So, This is What Living Means

artwork:ralph murre

So, This is What Living Means

by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

What a relief, to finally know

what living means:

an extra skate key

stashed under a garbage can,

on the right side of the stoop.

Years ago, I tried to ponder all

the great questions.  I read Nietzsche

and Dostoyevsky and fell in love

with a bulge-eyed Frenchman.

I tried to do what was expected

of a working class kid in a state college:

think, read, talk the big questions;

prove your mother right.

But I was a fake.  Friends read N and D too,

and understood them.  They were impressed

by my love for the bulge-eyed Frenchman,

my facile quotes delivered with meaningful

pauses.  They didn't know I yawned through N

and read D because he told a good story.

Marriage and a real job distracted, just in time.

I had things to do and need not ponder

what living means.  I stopped reading N

and fell out of love.  But kept D by my bedside.

Later on, with divorce behind me and poetry on my mind,

I watched my cat play with a terrified lizard;

I looked at rain; I choked on hot winds scorching

my tomato plants and began to ponder again,

but nothing happened.

I read N again and the bulge-eyed Frenchman, but I

didn't fall in love.

I understood better this time, but I was still

shaky on details and settled down with D

to forget myself.

"Why" is a good word, a solid word that can

occupy a lifetime.  But an answer to why isn't meaning.

"Is" is a good word too.  Something of substance.

Like an extra skate key stashed under a garbage can,

on the right side of the stoop, just in case,

just in time.

~ originally published on AmherstWriters.org

The Naturalist

street art (detail) colonia del sacramento, uraguay

The Naturalist

by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

                                    breaks a twig off a tree living in a brick-

                                    lined plot on a city street.  She slaps

                                    the twig across a brownstone's iron gate,

                                    absorbs the rumble back to bone.

                                    She hears birdsongs among taxi horns, adds

                                    a grunt, a hum, silence; she spots a cat

                                    on a stoop, pets it in passing; she swerves

                                    around dog feces, jumps a grating; she

                                    eyes the sky, like a Sybil ...

                                                            To burst, rot, rust, all in its turn,

                                                            by overripening or contrivance, back to

                                                            animal, mineral, vegetable.  Ancient game.

                                                            All the same.  Innocence doesn't

                                                            matter.  Ignorance doesn't matter.  Greed

                                                            doesn't matter.  Survive

                                                            matters, measured by unattended clocks.

                                                            Not meant, not mean

                                                            just are, here

                                    ... interpreting signs

                                    tickling arm hairs, scraping the edge of a nail.

                                    And with cat, gate, feces, twig,

                                    she dies a little

                                    in the natural order of things,

                                    ikon of the unsponsored,

                                    as natural as things get.

                                    ~ first published in Lynx Eye

On Being Slow

On Being Slow

by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

I.

It has always taken me so long

to understand, to "see," to say "oh,

that's what that means."

It has also always taken me so long

to get to where ever I may be headed

if not determined by roads, tracks,

ferries, or air routes.

Neither defect was overwhelming

except to a loved one here and there

or an unloved one there and here;

It was also not overwhelming when

there was plenty of time ahead of me

and not so much in back as there is

this year or will be next.

II.

I've always disliked the current generation

badmouthing the one about to overtake it,

especially when I am one of the current

and I am always one of some "current."

Perhaps because I've always been so slow

it takes me so much time to understand

that I'm not needed or not in the same way,

that those who sincerely depend on me

will be as able to transfer their loyalties

like I have, in my own disquieting insistence

on keeping myself whole.

III.

It has also taken some time for me to see

that if found dead, my body would no longer

be reported as that of a young woman

and that if I’m lucky “mature sexuality” will last

until old age creeps in, so slowly - or suddenly -

I won’t notice until it’s long gone

~ previously published in DUFUS (Lummox Press)

. . . Friends and Other Strangers

October 11, Noon:   Friends and Other Strangers

by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

           

            Instead of plaster, massive plates of glass

            pretend to be a wall; they pass me by,

            bouncing autumn sun off my eyes, playing

            back a too-familiar image:  Me.  Here.

            It isn't right, a hospital you see through;

            a hospital you see through has no shame.

            I need my wall. 

            Not loving friends.

            I learned the rules of waiting lightyears past;

            I pass GO everytime, on every roll, without repeating:

            I'm ok, honest.

            They're driving in by now, they can't be stopped -

            damn them - why did I say Come?

                        In case.  In case of what?  In case the shaman's

                        tools, gleaming in a stranger's hands, slip.

            That's what they think.  But that bet's safe,

            riding smug and easy on veteran skill,

            making the 1st cut for biopsy 2,

            the one they don't know about, the one

            that counts, the one that says:  Ok - Continue, or,

            Sorry - too late, after all - Close him up.

            I should have heard by now,

            before they find a place to park, flounder

            through 6 tiers of lobbies, sight me

            among my peers.

            What's wrong with them?  Don't they know civility demands

            that screams be secret?  Don't they know

            I can't be touched today?  I can't

            be seen today?

                        Why not?  What could they see?

                        Me.  Alone.  Like them.

                        They'll reach for me, they'll

                        think their words are more than

                        poundings in my head.

            I take a walk and have a cigarette.

            I look at windows, hold a magazine.

            They said they'd be here, twelve o'clock, they said.

            What time is it?  It's 12:05.  They're late.

~ first published in Sensations