Who Writes the Last Chapter?

after Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Une dei Tanti Epiloghi.”

Metallic clang of mailbox.
The postman packs letters, those dreadful,

silent passages. I thought you’d melted
from my thoughts like snow when spring leaves,

only forever. Then this postcard
with your handwriting: Thank you…

Thank you? Did your mother
hover at your side as you wrote that?

Did the devil laugh on the other?
…for the tickets and the ride. Your pet name for me

appears nowhere—mother might see.

Remember, sweets, my recurring dream
while you babbled in sleep beside me?

Driving the car, I’d see your seat empty,
door open, you running behind, calling

weepily, Let me catch my breath!
when you caught up you said This will cost you.

Life’s journey, sweets. Desires we only
discover in dreams. But I know the real you

said those words and felt them:
you still turn red if we speak of this

sober. Anyway, I can afford you.

The night we met, the guard locked the gate,
we slipped past him to the field where

in cannon-fort ruins we filmed
our screwing. My desire of freedom remade.

Now you’re my grateful passenger
riding to parties and theaters, to concerts and queer bars,

so many potential sites of drunken disgrace. I am leaving
for faraway places, will send you

a postcard. My life with you was made of cravings
you couldn’t name or satisfy.

It left me starving.

Filed under: Poetry