Lucia PerilloThe Destruction of the Mir
Every night space junk falls from the sky-- usually a titanium fuel tank. Usually falling into the ocean, or into nowhere in particular because we are a planet of great vacancies, never mind how much fog would be required in downtown Tokyo. In the Skylab days you'd see people on the streets wearing iron helmets, like centurions. But nowadays we go bare-headed, as if to say to the heavens: Wake me when I am someone else. Like the man whose car made fast acquaintance with what Yeats would have called the bole of a tree. And who now believes he has written many of the latest hits, which he will sing for you while he splits a cord of wood: like a virgin--whap!--like a virgin--whap!-- until he's got enough fuel for the winter and a million dollars stashed in an offshore bank. You may think it's tragic, like my Buddhist friend who claims that any existence means suffering, though my gay friend says: phooey, what about Oscar night, what about making popcorn and wrapping up with your sweetie in that afghan your great-aunt made long ago? You don't have to dwell on the fact that she's dead or bring up her last unkempt year in the home when she'd ask anyone who walked in the door to give her a good clunk on the head. Instead what about her crocheting these squares in preposterous colors, orange and green, though why must their clashing be brought to the fore if the yarn was enough to keep her happy? In fact don't the clashes light the sparks in this otherwise corny thing? Which is safer to make than a hole in the skull to let out the off-gassing of one's bad spirits. As in trephination performed by the Incas who traded their melancholy for a helmet made from a turtle shell. You never know when your brain will require such armor-- could happen sometime when you least expect. Could even happen when you are parked behind your desk, where a very loud thump makes you look up to discover a robin diving into the window again and again. It is spring after all, and in its reflection the bird may have found the perfect mate: thus doth desire propel us headlong toward the smash. Don't even try translating glass into bird-speak--it only knows it wants the one who dropped from sight. Same one who beaned it, same one who's perched, glaring back from a bough of the Japanese maple with its breast fit to burst. And behind the lace of new leaves, there's a wallpaper of clouds weighing hundreds of tons but which float nonetheless-- in the blue sky that seemed to fit so well when we first strapped it on our heads.
Lucia Perillo has published three books of poetry, the most recent of these being The Oldest Map With the Name America (Random House, 1999). Her work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, and has been reprinted in the Pushcart and Best American Poetry anthologies. In the year 2000 she received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
