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Have You Been to Alaska?

Dear Pat,

I like that you don’t wear a nose ring
and that I strongly suspect
there are no pictures of you with your lips
pursed. That’s so dumb.
A nose ring might be okay for some
but definitely not for you.
One would only get in the way
of your good looks. But please don’t get me
wrong. I haven’t focused
on your nose or any one part of you.
It’s just when I put everything together
you’re a knockout. One thing I really like
is the shape of your face when you smile.
I honestly don’t know at this moment,
5:02 AM, your eye color, I’d guess blue.
Your eyes light up your face when you smile
and your two cheeks flare in a soft V
pleasant to look at, and a nose ring, no,
nor one of those tongue studs.
I can’t see you with a tongue stud.
Maybe I’m wrong about the pursed lips.
I can’t see you doing that.

I strongly suspect you’re not a follower,
you go your own way.
I say that just from being around you.
Something I pick up,
that you give off, your going your own way
from the moment you wake till you sleep,
I suspect, that’s my impression
from how you look, speak and act,
from how you walk.
I’m okay with not knowing, with wondering
because it’s you I’m wondering about.
I suspect you’ve not seen the hanging
gardens of Babylon. If you have, I’d be
surprised. But you surprise me in little ways
that aren’t little to me, like the day
you pushed up whatever you were wearing
and showed the bruise on your shin.
That was a big event. I’d rather see
your shin than the hanging gardens,
I’d rather see your face than the Great Wall
in China, sunset out over the sea
from a ship, and water rushing over rocks
in a mountain stream. You go your own way.

Have you ever been to Argentina?
You’re more beautiful than Argentina,
more beautiful than a rose and all of Texas
and any of those girls who purse their lips
for pictures. One time you passed by
and you were wearing a beautiful scent.
I took in its fragrance, then you were gone,
off to do something somewhere I wasn’t.
Your scent, all the more fragrant because
it was only a moment. Had you stuck around
it wouldn’t have been what it was.
Have you ever been in a pavilion, in out of
rain and looked out at the rain in the trees?
You’re lovelier than rain in trees
and all rainbows that ever were.
They’re up there, you’re down here, as you
were one day with that knockout perfume.
You’re more beautiful than Argentina.
You’ve been beautiful from the day
you were born. Everyone wants to be with
you, and everything, even windows and
chairs in rooms you inhabit, your beating
heart, unstoppable loveliness.

Is Pat always beautiful?
—Every moment of her life.
There’s not a syllable of untruth in anything
I’ve said.
We’re not children, I’m not delusional
in my singing praises of you, a woman.
But this is more me than you, this note with
its underlying “To thine own self be true.”
It’s a joy daydreaming of you.
Wondering how you look, how you act,
what you do in places where I’m not.
I’m here with you in mind,
who are more beautiful than all of Texas.
Have you been to Alaska?
Have you ever driven through a tunnel?
Do you look long at yourself in a mirror?
If you do, you’ll know why I daydream you.
You’re so daydream worthy,
lovelier than
a waterfall, prettier than a nose ring wearer
or any girls who purse their lips.
Please accept these few praises
of all your beauty.

Duel in Weehawken

Hamilton and Burr, instead of pistols
arm wrestle to resolve matters.
Pistols. No issue’s worth that risk.
I wonder if Burr lost any sleep.
What’d you do?

How was your day? I killed Hamilton.
Yet Hamilton’s on the ten spot.
He and Burr, the U.S. Vice
President, stepped ten paces,
turned and fired.

Where was Hamilton hit?
There’s a past in cast iron fine print
marks the spot. A plaque
on a palisade overlooks the Hudson
they crossed.

Weekday mornings I winded my way
to a toll lane then into the Tunnel.
Back to the tragic duel,
Burr’s better shot.
Manhattan had outlawed duels.

House Sitting

Tomorrow’s supposed to be brutal, I live like
a pig, and Look, I’m bleeding—three titles,
three icicles in a grotto in northern Spain.
Break one off. Place it on the tip of your
tongue; try a fourth: Poland wants to dance.
East Europe wants a Fabergé egg
in which to see its chinoiserie face. Who
can blame them? Out your window cold,
a pond in winter woods in sunlight, a scene
you can’t enter. You’re wearing a big
backpack, on a bike heading north.
What about the earrings of the Poles,
the actress who died rescuing the boy
in the hotel fire, the split-level in Metutchen,
the Volvo in Tula, the ice follies tickets,
the Australian who danced well,
the reluctant tone of his last two letters?
Disappearing act, title number five.
You rang a bell for New Year’s Eve.
Mr. Romance tripped on icy steps.
What was he thinking? Leaning over a table
where you sat with your companion,
Veronica, he pointed to his face. “Look,
it’s blood!” For him a typical night. They say
you’ve bought a flower that dances to music

for your cousin, Bonita Portofino,
expecting her first child.
They are the Trapdoor Spider Gang. They
trade hashish for ivory, analyze boredom,
and command our cluster leaders,
“Don’t exasperate the trees of this town,”
that worships Vishnu and the harquebus.
Incidentally, Robert’s dating one
of the Shirelles. Title six: They were married
in a cathedral in Prague. At their reception
waiters served vini d’italia at room
temperature. I used my Armenian Express
to get around western Pennsylvania.
My better half wanted her family to think
of me as a man who does what he says he’ll
do. They didn’t, love fizzled like a match
where two boxers hug twelve rounds.
Title seven: Christmas with Willie Nelson.
Honus Wagner, turn the music down.
Someone’s died. Someone else
has shopped for her boss and bought
his daughter age five a red velvet dress.
That one of us will die first is a narrow
bridge we’ve yet to cross—you on your bike;
me, looking out a half-frosted window,

scratching my left eyebrow. You said,
“I’m having new curtains put in the music
room, after we take everything out I’m
having it painted. While that’s happening
we can buy dress shirts. I might get
a joystick to go with my Nintendo.”
What do I do here all day alone?
I’m no tinhorn dictator telling the masses
things are getting healthy. There’s anti-
abortion couples who’ll take the baby home
from the hospital, slam it against the wall;
tarantulas, earthquakes, sordid encounters.
“Fuck you, I’m on my vacation” was on his T
shirt. Title eight: That promise of love
in spring. A soldier’s embrace pleases,
although it’s not nine, and I’ve no top ten.
But that lack is different from the lack
of a hairpiece or a hearing aid or a foot
that falls off if I play too rough. Live like
a pig? Maybe there’s a secluded course
where the holes are challenging, and that’s
what counts? I’m looking out at the day
too cold really to go out and run around in.
You plan. At times that seems dumb,
but not now. Title nine: Now you know.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Peter Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is due out in September 2023 from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.

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