Try
My tears make you uncomfortable.
You avert your eyes while shifting your weight.
This won’t stop your insecurities.
Face me as you face yourself.
if a child
any child awakens
to a universe
and cannot see
stars at night
hear the songs
of birds
touch the leaves
of the forest canopy
that child will not
know themselves
or anything at all
~after the writings of Thomas Berry
One year we bought a pink peppermint pig
from a catalogue, it was just this shade of pink,
and came with a little hammer for smashing,
and a black velvet drawstring bag to contain
the pieces. We delighted in breaking it to bits,
eating that sweet pink bacon
of Christmas.
I will never again
wash farm-job socks
dream to tunes plucked from mandolin
find phone background changed overnight
hear car coast into home’s haven after night out
It’s like coming to the end
of silk binding I’ve been fingering
years of both wrinkles and tenderness
where loose threads now tassel
into something new
I dreamt once that we were on a train
you told me to write about a train but I have never taken one anywhere significant
besides London
and all I remember of that train is that the seats were red
and in the bathroom I pretended to be Alice in Wonderland
It takes nineteen hours and seventeen minutes
to get from you to me or me to you on a train
actually the exact timing is probably different depending on the direction
wouldn’t you say?
Have I ever told you that I stop on train tracks late at night?
brake right in the middle of them to look side to side
my mother is sure I’ll be killed
but there’s something about wooden rods leading all the way to California
I always wanted to walk along them
but my father told me about a serial killer
who walked the tracks and killed a couple in our hometown
that would be just my luck as a worrier
What side of the tracks do you walk on?
if there’s no side closer to cars
I suppose you would have to walk behind me
serving lookout for the potential of transportation oriented trauma
Not the obvious moments from a life–
not the announced and documented moments
graduations and weddings
births, deaths
The mind returns to times
that take us by surprise
tap dancing in an Iowa City studio
doing the jitterbug with a stranger in Custer
sleeping with the summer cabin staff under the stars
eating a ripe peach with relatives in Monteombraro
watching bees with your family in a gazebo in Tennessee
We draw on these unconstructed moments
like emotional capital
that lifts us out of place and time
My father,
World traveler,
Humble but proud,
With stern hands,
But a soft gaze,
Who Talks honestly,
But never excessively,
And Loves selectively,
But always wholly,
Advocates education,
But misspells “Salad”
My father,
An ass to some,
A friend to many,
Gullible to none,
And a Dad to two.
They say I look like him
But there’s no way I do.
They slowly unwound, two again,
but for held hands.
He knew to speak first
and make it count.
She smiled and enjoyed
the dance and the band.
He said I never loved
others like you.
She said she agreed and
what should they do?
(pause)
We have to be careful, she whispered at last.
The pill gives me acne, and leaves me reeling.
He played his imperative card as a bluff.
I won’t use a condom. They deaden my feeling.
She sighed as if some decision were hard,
then skillfully played her partnership card.
I’ll make a calender up, she said.
I’ll circle my good days and color them red.
Subtract 18 from 26.
Subtract 11 from 32.
I’ll take my temperature sometimes to check.
It’s really not that hard to do!
(pause)
HE:
Not two days before or till two days after…
SHE:
The caution’s built in, Joe (she said talking faster)
I’m very regular. We’ll do just fine.
HE:
Whatever you say, Helen. You draw the line.
SHE:
I’m like your wife now. She turned then profoundly.
HE:
But he was exhausted and sleeping, quite soundly.
for Mike Jasper
Almost called you ‘dad’ for good
somewhere between the canonball that made me cry
– you came out of nowhere –
and the afternoon I fell asleep in the passenger seat
with my mouth sagging open, when you and Corey joked
about putting straw paper in it, which was just like you,
so I closed my lips and napped on.
The comfort grew as easily as exchanging one syllable
for another, first name into fatherhood.
I wanted to remember you with every blue Jeep Cherokee,
at first, the ones on the road, not flipped in a field.
But now your name I hold like red carnation petals,
and it grows and it fades and it leaves its scent
and I love you, loud but temporary.
(in the original text, all of the words in bold are actually struckthrough and change first paragraph vs. last as the point of view changes)
they say that their’s is the slavery that freed us.
this Great White Gift grafted for our own good
to our skin – a boa constrictor ‘round the necks
of our chirrens children. the whitest of licorice.
a neck candy canyon.
they say their’s is the gravy that feeds us best.
told us it wasn’t the full-throated choral that we wanted
nor the dreaming of coral-colored singing but instead
the clinging of kin to skin, tightly woven within corrals.
that chiffon and saffron were above our ability to want
or value, that what hearts most desired were stacks and stacks
of burlap in a makeshift chifforobe. that the dream of cold iron
across the collarbone in chattelhood was a noble feature;
to be docile… dormant… the doormat for their republic.
“assuage yourself, rescue pet, in the auspices of our love,
and we’ll bestow upon you a kindness, a clean kennel. a row
of fennels in your comforting cage with rustic finials
o’er your domicile imprisonment as you ripen rot in age;
what a magnanimous liberty lullaby we’ve given thee!”
