Outside Disney
World
we stayed in
that hard-knock resort,
the one that had no running water,
only a pool with dark marks on the side,
as if someone had been bludgeoned to death,
before they filled it,
back when they did have water
(and maybe that's why he'd been bumped off,
stealing the last of it),
and the sun was so hot it burned
even after it had gone
halfway into tomorrow.
I snuck
outside to smoke weed
with a girl I met getting ice
and she gave me herself and I gave her me,
the parts we were willing to part with
to get some of each other,
down by the pool, that
see-you moon watching,
her back on the grass,
breasts glistening silver
each time I'd lift my shoulders,
thrust my hips,
and we smoked again, after,
listened to that couple
howl like wild dogs, caught
them on the balcony, the place had a
balcony,
and the man had the woman
right up to the edge,
or she had him, I couldn't tell
because, just as I inhaled deep,
let the smoke in,
I saw the faces, couldn't breathe,
and she
thought I'd lied
about my age, ran off
into the dark with her name.
I didn't sleep
that night, couldn't
get it out of my head,
couldn't look at them
the rest of the week,
even on that long drive home.
(first
appeared in Eclectica)
Death
Comes In Smallness
I remember the day recess stopped being
the last preservation of fun. We had
quit playing four-square in the sun
to watch a hawk take something dark
from the field, and the teacher
said it was a mouse, only it was more.
For, until that moment, life had been
this huge thing we were all part of,
but none of us thought about
how small it becomes once it's given a
body
or that death comes in smallness, too.
And, as if some greater force needed
to make this clear, sirens called us,
then,
to the front of the school, where we
found
two men in white loading the ambulance.
Being slaves to the spectacle of the
unknown,
we cheered, as they drove away,
unaware that my sister was the mystery,
that she had swollen shut—her eyes,
mouth,
throat—from a couldn't even see it
hint of cinnamon, and, to this day, when
I see
a hawk circling the sky, searching,
searching,
as I have all these years, I pull
to the side of the road, and say
goodbye.
(first
appeared in Underground Voices)
Fish
Jumping
You handled the greenest
part of us
as if it might bruise,
while I choked
on a red-hot
jalapeno heart.
Those three
fat
years of
sin, bloated
on the
sweetness
of our
flesh.
Our
daughter's birth:
me holding
you holding
her, that
fiery dragon
clawing my
chest.
Our one time
camping at
the gorge:
you with
your water
body; us
reliving
the
honeymoon lagoon,
the flying
fish
like
homesick
slivers of
moon
But now
this, casket-
closing
time.
You in the
dark;
me overcome
by the quiet
beauty of
things familiar;
my heart,
like fish jumping,
silver,
moonlit, aglow,
trying to
get back to you.
(first
appeared in Prick of the Spindle)
About the
Heart, Where It Hurts, and How Often
– from "To His Lost Lover" by Simon
Armitage
You were the first to notice,
when you nearly fell
from the roof, sneaking out,
the way he'd wait
until they'd all gone to bed,
turn off the lights, creep
thru the back door
like a burglar
breaking into the vault of midnight
to pinch the moon,
and you were stuck there,
expecting him to light a cigarette
or something, not to lay
in the garden she'd tended
every year for as long as we'd lived
next door, and you told me,
come morning, how you couldn't
get down, how he'd
stayed there hours,
so we hid among the eaves
and watched him
curl, night after night,
at the base of the butterfly bush,
as if he were hoping
the earth would take him back,
as it had her, welcome him as seed,
as mournful promise of bloom,
finger-roots searching
the soil for his heart.
Everywhere, A Secret Burning
– from
"Oh This Air! Drunk and Restless" by
Osip E. Mandelshtam (translated by Kevin
Kinsella)
You, you said, meaning me, are in for
the time of your life,
meaning your life, really, the way your
lips blossomed
beneath the
color stick, smile coming alive, like a
serpent,
at the thought of me in that dark
cabaret in the Village,
late at
night, at "the show" you failed to
mention
would be unlike anything I'd seen
before. Of course,
you also underplayed your excitement
over "dressing up"
meant you'd be wearing stilettos and a
skirt.
You were trying to see if I could handle
the you you became
every Friday after work, the one you
wrote about wanting
to be all the time, but you were the
one, big brother, in shock
when Luscious Lola Darling asked for a
volunteer
and my hand shot up like some dumb
pigeon spooked
from the curb where it had been waiting
all these years,
and you had the same face I had when the
doctor told me
my secret earlier that day, which is
why, when Lola said,
Honey, who are you trying to kid, I
thought she could tell
the thing I hadn't told you yet, what
the doctor really did say
about why my breasts had grown tender,
but not with love;
about my second chance at life, only
this one as less me
than before; about how I'd probably lose
my hair once
the chemicals burned my veins and how
bald was all the rage,
which was why I got on stage, because I
thought back
to all the times you told me I'd never
know what it was like
to be trapped somewhere between the man
you were
and the one you were meant to be,
because I felt like, maybe,
I didn't have to feel like a man unmade
by all the taking away,
the loss between my legs, which is why I
looked to you
to show me how to die and be reborn, the
way you were,
day in, day out, you, not you, you
again.
