When I tell him I’m working on “in which” poems,
imagining alternative lives for myself,
my grandnephew Nick lights up—
What about a poem in which you are a dog?
Then you wouldn’t really write poetry at all
just bark out some syllables about the sublime
smell of the grass or other dogs’ butts
or maybe you’d scratch out the lines in dirt with your paw
for the poodles and collies to find—since they could read “dog”
and you could write “dog”—though we humans wouldn’t get it.
My dog Ringo may be writing poems for all I know
when he digs in the yard. Or maybe he howls spoken word
at Danny the mailman.
What if you were an only child
and my grandmother had never been born and it was just you
getting all the toys? But then I suppose I wouldn’t be here
because Grandma wouldn’t have given birth to my mother
who gave birth to me and my brothers. Wait—I wouldn’t’ have
cousins either if Grandma had never been born
because then Auntie Kate would have never been born
and, most importantly, I couldn’t give you any more ideas
for poems.
What if you were made out of Legos instead
of hair and bones, plastic primary colors, wearing Lego earrings
and Lego necklaces, with a Lego birdfeeder and Lego flowers
in front of your Lego castle? Imagining myself
not quite animal or human reminds me of a joke
which is not really a joke. Why did the gingerbread man
feel queasy looking at the gingerbread house? Answer:
Because it was made of his skin. Nick thinks this is funny
but not. As we try deconstruct why, we realize it’s not
really a kid’s joke or an adult joke, just a kind of uncanny
observation, nothing like the “dad riddles” his father
finds on the internet at breakfast. I tell Nick
I had a husband with his same name before he was born—
I’ve heard of him, Nick says, just the way he’s heard
of my dad who died before he was born, before his mother
married. I tell him my own grandmother, his great-
great-grandmother was born in 1900 so I always
knew her age just by knowing the year.
Nick has no memories of the 1900s, which sound
like olden times to him—TVs with knobs to change
just a few channels and big ugly telephones
stuck to the wall.
Or what if you were born a boy?
You might be better at basketball and you’d definitely make
more money.
What if you lived in a world in which dinosaurs
were still alive? Would they be our mode of transportation?
Would we ride a Triceratops’s back on a giant saddle?
Could we even coexist with the likes of a Tyrannosaurus rex
or would it stomp on us? Or eat us? And what about those
tiny dinosaurs, Yulong minis, only as big as chickens?
Would they become our pets instead of cats? This reminds me
of “Feonix/(Mystical Creature),” a sculpture I saw
at Art Basel in Miami just a few weeks before. I show
Nick the picture of it I took on my cell.
Enrique Gomez de Molina used the remains of dead
animals and birds—beetle wings, peacock feathers,
goat skin, a resin stork bill, Macaw feathers, and pig ears
to make a gorgeous 3-d leaping beast that looked
as though it might spring from the wall. And what if
you weren’t born on earth? What if you were born
on Mars instead? You’d be a Martian and maybe
I’d be a Martian too.
Did you ever wonder— What if poetry
wasn’t ever invented? What if poetry wasn’t even a thing?
Then what? What would you do? Maybe you’d live on a boat
and your job would be to take people snorkeling.
What if
we lived under a mean king? Or a benevolent king?
Or what if Burger King was the only kind of food in the world
and there were no vegetables or fruit left? We’d feel lethargic
and full all the time, right?
What if you were an organic
farmer? What if you sold those purple carrots? What if your
carrots were so delicious you became a millionairess?
Then I could work for you. I love digging in the dirt
