Paul Majkut, Ph.D., C. Phil is Professor in the College of Letters and Sciences. Department, Arts and Humanities, Torrey Pines South Campus, National University, San Diego. Born in East St. Louis, Illinois, he now lives in San Diego, California. He has also lived for long periods in Canada, Mexico, the People’s Republic of China, and the Middle East. He is widely recognized around the world as a respected media theorist. He founded the International Society for Phenomenology and Media in 1999, and he spent a decade as a journalist, winning numerous awards from the Los Angeles Press Club, the Southern California Press Club, San Diego Press Club, the Society for Professional Journalists, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and other professional organizations prior to teaching at National University.
- Fulbright Scholar (Argentina);
- Fulbright Senior Specialist (Finland, Germany, Mexico, Estonia), 2003-present;
- National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, Oxford, 2010, Cambridge, 2003.
Contact: pmajkut@nu.edu
Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>
From Verse and Adverse
Dirge of the Dead Letters
What does it profit a man
or a woman,
her fingers five kinds of literate madness
moving in a slow handful of purposeful sorrow
shaking out the facts of decease
like rheumatoid snakes
or
her hand cutting with blue-ink ballpoint
as indelible for me
as a chisel on a gravestone:
“Karl died last April.”
What does it profit, huh?
—her hands that in an ancient passion once
were lithe snakes full of touch.
Here I am in a non-profit outfit,
disemboweling with a brass-plated letter opener
return envelopes
containing cards
with check-off boxes
we sent out to members:
$10 $20 $50 donation
or
Remove My Name from the Mailing List
and piling the checks
on a fake-woodgrain, pressed-wood desk.
I’ll pour their little souls’ good intentions
into a data-processing spreadsheet.
And sometimes there’s a hand-written message.
“Take Louis off your mailing list.
He died in June.”
Is Louis less a member now?
What does it profit a man
or a woman
to live?
“Mary passed away. You do good work.”
All the curves of the letters are gone,
replaced by the acute edges of palsied calligraphy.
The hand has disremembered
its grade-school exercises of
rows of circles on lined paper
to practice curves.
Only the up-and-down cuneiform jaggies
are now inherent in the blue-ink ballpoint.
I suppose the memory of gracious curves
was left that Wednesday evening
in the Episcopalian oak pew when
Karl Mary Louis
was remembered
by the race of pallbearers who
survive temporarily.
The hand on this card has
taken up with Druid runic scribes!
Occult masters who
teach her snakes to be cryptic.
I suppose
that’s what I most appreciate, the
cryptic intelligence and
blue-ink ballpoint memories
of the aged survivors who
take on that oldest profession,
mourning and pallbearing.
What does it profit a man
or a woman
to live
except to remember?
Either this surviving hand is very old or
the pen is lopsided or erratic.
“Deceased. Please delete from mailing list,”
Norma writes in blue-ink ballpoint
on the solicitation return card our
non-profit mailed out.
I’m thinking about what it
does or doesn’t
profit a man
or a woman.
Here’s a tear for Mary who
mourns Honey
deceased at 87.
“He died last April. He was 87. Please
remove his name from your mailing list.”
What does it profit a man
or a woman
to live
except to remember
and share that memory
with the race of good pallbearers?
I place the card with grim sententia by
shaky hand written, the sure, sad hand,
in a separate place,
a little graveyard on my desk
with neat rows of the rank-and-file dead
with white-paper solicitation return tombstones
with blue-ink chiseled epitaphs:
“Please remove
Bill’s name from your mailing list. My beloved died
last spring. I am Ruth, his wife.”
And who will write Ruth’s sorrow except Ruth?
Who other than Ruth can write that particular sorrow?
Perception: sensation accompanied by memory.
“I am moving to a rest home
near my daughter in Ohio. Mr. Bartleby died
last year.
Please remove his name from your list.
Remove my name, too.”
Published on April 15, 2020. © Author.