Joseph Green

Acid
Portrait



Acid

When his wife's friends come
for dinner, the man serves them wine
while they visit in the kitchen.

Later, at the table the conversation turns
to Europe, and his wife describes her time
in Vienna, Turin, the man she lived with

before him. The guy was a jerk,
the man says, his words circling
the pasta, lighting in it like flies.

He pours more wine. As for himself,
he says he should be dead by now,
considering the foolish things he's done.

He rolls the motorcycles one at a time
out of memory's garage and races them
around the table. He's a little drunk, but

that's nothing. He used to do acid
and ride till it kicked in: the highway turning
to a black tar carpet; the sky, a blinding

white lens he couldn't look into,
birds flying down out of it like charged
particles aimed at the negative earth;

the oncoming traffic of his past
leaping toward him; the bike itself
whining, a swarm of dissonant insects;

and everyone smiling politely except his wife.
He can tell something is burning her tongue,
the way she shapes her mouth around it now.




Portrait

When they come home from the party
the man says he is tired, he wants to go to bed.
The woman says she has some things to do
before she joins him. She kisses him good night.

But it is not a good night. She starts
thinking of something that has nothing
to do with the man, and soon even the pictures
on the walls begin to irritate her, the way they stay
the same. She wants to rearrange them, but
instead she sews until sometime after 1:00.
Then she scrubs the sink.

When she finally goes to bed, she cannot sleep.
The problem that has been bothering her lies
curled at her feet, purring, keeping her awake.

In the morning, however, the woman discovers
that she has slept after all, that sometime
earlier the problem must have gotten up
from the foot of the bed and gone away.

At first she cannot believe it has left her.
She moves through each room like someone
expecting the floor to collapse beneath her,
like someone who can hear something tunneling
under the house. She hesitates at every door
as if the problem might be hiding behind it.

Sooner or later it is sure to come out again,
but right now she is carrying a hammer.
She is pounding nails into the dining room wall,
bending them and jerking them back out,
trying to get one to go in straight so she can
hang the man's portrait from it.