David Austerweil

His poetry has been previously published in The Drexel Online Journal and Poems Niederngasse. He was also a recipient of the Ford Poetry Award for best collection of poems from Columbia University. His email address is dave@davidausterweil.com.

EPARTURE.
After Reading “Eight Verses on Transforming the Mind”


I blacked out in a public park.
When the kind slaps of a stranger
woke me from my chrysalis,
the inside of my head was an aquarium,
full of water and the kind of goldfish
you win at a carnival.
It swam around,
every now and then darting into a plastic castle
that rested on a gravel bed.
When the fish rubbed against the walls of my skull,
not so accidentally,
I felt an excruciating tickle that I could not scratch.
I sat on a bench in that park, perfectly upright, staring forward.
A woman walked over,
bent down, and cupped my face in her hands.
She looked into my eyes, past her reflection,
and saw the fish swim out of his castle
and look back at her.
I could no longer think or imagine anything,
except for what the fish imagined or thought.



Yawns are Contagious Because We are Each Locked-Up Bored

'Shave it short so you just can’t see scalp,
I tell her. '

They mock savages at work.
I had had my last good taunting seven months ago,
and I remember then I hid in the bathroom
cheering diarrhea.
Then the dragon sun was hidden by April.
I was taking precautions for May.

She gloats over last 'year’s' victory at
The League of Barber Shop Quartets Annual Competition.

She jokes. I joke.
I can say anything and she’ll laugh. The following are examples:
I am too much a young man to carry an umbrella to the beach.
They 'don’t' pay the bills, but I wish they did.
The big bang must have happened because Phineas & Rose spent
the money for the new Hayden Planetarium.
She stops laughing. I stop laughing.
I sneeze a tsunami.

How does it look?
I ask.
She hands me my glasses.
Outside a palanquin runs a red light.
Good, she says.
I could strut down Fifth Avenue.
I could shamelessly buy Brooks Brothers shirts.
She yawns. I yawn.
We always discuss travel and marriage.


Looking Towards South Ferry

Gecko faced woman,
you don’t seem to know it’s summer.
Your husband works
in the Sunset Industrial Park
among the warehouses,
wide and long as blocks,
with their cavernous bellies
and gaping mouths.
He stands in a room
that provides an arm’s space,
enough to place
his coffee and donut
and the brown bag lunch you made.

In his blue shirt,
through his black framed glasses,
he watches the men load
and unload
the elephantine trucks.
But drivers are not royalty
so he watches them carefully.
He brings his lunch to the shore of the East River,
nestling among storage bins
as he tries to name every building on the skyline.
He wishes he could see you more,
but you understand. You are working too,
while Con Edison, Key Span, Chase,
Geico, GMAC Mortgage
steal under your front door.
You work hard, and dispatch them silently.



This Room and Beyond

I won’t stuff my salvation in your ears
like a subway preacher.
In fact, I won’t tell you anything.
My captive audience,
I just want to point out the clock behind you
with both hands endlessly circling.
I want to draw your attention
to my hands on the podium,
my lips sometimes touching,
my eyes that might build a tunnel
to yours, and yours, and yours.

Follow me outside.
A gust of wind breaks the shingles into applause.
The grass sways back and forth.
A child rides his bicycle
in the eye of the hurricane.
A few drops of rain pat him on the back.

My captive audience,
a woman who did not decide to have a baby
buys Nestlé baby milk and diapers
from a bodega.
The diapers were made by a grandmother in China
and shipped across the Pacific.
The Nestlé was milked from cows in Wyoming
by dehydrated steel mouths.



Portrait of a Man Departing

He has a logic death ray.

A hyena in the supermarket,
he keeps his nose to the ground
with a taste for giraffe.

He encounters a snake.
Those who do not know
it is a snake
are happiest.
He knows it is a snake.

When handed a quarter
he dispenses a gumball,
not a clear plastic ball
packaging high and low,
near and far,
truth and untruth.

Under a hot sun,
he questions himself.
Under a cool noon,
he questions himself.
Under a dark star,
he questions himself.

He dreams his skin
becomes burnt and ashen
until every limb is like wood
spent after a fire.
With a wake-up prod,
he crumbles, his dust scatters.