The left side of his driveway, guided by the rock wall he stacked in 1962, narrows at the mouth like the old man’s at the news of another stone corner cracked by a seemingly blind backerupper. The wall does not lunge at bumpers, so he swears. He shouts Slovak obscenities while the old woman, graceful and wise, rolls her eyes, begging, “Chuck, please.” Sixty odd years of similar exchanges dubbed the pair Sweet Heat. Brown Sugar, beacon of light for souls blown sideways by fiery squalls of the Heat. So, he retreats to his cave to collect his rage, taking inventory, meanwhile:

Few dozen ball jars in assorted sizes, butter beans, spare coffee pots, twelve to fifteen kerosene lanterns (one, he notes, once rode on a carriage), ancient nail pulling apparatus, enough scrap wood to rebuild the house twice, empty JIF jars labeled minnows in sharpie on half-stuck scotch tape, wrenches/drivers/pliers floating in formation, petite cauldron of lead, hooks and lines, mounted antlers, unmounted antlers, cardboard scratched with notes dated 1997, Len jedno je potrebné published in 1907, etc., etc. 

This collection of junk that breeds in the shadows cast by Carnegie beams, that cools a man made of molten steel enough, at least, to rejoin his Sweet. 

fifty percent gay?
i guess i’ll just celebrate
ev’ry other day 🙂

I was drawn to the clan
coming from the same soil
drawn to the goodness,
the steadfastness.  These
people could be relied on.
Doubting my own strength,
I thought it an act of self-
preservation, a way
of making my way in the world.
Now I look at the child
who was me, with compassion,
with love, knowing all that
would follow.

A slate blue heron above
the expressway, huge wings
lumbering beyond the airport,
onward against a ruffling wind.

Just a snapshot, all granduer,
purpose in his silver ascent.
Then, he’s gliding up, pressing
to merge with the dingy sky.

When I was six
I burnt my calf (second degree)
on a four-wheeler motor. You
can’t see the scar now
it’s covered with an impulsive
American traditional frog tattoo.
Mom told me not to get back on the four-wheeler
“that motor’s hot, you’ll get hurt!”
I didn’t listen. Sometimes I do now.
I remember the frozen bag of peas
to this day. Slapped on the burn
searing like frozen fingers in hot shower water.
When I hurt my ankle
one of many times
I iced it with a blue gel ice pack
that we had for almost a decade.
Until it started leaking
and we put it out to pasture.
At football over the years
it was just ice from a machine
in a plastic bag
but that feels too pedestrian
too sanitized, to break out into everyday.
When I broke my toe
chasing a cat
back to the frozen veggies
an old, frostbitten bag of corn.
That I used on my toe, my back,
my ankle, and my sore fingers
the whole time we lived in that house.
I remember throwing that bag away
when we moved. Almost like mourning an old
livestock- past its prime for eating.
When my mom hurt her leg
just below the knee
she used a frozen bottle of liquor
the square bottle a perfect surface
to maximize the cooling.
We were taught to hold on to everything
repurpose and reuse
a depression era holdover
carried down through the generations.
My daughter has an Elsa gel ice pack.
[even though it was on clearance]
Will I fail to pass on the lesson?

                “If the economy’s good
                 you’re not going to beat Clinton.”

                                        –Richard Nixon’s warning to Bob Dole
                                          shortly before his death in 1994.
  
Did I get ground in the gears
of a Republican propaganda machine
or did I come up with a valid reason
to vote for Trump in 2016?

November 5, 1996:
Seven years old and standing in line with my parents
to vote for the next president, I ask
who do we want to win? Bob Dole, they said.
I don’t think I even knew who Bill Clinton was.

That night, I stayed up watching votes get tallied
like the scores of a extra long basketball game–
ooOOOHH C-A-T-S or some shit like that.
But of course, Dole fell short, and if I had known
the word, I’d have thought
‘FUCK Bill Clinton’
like he was Duke or a Louisville Cardinal.

It was a sentiment that last only a few days,
because again, seven,
except now I could recognize Bill on TV, thinking
there’s that jerk again
which may have been all it would ever be
if not for the headlines soon to meet our eyes:

CLINTON LIED

a statement so loud that decades old echoes
not only still deafened
but had only been strengthened
by the converging sounds of Bosnia,
Benghazi, and a suspicious private email server;
the evolution of who a contentious man would later dub
‘Crooked Hillary Clinton.’

Returning to 2016, it’s hard for me to fathom
how the Democrats could have stuck to their guns
ignoring the morphing reality of pitting establishment Hillary
against the refreshing (if ultimately calamitous)
presence of a non-politician Trump.
I recall the agony of seeing who Trump was
but being completely unable to trust a Clinton,
how my vote would absolutely change
in any other version of that race;
how there may have been millions just like me,
we winnable few.

Now today, years later
seeing what has become of that change in history,
I wonder what might have happened if the Democrats
had given us better choices–if they’ve learned since then.
I wonder, despite standing by decisions from 2016,
if maybe Hillary would not have been so bad after all.

Or have I always been ground in the gears
of a Republican propaganda machine?

Scotch Pine and Pogonip After Cockcrow:

for the hush before June

In the hush, a bird
no larger than a breath
rests in the cup of your hand—
all pulse, no plan.
The road was too wide,
the wing too wrong,
but still you crossed the line
between knowing and trying.

You learn that spiders feed the brain—
taurine spun in silk and leg.
So you tweeze what you can,
insect by insect,
as if the mind could be built
from kindness and chitin,
from blueberries and borrowed time.

A girl in your house
sleeps like a fallen comet—
burnt out, becoming.
The night doesn’t ask much—
just that you keep still
long enough for the world
to breathe its secrets near.

Outside, the moon sharpens.
Inside, June waits like a bell
that hasn’t rung yet.

And you,
weary but grateful,
are a kind of spider, too—
spinning memory between
what you love
and what you cannot keep.

I am a fire exit pulled,

all flashing lights and blaring alarm.

I am a smoke detector

with its batteries run low.

A continual chirp.

A baby bird pleading,

“Are you my mother?”

There is no blessed virgin,

no circle of trusted disciples

awaiting return from the tomb.

The rescue team

missed the final flare.

Clung to an empty life raft,

all that’s left-

drowning or not-

is me,

myself,

and time.