Monte (Peace In Our Time)

By David Kirby

Once I got a postcard from Joyce Carol Oates,
whose novel Unholy Loves I had reviewed favorably,
and on it (the card) she wrote,
"I think you must be a fellow Canadian,"
and I figured, well! That's me, all right:
the Mounties, Wayne Gretzky, Margaret Atwood. . . .
It wasn't until years later
when I found the card again
while cleaning up some old files
that I saw she had written
not "Canadian" but "Conradian"
(in fact, I had mentioned a Conrad essay
she'd published elsewhere),
and I thought of the poster I'd seen for a Monet show,
only the artist's name was spelled "Monte."
I could see this Monte in his plaid jacket
and his open collar and his medallion
nestled in his chest hairs just so,
calling for a corned beef sandwich,
"very lean, please," and a Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Tonic
so he'd have the energy to finish, say,
Caesar's Palace: The Façade at Sunset.
Names mean too much;
for example, if you called a general "Genital,"
as in, "Your car's ready, Genital--urrk!"
he'd kill you in a fit of rage,
and his bodyguards, confused by the gunfire
and the screaming, would fill the air with bullets
and take him right out of the picture.
Bingo, no more war.