Banishment

for Sharon Doubiago

She urinates on the graves
of her precursors—
it’s her thing (one of many),
to “unite my living waters
with theirs.” The list
includes Camus,
Karl Marx, George Eliot,
over a hundred in all.
She once called me a fascist.
Compared to her, I am
a kind of -ist, a miniaturist,
a kettle boiling to reduce,
while she is ticker tape,
a glorious volcano,
I want to say diffuse,
but she would look it up,
dispute my meaning.
(Festschrift took us to the brink.)
She harnesses particulars,
proclaims what others hide,
the war the individual
collectively must wage,
a woman’s way of seeing,
of being in the world,
details as waves, accreting,
each wave distinct, alive,
reconfiguring the shore.
We were the twain foredoomed.
That’s Kipling. She hates Kipling.
Harm done can’t be undone.
Still, a spark of recognition
passed, or so I tell myself,
between us.

by klipschutz
from A Visit to the Ranch & other poems (2015)

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