The Artifact

Like cows, we gathered to the artifact.
Maybe we were bored.


The thing blew into our lives like a meteor.
Indeed, it looked like a thing torn


from space and tossed in a field. Only, it wasn’t.
The thing was a chair.


“A chair?”
“Yes.”


It is the simplest way to name
such an artifact, an ancestral wish,


a hand-me-down adrift—
How else to describe it?


This morning, it appeared
in the empty living room.


We do not know who placed it there,
but the designation said,


“This chair belongs to you.”
We pulled up next to it.


We flicked aside our canes and walkers;
we cobbled our false teeth,


knicking them against our gums.
Click click natter natter.


“How does one actually sit on it?”
“Where do our legs go?” “Does it recline?”


The thing looked back at us,
holding its own secrets,


knowing and smug, about what it was
to be a chair. We circled it.


Now, as I tell it, I see that
our gathering was elegiac.


The twentieth century had passed
before us and we could not


understand the whole
expanse of it: the trite inventions,


unabashed cruelty— how it
sidewinded psychology to us,


instead of God. Our relic shone
like smeared tin with upholstery


pinned around the edges. We lumbered away,
in search of other furniture


more comfortable. Into our rooms,
we dispersed; we fled the chair.


It remains a thing, a place
where no one sits. It’s of little use.


So when guests come, we recommend
the artifact. We say, “Be seated.”


Of course we leave the room.
Best not to see a guest wrangle


with a chair that so easily outwits.
We’re nearly blind and rickety


on our feet. We know better than to sit
in the thing. We wouldn’t even dream of it.

reprinted from The Clearcut Anthology, 2006.

The Orphan’s Consolation


When they say, “How lucky you are! Just so lucky!”
they mean, “It was only luck that saved you.”
They mean, “We felt kind that day. Our good will is your fortune.”


When they say, “You were lucky to be clothed,”
they mean, “We gave you clothes. How kind we were!”
They mean, “We might have saved those clothes for others.”


When they say, “We sent you to school. Such luck!”
they mean, “We gave you to the school.”
They mean, “An education makes you worth something. You owe us.”


When they say, “We fed you. You’re just lucky we fed you,”
they mean, “some of our food. It was ours.”
They mean, “We spent our money on perishables. Lucky for you.”


When they say, “We gave you a roof over your head,”
they mean, “You are lucky. You dwelled in our kindness.”
They mean, “Our house was never yours.”
You know you were taken in. And it was just luck.