I Dream I Am Emily Dickinson’s Boyfriend.
Our love is secret, so we go to the movies all the way over
in Greenfield, then stop by the Fun Zone.
Emily kills at foosball. That gossamer and tulle makes
guys think she can’t play.
We talk at least once a day. When I ask her what she did
she says, “Stayed indoors.”
The other night she texted me, “I feel a funeral in my brain.
But come over, anyway, and we’ll watch ESPN.”
She tells me I’m more fun than Reverend Charles Wadsworth,
and a better kisser than Judge Lord.
She asks for help with her poetry. Hope is a thing with . . .
1. Fur 2. Down 3. Feathers 4. An exoskeleton
She’s older than me so she can buy beer at any 7-11. She likes
a liquor never brewed. Which 7-11 doesn’t carry.
She gives me little books of her poems that she’s sewn
together herself.
“Keep these, honey,” she says. “They’ll be worth a lot
someday.”
The Wasp Woman
Janice Starlin, owner of a foundering cosmetics firm,
is injected with royal jelly from wasps. She grows younger
until the headaches start. Then she needs more, so much
that she turns into a carnivorous insect and devours
the nearest man.
She’s killed, of course, and the status quo is restored.
Bill and Mary from Accounting continue dating
but the relationship doesn’t go anywhere. He saved her
life, yes, but now he lies around the apartment in a T-shirt
with a stain on it.
Maureen from the typing pool has to find work elsewhere.
From a distance she almost looks like a movie star. She’s hired
quickly but calls in sick a lot. She has nightmares and is fired.
It’s that way with everyone who worked at Starlin Enterprises,
everyone who even glimpsed the wasp woman. The account
executive cries in the market buying his frozen dinner.
The kid who brought in bagels turns to a life of petty crime.
The fat janitor was first to be eaten. All the police found
was his hat which they gave to his wife.
No pension from the company. Just a hat. And what
is she supposed to do with that as the bills pour in
and the buzzing in her ears gets louder and louder?
Sunday Comix
Blondie
When Blondie Boopadoop became Blondie Bumstead,
she gave up cloche hats, boas, and fringed dresses.
The dancing was fun but not the woozy compliance
in the back seat of someone’s runabout.
Dagwood was the steadiest of all her beaus.
She liked the little house he picked out. It was all
they could afford. He was no longer an heir to
the Bumstead Locomotive fortune.
Blondie wondered if he loved her so much
or just hated his father. People acted out
of malice and defiance all the time. How many
girls had she known who ended up in a ditch
with their stockings torn just so their parents
would have to come down to the police station.
Blondie couldn’t imagine Dagwood doing
anything rash or self-destructive. There were
those ridiculous snacks, but his cholesterol
was under control. So he took naps? A lot
of men did that.
He was a good husband and father, and Daisy
did not cringe and slink away when her master
came home but ran to the door ready to leap
into his open arms.
Dagwood
Mr. Dithers sings the usual anthem
of exasperation, Herb borrows another
hammer, Tootsie drops by with cupcakes,
Blondie wants to vacuum beside the couch.
It’s a good life—napping, eating those
gravity-defying snacks, rocketing out
the door every morning.
Something else Dagwood enjoys is the act
of creation: how he’s not there at all,
how he’s nowhere
until the insolent pen descends and violates
in a way the innocent page and little
by little
there he is: that signature hair,
the bow tie red as Blondie’s sweetly
hectoring lips, the enormous whites
of his eyes.
Mr. Julius Caesar Dithers
He yelled at Dagwood every day and fired him at least
once a week. But Dagwood was just a scapegoat.
It was J.C.’s wife, Cora, who really drove him
crazy. What a battleaxe! But Dithers knew that if
he ever started in on her, it would mean homicide.
And he didn’t want to end up in Detective Classics.
He loved those magazines, though, with their “Gruesome
Love Crime” and “Bloody Rampages.” He knew Dagwood
would disapprove but who was he, anyway? An employee,
that’s who. An employee who was always late and never, ever,
ever balanced the books in his life. “Bumstead!! Get in here
now! You’re fired!! And this time I mean it!!!”
Herb Woodley
He and Tootsie are a couple. Indeed, they are the couple
next door. Someone to play cards with, plan a picnic,
or babysit Little Dumpling and Cookie while their
best friends go to the movies.
The next day, Herb and Dagwood play golf. The sky
is whiter than cream, which reminds Dagwood
of how hungry he is, so off they go to the diner.
Later, Herb borrows another hammer, one
of the hundreds of tools he will never return.
There is nothing to fix that a pen stroke won’t
remedy. And it’s not as if Herb has to board up
a window because something is out there waiting
for it to get dark.
No, only the Bumstead’s little house and sometimes
an arc of Z’s rising from the couch and meandering
through an open window.
Tootsie Woodley
Before she was a cartoon character, Tootsie
was an imaginary graduate student. Thus everything
she does is shadowed by knowledge.
Chatting with Blondie about their next catering
job or just watching Daisy gaze out a window,
she is a kind of double agent.
She knows the very ink that makes her
accessible consists of atoms always in motion—
arching and oozing, clinging and discrete,
now making a telephone, now a clothes line.
Even the garage full of tools Herb has no intention
of returning is just a nest of possibility.
It could just as well be a gazebo where she
and Blondie could put out the dips. Or a prison
with walls anyone could walk through.
Alexander
Since he never changes,
one might suspect
there’s a hideous picture
of him in the attic.
But he’s not Dorian Gray,
he’s Alex Bumstead,
a popular kid and more
stable than his father.
He’s never late or even
tardy. He eats just enough.
He’s an A student
and president of his class.
High school lasts forever,
but his teachers are smart
and there’s lots to learn.
It isn’t like he’s going to
peak at eighteen, then decline
into a dead end job and
alcoholism.
Every day is April. His
mom cooks, Dad plunges
into the world. He’ll make
sure Cookie gets to school
then lope toward his own
campus where everyone
is glad to see him.
Cookie
What a stupid name! Something that crumbles,
something that boys eat, something that gets stale.
If I could only misbehave! How I’d love
to come home drunk with my sweater inside out.
Or even better—make my parents drive down
to the police station. All those question marks
floating above their stupid heads. I’d flirt
with the cutest policeman. I’d sit next to
the prostitute and ask for a light. I’d ask
a kidnapper for a ride anywhere but home.
Mr. Beasley
He has been the Bumstead’s postman forever,
and delivering their mail is all he does.
Herb and Tootsie live nearby, but Mr. Beasley
doesn’t go there, as much as he might like to.
His job is to be right in front of the door when
Dagwood, always late for work, charges past
knocking him head over heels and sending his
handful of bills into the air
prompting an apology from tenderhearted
Blondie as he lies on the sidewalk.
He loves her and would be eloquent if he could—
Beloved, there is a war inside me. Here the milk
of your skin, there a door with a lock
But he can’t. The panel he inhabits is a prison.
At least downtown Mr. Dithers is giving Dagwood
a good talking to,
the jagged lines that show the boss’s anger shooting
harmlessly past Dagwood’s stupid hair.
Daisy
First of all, her pups never grew up.
And then they disappeared!
She misses: Hildegard, Fatima,
Gibson, Voodoo, and Roger Moore.
The secret names she gave them.
It’s tedious to just bark at the postman,
lie at Dagwood’s feet, and eat the scraps
that fall from his Pisa-like creations.
If the puppies would only come back!
She imagines them trotting up
the sidewalk in a line.
Maybe a little cold and hungry.
Daisy would lie on her side
so they could nurse.
They’d crawl all over her licking
and slobbering. Then romp to
Cookie and Alexander who would
play tug-of-war with a sock.
Even Mr. Beasley would be glad
to see them, leaning down to pet
each one just before Dagwood
bowled him over.
