Three Poems

The World Is Not Astonished

The famous nuclear institute
wants a poet to describe why

their research still needs more funding,
which is perfect for me,

except my grandfather’s dead now
and not here to tie

the silver and blue stripes
with his arthritic fingers

bulbous as padlocks.
To help me, my little sister

studies men on YouTube
as they demonstrate

the Double Windsor, like cigar
salesmen promoting

their dens of smoke. Her breath feels light
on my eyelids, fumes

from a broth you drink
when you’re sick. I remember

our grandfather’s breath:
Fixodent and cordite

and homemade wine, the mid-
20th Century exhaling

in my face. I would wait
with my eyes closed for the knot

to cinch on my throat, to stream
into Clougherty Chapel,

one of a thousand
local boys in identical dress

who knew that one day 12th grade’s
rollercoaster of homework

and hedonism would relinquish
to a life perhaps

much dimmer: long hours
of nonstop rumination,

too nervous to be a song.

The Extinction of the Greeks

I might doubt that I am grieving, but I truly am.
One day my arms will tell you what I couldn’t. There wasn’t

another soul to shelter everyone we loved.
Walking to clear the air after midnight, my hands shook

like a colonel crossing out points on a map. Whenever
I listen to the past, toddlers yelp like crated puppies

in the arms of matriarchs. I always knew the globe
was drawn by them. Late afternoon woozy plum

languishing down from the shaded windows. Careful and sure,
my mother’s hands the only truth, and near our house,

a gravel pit flavored the breeze, dust on every tongue
in the city, citizens mostly unaware of the cause.

Nothing relies on the wet cobwebs bulbous with prey
above a child’s desk. I wallowed in our city-state’s lethargy,

after-school heat wobbling above the Burger King’s
parking lot like 95.5-KLOS,

“Breakfast with The Beatles” wavering between stations
on Sunday mornings. The day my father left: listening

to “Yesterday,” tears in his eyes as he stood above me.
Old MacDonald was a corpse, already eroded

in a fertile field, adapted to song
for the benefit of boys and girls in tight, plaid car seats,

imagining the darkness of their father’s face, his power
keeping them serene, his shoulders always turned towards leaving.

I invariably had a book open in my lap, even driving
home at night, and kept secret the things I learned

until the time was perfect. Naturally Alexander
the Great had nightmares about his army leaving

their weapons behind to cry over news
from home, as paranoia had always predicted,

but in the books it was only him in the end, waving
to the common soldiers as they passed—a speechless sickbed,

closing into the mystery, just like any scribe in Thebes.

The Man Who Lives Behind Us

refuses to cut the hundred-foot
eucalyptus that could kill us all.
He argues it’s a matter of several
thousand dollars he can’t part with.
Fifteen years ago, he still lived
in the house next door. His wife
threw him out, so he bought
the house beside it, then
his wife and kids moved.
Now he lives with his secretary,
a woman who films me
doing yard work. They’re waiting
for a chance to sue. I’m not very
good —I just pick things up
and put them away. My grandfather
planted watermelons in this dirt.
He put a TV outside and we watched
the All-Star Game, until mosquitos
chased us. It’s the same house
but now I’m its man. It needs
a new roof, new paint. If you looked
at it you might have notes. But I think
it’s where I’ll stay.

_____
Michael Juliani lives in Los Angeles. His poetry has been published in Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, and Bear Review.