Claire Schwartz

In his office in the attic, in his favorite khaki pants,

the Archivist carefully sets down the glass case

of his body so as not to rattle the exhibit of his mind.

He wears gloves to stroke the name on the envelope,

the name written in a florid hand trained by long-ago

love. To live among the dead, the Archivist thinks.

His eyebrows do a little jig. With fingers strange

to his wife, the Archivist traces the name of the street

in the village that burned. The street wears the name of the flower

the Archivist’s mother tucked behind her ear in a photograph

languishing in a desk drawer. The Archivist carries his mind

into each house. Here, the Cook makes love, his hand

brushing flour against his boyfriend’s nipple. There,

the Tailor’s satisfied song of scissors bisecting

a ream of red. A girl whose mouth makes an O,

around which chocolate makes another mouth, runs

through the road. The road which runs through

the Archivist’s blood. The girl is the Archivist’s grandmother

only in that she is a story the Archivist tells

himself about how he got here. Under an oak tree,

two dogs fucking. The girl’s ice cream is melting.

The Archivist’s mind is sticky with history.

Of course, the village burns again. History is

the only road that survives. Downstairs, the Archivist’s daughter

is hungry. He restores the dead to their folders. To live!

The girls’ wails rise through the house like smoke.

The Censor uses the black crayon

to eradicate sex. On payday, he takes

his wife and son to Shake Shack. Whatever

you want, the Censor says to his wife

when she asks what she should have.

The Censor crosses provide for your family

off of the list he keeps tucked in his billfold. To track

the time, the Censor sings You Are My Sunshine twice

while his son brushes his teeth. The boy shows the glass

his shining mouthstones and growls. He is a bear. No,

he is a boy. In the boy’s drawings, the zebras

are purple and white. His mother hangs

them on the fridge. What beautiful horses,

the Censor says. His wife’s wit trembles, then ebbs.

The children’s nails are clogged with black wax.

The townspeople paste wax apples on the trees, 

glow shyly out their windows as the Dictator 

struts past the monument of his father strutting

past nothing at all. Yesterday, the Dictator dressed 

the Butcher’s boy in the uniform of his own son. 

Today, at the orders of the Dictator, guards shot the boy.

In the town of his childhood, the Curator is a tourist. 

He touches his mother with the language

with which he does not touch his work.

In the painting, bored bored Eve chomps on an apple.

In the tongue of his work, he acquires her.

At the banquet: music wrung from the townspeople’s anguish,

pigs choked with apples.

The meat in the soup is human meat.

The Dictator’s rings are made of gold 

yanked from the teeth of corpses.

The Censor bloats with what he knows.

His sons bloom in neat rows. 

An orchard grows inside his wife.

He prunes her on Sundays.

Under the earth, the Butcher’s boy, laughing, 

eats an apple. The core rises, light with rot.

The Dictator admires the fruit of his land.