Excellent Swimmers With Impeccable Form Innocent and Chaste
it was on the pier
at Jackson’s Point
in the mid-summer heat
pretending to shade their eyes
secure in the blind
of their separate gangs
skin tanned and glistening
bathing suits wet
both fit and both excellent
swimmers with impeccable form
race to the buoy and back
and the winner is
forgotten as she
pulls off
the white
bathing cap
and shakes the curls
back into her raven hair
Hey little girl is
your daddy home
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire
I’m on fire
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire
I’m on fire
At night I wake up
with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I’m on fire
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I’m on fire
desire trumps all religion
and parental imperative
they had nothing to say but
their beauty was undeniable
standing beside each other on the alter
under the canopy
outrage already brewing
the Russians and the Poles
never meant to get along
his father inviting one hundred
more to the wedding
and forgetting
to tell her parents
who were picking up the tab
and there were no seats
for honoured guests
the Gentile politicians
and the bankers
and chaos ensued
and that was only the ceremony
and through the evening
it got much
worse
and we would hear about it often
how his parents
first cousins from the shtetl
in Poland
had no class
though the mother
with a loving heart in disrepair
warm and giving would die
much too soon
while the father
a true believer prayed
three times a day
to a God he would never know
a furrier making garments
to stave off the cold
Persian lamb, muskrat, beaver,
mink and Alaska seal
ownership alone
was a declaration of prosperity
in this new land
both bleak and hostile
but not as hostile as Poland
not as dangerous to the man
with his prayer book hurrying
through the shadows
the sun lit streets
draped in darkness
to say Kaddish
for a mother or a wife
no pogroms or purges in this place
simply the shortened day
and the descending chill of indifference
her parents came from
Kiev and Odessa
and far apart they would remain
once all the
children were born
one in Belgium
on the way over
and three at the end
of the world’s longest road
where he ran a
dry goods store
lent money, gambled high stakes, won
and lost a fortune
and she a sullen introvert
was devoted only
to the children
in time he sent them all away
to Toronto
and stayed above the store
with its green linoleum floor
and the arborite table
and the mistress speaking French
the house by the lake sold
in exchange for one
with a view
on a hill close
to Castle Loma
the Cossacks
back in the old country
had a way of subverting
religious impulse
whether with a pitch fork or a sword
and prayer came on days marked
by the cycles of the moon
in rooms adorned with symbols
of half
remembered stories
the women seated above the men
wearing their finest clothes
growing up in the north
they kept a shovel inside
the door to carve
a way
through the snow
leaving her with a different sense of God
than him on Euclid Street
his grandmother with an ax
killing the Friday night chicken
out in the yard
in the way that it was written
she wanted a bacon sandwich on white toast
with butter and mayonnaise
it was something he would never comprehend
choking on religious superstition
he offered little resistance
to the leash pulled tight
by an unseen hand
on a good night in their new house
in the newly built suburb
of treeless streets
at the city limits
there might be laughter
on a Sunday night
watching Ed Sullivan on TV
and they might retreat
after the kids were in bed
and though there was never
enough sex for him
and always too much for her
there was a palpable heat
burning into the darkness
and bringing light to the household
like a comet passing through
a distant galaxy
once or twice a year
but rarely would it remain
civil with cruel words
enflamed with hate
emanating from behind closed doors
they hated themselves
for the trap they were in
and they hated each other
for springing it
love and desire slipping
from their grasp
sinking to the bottom
visible and out of reach
never enough money
since he left school
and went to work for his father
doling out a salary
that came in a brown envelope
like the cutters and the sewers on the floor
with strings of failed promise
and guilt attached
and always some back handed
comment about the wife
whose spending was unending
and for why does she need that hat, dress, coat, car, piano,
TV, set of dishes
or sterling
silver cutlery
and religion with its rules
written back in time
of the bicameral mind
and still beyond
a shadow of a doubt
each believer an authority deflecting
and refusing all questions
the wisdom of the holy one
blessed be he
was absolute
and they fought
at the table
resistance and revolution
for the sake
of the children
he wanting them cut
and pasted into the family
ledger of belief
she wanting them born to freedom
the capacity to think and chose
and always this fight would erupt
on the most holy day
and night with screams
and the car tires spinning
in the gravel drive
while she sped away
for some reprieve
bastard
bitch
son of a whore
cunt
and so it is said
you shall repent
on this day and atone
for all your sins
it took them thirty years
to wring the last drop of life
out of their union
and leave us with the residue
shoveling it into the plastic pails
we used as children
at the beach
the shovels bending
with the weight of each load
and it would
take a thousand trips
up and down the cellar stairs
to eliminate the dampness and the stench
the human waste
Stephen Zeifman
