Last Edit Was Seconds Ago
by Daniel Meltz
Used to be a bungee life off a rusted bridge on a paisley
river named a superfund site during the Carter
administration. Used to be bouts of vertigo and
homewrecking and acid trips on the railroad tracks and
la-di-da books about gravedigging and identity
swapping and shoplifting The Bell Jar at the Brentano’s
in the Village that’s now a Duane Reade. But then I
tomahawked the bungee cord and sproinged like a rock
from a Jack-in-the-Beanstalk slingshot onto lower
Second Av where that notorious hotspot the Saint used to
be, marked by a grease stain in the shape of a gunned-
down body. Every part of me was busted but I still had
the high-pitched bizzbuzz of Yessir or Nosir against my
swollen intellect which echoed through a decommissioned
subway station where a corporal played Taps on a plastic
trumpet. If only I had the one word, be it strength or
emergency or anything as big and unmistakable as that
to snap me out of stupendous stupors, but as soon as the
word seemed to fit the situation it escaped through a
nostril so I discontinued talismanic buzzwords and realized
that if I wanted to stick around I’d have to get professional
help and return to the vocabulary at some point. That
some point is now. And though the word was changing
up until yesterday (words like connect and proportion and
father) the forever word is easy now, it’s kindness.
Lost and Found and Lost Again and Again
Sometimes it’s better to have the upper hand and sometimes
it’s not and sometimes there are no hands to be had in the first
place.
Sometimes someone is always apologizing or overdosing on
Lexapro, full of what Gertrude Stein classified as “servant girl
being.”
Sometimes it’s best to spread love like mulch though it nauseates
firmer temperaments but in the long run inhibits crabgrass from
spreading.
Sometimes it’s best for the snarky to dominate so that the nicer learn
to dish it back and polish a sense of independence that lurks within a
dependent nature.
And the ones with no hands to speak of: Invite them over, they mingle
so effortlessly, although they don’t necessarily make good bosses, yet
they’re so perfect for
each other when they marry each other that, even if one of them dies,
they will marry again because their love life never made them feel
inadequate.
I cannot lie that I like it when your personality changes and you look at me
with a dreamy curiosity as if to say Who is the real unknowable you that can
make me feel guilty.
Bogota New Jersey
whoever is stable thats the
one to go to everyones
got a hope and a secret
holdover that comes at you
like a grumpy rugrat or
retreats from you like a
nurse with bad breath
oh Lizzie of the sacred
snow day sledding down
through the intersection
of hearts sliced thin I was
putting myself together with
masking tape and an attitude
so worried about the
marauding carthieves though
I dont own a car this
barn these hands at 2 and
10 wake up resting mommy
and renegotiate with the
mediator who is sorrier
than a cannibal of all
that rope on a poopdeck
of weather-beaten rigmarole
and a holy I don’t know
Israelites Delivered unto Freedom in Two Kinds of Hebrew
By staying with you as long as I did I guess you could say I got left back 38
times meaning I could’ve wound up age 47 and still in fourth grade but
if it had taken that long to learn long division I still would’ve ended up
knowing how to divide and continued on to fractions. I didn’t divide. I
split. I miss you. I will never forget the
lessons you taught me though I was
such a bad patient for so many years,
so resistant to your help, so addicted
to false enthusiasm and reflecting
plastic surfaces, that at one point you
told me A lot of therapists would’ve
dumped you by now, would’ve told
you you’re unworkable, but lucky
for you I am not one of those
therapists. (What a lesson right there,
a lesson in sassy-ass.) Because all
I’d been saying was no, to whatever observations you offered.
Observations that scalded like cast iron skillets with kidneys
and livers still sizzling in the fat. You said I was sneaky and
petty and snooty and vengeful and smirky and smug and
condescending. How did you expect me to respond to all
those switchblade descriptors? But I hung around anyway.
I had a tiny uncrazy reasonability
in me. It knew your approach was
necessary, fortified, Molotov, en-
dangered. It knew I couldn’t snow
or guilt you. You even warned me
early on that I shouldn’t mistake
you for one of those bleeding-
heart social workers. And besides.
For every thousand or so of my petulant nos, a yes would pop out
of me, freely espoused. And every yes thereof came pressure-
tested, credible, a steel-inforced tulip, in the order of operations,
in the number brought down after subtracting for the remainder.
Yes, I want to suffer. Yes, it’s wrong to cocktease. Yes, I want
to watch you eat dirt. Okay, Mr. Twist-O-Flex. What comes next?
Moving away from you. Learning
to release you. Understanding
how long ago you released me.
Knowing the difference between
repressed bellicosity and catalyst
combos such as independent
thinking, throwing wet clay on a
pottery wheel and (now that we’ve
memorized the poem Moses
sang when he split the Red Sea)
I scratched the table behind my wager.
BIO
Daniel Meltz‘s first book of poems, “It Wasn’t Easy to Reach You,” will be published by Trail to Table Press in February 2025. David Sedaris is calling the book “funny, bold and moving.” His first novel, “Rabbis of the Garden State,” will be published by Rattling Good Yarns in April 2025. His individual poems have been published in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2012, Salamander, upstreet and lots of other journals. He’s been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and was a finalist in competitions held by seven independent presses. He’s a retired technical writer and teacher of the deaf, has a BA in English from Columbia (no honors) and lives in Manhattan. https://www.danielmeltz.com/
