The Wasting Game

In these resonant, sometimes harrowing poems, Philip Gross grapples with difficult and unlikely subjects: ozone alerts ("In the ultraviolet light of what we know / the future begins to look pale / as the Middle Ages"); a sauna like "some lesser waiting-room / in Hell"; fluffy kitten postcards meant "for sore eyes, eczema'd"; and hotels marked UNSAFE STRUCTURE. All hint at our precarious futures, if not downright apocalyptic doom. The title poem provides a rare glimpse of the daily life of a daughter intent on starving herself, the "last night's pushed- aside / potatoes, greying like a tramp's teeth, / crusts, crumbs are a danger to her, / so much orbiting space junk / that's weightless for only so long." Here he also explores the root causes ("'I'm fat, look, fat...'") and historical legacy ("Maid-saint / fierce against the flesh / (burn it, burn it) denouncing / the witch in herself...the tinder and the heartless / blaze you might mistake / for holiness") of a dread disease. And in the heart-breaking "Visiting Persephone," the speaker's affinity to Zeus ("Can you picture him / going down to see her, fitting in / with the difficult visiting times?") is ultimately overshadowed by feelings of powerlessness:

The gifts he foisted on her
leave him dull, a Souza match
come shuffling to a halt

outside the darkened concert hall
where a child's violin
slips on difficult scales...

Human frailty is Gross's modus operandi, as in "Spirit Level": "We're crockery / slipped to the edge of a tilting table but so slowly / who'd notice, until...?". And in "Time Lapse" an innocent New Year's Eve toast to friends in an earlier time zone forces the question "what if time, once slipped, / went on slipping?" The way Gross sees it, we're all on a rackety bus, driven by a tunelessly humming driver. "[A]ll paths converge on nothing / but a ten-foot concrete square..." With daring finesse, however, he takes on dirges of personal and global disaster, and sets them to exquisite music. --Martha Silano