Confession

By Norman Dubie

for Hank

The General’s men sit at the door. Her eyes

Are fat with belladonna. She’s naked

Except for the small painted turtles

That are drinking a flammable cloud

Of rum and milk from her navel.

The ships out in the harbor

Are loosely allied

Like casks floating in bilge.

The occasional light on a ship

Winks. In the empty room of the manuscript

Someone is grooming you

For the long entrance into the dark city.

They’ll hang the General.

Then with torches they’ll search for his children.

Men and women

Are seen jumping from the burning hotel.

Journalists, in no hurry,

Elect to take the elevator. They walk

Out of the building, stepping over corpses. . .

You are listening to loud bells.

The corpses get up and follow the journalists.

It’s unfair that while rehearsing

For death they actually succumbed to it.

But no one sobs.

Shirts and dresses billowing as they fall.

Something inhuman in you watched it all.

And whatever it is that watches,

It has kept you from loneliness like a mob.

Copyright Credit: Norman Dubie, “Confession” from The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001). www.coppercanyonpress.org

Source: The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001)