Suzy Zeus Gets Organized (5 page)

SUZY MEETS A GUY

Last week, at a parish meeting,

Suzy saw a stunning sight:

someone with a brace of cheekbones

higher than a flying kite.

William spoke, and made it clear, on

top of that, that he was bright.

Bill knows port, and Bill knows starboard.

Bill knows booms, and ropes, and crews.

Bill can change his tack mid-harbor.

Bill knows all the microbrews.

Bill would like to take her sailing.

Bill begins to call her "Suze."

Bearded, tall, as thin as Jesus,

wowed by Christianity,

Bill has learned to work on water.

Bill gives Suzy rides for free.

Bill is into contemplation.

Suze prefers activity.

SUZY MAKES A DATE

Suzy Zeus is filling ketchups,

thinking that it's very Zen.

Killing time and killing roaches,

counting money, counting men.

Suzy wants to kiss and cuddle.

Suzy stops to wonder when.

Suzy's thinking back to Harry.

Looking forward to her date.

Will she get off work by "nine-ish"?

Will they keep her there too late?

Bill says call him, hey, whatever.

William's from the Lone Star state.

William's studied Being, Presence,

won't eat meat or wear real fur.

He's read Kant, a little Kafka.

Suzy thinks he's real mature.

Suzy wants to bear him presents:

gold and frankincense and myrrh.

William bought a Russian icon

for his roommate: angel, horn,

lily, dove, and seated girl—"To

you a baby will be born."

Suzy wonders if this handmaid

crops up in religious porn.

Suzy thought of Robert writing.

Suzy thinks of William bound.

Suzy thought of Robert reading

to himself without a sound.

Suzy thinks that Bill's the hottest

son of man for miles around.

Suzy wants his what and why. She

wants his when and wants it now.

Suzy wants his where and whether.

Suzy wants his who—and how.

Suzy wants a new communion:

bread and wine and
I
and Thou.

Suzy Zeus is mad about him

(let her sing it in the rain!)—

crazy for her handsome sailor

(spin and twirl, a weathervane!).

Suzy Zeus is full of feelings.

Suzy Zeus is feeling sane.

SUZY MULLS IT OVER

Suzy Zeus knows guys are shallow.

Suzy Zeus knows life is short.

Bill says let the field lie fallow,

bring provisions to the fort.

Suzy Zeus says ride the storm out.

Bill says shelter here in port.

Suzy wants a whole new haircut.

Suzy wants a special gown.

Suzy wants to wear silk stockings

and a boa and a crown.

Bill wears jeans and cotton T-shirts.

Bill is calming Suzy down.

Suzy hears but doesn't listen.

Suzy looks but doesn't see.

Suzy Zeus is like a chipmunk.

Bill is stiller, like a tree.

Bill knows how to stop and notice,

sit (or stand), and breathe, and be.

Suzy needs to slow her talking:

slow her teeth and tongue and lips.

Suzy needs to slow her walking:

toes and ankles, knees and hips.

Suzy needs to slow her radar:

slow the sweep and slow the blips.

Suzy watches Robert blessing,

bowing down, diluting wine.

Suzy tries to be a grape and

think of Jesus as her vine.

Tries to be an upright sheep, be

graceful as she waits in line.

Suzy's stance is so unsteady.

Suzy's grip is none too strong.

Suzy's feeling so unready.

Suzy's feeling so, so wrong.

Maybe this is just too heady.

This week's service is so long.

SUZY MAKES AN EFFORT TO

APPEAR PATIENT

Suzy Zeus is trying softball.

Suzy's trying macramé.

At first base and tied in knots, she's

at a loss for what to say.

All that she can think is, Will he?

All that she can do is pray.

Falling in
makes love sound deep. A

vat. Or is it more an art?

Suzy's feeling scared and shaky

as she watches something start.

Suzy feels like someone's playing

table tennis with her heart.

Suzy pushes, pushes harder,

wonders where she wants to get.

Suzy isn't sure what's wrong, but

something hasn't happened yet.

Why is Suzy so unhappy?

Why is Suzy so upset?

Suzy tries to sit and wait for

matters slowly to unfurl.

Not o'ernight a grain of sand in

oyster doth become a pearl.

Suzy doesn't need a guy to

tell her she's a pretty girl.

Bill is loaning Suzy books to

look at while she's on the train.

Bill is making Suzy tapes, and

Bill is causing Suzy pain.

Suzy falls asleep to
Follies

and the sound of driving rain.

SUZY MAKES AN EFFORT TO

AVOID VIOLENCE

Suzy wants to take him sailing

just to smack him with the boom.

Suzy may just need to leave him

drowning in his elbow room.

Suzy wants to bean him with
The

Book of]
by Harold Bloom.

Suzy grants him room for elbows.

Suzy grants him room for knees.

Throw in houses while you're at it—

swing sets, cars, a couple trees.

He can find some other girlfriend.

Let her search for birds and bees.

Suzy has his number. Baby,

Suzy has his full address.

But how William thinks about her,

Suzy can't begin to guess.

Suzy, none too good at courting,

only knows the full-court press.

SUZY RETREATS

Suzy went beyond Poughkeepsie—

Suzy went to Holy Cross.

Looked and listened for the Lord, 'cause

Suzy knows the Lord's the boss.

Suzy went to shake her innards,

keep her soul from growing moss.

People try to contact God there.

People try the herbal teas.

People listen to their heartbeats,

to the wind through groves of trees.

Sometimes in the silence they

remember where they left their keys.

Suzy gazed across the Hudson

at a mansion on a bluff,

trudged through trees and wet her knees—she

had to put on all new stuff.

Suzy's going to dance her praying,

like King David, in the buff.

Suzy met a handsome monk there.

Suzy met an aging nun.

Suzy asked the Holy Spirit—

and the Father, and His Son—

how to tell her own unconscious

from the Transcendental One.

When an insight comes to Suzy—

what to wear, or what to do—

could it be a gift from God, or

is it her? (They're not all true.)

Is the voice divine or human?

Suzy Zeus has not a clue.

Ancient Greeks, with nine to choose from,

sipped their ouzo, heard their muse.

Suzy wonders, was that real, or

was it maybe just the booze?

Suzy hears a thought.
His roommate

isn't just his roommate, Suze.

CHAPTER 7
Suzy in Hell

SUZY CONSIDERS THE SITUATION

Suzy wants to kick his head in.

Suzy wants to hear him scream.

Suzy wants to lacerate him,

whack him with an iron beam.

Suzy's going to
get
revenge. New

ways occur in every dream.

Never last, or limp, or lazy,

always first, and fast, and fun,

now she's boiling, out for blood and

tears and sweat and number one.

Wishes she could get some bullets.

Wishes that she had a gun.

William stands beside his boyfriend.

By his boyfriend will he stay.

William stands to sing the hymns. He

sits to listen, kneels to pray.

How can William live without her?

She can change him off of gay.

At St. Jude's this balmy morning,

William's got a front-row seat.

Even way back by the organ

Suzy Zeus can feel his heat.

William's boyfriend looks like Ringo.

William's boyfriend can't compete.

Suzy Zeus is barely breathing,

still as stonework, mad and mean.

Suzy bows to sing the Sanctus.

Suzy's face goes gray, then green.

In her mind she tosses matches

into pools of gasoline.

William's boyfriend is a nebish.

William's boyfriend is a gnome.

Men can kiss in backstreet bars, but

men can never make a home.

William wants her. He's washed-up: a

Greenwich Village Ethan Frome.

SUZY CONSIDERS JUSTICE

Suzy's served the homeless homefries,

got them warm and got them fed.

Suzy's volunteered with kids. A

Softball hit her in the head.

Suzy Zeus deserves attention.

Knows she should go back to bed.

Suzy Zeus is all for justice:

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

Hell was built for such as William—

men who dare make Suzy weep.

Suzy needs a team of lawyers.

Suzy needs a night of sleep.

Suzy's futon's full and fluffy.

Suzy's nightie's just like silk.

On the table by her bed, she's

got a little book by "Rilke"—

very deep, and good for sleep. She'll

count some sheep or warm some milk.

In the kitchen, whiskey sours,

sour grapes, and sauerkraut.

Suzy swimming, like a salmon,

upstream, driving, leaping out.

No, she knows she's hooked on William—

more like some dumb rainbow trout.

SUZY CONSIDERS MURDER

Suzy's living in a fishbowl,

in a fishbowl that's a font.

Living, through imagination,

what she's not supposed to want.

Feeling flattened, like a flounder.

Like those fans at Altamont.

William says it's called committed—

just like married, but for gays.

William says he's been acquitted,

says that Suze was just a phase.

Surely he's not that dimwitted . . .

Can't he feel her blood ablaze?

Suzy Zeus is his all over.

Suzy Zeus is his, all right.

Melting, boiling, steaming, Suzy's

glowing with a liquid light.

Suzy Zeus is his forever—

well, forever here tonight.

William's broken, like a record.

William's broken like a horse.

William's broken like a vacuum.

Get this man a gay divorce.

William sputters dots and dashes—

much like Samuel F. B. Morse.

Suzy's sure he's hiding something.

Suzy's sure—but God knows why.

Suzy, in the church hall kitchen,

hears him heave a heavy sigh.

William isn't going to kiss her.

Isn't even going to try.

SUZY CONSIDERS HER ROLE

Suzy's chest is cracked and hollow.

Suzy's muscles ache and strain.

Suzy's insides lie around her

on an open, windswept plain.

Suzy is an empty pelvis

and a burnt, exploded brain.

Suzy cannot walk on water.

Can't turn water into wine.

Can't make fishes into bread loaves.

Jesus can. In God's design,

God's the center. Is the church the

bride of Christ, or Frankenstein?

Suzy's always been important—

never some old also-ran.

Suzy's kept the whole world going,

since before the world began.

Where would Louie's be without her?

Who would take her shift?

Joanne.

SUZY CONSIDERS HERSELF LUCKY

Suzy Zeus saw Harry Sunday,

on the subway, in a suit.

Working on the Internet with

students, making loads of loot

teaching them communications.

(That, she thinks, does not compute.)

Harry had a better haircut.

Harry had a bigger place.

Suzy Zeus had vanished from his

daily life without a trace.

Suzy's going to write a novel:

Stupidheads in Cyberspace.

Harry'd learned a foreign language.

Harry'd found a lovely bride.

Harry'd opened up a business.

Harry'd traveled far and wide.

Harry'd seen her back at Louie's.

Harry'd seen her classified.

Harry cannot live without her.

Needs her there, a constant prop.

Look how hard he tried to hide that

minus Suzy, he's a flop.

Suzy sauntered from the train as

if she hadn't missed her stop.

SUZY CONSIDERS SUICIDE

Someone's standing in the bathroom,

staring into Suzy's eyes.

Someone with the look of voices

Suzy doesn't recognize.

Someone living in the mirror.

Some fat face that cries and cries.

Suzy's skull is packed and pounding.

Suzy's teeth are shaking loose.

Suzy's hands are slow and tremble,

covering the glass with mousse.

Suzy studied knots one summer.

Suzy doesn't know a noose.

Suzy feels a veil get lifted.

Suzy hears a veil get torn.

Then the truth lies, pinned, before her,

stark and struggling, woken, worn.

Hunger pangs are all that's certain,

all we're given when we're born.

SUZY TAKES A WALK

Suzy's crouching on the sidewalk.

Suzy's crawling in the street.

Suzy's weaving through the blackness,

catching headlights with her feet.

Suzy's tears are warm and tasteless.

Suzy's blood is hot and sweet.