2 Jun: "Mrs Midas" by Carol Ann Duffy

Background: King Midas wished to turn everything he touched into gold. When his wish was granted, he realized it was a curse.  

It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begun
to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen
filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath
gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,
then with my fingers wiped the other’s glass like a brow.
He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.

Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way
the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky,
but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked
a pear from a branch. – we grew Fondante d’Automne – 
and it sat in his palm, like a lightbulb. On.
I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?

He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed.
He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.
He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne. 
The look on his face was strange, wild, vain. I said,
What in the name of God is going on? He started to laugh.

I served up the meal. For starters, corn on the cob.
Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.
He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the forks.
He asked where was the wine. I poured with a shaking hand,
a fragrant, bone-dry white from Italy, then watched
as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank. 

It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees.
After we’d both calmed down, I finished the wine
on my own, hearing him out. I made him sit
on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself.
I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone.
The toilet I didn’t mind. I couldn’t believe my ears:

how he’d had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.
But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?
It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes
no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced,
as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least,
I said, you’ll be able to give up smoking for good.

Separate beds. in fact, I put a chair against my door,
near petrified. He was below, turning the spare room
into the tomb of Tutankhamun. You see, we were passionate then,
in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly,
like presents, fast food. But now I feared his honeyed embrace,
the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.

And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live
with a heart of gold? That night, I dreamt I bore
his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue
like a precious latch, its amber eyes
holding their pupils like flies. My dream milk
burned in my breasts. I woke to the streaming sun. 

So he had to move out. We’d a caravan
in the wilds, in a glade of its own. I drove him up
under the cover of dark. He sat in the back.
And then I came home, the woman who married the fool
who wished for gold. At first, I visited, odd times,
parking the car a good way off, then walking.

You knew you were getting close. Golden trout
on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch,
a beautiful lemon mistake.  And then his footprints,
glistening next to the river’s path. He was thin,
delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan
from the woods. Listen. That was the last straw.

What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed
but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold
the contents of the house and came down here.
I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,
and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most,
even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.

1 Jun: "Moderation Kills (Excusez-Moi, Je Suis Sick As A Dog)" by David Kirby

I’m tackling this particularly chewy piece of sushi and
            recalling the only Japanese words I know,
“Fugu wa kuitashii, inochi wa oshishii,” meaning,
            “I would like to eat fugu–but live!”
which, I’ve read, is something Japanese executives say
            when contemplating a particularly risky

course of action, because whereas the testes of the fugu
            or blowfish are harmless
yet highly prized as a virility builder, the liver,
            which is almost identical
in appearance to the testes, is toxic, so that
            a less-cautious individual,

a fisherman, say, who thinks himself as skillful
            as the chef who has actually been
educated and licensed in the preparation of fugu,
            might eat the wrong organ and die,
face-down in his rice bowl, chopsticks nipping
            spasmodically at the air.

Coming in from the vegetable patch, the fisherman’s wife
            sees him cooling in the remains
of his meal and shrieks, and I don’t know
            the Japanese for this,
“You have eaten fugu–and died!” True, though
            for anyone other than the new widow,

why should his death be exclaimed upon as though
            it were a failure or defeat,
since the fisherman had finished a good day of work
            and was not only enjoying his tasty snack
but also looking forward to the enhancement
            of his powers of generation,
this being therefore a fine moment in which to expire
            and certainly preferable to
countless moments of life as a fumbling drooler
            (since fugu liver can paralyze
as well), a burden to his loved ones as well as
            the object of their contempt.

Then someone across the table from me says he’s heard
            of a state of mind called boredom
but never actually experienced it, and I wonder,
            Can a mind that never sinks
into the cold gray waters of boredom ever rise to
            the blue-and-gold heavens of ecstasy?

Then someone else shouts, “Excusez-moi, je suis sick
            as a dog!” and disappears
laughing, but that’s okay because “ecstacy”=
            “ex stasis”= “get off the dime”=
“fish or cut bait” = “lead, follow, or get out
            of the way,” does it not?

Besides, who’s to say the fisherman didn’t hate
            his wife, couldn’t stand her?
And had to eat fugu testes in order to be able
            to countenance her and
therefore is better off dead and unknowing than
            alive and fully sentient of such misery?

Or hated himself and therefore is better off dead, etc.?
            And therefore who is
more admirable, the executive who fears death
            or the fisherman who actually dies?
Does the former feel brave merely because
            he has talked of taking a risk?

Would the doughty fisherman have said “Fugu wa kuitashii,
            inochi was oshishii” and taken pride
in his temperance? Certainly not–
            offered the same challenge under identical
circumstances, he’s have said, and I don’t know
            the Japanese for this either, “Moderation kills.”