James Miller

On Not Reading the New Translation of Berlin Alexanderplatz

we have not watered the tomato plants in at least two weeks. soils all thick with clay, shards of shingle from the last hurricane. you sleep late, seeking. i play Fennesz in the kitchen, low and indistinct on my new phone. Endless Summer. what wit could grow here, now. chop slow greens for my morning eggs, stroke the scar at the base of my skull, still raw from yesterday’s fall in the street. you lifted my body, tried to call me back. i heard your voice, a recording on cheap cassette. stood in a small room with five doors, all but one locked. the only door out, glass and steel, peeling yellow letters that once made clear how many guns each guest could carry on the premises. when i opened that door, you were holding my head in your hands. say my name, you kept asking me. i knew it, and was desperate to prove my certain knowledge. and i wanted to explain why i had not begun reading the new translation of Berlin Alexanderplatz, why i have so often held the paperback close, then placed it again on the bedside table, on top of the jack vance i will never finish. i wanted to make sure you knew— no one must hear i have fallen again. no one must learn my vision test is coming next month, and i will not pass. i tried to say, remember to put daikon in the next grocery order, so that we can make a batch of winter kimchi for holiday gifting. that was yesterday, and my egg taco goes down in five bites, or four minutes of breakfast chewing, weary beats that sound out mote, mate, blood in matted hair. we’d prefer that ache to speak, only once. then lose itself in a hot bauble bath. but i am still hungry and can no longer make out the contour of satiety. when you leave for work, i hope you will ask me to say your name, again. easily, like peeling salted sunburn. i have practiced it all night, trying to sleep beside you. before sunrise i slipped into the bathroom with the paperback copy of Alexanderplatz. pages clean, clean. but i didn’t open to the first line. the neighbor’s back porchlight was enough to read by, but i could never accept that hand. there were five doors, and only one unlocked. the locked doors spelled out four syllables of great power. would i risk speaking that grievous word aloud? i tried to ask, will we have time to fold our sheets and stow them away? i stuttered out ok ok ok ok, insisted my cool slime of lizard sweat proved nothing. give me a pencil and i could draw out a map, a path back to the asphalt. stab of doubt in the occipital, syntax shallow as shadow of a great wing passing over dusked oaks. our creased neighborfaces crouched to peer, curious and kind, into my eye. what what what was i breathing in? what promises, what oily balms for mysterious shin abrasions, livid betrayals, half-housed stings, furred brownrecluse visitations? i wanted to write my phone number down on seven- teen tiny scraps of paper, and distribute them to everyone present. my skull felt like a pyrex bowl sloshing with cheap orange juice. i wanted to pour it out on the earth, and watch the acid burn through to an icy underworld. i wanted to ask the crowd, what restaurant were you headed for, when you saw me drop down? i wanted to tell them, i had the courage to take her hand, i did that, years ago. and we ate a meal together, that wednesday evening in the city. enchiladas and queso and a twitch of salt round our frozen glasses. i wanted to tell them, i will read the new english translation of Alexanderplatz, if i can discover how to lift myself from this damp bed of november grasses and dead leaves. i saw you. i saw that you were holding my head in your exquisite mammalian hands. i saw that you were asking, insisting, say my name, say my name. it was easy. i knew it, but at first could only enumerate the deaths piled up in warsaw, nanjing, soweto, detroit. at first I could only honor the deaths piled up in cairo, new york, el paso, jakarta. at first i wanted to tell you about my dream of 1854, london children vomiting up rice- water and—did you know it? their mothers wept and cursed god and—did you know it? i can find no way to show my students how to weep with them. it was easy. i knew your name, but at first could only think to find my own fugitive hands, and lay them on your wet cheeks to dry them. at first i could only think to ask, how are the songs, how are the rehearsals? i wanted to say, i have not yet seen the photos you long promised, your singers in their immaculate 50s white jackets, a gleam of irony on their perfect teeth. i wanted to say, sing the aria for me, what a movie, what a sequel, what a delirious pile of doodads, chintz, clockwork couples spinning in their afternoon bellyful round the seat of marduk great lord of babylon. and i knew that you would sing, gladly, if i could work out how to say your name. but there were so many bodies to sort through, toe-tags to write out, reports to file. i thought to get the song started with some keening of my own, so high not even the neighborhood dogs would hear—celebration songs of the longago, wild exhortations to the old brother suns, lichen-red and gatorade blue, twinned in a dusty desert sky. but i was a thirsty thought, and i am thirsty still, and Sunday is no longer replete with sweet juices, crunchy twinge of carapace, piles of roasted ants drowned in milky chocolate. waiting for your waking, i have laid my paperback copy of Alexanderplatz on the table beside me. i have written a short poem about looking for hegel’s grave in berlin. and another, even shorter, about fritz lang’s passport, safe behind museum glass. pings and slow drips in the near-empty house make me think a light rain has come, but the cracked driveway is dry. the cats have been fed, and circle round the fringed carpets, hoping for more. i thumb through the first chapter, but dare not read a sentence through. i collect thirty-two english words from the first thirty-four pages, write them out in pairs on index cards. search for the german equivalents to fill the back-sides. when laid end to end across the table, my cards suggest serving lines at a wedding banquet. promise of pastries to come, once the hotel cooks have stirred in their last creams. but my neck aches, and i can hardly turn my head. the morning work has been meagre. it was twenty seconds i lost, by your counting. twenty seconds in the outer place. i collect my cards into a little pile, and shuffle. lay them out like solitaire, or raw tarot. assign numbers to each letter, and spin out coiled cold equations. when you come, i will boil water for tea, and spoon honey into your cup. say my name, you will ask me. say my name. say it. i will drop my cards into a drawer. save that question for another embrace, another time.

 

James Miller is from the Texas Gulf Coast, now settled in Oklahoma City. His work has appeared in Best Small Fictions (2021), South Florida Poetry Journal, Hopkins Review, The Fourth River, UCity Review, Citron Review, San Pedro River Review, Heavy Feather Review, The Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Follow him on Bluesky @jandrewm.bsky.social or at jamesmillerpoetry.com.

 

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