California Poetry

Matthew Siegel, one of San Francisco’s few remaining troubadours, demonstrates that a great poem can be fueled by heartbreak as well as love. “You can’t hire a crew to clean up your heart,” begins in desperation. The poem’s speaker enumerates the ways in which he cannot cleanse, or overcome, his heartbreak. After that half-comical litany, Siegel appears to surprise himself, or the poem’s “you,” by discovering a path away from the depression typically following the end of a romance. Only when the character leaves his writing desk to walk, ride the train and consort with other people, does he realize that he can return to the world, can “get from here to the next here.” You can’t hire a crew to clean up your heart, can’t cut your ice-water with lemon-fresh floor polish, can’t eat the candy-like detergent packets with their orange and blue swirls. You can’t scrub-brush your gut, can’t vacuum your veins, can’t purify your blood with a little bleach. You can’t get clean as much as you try. You try with poems. You try with pills and prayer but you are held back here in this place. You walk the lake ringed with bulbs at night feeling encircled even though you’re doing the circling. You ride a train to another town. You say hello to all the folks, kiss the conductor on the mouth. It seems for a moment the world is not destroying itself.

We can get from here to the next here. The heart punctures holes in the poem and the lies spill out.

You roll another joint. You open another window, imagine another lover, tender another rendering of the body slipping into its intended shape. Something happens when you touch another person, feel the smooth parts and tiny bumps beneath the skin, find the edge of the hairline and run a finger along that border. Beyond your window, the hills press themselves upward into night. You can choose one, you can let the wind sweep the papers from your desk.

“You can’t hire a crew to clean up your heart,” appears with the permission of the author. All rights reserved. Matthew Siegel is the author of “Blood Work,” winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. He lives in San Francisco.

David Roderick is the author of the poetry collections “Blue Colonial” and “The Americans.” He is co-founder of Left Margin Lit: A Home for the Literary Arts, in Berkeley.

Danny Bittiker