For the families

Between two storms I walk my dog
after a mass shooting near my home

there is a clinic and a hospital as
helicopters hum above, three hours now.

My god, who pulled the trigger
and who pulls the trigger inside?

Sirens wail as my dog wags his tail
loaded with delight. As we head home

the sun sails in satin pink through the clouds
dripping purple ink into a poem,

or whatever this is. This is no escape. Danger
surreal to itself dust worn and shelved

like a forgotten tome of tombs of names
4 are dead 4 are dead 4 are dead 4 are dead

I cannot forgive myself if I let the sky
between the storms be beautiful

before 4 were not-so-dead.
At home, my love still sleeps,

I see my phone, “update: 5 are dead” –
and I wait for her to wake…

Her father was a crop-duster
who would speak in Tongues
And each time he did she would
never remember what happened
next until many years later when
she suddenly began remembering

She would ask boys to
take her out north of town
to look for the Spook Light
It was there she learned
the history of her tongue
It was there she was taught
the language of spies

She loved to talk about
the magic of flat rainbows
and black carnations
while drinking red beer

She’s been gone now for many
years but some day I will
show you the rock where she
carved her initials right next
to those of Jesse James

He can’t see where everyone goes each day
and doesn’t care where they sleep,
but where they dream when they return
to their night place past this place
on the pavement, where he sits against the wall
and reads. He doesn’t need much—like his pants
he sews again and again, and the thin pages
of his Bible, but the psalms don’t wither.
Here he sings in Akan. Here, too, he sleeps.
When he dreams, the clouds open
to water, a mirror of the purest light
where the shadows disappear.
When the rain comes, he soaks it in.
His skin and soul looking for God
glow like God who saw the man he once saw
with a ring of fire around his neck,
consumed by the shrieks into voices
of weaverbirds. After the gang surrounded
the man, Joseph could not breathe
as the man grew unseen. For how long
Joseph did not speak—still that radiance
has not dissolved but lightened
his bones, and some days he just
disappears, leaving the pavement washed.

Packing up knick-knacks
In six months old
Newspaper
Taping bottoms, up
Of grocery store boxes
Sweeping up the dust
Of an old relationship
Moving out, moving in
More to life, living alone
Consequences too great
Together we clashed
Like polka-dots and stripes
Too loose, or too tight
It just didn’t fit me right
I’m crying my eyes out tonight
But, when I awake
Tomorrow morning
It will be a new day
I’ll be on my way
Footloose and fancy-free
Do what I want and say
What I please
No longer the prisoner
Who packed up these pieces
Of freedom, today
And moved away
In a truck
Without the two men.

In the botanical garden
orange poppies blaze through the meadow
and peace enters my feet, then slips into my bloodstream
flowing upward to the sun.
There are no words for this absolution,
no words for blessing.
I am votive to wind, to bird calls in the canyons,
to the cactus flowers in whose yellow cups tipsy insects
tumble among their pistils,
and to the giant boulders strewn under the oaks,
Samurai guarding the path.
And to the lost ant crawling over the labeled rings
of a halved sequoia trunk — a sapling in 1150 —
then crossing its rings to the Magna Carta in 1215,
searching fruitlessly for its kind in 1542
when Juan Carrillo explored
the Channel Islands, the ant inching
forward to the Declaration of Independence
and rings tightly yoked by violence together —
death by drought in 2000.
Unaware of its long rite of passage across eons,
the pilgrim finally disappears over the edge
of the trunk into shadows
and the leafy beatitude of home.

A twice poet laureate proclaims that cicada
is a word that writers should never use,
the mere sight of it bringing him up short,
causing him to classify it as cliché—trite
symbol of memory, transformation, rebirth.

But just this afternoon, when I stepped outside,
I, too, was brought up short by cicadas, clicking,
reverberating from their masculine membranes
on their ribbed abs and obliques. These dog-day
choir members, chanting congregational songs,

synchronize their voices, as they bask in glow
of late summer sunshine, send out courting
calls. Just like in a rock band, the drummer
with his wicked sticks always gets the girl,
so these guys resonate their hollow tymbal,

sometimes as much as four hundred eighty
times a second, and girl bugs perched on limbs
of willows and redbuds, play hard to get, feign
disinterest, as they sip sap with straw-like mouths,
waiting patiently, after seventeen years, for Mr. Right.

In the early 70s I taught Junior High Art in Saint Louis. My fellow teachers became my running buddies. One of my friends, Evelyn, was a music teacher. Due to her position, she scored two free season tickets to the Saint Louis Symphony. I often went with her. I was appreciative of her generosity because as a poorly paid teacher, I could not have afforded to attend the symphony. However, there was a torturous trade-off. Evelyn had become involved in a charismatic Catholic-based faith healing movement. I had to feign interest and attend the healing sessions with her. I was not going to give up a free seat at the symphony even if I had to pretend to be interested in a religious activity that was somewhat strange to me.

The healing sessions would begin with the testimonies of believers who had been healed. There were always many nuns in attendance. I was a skeptic who was raised a Methodist. The teachings of the church of my childhood didn’t include the belief in contemporary faith healing. We were prepared to take “what is” and limp all the way to the grave. Despite being somewhat bored during the testimonies, I was fully awake when the star of the show took over. He was a priest, Father McNut, and the leader of the local movement. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He resembled a young Charleston Heston, and he was very charismatic. I think the combination of looks and charm gave him the edge to be persuasive. It didn’t work on me. However, I kept going in order to keep in Evelyn’s good graces, and to keep my seat at the symphony.

After only one year in Saint Louis, I quit my job, and I moved to Tennessee. I enrolled in the Memphis College of Art to further my studies as a painter. I immediately took up a hippie persona, and vowed to never again wear a necktie. I let my hair grow long. I wore love beads and ragged bell bottoms. I was free.

I had been living in Memphis for several months, when I received a call from Evelyn. She asked me to accompany her to a Kathryn Kuhlman event that was to take place in Memphis. Miss Kuhlman was a flamboyant and prominent faith healer with a huge following. Evelyn, Father McNut, and his followers had become groupies of the popular evangelist. I said, “Oh, what the heck, sure I’ll go.” Then I forgot all about it.

A couple of months later, Evelyn called early one Sunday morning to tell me that the day had arrived. She had saved me a seat to see Miss Kuhlman at the Assembly of God Church. It was a very large church, the one that Elvis attended when he was in town. When the phone rang that morning, I had just walked in the door from being out all night dancing, and I have to admit, I was still tripping on LSD. No excuse except that it was the ‘70s.

I was wearing a black see-through shirt, black and white striped bell bottoms, and platform shoes with stars painted on them ala Joe Cocker, an English rock star. I looked down at my clothes and I thought, “Hey, these are good enough.”

I jumped into my car and drove to the church. My friend Evelyn had ridden to Memphis from Saint Louis with a bus load of faithful followers of the Saint Louis charismatic Catholic movement. The group included a large number of nuns. I found my seat in the church and sat with my friend Evelyn and the sisters. Fortunately, the row in front of me was also occupied by nuns. If I had sat behind one of the many women that were there with high hair, my view of the stage would have been blocked.

We were there early that morning in order to get a seat. We had to sit through the entire morning service while we waited for Miss Kuhlman’s afternoon performance. For lunch we shared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that Evelyn and the nuns had brought with them on the bus. By this time, I was really starting to suffer and was wondering if Miss Kuhlman might be able to heal a drug crash.

At one o’clock, Kathryn Kuhlman took to the stage wearing a very gauzy white dress and gold lame high heels. She was slender with bright red hair, and she was very theatrical. Shortly after she took the stage, folks lined up one by one to be healed.

Miss Kuhlman would describe the person’s ailments to the audience, touch the afflicted on both sides of the neck, and they would immediately fall backwards into the hands of her attendants. If the attendants missed, the person would fall to the floor. They arose healed or so it appeared. Folks were falling all over the place on stage including some of the nuns from the bus. They fell to the floor like shot penguins.

As badly as I felt, I did find the healing service interesting and entertaining. However, if I had been a praying man, I would have prayed for the service to end. Two hours into the service, Miss Kuhlman called for all folks who needed to be saved to come down to the altar. I thought, “I have found my avenue of escape!” I got up from my seat and brushed past the many kind church goers and the nuns. They were patting me on the back, and congratulating me. They thought I was about to be saved. When I got to the end of the aisle, I made a beeline for the door, jumped in my car, and I went home. I was far from healed.

I never heard from Evelyn again.

First I just stand and watch him. So relaxed, so uncomplicated.

They don’t talk about the times when you envy your child – really and truly grok the advantage that the adorable little son of a bitch has on you – simply by virtue of being too young to shoulder a single burden.

“He’s two,” Todd says without moving his eyes from his iPad. “You want something different? You thought you were giving birth to the exception?”

He’s strangely sexy in these tuned-out moments, blue of eye and furrowed of brow.

“You want a machine, go to Fry’s.” That’s one of his favorite lines and he pronounces it as though it was the first time. Every single time. “You want a person, you’ve got one right there.”

Sexy, but jumping him never enters the picture, even if Forrest weren’t sitting three feet away in his high chair, drooling something purple or pink or otherwise gaudy-colored onto his chest. These days I don’t even bother with a bib because when I try to put it on he screams like he’s being waterboarded. Instead I just take his shirt off and wipe him clean when he’s done. That’s the easy part of my day. Believe it.

When he was born we agreed I would be the one to stay home. It just made sense: I was the one with less money, more commute, stronger piss-off about having to be somewhere at a certain place and time. Offices were never my thing. This could be the exit door I needed.

Baby as utility, as reason. You think it just happens on Jerry Springer?

“So negative.” Todd closes Facebook, opens Facebook. He caresses Yelp and cheats on it with Reddit. “You just carry this shit around with you and it poisons your heart.”

Thing about Todd is, he’s an asshole, but a smart asshole, and so often a correct one. That’s the hardest part: you hate him, not because he’s too direct or too right, but because it’s that much more pointed and painful that you could love him.

I did. Honest.

“Well,” he said when the pregnancy test turned up positive, “that was unexpected.” Then a flick, a short, steep intake of breath. He’d been trying to quit smoking. It was fun while it lasted.

“We can do it,” he said over Zagat-approved food that night. “It’s whether or not we want to.”

I did love him then, I did. My love for him was tentacled, a hydra-head. It stretched and peered in all directions. It had powers that far outstripped those of your average serpent. It could kill you and for that I loved it, I loved the love.

Pregnancy: a series of paper cuts against those heads of hope. Each malady – night sweats, restless legs – felt a fresh insult. You. You did this to me. Then I turned up with placenta previa and we weren’t allowed to have sex until the baby was born. Fine. Fine by me.

Labor: a crystallization of what was to come. Push through the pain. Bear down and breathe out. Legs up, down, over and across. Spread them and pray. Finally, finally. Forrest. A gray bundle with an oxygen mask across his tiny crumpled face. I held him against my chest and our hearts fought each other through our flesh.

Breastfeeding: a joke. He tried to latch onto my nipple, wanted to feed. Nothing came down to sate him. The film they’d shown us in class didn’t look like this.

“That’s theory,” Todd said, correctly, of course. “This is reality. Worst case scenario, we’ll do the bottle.”

We did the bottle.

Nights: the worst, as they are for every honest parent. Outside with its swaths of black, inside with Dr. Brown’s bottle at hand, formula dribbling down his chin. The screams echoed for hours. Reflux. Colic. Food allergies. All the possibilities, all the permutations. Todd took him from my arms and the sound seemed to dwindle just enough for the difference to grate on me. I carried you, you little fuck. Pushed and howled and tore, and still you prefer him.

“He’s a month,” Todd said. “Two months. Three months. Not even a year.” Time drew on and still he was never wrong.

Factual accuracy.

You couldn’t get him on that.

You couldn’t love him for it either.

That’s his face there, sleeping in the car seat, our child’s features arranged in the folds of his father. Except he’s not sleeping. Except I didn’t even realize he was in here. Except it’s 85 degrees outside and he’s not moving.

You pluck methods, piecing them together like floral bundles. You find your way. And then one day there no longer is a need for direction. The path cut short, littered with the crumpled corpses of petals.

You too, crumpled.

There are not really villages in the valleys
between the mountains.

They only exist in my mind.

There are not really people
living in huts in those villages in the valleys.

They only exist in my mind.

There are not really stoves
lit by matches in the huts in the villages.

They only exist in my mind.

There are not really home cooked meals
placed from stoves to tables in the huts.

They only exist in my mind.

There are not really dirty dishes
that must be taken from tables to sinks.

They only exist in my mind.

So there will not really be fires
consuming the tables and huts.

They only exist in my mind.

Just like the incessant smell of smoke, persistent, demanding

Only exists in my mind.

Because there are not really villages in the valleys between the mountains

Only the ashes left behind.

All forsaken figures dispense drinks with it
In trivial routineness with a slovenly bodach
But littlest to the next on the devour table.
In succession to shepherd’s pie, Cornish pasty
Teeth mechanisms crush ties near to tongues
And beast deepens its digestion with bile juice.
The aprons stitched with white rose’s fashion
Like chalk and cheese names on a radio cast
None a synonym voiced for the paranormal.
Fail to recall the prayers, O Lord, Amen Father
Stone deaf remain words of heed, mind, wishes
Only sinful bloating reverberates the housing.
The timepiece clicks, so do the cell dials’ rings
Ear-splitting goes jarring by forks on eardrums
Baby sitting by spook spills a dark night distance.
The feet glued to hidden air under drugget on tiles
Heads rotating to the western devious enshrines
Drilling partitions on a table governed by phantasm.

Chris, my deceased ex-husband, comes to me in dreams. Always in dreams – daily, weekly, monthly. Sometimes he holds a baby boy with dark brown locks that fall thick from his head in curls. He brings with him my daughters, young. We marvel at this boy, singing and laughing and celebrating. He is my son. He is my children’s brother. I strain to take a longer look, but before I can he is gone. The dream is over and I wake and wonder.

I told my now-grown children about these dreams.

“I didn’t know you were pregnant a third time,” my oldest said, almost a question.

“I had forgotten,” I answered.

In truth I did. That is until the dreams came vivid, full of joy and mystery.

It was the eyes that got to me. Sunken. Ashened yellow. Fixed on the ceiling, but not really the ceiling. They were the eyes of a woman approaching death. She feared it.

The woman’s face was soft like snow after a winter storm, ripples of snow across her face. Gentle slopes smoothed by wind. It was framed by long, sparse wisps of uncombed gray. Her mouth, thin lines of faded red, lacked moisture.

Her eyes again. Glazed. Pupils big and black, death black, floating in a yellow bloodshot sea. She was searching for something. Not here.

There. Death was now coming into focus. She was trapped between two worlds and I wondered what she saw.

She jerked. Grinding sounds came from her throat, the air now like poison to her lungs. Her stomach heaved from the stretcher; her eyes rolled. She lifted her bony, naked arm to grasp the sterile white sleeve beside her, but her failing body was too weak to hold on. Her arm slid from the sleeve, floating recklessly, landing off the stretcher. It dangled, rocking back and forth like a limp pendulum swinging irregularly from an unexpected jolt.

They raced into a nearby room, doctors scrambled on both sides of her. Their frantic, muffled voices and the equipment’s shrieks tore through the walls. I said a prayer for her, but the storm was over. She was gone.
The waiting room, which had quieted since she was wheeled through the big double doors, remained without sound. Even the children sat still.

“Debbie,” a nurse said. I followed her into a clean, white (always white) room and watched as snow, misguided by the wind, hit the warm window, turning from a light flake into a heavy drop of water. It was another Alaska November, still early enough into winter I welcomed the snow, wanted it.

“Have a seat,” she said. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”

He wasn’t, but I was glad as I needed time to think. It was the first time I ever witnessed death. I was told it would be peaceful. White lights. Tunnels. But for her it wasn’t. Her eyes screamed at what she saw, but she couldn’t run, escape it. I didn’t understand – one moment she was there, frightened, alive, feeling, breathing, thinking. The next minute an empty shell. I cried.

I wondered where her family was and thought of my grandma who died in a nursing home, also with no family beside her. My grandma’s mind went first, and I assumed death was a friend to her. For months before she died she saw gypsies hiding watches in the curtain by her bed. She saw my mother when she looked at me. She didn’t always recognize her son. We went to her funeral, my Mom, Dad and I, but were the only ones there because we were the only ones who could make the trip from Arizona to Salt Lake City where she would be buried next to my grandpa. The grandpa I never knew, who died before my birth, my father still a child.

The three of us stood in an empty graveyard watching her coffin being lowered into the ground, falling leaves circling in slow motion around it. I was sorry no one lived nearby to check her grave, bring flowers.

I now realized that I felt sorrier for her after death than at death. I wondered how horrible it had been, to die alone. I wished someone had been there for her, to hold her hand, love her. I wished I’d sat by her bed, stroked her fevered head, whispered some kind of assurance. But instead she faced death, whatever that means, alone.

“Sorry you had to wait so long,” the doctor said coming into the room. “We had an emergency. A woman just died.”

“I know. I saw her as she was being wheeled off the ambulance. It must be very hard on you,” I said, wiping my tears. “It must be hard to keep working.”

“No, she was old,” the young doctor said. “There was nothing we could do to save her. Now if it was someone young like you with a whole life ahead of her – then I might cry. But she’d lived a long life. It was her time.”

He looked at my records, businesslike, putting on his glasses, turning page after page of my medical history. He reminded me of my then-husband, Chris, when he read the morning paper. He had the same intense look of someone deep in concentration – the furrowed brow, the unblinking gaze. I knew if I stood on my head and waved my arms he wouldn’t see me. Instead, I stared out the window, now streaked from melted snow. I thought about death and wondered if it was like the melting snowflake, just a change in form, a continuous cycle of different lives. I hoped so.

The doctor set down the papers and cleared his throat.

“I see you’re having menstrual problems,” he said taking off his black-rimmed glasses, staring at my face. “How long has this been going on?”

I told him about three weeks. At first it wasn’t heavy. Then it stopped, started again. Stopped. “Two days ago, it became so thick I had to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes and was passing clots, some the size of peas, some looked more like golf balls.” I was getting weak, dizzy.

“When people talk to me, sometimes I hear the words and understand what they mean, but I can’t link them together,” I explained. “Yesterday in class I couldn’t understand anything the instructor was saying. I left and nearly passed out while walking to my car. I don’t know how I got home, but I did.”

“Why didn’t you come in yesterday?” he asked.

“I just thought I was having a really weird period and was weakened by the heavy flow,” I said. “I just thought it would get better.”

I lied.

I didn’t tell him Chris and I had plans and I was afraid if I came “yesterday” it would ruin them. I didn’t tell him I’d bought a $100 dress, spent a fortune on tickets to a dinner and had a sitter coming. I didn’t tell him I thought time away from the kids for an evening might save our dying marriage. I didn’t tell him the flow thickened throughout dinner, that I got sloppy drunk on two glasses of wine and embarrassed Chris by alternating between drunken slurs and high-pitched giggles. I didn’t tell him Chris had to take me home before the evening barely started. That I woke with a hangover and bloodstained sheets. It was easier to just say that I thought it would get better.

“Could you be pregnant?” he asked.

“No.” I was horrified at the thought. “I’m very careful.”

He didn’t believe me.

“I want to do a blood test just in case. It sounds like you either have fibroid tumors or are miscarrying.” He explained about fibroids while he filled out a lab slip and sent me to another part of the hospital where a woman took my blood. More blood. I sat in another room, this one empty, waiting for the results.

“Dear God, please don’t let me be pregnant,” I said softly. But I knew I was. I felt stupid for not realizing it sooner.

And I knew, right there, right then, my baby, what was left of it, was dying and I couldn’t do anything about it. “If you let my baby live, I’ll go to church. I’ll do anything. Please don’t let my baby die,” I cried.
I got up and paced the room. I didn’t even want a baby. Both girls were in school and, now, finally, so was I. I stayed home for eight years so I could raise a family, be there for them when they were toddlers. That part of my life was over. A baby was the last thing I wanted. But still, I didn’t wish my child’s death.

“I know I didn’t want a baby, but I want this one,” I said. “God, if you let me keep it I’ll do anything. I’ll quit school. Don’t give me a baby only to take it away. Don’t be so cruel.” I knew, however, it was already too late.

I raced to the bathroom wanting to look at the clots, wanting to see what would have been my child, say goodbye. I gasped in shock. The flow had stopped. It was over.

My baby was gone and I thought it my fault. They might have been able to stop it if I’d gone in sooner. And I hadn’t been eating right, and was drinking and giggling while it was dying. ALONE. I felt as though I murdered my child.

I remembered my friend, Kendra, who lost her baby a year earlier. I thought about how she must have felt as she carried hers for months before it died and she wanted it, really wanted it. I wondered if she blamed herself. But she had no reason to. It was the cat …

It clawed at her, tearing the flesh on her arms, hissing, arching, drawing blood and screams before running back to wherever it came from. She had to have about half a dozen shots in case it was rabid. “I don’t think it will hurt the fetus,” the doctor told her. A few weeks later she miscarried. She called me from the hospital. Then she never spoke of it again. It was too painful.

“I’m sorry,” I told my unborn child and wondered if it could hear me.

“Are you here?” I asked. I felt nothing. “Could you give me a sign that you hear, that you understand?” Nothing. Maybe I wasn’t pregnant, I thought. I decided it was best not to know, at least not now. I decided to make a run for it. But as I tore out of the bathroom, the nurse approached me.

“You may take this back to the doctor,” she said, handing me the lab results. I paused before looking at it. It read, “negative.”

“I think you already lost the baby,” the doctor told me. “You waited a long time before coming in. That’s why the test came back negative. You probably weren’t very far along, just a month or so. I want you to go to a gynecologist first thing in the morning.”

I went to the waiting room by the lab to grab my jacket and thought about the doctor. I wondered if he cried when a woman lost a developing child. Probably not. Not for a fetus. Where does he draw the line? When is a person too old, or too young, not to merit tears? I knew death was an everyday event to him. But, still, I didn’t like him. What did he know about losing a child, even one that was never wanted?

Walking back through the emergency room, I was shocked to see the covered corpse of the woman being wheeled to the elevator. People who were once chatting, waiting to be seen by a doctor, now stopped their conversations and stared at the form of the now-cold body. They were all new faces, not the ones that had witnessed her arrival.

A woman, middle-aged, stood nearby, her eyes swollen red, her face puffy. She boarded the elevator, too, and I wondered if it was the old woman’s daughter. I was glad she was there, glad she was crying. I watched as the doors closed, then turned to walk away.

“Look at the faces on those people,” the receptionist whispered to a nurse as I passed the station. “They’ve never seen a stiff before.” She laughed. I wanted to slap her, but instead ran out the door and into the parking lot, just glad to be out of the cold, medicinal atmosphere of the hospital.

Driving home, I watched as falling snow struck my truck’s window and wondered what I would tell Chris, and tears flowed at the thought of it. As I left for the hospital, I asked him to come, but he was watching a game on TV, still mad at me for ruining his evening.

I turned on my wipers, which beat the thickening snow from my windshield. The blades thumped as they raced back and forth thrashing at the snow.

They moved with ease, a strong and steady pendulum, sounding harsh compared to my irregular, soft sobs.

Wait until dark. Not milky dark. Black opal dark. Wait until the sky turns itself inside out and you can sidle under the wood fence undetected. Your dog will be conspicuous bounding along in the freedom of the night. No one cares about that. A dog can be in the apple orchard. You can’t. You have a paper bag to fill. Many of the apples on the ground are sound, full, even unbruised—just waiting on the ground like beached whales looking for an ocean. It is a starless night, all the better for you: person of trespass. One slight bend of moon breaks the black sky blue and you can feel it like a knife on your back. Please don’t let me get caught. My second graders want Taffy apples. On Friday we’ll melt the caramels in a crock pot and take turns dipping our fat apples into their sticky coats of caramel, leaving them to sculpt in sweetness on a sheet of wax paper.

This apple heist is charity, sweet happiness for seven year olds who could care less about brushing their teeth, could care less about cavities. The mix of sweet and tart; this is the taste of childhood. Lingering.

Headlights. Lay low. The dog still bouncing, catching the moonlight in fierce nips. The headlights drag along the road—even the car seems to savor this September night. The pueblo-style house sits in the distance, maybe a mile away, the lights fuse the windows yellow. You can feel the current of life inside that house up the road. That house you are hiding from: marauder of the orchid.

Will there ever be a night this magical again? Your bag of apples is heavy as a bowling ball. The sweet glory of the steal. You are the Robin Hood teacher, stealing an apple tasting experience for your Friday afternoon kids.

You’re not doing this just for the kids though. You want your taffy-stuck remembrance of Fall—the sugar ache of childhood that makes your teeth hurt. You want this so bad you steal for it.

She makes paint from moldy brick with the flavor
of advertisement and blood and

hair and bits of concrete raised

raised from the floor; she leaves them there
to wait to speak, there’s an offstage rumble

and this time it’s the furnace,

because it’s cold in the basement, even in summer,
and the girl is almost sleeping,

she cannot tell if the cobbles

lying covert beneath the street
have been buried or planted,

she is happy not to know,

as for the cobbles,
who can tell?

You sit in a brown Adirondack chair
on a steep slope looking east
between the pines so tall
they were surely here, large even,
before you were born.

The storm chased out the humidity
and now, a month before autumn,
and still in the heavy grasp of katydids
and one insistent bird that changes
trees too fast to see, you are safe.
Free from the worst you imagine.

In the distance, tourists with phones
and not enough light still try to catch
the old church’s round roof
while one slim beetle that can fly
lands on your forearm, stays.

This is what you told yourself you wanted:
a quiet evening, a chair with a view,
a breeze, the rumble of motorcycles
fading to a line on the horizon.

But if you’ve learned anything
from the long drives to the hospital
or letters from the lawyer, phone calls
that aren’t wrong numbers at 2 a.m.,
and that tone in his voice, her face
when there’s something to say
that will shake away the Etch a Sketch
of your life for a moment, it’s that
nothing will be the same.

There is no emergency.
There is only emergency.
How can it be any other way,
the pages of the sky, each one
in slow motion or fast,
keep asking you.

Close the lids of your words and listen.
The dirt, soft and loamy, is where
the rising world makes its home.
I may be mostly blind, but who isn’t?

Still, I can see the sounds of birds
only the power lines adore. I can inhale
a swath of light swimming in sun
the so-called seeing eye can’t imagine.
Light hums like the smooth sides
of a large cave, marrying the particulars
we usually divide: irritated cat
instead of unmade bed, doorknob
instead of golden globe mirroring the sky.

Why do I keep saying, “mostly blind,”
as if someone, surely not me, chuffed
all the shutters down at once to fixate
on where the wall meets the floor
with a pipsqueak of a crack?

Nothing taken or lost ever leaves us completely.
Bodies were made to compensate, to sing
in their rusty voices of what’s coming
into view, especially in the dark.
All God’s children love the sky.

Okay, let me explain: it takes less torque
to loosen a threaded fastener than it does
to tighten it. Try it with a couple of lines,

blow them apart. Rhymes
act like inclined planets.
No, sorry, I meant planes.

Think uphill and downhill.

On this leaden gray day, the first autumn winds coerce
the sieves of my house, droning like a turbid sifter,
grinding foreign matter and depositing tiny particles
against my windows.
Outside, a banging wood fence burrows into my mind,
weltering skewered words and needling difficult lines
into vacuous prose.
Leaves, whirling, swirling, brown and crisp,
blow round the corners of my house,
piling up secreted lines.
For my pen has been bereft since this windy ogre arrived.
And as I write I know it has no voice.
It only blows cold.
Perhaps, when it fades, my mind will become resolute
and I will write with renewed autumn serenity.

After her hellish flight from NYC to Portugal, Maggie D did not expect to look up from her curry at Nola’s Kitchen to see a man tumble out of a six-story window. He fell through a missing pane of glass in a large window at the top of a dreary building. He fell onto the roof of a grey and black Smart car just then turning the corner below. Then he rolled off into the street across from the restaurant.

Maggie D dropped her spoon in the curried cauliflower and did not run out of the restaurant with everyone else to cluster around the body. What could she have done anyway? She sat quietly in quilt, wiping her spoon.

Soon enough the ambulance arrived and the man was hauled away. The knot of people from the restaurant now returned. They were two middle aged couples from the table next to Maggie D’s. Americans.

“I wonder who he was?” said the bald man. “Was he pushed or did he jump? How old was he? Good God, I wonder what it is like to die.”

“Oh Frank, just stop!” said Linda, his wife, tucking into her meal.

“Do you think it was an accident? Or was it murder?”

Linda suddenly reached over and cuffed Frank’s head with her free hand. “Enough already!”

“What? What’d I do?”

“‘What is it like to die? Was it an accident? Did someone push him?’ You’re writing a friggin’ novel.”

“So?”

The other man facing Maggie D made a long face.

“He’s very bad,” said Maggie D.

Linda turned and looked over her shoulder. “That’s not the half of it.”

Everyone laughed.

“Just for that,” said Frank, looking at Maggie D., “you can’t read my novel.”

“How mean,” said Claudia, the other woman, channeling Terry Gross. “So did the victim jump or was he pushed?”

“I haven’t decided,” said Frank. He glanced up at the building. “It is a strange place to be. What’s up there anyway at the very top, but dusty empty rooms.”

They looked up at the window.
“Put a thunder shirt on him,” said Linda. “He needs calming.”

That elicited more laughter.

“Whatever happened, I’m glad I’m not that poor bugger,” said Joe, the second man.

“I should like a thunder shirt too,” said Maggie D.

They watched her carefully ease her arms through the straps of her backpack. Then she gathered up her metal cane leaning against the next chair and inched her leg brace around the table legs.

Frank rose to hold the door.

“Be careful of open windows now,” he said.

Maggie D. laughed.

“Oh, Frank. Do I have to put you to bed?” said Linda.

The next night Maggie D. returned to Nola’s Kitchen and ordered an omelette. It was easier to go there then to traipse all over looking for a new restaurant, especially when she still had jet lag. She sat at the same table as before and looked out at the dreary building from which the man had fallen. She missed the Americans. Had Frank worked on his novel?

Why was the man up there by that window? She wondered. What was happening in his life to drive him up there with such an unfortunate result? Did someone lure him up there? Or had he wanted to cross over? Sadness washed over Maggie D. Maybe she should write a novel too.

The waiter interrupted her meditation by spilling the little cup of ketchup she had ordered. The ketchup splattered into a Rorschach test at her feet.

“I am so sorry, Madame. Did it land on you?”

She shook her head, wondering if spilled ketchup revealed life’s secrets.

Several waiters came running with a mop and a wad of paper towels.

“It’s all your fault, you know,” said the waiter smiling at her pretty face, her cornsilk hair.

She laughed.

“Next time, no ketchup for you.”

“Have you seen the ‘The Matrix’?” she asked. “Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Lawrence Fishburne?”

“No,” he said, giving her a hug, noticing that despite being a dwarf with a leg brace, she was perfectly proportioned in all the right places.

That night Maggie D. opened her hotel window for the night air. It was hard to sleep. She worried about her eventual departure. It had been so hard getting to Porto, so debilitating.
She had had to climb the steps to the hotel reception - six marble steps without railings.

She had to climb two more marble steps to the lift. It was even worse at the airport. She had nearly fallen while going from Terminal E to Terminal F at Charles de Gaulle. A couple was following too closely and plowed into her, not noticing that she had a cane and a leg brace. They had not even bothered to help her regain her balance either as they raced ahead. Somehow she had managed not to topple over her carry-on, fighting back a sob.

Then her leg brace got snotty.

“You might as well give up,” said her leg brace. “Look at you! A crab scuttling across silent seas. If you don’t have health, you don’t have anything. Why knock yourself out traveling all over creation?”

“Be quiet.”

“Think about it, Boss. It’s quiet on the other side. No worries. No —.”

“Shut up!”

Now sea gulls outside her window were screeching. How lovely to be a seagull, she thought, to have wings, to drift on an air current. The air currents of her own brain now drifted here and there as she drifted off to sleep and finally landed on the handsome man from the plane whom she had commandeered when they first landed in Porto. The handsome man who had caught his gaze.

“Can you help me thread my arms through my backpack? It is hard for me to twist.”

“Yes, of course,” he had said.

He had graying temples and a kindly face. He was slender, all in black — black shirt, black suit. He could have been a poet, a priest, a vegan academic or all three.

“Take your time. Take your time,” he had said, holding out the straps of the backpack.

She had smiled at him. “Thank you so very much. It’s my arthritis.”

At the baggage claim she had tried not look for him but she couldn’t help it. Then she spotted him. As he was pushing away his trolly, she had called after him. “Thank you again!”

When he heard her voice, almost as if he were listening for it, he had turned and smiled. “You are quite welcome. Enjoy your holiday.”

Her eyes followed him through the exit.

Now as she drifted deeper into sleep with the sweet wind stirring the curtains and admitting the night sounds outside the hotel, the world shifted a little and the man reappeared in her dream. He passed through a shaft of golden light and paused. Then he turned to her and beckoned, smiling broadly. Yes, she would go with him to his well-appointed home of books, art and musical instruments. Yes, she would cook curried cauliflower for him and match his hunger. Yes. She could, she would do that.

Meanwhile, under her bed, her shoes began to murmur.

“Boss is dreaming again about that guy on the plane.”

“Leave her alone,” said the other shoe. “He’s a perfect fit.”

“I found myself standing at the bathroom sink…”
gazing at the mirror, at the old man
looking back at me.

It had to be asked, “How did you get here?”
There’s only two of us:
You live alone.
You eat alone.
You watch movies alone.
You sleep alone.

With a stern face I responded –
“That’s the wrong question.”
The correct one is:
“Where are you going?”

for Eva

This is not a poem about moonlight
but November shadows elongated
around a house
where inside seven cats have huddled
for days awaiting their still mistress
to feed them
while the neighbors
note the overflowing mail box
and do nothing despite having
an emergency contact,
not wanting to miss
the opening day of deer hunting.
Minnesota nice.

Through the long terrible hours
the cats have waited, creeping in confusion
around the body
their hunger now a panic
as the phone rings and rings
and no one answers.
Sirens suddenly assault the evening,
growing louder and louder
surrounding the house
until police rattle the door,
shattering the glass,
and splintering wood.

The cats flee to dark corners
behind the upright piano and the droopy
mattress lining under the bed
as heavy footsteps pound the stairs
and strange voices register dismay
at the spectacle slumped
on the couch, book in her lap.
The strangers move from room to room
looking for signs of violence,
checking the medications,
attributing all finally to natural causes.

The cats know none of this,
their lives changed forever
by a last breath, a last heartbeat,
a wave never to return.

They huddle still
long after the body has been removed,
the doors secured,
the footsteps have faded away
and food and water put down at last
leaving the house to settle.

Only when they hear their familiars outside
crossing the yard, rabbits in snow,
the moonlight catching their shadows,
and the hooves of deer snapping twigs,
do they creep bewildered to their bowls,
not knowing they are lost.

On a Friday, January 13th 1950, we were braving a huge snowstorm on the way to the hospital when I came out of my mom wearing tap shoes and singing “On The Good Ship Lollipop.” Well not really, but almost. Anyway, I made it into this world.

Lying in front of the pecan Hi-Fidelity cabinet with the straight pointed legs at my home on 40th and Sheridan Avenue South in Minneapolis, I waited for my mommy to set up the ironing board, plug in the iron, and carefully place the 33 ⅓ LP on the spindle so we could sing and dance to Shirley Temple’s songs from the movies we adored and watched over and over again.

In the 1930’s when she was a little girl, Mommy watched her Shirley Temple movies at the movie theater five blocks away from her home. It only cost a nickel. My sisters and I watched those same movies on the television in our living room. Heck, even my little brothers watched Captain January, The Little Colonel, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm as those boys were good singers and dancers, too.

In 1957, Mommy asked me what I wanted from Santa for Christmas. The sole thing on my list was a 12” Shirley Temple Doll - the least expensive one. I figured if I asked for only one thing, and if it was affordable, my chances of getting what I really wanted would improve. And it worked! Christmas morning smiling up at me, there she was lying under the Christmas tree in her pink onesie with my name attached to her wrist - my very own 12” vinyl Shirley Temple doll. Oh, how I cherished that doll.

The years passed, life’s desires took hold of me, and along the way my beloved Shirley Temple doll fell by the wayside. I looked high and low for her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Well into my 30’s, I was at a loss to find Shirley no matter how hard I tried. Although she won’t admit it, I think my mom put her in a box to give to the Good Will, poor baby.

I had to find her. That’s all there was to it. I scoured every antique shop I happened upon, but not one Shirley Temple doll peaked out through the glass cases.

One evening, I had an hour before my French class was to begin at the Alliance Francaises in the warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis so I decided to order a frothy cappuccino at the nearby bookstore. There was an antique shop next door so after drinking my coffee, I gave finding my 50’s Shirley another try.

There she was sitting all pert and pretty in a foggy glass case near the back. I’m telling you, that Shirley doll was smiling at me. I convinced myself she was indeed the long lost doll from my childhood. $98.00 later, she was once again resting safely in my adoring arms.

As a child, many of my Sunday mornings were spent sitting on my daddy’s lap combing over the want-ads of the hefty five inch thick Minneapolis Star/Tribune. If there was something to be had at a darn good price, you could find it among the hundreds of little boxes advertising used cars, ebony clarinets, and washer/dryer combinations. So, when the internet hit, it hit me hard. Obsessively hard. Ebay was pure magic. I set my alarm for the middle of night to get in on a last minute bid for a ruby and gold pagoda ring listed in Thailand. It was beyond amazing. You could buy a 1,000 year-old enameled cricket cage from China and Civil War daguerreotypes in hard cases. I bought a 1963 Morris Minor 1000 right hand drive stick shift with a big white steering wheel out of the UK. After six months, I managed to get Petula through Homeland Security and into my garage. One day I set about finding a 1930’s 13” composition Shirley Temple doll like the one my mom would have had when she was a little girl. It was easy, but it was also expensive. Still, the one I found and purchased was in very good shape for being so old.

Surprisingly, my mom passed on keeping the 13” composition Shirley Temple doll she would have had as a child. I decided to post her doll for sale on Ebay for twice what I paid for her. Mere moments later, a girl bought my 30’s Shirley paying full price on a “Buy It Now.” There was no doubt the buyer wanted that particular doll. I was to send Shirley in a sturdy box carefully cushioned in many layers of bubble wrap to Gina Napolitano at a shipping address in the Rossville neighborhood of Staten Island, NY. Gina was over the top excited about her purchase and once you hear her story you will be, too. Gina couldn’t spill the beans to her mama so she exploded with her plans in an Ebay message to me:

“I’m going to take a composition doll restoration class and make that old Shirley Temple doll brand spanking new again,” explained Gina. “You see,” Gina went on, “my mother grew up in the poorest Italian neighborhood on Staten Island. When the Depression hit her family, it flattened them with an asphalt stench and the annihilation of a double drum road roller.” (Note: I delighted in what I knew was Gina’s Italian/NYC accent crawling out from behind every syllable of her writing.) “Mama was a little girl when the Depression robbed people of what it means to be human.” wrote Gina. "My mama’s parents, my grandmama and grandpapa, wouldn’t let my mama play with her Shirley doll because if she broke it, they would not be able to buy her another one. So, they boxed up Mama’s Shirley and put her high on a shelf in the back of a closet for safe keeping only allowing her to take the doll out at Christmas.

Mama was eight years-old and it was the long awaited Christmas Day - the day she would be allowed to play with Shirley. Mama invited her friend from next door over to play with Shirley too because her friend did not have a Shirley Temple doll of her own. Cradling her precious Shirley in her arms, Mama went to the back door to let her friend in. Mama’s friend took one look at Mama’s Shirley Temple doll and became enraged with jealousy. She grabbed the doll by one leg and smashed her over and over again against the wall, cracking her face, legs, and fingers beyond repair. Mama couldn’t stop sobbing. That doll meant everything to her.

When Mama had me, she told me the awful story about seeing her Shirley in crumbling pieces on the kitchen floor. She told me over and over again, year after year after year, ‘Gina, I still miss that doll. My yearning for my Shirley never really goes away.’”

“Oh, my, Gina,” I wrote back. “This is so heartfelt and good, it might be the most amazing Christmas present ever. Gina, I have Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm bib overalls and a straw hat for that doll that I want to give to your mom, okay? In fact, I have an original Baby Take a Bow dress I will send to you as well. Would that be okay?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Gina wrote. “This is going to be even better than I imagined. I’d better get on with the lessons and restoration,” Gina wrote. “Christmas is in two months and I want Shirley to be perfect.”

Six weeks passed and I’d heard nothing from Gina until one day I received a message with a photo attached. Gina had worked magic into the composition of that 1930’s doll. If you looked long and hard enough the smile on Shirley’s face became real. Shirley’s golden curls were divine.

On Christmas Day, I received a note from Gina with a video attached. In the video, Gina’s mama sat in a chair waiting for Gina to give her her Christmas present. Gina placed a beautifully wrapped box on her mama’s lap. Gina’s papa took the video of Mama unwrapping her gift. When Gina’s mama removed the lid, she gasped, “My doll. My doll. My Shirley. You’ve come back to me.”

Mama looked up into Gina’s face with a look for which words can never do justice. Silence took over the room except for nose blowing and tears. Mama held her long lost Shirley Temple doll to her shoulder kissing her face over and over again.

And a thousand miles away, a stranger who sold an old doll on Ebay cried.

Gina wrote one last thing to me the day after Christmas:

“Thank you, Julie. If you ever decide to come to Rossville on Staten Island, come and visit us. We’ll walk down to Portofino Pizza for a slice, my treat. I promise you will not be disappointed. Porofino’s is a small family owned pizzeria that also has fresh garlic knots that are out of this world.

Merry Christmas. With love, Gina Napolitano.”

Six days of the week,
The sun rises once.
On Tuesdays, though,
The sun rises twice.

You work that day
At the Senior Care Center.
Each Tuesday morning,
My darkness lifts.

The moment I see you,
A second sun clears
My horizon of night –
For today, I feel alive.

Your welcoming smile,
Your near-giddy voice,
Your lustrous eyes,
Issue a galaxy’s fill
Of ten billion suns.

Then six long days
Of total eclipse.
When on Tuesdays, I return,
You are there –
If just for today,
The sun rises twice.

Long-forgotten chill
And diminishing sun
Perform their natural alchemy
On deciduous trees,
Transmute dark green
Scrub oak leaves
Into yellows, oranges,
Golds, and ruddy browns.
These scrawny survivors
Wring from hardscrabble lives
A severe kind of beauty.

Backlit by a fading sun,
A patch of glowing leaves
Lingers before nightfall,
Suspended in the air
As much as in time,
Then vanishes until morning –
Minus a few more leaves –
Backlit now by an eastern sun.

Wonders of the world
Come in small sizes,
Magnificence, not
A matter of scale,
But of wakeful
Eyes’ recognition
Of what soon passes
From sight.

Claus One

Lockdown coffee cake
it never rains in southern California
or so I had heard it said…
until refraction
concern crisp and clean,
& cannot be swept or hid

Claus Two

Corn,
a metaphor for a woman un-satiated
starched jeans & buttoned down
collared shirts for IVY LEAGUE boys
to play foolish games
& pretend ‘it all came undone’ after 21

Claus Three

Upside down collard greens,
if you new who knows who,
words are like motor oil
for advice eclipsed nights

when your god is too small
and excelling is a habit
choose to ignore editorial demands

write it down if you must,
if waiting broke the bridge
You were not built to break

I no longer sleep alone.
It is a strange feeling
knowing that there is
someone else in my bed.

Two nights ago, she was
playful.
She planted a hickey on my
thigh.
Last night it was on my
stomach.

You see there is a spider in
my bed.
Woke up when she strolled across
my face.
I am her midnight snack.
Murder on my mind.
Solved by relocation to the
backyard.

Bat food – I hope.

Julie no longer plays into the big hand,
The heavy hand, the upper hand,
The hand that silences, shames, smacks.

She used to plead, “Pick me! Pick Me!”
In a rush, she’d cast her heart into pools of abandonment—
Pearls to swine, like clockwork.

They could count on her to bear the secrets,
The stains, the scarlet paragraphs and
Chapters that chronicled cries and crises.

But in the hour of need, past half the darkness
The second hand clicked into place. . .
Safe hands and second chances surfaced.

This is her day in the sun. Love won.
Flourishing, fostering freedom and hope,
Counting on truth—not time—to heal her wounds.

What happens to a voice unheard?

Does it get lodged
Like popcorn kernels behind a tonsil?
Or deflate like a tire—
And then collapse?
Does it smell like singed hair?
Or bubble and fizz
Like a chemical reaction?

Maybe it just whispers
Like a secret in one’s ears.

Or does it scream?

It was Christmas 1962, I was seven-and-a-half years old and having serious doubts whether Santa Claus was real. It was all the usual clues – the multiple Santas in the various malls, the hidden packages under my parents’ bed and the serious doubts a man with a white beard could fly in the sky with eight reindeer, squeeze down a chimney we didn’t even have, and deliver millions of toys to all the world’s boys and girls in just one night.

I was raised in the suburbs of Toronto, the middle child of five boys who was, frankly, a little different than his four brothers.

Hockey ruled in Canada, and I remember my dad at five in the morning driving my two older brothers to the indoor arena for hockey practice. There was a public outdoor skating rink around the corner where we lived and my father would flood our backyard every winter to make our own private ice rink. There was no shortage of ice, except on rare days when temperatures rose above freezing. This was obviously pre-climate change.

Hockey Night in Canada was close to a religion in our little suburb, and kids in our neighborhood donned hockey skates as soon as they learned to walk.

I, however, was not the least interested in hockey. I wanted to dance on ice.
I was totally enthralled with figure skating and loved watching it on television. When the Ice Capades came to town, I begged my parents to take me, to no avail. I was obsessed.

So that year, when asked what I wanted for Christmas, it was a pair of figure skates, making sure Santa understood that it was figure skates, not hockey skates – the ones that were all shiny black and had the little pointy things on the top of the toe blades.

I had never been this excited for Christmas. I threw all my Santa skepticism aside and set out milk and cookies for Jolly Saint Nick, with a big fat carrot for Rudolph, before going to bed.

I could hardly sleep, and aroused my sleepy younger brother at four in the morning to quietly sneak into the living room to check out what was under the tree. There it was – a box, all wrapped up: “To John, Merry Christmas from Santa.” My heart was pounding.

I impatiently waited until 6 am before dragging my parents and two older brothers out of bed.

We had a family tradition of giving each other gifts and opening them first. The big gifts from Santa were always left to the end; sort of the big morning crescendo before the big morning breakfast.

After waiting for what felt like an eternity, the box from Santa was finally on my lap. I savagely tore open the paper, lifted the lid – only to find hockey skates!

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the 1972 cult film Female Trouble, but in it, is a scene where the star, Divine, playing the teenage character Dawn Davenport is desperately wanting cha cha heels from her parents for Christmas. It being a John Waters film, when Dawn unwraps her present and opens the box to discover she did not get the cha cha heels her heart desired, she flies into a major tantrum, screaming, “these are not cha cha heels, I wanted cha cha heels you bitch”, then proceeds to throw her father into the Christmas tree which falls down on her mother, ending the scene with both parents trapped underneath, uncontrollably sobbing, “Oh Dawn, oh Dawn!”

My reaction was not so dramatic. As my disbelief turned into tears, I threw the box of hockey skates down and ran into my room, slamming the door for added affect.

There was no way to console me. It all confirmed what I knew in my heart was true – Santa was fake and my parents not only lied to me, but also knew how much these figure skates meant to me. With my Olympic dreams dashed, I felt betrayed.

I never did get a pair of figure skates, and it took awhile, but I finally forgave my parents.

My seven-and-a-half year old self learned some pretty big life lessons that day: people who say they love you, can deceive you; you can’t always get what you want; and, be dubious of anyone pushing invisible entities on you.

The following Sunday I loudly announced to my Sunday school teacher and class: “There is no such thing as Santa – or Jesus.”

Today,
And every day since Vietnam
I see the brown eyes
Of a ten year old boy
Staring through me…

He was not crying
Or blinking
After we killed most of his
Three generation family

I couldn’t explain to him
About mistakes…
Or the fog of war
As we carried dead family members
Past where he sat
He continued to stare
Showing no emotion
Fifty years later
I wonder
Where he is
And if he has healed

I have not.

Trina neared the end of her anecdote. Unexpected breathlessness. Mixed up “champion” with “championship.” No one at the table seemed aware of the error. They looked pleased with more than the considerate brunch that repelled all possible allergies. They looked ready for dessert, a sweet way to push back from the table. Reassured, she launched a punchy last line. Their chuckles and gentle nods revealed the reward for sharing her chance encounter in childhood with Cassius Clay, before he became the world-famous Muhammad Ali.

Finished with her story, she looked down at her plate, at a piece of avocado toast couched against a slice of potato tart. She lifted the green tidbit to her mouth. Heard her stomach growl, signaling her to head to the buffet table for another helping. A smidgen more wouldn’t harm her calorie and cholesterol limits, especially if she left the potato tart on her plate.

“And what do you say, Dad? Is that how you remember it?”

Jackson. Half-brother of the groom, good friends with him, a testament to how a blended family can work out despite divorce. He was leaning over to spot his father’s answer. Trina was half-standing, the last of her avocado toast already in her mouth. Distracted by her growling stomach, but not enough to overlook Jackson’s question. She followed his lead, glancing down the table to the end where Terrance sat.

“No.”

Part of Trina wanted to pretend. Make like she hadn’t heard her brother’s answer to his son’s request for verification. Or maybe Terrance was distracted, too, answering a question put by someone at that end of the table. Jackson’s question sounded innocent, plucked from a sea of submerged history. Limp, waterlogged stuff everyone dumps overboard to lighten the load of chugging through endless days and nights of good, bad, whatever. How about this detail, his question asked. Recognize this—the moment when this happened?

Terrance said no. A definite rejection. An order to throw the crap back. It’s worthless, doesn’t belong here, among us. Not acceptable on this day of happy matrimony.

She looked at him, her mouth finishing its job of chewing the toast with avocado smeared on top. Bit of a culinary miracle. The toast didn’t get soft, the avocado remained green. Later, she would remember thinking about the crunch, the creaminess. Her throat and tongue in concert. For now, she slumped back in her chair, unable to shift her focus away from her brother’s face. For a second she grew afraid she’d choke, cause even more of a scene than what was surely sucking out all the air while she stared at him and none of the gawkers said a word.

The look he gave her held onto pain. Held her in a bright gaze that stepped them onto a threshold and stopped. She was stunned. The threshold pooled, a watery mess. Her eyes were damp. She could have mistaken the choking sensation. It was more like a sucker punch, T-boning her liveliness. A rising tide of shock. She felt her eyes blinking, shutters slamming, protection from the storm: Terrance, the male’s male who always knew the correct answer. Always held his goateed chin high, his mahogany body the plank that survived the wreck of patronizing scholarships, made it to shore, became the frontispiece of success.

She sensed him forcing back something. Making himself turn down his temperature. Past heated anger, a conditioning of the air that reverted to cool and then to cold. Gripping the look he gave her as he sat, rigid. No recognition of a blood bond. No warmth. No rescue.

It was a time in childhood they shared. That was all. She’d told a tale that sounded almost silly. One small ripple of time. She was 8 or 9, he was maybe 15. She couldn’t see what the big deal was. She’d spotted the man as he left a neighborhood bar. She remembered late afternoon sunlight falling across him and the two men with him. The bar’s doorway taking its time closing after them. Darkness from inside the bar challenging the sun, giving the three a weird glow as they paused, squinting. The man in the center looked like her big brother, especially in the eyes and chin and molasses coloring. When she told the man, unabashed, on her way home from a piano lesson, the man reversed her notation: he was the Big Man, not her brother. A stance she’d stumbled back home from. When she told on herself, she got a comeuppance, for talking to a stranger and for mistaking the next world champion for someone anywhere near her brother.

Now, she was still confounded. How could her story—their story—smash his fabrication, his breastplate of confidence. What was he fighting not to reveal? Why the pain? She swallowed an urge to hug him, ask him to daub her tears, like he used to do when she scraped her knee or shoved a bully who knocked her flat. Remember, she wanted to ask but didn’t, how we laughed at ourselves as we practiced the Twist while you played your Chubby Checker 45? Now, Terrance was hard, unrelenting. Touch me, he seemed to warn her with his knifing stare, and I will make you hard too.

She stood, all the conversations at the table buzzing in her ears. Everyone sounded quickly and with relief interested in some other topic. Any other subject sounded OK to them as long as the words swerved them away from the smack-down they’d witnessed. They could step aside, revisit the merriment housing their smiles and nods and genteel chatter. It was difficult for her to move but she was able to make her legs take her toward the exit. Later she would chew on the astounding flavors and textures of one person’s pain flooding her. For now, she was glad she’d kept her coat on, relieved not to need to navigate the checkroom. She could go.

Part I. Dusk—Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here,” 1975

I grabbed Gatorade on a sunbaked return home
to gawk groundward in a cloth chili pepper mask—
and not toward Tulsa’s shrapnel within paling skyline,
not to co-opt it for the sake of longing any longer.

I stumbled over my doorstep’s first Amazon Solzhenitsyn novel—
A Day in The Life of Anybody Not Doing All This,
where if “You” just had to be somewhere, then not “Here”
or even there, but away from all this, was all I’d “Wish” for still—

but if its Ivan hinted how best to cheat on my path through spacetime,
I was too worn down from 13-hour shifts on foot and sweaty
five-mile commutes to splice a day’s film to headspace.

As my apperception’s reel-to-reel flickered
like every daylight’s fade out,
no thought ever seemed enough.

Part II. Late—Keith Jarrett, “Answer Me, My Love,” Live in Munich 2016

Plodding back from fetching forgotten CVS psych meds,
I wondered, what use all those spastic obversions to response were—
such as entreaties, invocations, querying—beyond
consignment sales of cerebellum grooving out chronic aches?

What use, as two more EMSAs wailed rejoinder of anti-Siren-Song
(its primordial “Stay the Hell Back, I Lure You to Living”),
were one’s engines for craft or seeking purpose in abecedarian

spillages after inner cogency? What use was dejection
at being kicked and kicked way down in the dumps
of our regional vortex in the Great American Dumpster Fire?

What use was smearing pencil points for pretty pearls to ask
or rifle through middens of a vacant “Answer,” to have taken
stabs at “Me” or “My”, to grope around for the stuff of “Love”?

What use are such words?

Google search: I no longer speak to myself in my mother tongue.
Google search: I no longer think in my mother tongue.
Google search: I no longer dream in my mother tongue.
Google search: How do I mourn the death [word deleted] the loss of my identity?
Google search: Meditation for trauma
Google search: Quran cleanse for anxiety and grief
Google search: Did Algeria open its borders?
Google search: When will Algeria open its borders?
Google search: Covid cases in Algeria
Google search: I have Covid symptoms
Google search: Ginger and turmeric blend for covid
Google search: my dissociation is worse after covid
Google search: ideas for covid care packages for friends
Google search: Booster shot near me
Google search: Did Algeria really open its borders?
Google Flights: XNA to Constantine, Algeria
Google search: PCR test near me

I woke up disoriented and confused by the sound of the Adhan. I haven’t heard the call to prayers in three years. The voice sounded different. It sounded transient, crispy, less cracked, and more powerful. I figured our local mosque has a younger Imam now. Moments later, I heard hurried steps and running water. I heard whispers of morning prayers. I heard the soothing sound of my father’s voice as he prayed for heaven—for all of us, for all humanity. It lulled me back to sleep.

My mother laid out a spread that morning. The smell of coffee teased my nose. It smelled sweeter than the coffee I had in the States. It took me some time to realize that I’m here. I’m back in the homeland. Nothing has changed in the kitchen, just a new shiny pot and more plastic containers. I stared blankly at the bubbles that formed on my coffee cup. They twirled in a harmonious dance. The froth reminded me of Aphrodite’s sea stunt and of births and rebirths. I looked up to see my mom looking at me. I could see in her eyes that she is trying to grasp that her daughter is here. My mom and I talked a lot more during the pandemic. Our relationship changed to the better. I can tell her a lot more about my life, and she seems receptive of it—very understanding even. It’s rare for a Muslim mother not to mention marriage to her thirty-year-old daughter. I respect that about my mom, but I also understand that it’s temporary. I know the subject will come up someday.

The night of my arrival was emotional. My siblings were there waiting for me at the airport. Kisses on the cheeks while tears ran down. I felt their heat piercing my flesh. The fear of loss is haunting us. We lost so many aunts and cousins in the past, and now the pressure to survive seems collective. We lost more family members to colonialism and to natural causes than the pandemic. The response has always been the same when we hear of death. It’s Allah’s will. Everything is pre-written—it’s maktoub.

My mom insisted that I begin my breakfast with her homemade bread and a dab of olive oil. “It’s good for your health”, she said. A statement I heard often growing up. I wish I can explain to you how powerful this love language is for mommas of North Africa and the Mediterranean. They offer you herbal medicine to outlive them. The belief in the magical powers of olive oil has always fascinated me. I never questioned it.

My mom’s stories seem more detailed now that she’s in her sixties. Maybe they were always detailed. I don’t remember. The stories began with brief updates on the pandemic then they somehow shifted to stories of colonization—the shift that often happens when my mother is telling stories. She placed a bowl of peas on the breakfast table and began to crack them swiftly from their pods.

In the past three years, I tried working on myself using the framework of Western psychology. I learned about boundaries. I wanted to tell my mother that we can postpone the conversation to when I’m ready to receive the information. I wanted to tell my mother that I was getting triggered, but I didn’t know how to translate it properly into Arabic. My tongue couldn’t release those words. It felt like an insult—a betrayal. Stories of violence that seem so normal to her made me want to weep. The feeling of anger towards the colonizers became a searing pain that tore through my insides. I felt like I’m betraying her and my ancestors who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.

I exhaled the anger outside of my body. My shoulders released their tight grip, and I continued to listen—but this time attentively. I allowed myself to receive my mother’s stories. I observed how she speaks about colonialism like it’s a present occurrence not a memory. I wanted to tell my mother who couldn’t finish elementary school (because of colonialism) about the “post” in postcolonialism. I wanted to tell her about the scholars who theorized her life, and my grandmother’s life. I wondered what her critique would be. I wanted to tell her about the subaltern while she spoke. I wanted to tell her she’s the reason I’m researching colonialism. I wanted to tell her that she’s the storyteller of our often-erased history. I wanted to tell her that I, like a clay vessel, carry her stories with me even when I have no capacity to listen. Her words stick and cling onto my memory and my flesh. I carry the violence, the trauma, the legacy of the free people, the Amazigh, of the martyrs and the freedom fighters— I carry them, and they carry me like a pea in a pod.

I broke the pattern.
Crackled curves down the
smooth surface I was trying
to preserve for you.

I tried so hard to keep the sidewalk
clean, shoving the banana peels and half-drunk coke cans
and crumpled cardboard into the streets that lined my veins.

But the pressure eventually built up
and the contents of my capillaries
exploded, sending the ugliness I was trying
to spare you from right into your lap.

Showing you the shameful truth.

moving slowly, lowly
eyes glued to the topiary
snow fills sides and winds
following one everywhere they glide

a shadow of light
a son shining bright
dull boys
red walls
similar rum

a beating drum doused in oil
a boiler
a hissing hose coiled
and the spoiled sting of blades gone astray

all accompanied by the lingering tray of an old fool’s ash
sauntering with you along in the walls
tobacco and stairs now complimenting the hairs of some dog
one that bites and barks
your third

now 217
swirling in green, a dead woman’s tub
the mutt is back
licking and lapping at the sin
whiskey sliding down your cheeks and chin
his laugh paired with your now crazed grin
confirming the horror you knew to be true

this castle?
why, dear sir,
you must be mistaken
I fear, you and yours, have always
lived here

Music in the sky, the hills—
clouds make music too.
Keep listening. There’s music
everywhere—rivers, lakes,
a forest, a clearing. There’s
nothing that’s not music.

Can you hear the wild?
Open yourself to everything
underneath. There’s
nothing that’s not music—
the dirt, the rocks,
your history on earth.

For Max Elbo

It will be June and we will be sitting
in the Parc Monceau, the one with the pond
and the columns and we will be at a table,
one of the small ones, and we’ll have just struggled
to buy a baguette from Madame on Rue de Mosselle
who hates Americans and also other tourists.
It will be like that other summer, when
we stayed in the 19th Arrondissement and
you will be stepping toward us along the path,
dodging les gens, smiling, and we will forget
for just a moment that you’ve gone
somewhere we can’t follow, left us shadows,
the breeze under the plane trees by the canal.

Delta summer plays possum
with Buddhist Sisyphus lessons

a stray cat
evening thunderstorm
slows thoughts

flash flood warnings
notice sensations

deep weather pushes
Wednesday’s
speechless noise

do not drive unless
it’s an emergency

cherry pits falling
on pistachio shells
sound ready
to compost

the time echo
tastes cold air
turned hot like
when you pee
after iceskating

when I sing for the boa
the kittens trill

why do I peel the tape
off the book spine
leaving it so sticky
I have to retape

fancy snakes sleep
sea scallops split
kimchee mouths

seven steely-eyed sloths simmer seaside
seven slick silver sliders sleek and smirking
seven stuttering splices of smack splash
seven spider slips speak of Spaniards
seven Saturdays splurged on sushi
seven strings silly stop showing
seven sample skeletons sometimes sidle

what if we could
taste with our skin
the way an octopus does

these are the stories
of my hands
on the keyboard

left longer
right wider
left taller
right deeper
left lifts light air
right finds
dinosaur stones

waiting for the
next fearsome thing
running under a lark

diurnal den of dreys
diatomaceous drifter dog
densely dim diner dins
daleths delve deliberating

chasing clockwise thoughts
I cannot track
unraveling directions
heading to the right
the heavier denser side

this posture feels like a hat
I’m not wearing any more
with its numb January hands

circulating left
stiff right
windy left
swizzle stick left
pink flamingo fizzy
Shirley Temple
grenadine syrup left
thick brick right
steady as she goes right
left freedom rides the wind
twice right lines

the math is off
marching 2/2
Sousa horns
your left your left
your left right left

there’s the tie snapped
for the chorus performance

a little yellow book finds
thin pointed pain on the left
shoulder blade
with its uneven glasses

I know if I try I will know
I know nothing

what I know does not matter
what I know makes no difference

the left higher than the right
the left the top step on the ladder
the right the bottom rung

this morning
we make a minyan
of hard boiled eggs

Siri says all the alarms are off
then she says the next alarm
is set for 10 p.m.
make up your mind Siri

a mother bat and her baby
recognize each others’
voices and scents
among thousands
in the nursery colony

a baby bat is a pup
a bat is as smart as a dolphin

vampire bats feeding
hurt no one
the cows do not feel
quick incisions
or lapped up blood

some people suck
but none can pollinate like bats
who maintain and advance
rather than destroy
ecological systems

sensation decomposes
bark turns to mush

I uncoil my head
shit from a mussel

what happened to
the rest of them
I can’t be the only one
waking up to climb

the butterfly effect
shouldn’t be a burden

winter arrives early tonight
or maybe it is just near
the back of my neck

by Frume Halpern
translated from Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Excerpted from Blessed Hands: Stories by Frume Halpern; translated from the Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (Philadelphia, Pa.: Frayed Edge Press, forthcoming)

Translator’s Notes: “Rusty, My Friend” is a story in Blessed Hands: Stories by Frume Halpern, my forthcoming translation of her Yiddish-language Gebenshte hent: dertseylungen. Halpern wrote with tremendous empathy about the lives of those marginalized by a range of causes and conditions, include illness, physical handicap, poverty, and racism. In “Rusty, My Friend,” Halpern creates a delicate meditation on aging and lost love as conveyed to humankind’s best friend.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Robert Linn and Victor M. Linn and Judith Linn, for kind permission and support and to Norman Buder for very helpful responses to queries on Yiddish language matters.

Rusty, my friend, even though you’re four-legged and I’m two-legged, we have a lot in common. My affinity for you is profound. It seems to me that I feel you the way I feel myself, that I hold you the way I would hold my own self. Like me, you’ve been forgotten and sidelined because of your age. You’ve lost your practical utility to humans, a quality you’d mastered throughout the years. Now, nobody cares about you. Like me, my four-legged friend, you’re alone and not attractive to people’s eyes, and as for your practical utility to dogs—well, that’s also been lost.

I feel you, my friend, and I don’t let you out of my mind’s eye. Now I see you, my little lump. You’ve selected a sunny spot of earth on which to curl up and bury your head in a few wet blades of grass, and with sleepy, cloudy eyes, you look dully at your “hims” and “hers” racing after summer butterflies and the cheerful children around them who fill the air with raucous laughter.

No one can compete with you when it comes to sniffing something from a distance or when you get the urge to play with the “she” around whom everyone is now dancing.

Based on your phlegmatic cleaving to the ground, one might presume that their activities don’t matter to you; after all, you’re not even looking in their direction. But, my friend, I know that’s just a show. I sense your internal pain. I see your twitching nose. I see how you flap an ear and give a snort with your shivering nose, and although I can’t claim to be an expert in canine psychology, I could swear that you, with the whole of your ungainly body, are now with them, with the young “puppies” that don’t even send a friendly sniff your way…

It’s already happened several times. There you were lying down in your loneliness, like you were already buried in the ground, when suddenly, as if the earth whispered a secret in your ear, you leaped up, like you did in your youth, and headed off like a whirlwind. Those around you tried to follow your example by running for a bit, but they soon returned, as if they’d decided: We won’t catch him, in any case. Let him run, that old fool. When you returned like a victor, with a guest, no one even looked at you. Your master didn’t even offer you a caress in thanks.

After one such expedition, I notice a flicker of old age in your eyes. This much is apparent: It’s all too much for your current capabilities. You flop to the ground, your usual resting-place, utterly spent. Just a moment ago, you detected from quite a distance with a sense of smell that has yet to let you down, someone from your household, but he doesn’t give you what you deserve. It is he, Grazia, who receives the special treats, the kind words, the caresses. It was he who danced around the guest, not you. He is beautiful. No one can resist his black, gleaming pelt with the white spots. The spot at the very center of his forehead adds a world of charm. Now Grazia rejoices in his conquest!

I’ve gone through the same thing, and so I feel for you. Oh, how I feel for you, Rusty, my friend. I know you’re exhausted and that you have pain in your sides from the running you just did; here you are lying in the tumult, with shortness of breath and sleep in your eyes. I feel for you, Rusty, my friend. Forgotten one, like me. I read all your resentments. Right now, I see that you are tired, that you tremble from time to time. Your muzzle rests on your weak front paws, your wide, pendant ears are even with the ground, and your half-open eyes are veiled with a slimy membrane. It’s hard to know whether you’re asleep. It’s already dark. The setting sun sets a slice of sky aflame. A few rays stumble upon your head and make their way through the dark recesses of your dozing brain to illuminate the remembrances and desires there. You glide in the past, my friend. Here too, I feel for you, Rusty, my friend, because the setting sun has also stirred up for me times past, yet not forgotten…  You are still feeling at this moment how and in what way to throw yourself upon your enemy, upon any dog who stands in your way and doesn’t let you get anywhere near the female your heart so desires… A burning fury is ignited within you. You let out a wild howl! You give yourself a shake and there you are again lying on the ground. You woke up…

Oh, Rusty, my friend, how well I understand you. Oh, those years, when your legs were even, flexible, nimble, and swift as an arrow released from a bow! Why, your legs ran so quickly that they were invisible. I, too, Rusty, my friend, when I close my eyes, see myself long ago… the only difference is that I sit on a bench and you—on the ground.

Rusty, do you remember those adoring, soft, and loyal hands that we both loved so? Between you and me, Rusty, there was no place for jealousy. I loved to caress your satiny curly fur—fur of a hue that, in the dark, looked like flames, the only-just vanished flames of the setting sun. Your eyes were so human that I often thought you understood a bit too much for a dog… And what a scamp you were! Your ears stood like a young hare’s. She and I, both of us loved to play with your ears. No less than me, you were greedy for the caresses of those hands with their magic-fingers.

Remember how those hands caressed you. You wanted to thank them with a kiss, and in the face, no less, right? Remember how she embraced your handsome head in her translucent hands with such tenderness so as not to cause you any pain. Then your eyes would ask me to come to your aid. Neck outstretched, you would look at me, a little embarrassed. I saw a tear in a corner of one of your eyes.

Ach, ach, Rusty, my friend, how foolish one can be when young and in love! Now, when I speak to you without words, I can say that to you. You know, Rusty, there was a time when I was jealous of you? No, you can’t know. More than once, when I spotted her sitting on a bench in the garden, you at her feet, your handsome head on her lap and she playing with your silky fur—oh, was I jealous of you! Oh, how I wanted to be in your place!

Ach, ach, how monstrous the years can be, Rusty, my friend.

You lie in the corner and although you’re always drawn to the ground, you turn your head to the slice of moon that leaps out now and then from the heavy, dark clouds as if seeking to free itself from their pressure. But the clouds are rushing off to who knows where. As recently as earlier today, my eyes followed you as those of your kind held sway over the meadows and you were seized by a sudden urge. You hastily got up from your bed, shook the dust from yourself, looked all around, and spotting a white “she”, for whom you apparently have a “weakness”, made off in her direction as one would to an old friend. But she, although no innocent young thing herself, started barking so forcefully as if you wanted to slaughter her. At the sound of her cries, the entire “dog brigade” came running and started barking, and you, poor Rusty, unfortunately had no alternative but to retreat…

The truth is, you left in dignity, albeit with a lowered head; you didn’t flee, but walked slowly, step by step, and then returned to your bed.

As it does for myself, so my heart ached for you, Rusty, my four-legged friend. I experienced something similar in my own life. Strange, but when I saw you coming back with sadness and awkwardness in your steps, it seemed to me that I heard your wide, hanging ears weeping over your bitter fate…

… It’s midnight. A stripe of light extends from a lamp hanging from a beam, cutting through the dark fog. You, Rusty, are seemingly enveloped in a shadow, but when an edge of the moon reveals itself, your presence on the ground is spotlighted. When one gets close to you, one might think that you are still, like the ground itself upon which you lie, and like the trees standing by your head. But that is not the case. It’s not just the ground that is still, but also the trees that are still. You, Rusty, are very far from still. In your subconscious, something is happening. It’s hard to say what. What I do see: Your body gives a shiver, a jerk, as if someone had stepped on it, and from your throat—as if you were enraged at someone—a kind of grrr can be heard… Any minute now you will be coming out with a true canine bark. Perhaps you’re angry at the moon… and perhaps the moonlight has brought memories of the past back to you? Perhaps the moon has awakened in you a longing for those tender hands—the hands with the magic fingers, for which I, too, yearn, yearn unceasingly?

Of one thing I am sure: Despite your awkwardness and your proximity to the earth, you’re a dreamer, and that makes me happy. Because you ought to know, Rusty, my friend, that to dream is itself an achievement. And there’s something else you ought to know—one can’t always dream. A dream, too, has its time…

So dream, Rusty. Dream, my friend!

Oh, to sleep like the cat.
Indolent napping during
Daylight hours,
Exhausted by a night’s prowl,
Then a rarefied rest.
Balletic investigations
Of belly, paw, and privates,
Easing her down upon
The counterpane:
The Isle of Tabby.
Eyes half-mast and slow fade
To brief oblivion of empty house.
Until a human invasion.
Obscene stretching
Invites a touch, a scratch,
A shift of position,
Then napping on.

Oh, to rest a long time!
A poison-spindled slumber
With no wake-up call.
Instead, this wakened/woke
Angst of Now.
A flash of heat, petty fretting,
Life-or-death disquiet,
Breaking glass, a mate’s mere snore,
Toss and turn me long before
Oblivion will come.

Oh, to be nocturnal like the cat,
Aptly named Aurora.
We pass in the night.
She creeps toward her bowl,
I stumble toward the clock,
Old woman squinting
At a luminous dial.
How few hours has she rested?
Vigilant and wary of
A siren in the distance,
A dumpster dropped
From a midnight height,
An exchange of vital cautions
By the neighborhood dogs.
A freight train slows
At endless crossings
From north to south of town.
That not so lonesome moan
That offers no repose.

I’m not saying –
To all the followers,
To all the friends,
To all the subscribers–
Anything about the terror
That is holding me so still.
So still I appear
Perfect–
So still I seem
Weighted–
So still I could be
The soaking cold
Night before
Spring dawns.
No.
I am, not.
Rather,
Electric, I am, in hateful waiting.
The stillness of
An alligator jaw.

When I dare to be powerful
I eat the world alive.
There is no helping any of you
You won’t be my friend–
Silence will sink us –
I might not say anything
But the vibration
Of me will judder
In your palms.
Oh how you itch to
Leave how you wish
To be free to
Find yourself back in a park
Swinging in the flat sunshine
Flying free over cement
Baby-face and rolls
A cozy sitter nearby
Heedless of the others.
This is your rollercoaster
To emancipate the treasures
Of your heart – out
Around through you.
No need to play with
The lurkers no need to
Open up to them no need to
Launch yourself into
Their foray, to collide
With the cruel
Shape of their words
As they cut zigs
Into the grass.
You’ve forgotten,
Haven’t you, why you are
Here? It’s the long slow
Play to run away from
Me from me from
Me the hellhound who
Tucks inside
Mirrors, creeps in
Gloom, slurs into
Mistakes the rakes the villains
And somehow bares logic
Once cemented and
Decided to speak up –
Oh no. No, no.
We are revealed in our
Discomfort. So you
Sit with the heart of
Maleficent, love pounding,
Wonder worrying:
What is my next
Iteration? Will it be
Mud, apostasy,
A screech owl
Rending the night
With her vow to
Retreat? Friend,
Tell me what you
Want.

Hidden in the thickets of cedar, pine, and weeping willows
the old cabin patched with make-do siding and leftover windows.
The tin roof shines when the sun comes peering through the clouds
but in the mountain rains the roof chatters telling tales out loud.
Old wives’ tales crackin’ a smile like peppercorns in the stew
and shared recipes of the perfect buttermilk biscuits, cornbread too.
Sewing swatches together for a warm patchwork quilt,
stitching a ruffle to a too-short dress not wasted to clean up silt.
Though legends speak of the cry heard of a mother with her stillborn,
years to follow the midwife’s hallelujah cries for four healthy newborns.
There are fishing and bull frogging tales longer than PaPa’s legs
and the neighbor’s filly jumpin’ the six-foot tall fence pegs.
The eight-point buck’s head mounted over the stone fireplace mantel,
venison pot pie at the dinner table while hungry children quiet their tattle.
Porch gossip of a jilted love affair with a soldier gone away
and who’s passed the smallpox onto the poor clan down the way.
If listened close enough as the summer rain pitters and patters,
The tin roof chatter echoes our own stories, real heart matters.

There’s something wrong with me. No, really. I mean it, there’s something wrong with me. I know you’re thinking “everybody thinks there’s something wrong with them,” but I know there’s something wrong with me. I know it because I think of my life in every single timeline. Why do there have to be so many possibilities as to who we can be? Why can I think about all the things that I could be or have been or don’t want to be or do want to be? Why do I think about running through a field with no shoes on and a white dress and flowers in my hair? Then I think of the version of myself who sits at coffee shops and takes in the people and drinks a drink that’s warm and velvety and enjoys the simple pleasure of letting the warm liquid trickle down her throat?

Then I’m me but I have heels on and a pencil skirt and work day in and out in New York. I’m drinking with my girlfriends on the weekends and letting rich men buy me drinks at a rooftop bar. I think of the ways that I could act or look. The different ways I could present myself, then I think about the fact that I’m not any of these girls I’ve described. Could I be all of them? Maybe if I tried hard enough. I could be all of them in this lifetime, but is that what I want? What do I want? That’s what’s wrong with me, I don’t know what I want. I don’t know which version of myself to grow into, to become. Then I ask myself: is it predetermined? Is it already set in stone? Destined, maybe?

I have a control issue. If you’ve ever gotten close to me you know that. I don’t like letting things happen. Go with the flow? Not this girl, given I have gotten better at this. I’ve learned the flow is a nice place to be. To not have to have that control all the time is actually immensely relieving. To live in peace and not worry about what’s happening next.

However, current Raven and past Raven still have some issues with it. The flow I mean. Is that okay? Sure. Do I need to learn that it’s also okay to not be a big ball of anxiety when I have nothing to do? Yes. In this timeline, the one I’m currently in, I’m learning so many lessons. I’m learning that I adore sleeping in my bed by myself with the stars placed on my ceiling from a sweet boy who wanted to be more than what we were. I appreciate the morning air during the summer time, and I enjoy wearing oversized sweatshirts and shorts and having bare feet. In this timeline, this Raven loves to braid her hair. To wear rings on all her fingers except the middle one because she read once that if you wear rings on your middle finger you’re inviting chaos. Real? Probably not. Will I continue to not wear rings on my middle fingers? Probably. In this version of myself I am constantly trying to prove myself, but to who? Myself? The world? Then when trying to prove myself I think of all the other versions of myself that I could possibly be because do those versions flip pennies on the street so someone finds it face up and has good luck? Is that version of myself in love? Does she worry about her weight? Her hair? Her makeup? Does she have an eating disorder?

I think about the girl who stayed in Hawaii, who got to live her island dream and be with the boy she fell deeply and wholeheartedly in love with in the sand. She wakes up in the morning and hikes the green mountains then spends the afternoons with waves washing over her. Her hair is sandy, wavy, and has highlights from the sweet Hawaiian sunshine. She goes to work at the coffee shop in the morning and she works the restaurant or bar or hotel job in the afternoons or at night to cover her rent. The boy she fell in love with adores her and constantly battles her homesickness from being 5,000 miles away from everyone else she loves. He kisses her eyelids before she goes to sleep. She dances with her friends in a bright kitchen with no air conditioning but that’s okay because you don’t need cool air when you have love surrounding you.

When you’re content in the moment and the only moment you’re in is the present you don’t need cool air blowing the back of your neck. You’re too giddy with love and drunk on the people surrounding you. But is that version of myself happy? Would this be the way life would be for her?

I think about the version of myself that never went to college. Never dated the same boy for three years. The version of myself who stayed at the small liberal arts college that I transferred from due to a breakup and anxiety that left me shattered and scared. I tell people I wanted to live off campus in hopes that it covers up the fact that I was 19 years old and freshly out of a three year relationship where I only thought about being in the relationship and others and not who Raven really was. I didn’t transfer to live off campus because I was lost and confused and sad.

All of this to say that I’m allowed to be all versions of myself at once and to move through this life in the ways that I am.

These days, I look like the fertility goddess,
tumescent tummy hanging low,
pregnant with improbable possibility.
Then the thighs, fluffy and rounded
on squat, sturdy legs, feet splayed wide.
Oh, and the breasts, pendulous
and swinging free.

I was given the goddess as a gift,
a gesture of goodwill to help catch the baby
I was reaching for, but kept missing.
The goddess lived in the upstairs closet,
sleeping with the miller’s wife, the untamed shrew,
a handmaid, and Bathsheba.
I hated her.
One day, I carried her outside,
kicked her thick body to the curb,
clapped my hands and said so long,
I hope to see you never,

But she was in the mirror
this morning, there in the steam-streaked glass,
wet and gleaming,
curves and mounds,
voracious and
breathing warm hunger

I saved up and bought a 3-D printer. It is the 2600 polymer extruder, the largest I could afford. I had to upgrade my Mac, which dented my savings severely.

And man, it is sure worth it. The first thing I printed was a quail. I’ve had this ceramic quail sitting on my desk for years. After reading the printer’s instructions I took a dozen pictures of the quail from all angles, printed it out and set it on the shelf next to the real one. Now I have a replacement in case the ceramic one breaks. It looks very good side by side with the original.

Then I had an idea. I went to my files and pulled out my collection of Marilyn Monroe pictures dating back to the 50s and 60s. I selected a couple dozen of the best ones and scanned them in. Then I filled in specifics about size, surface texture and colors. The program took some time, then gave me a read out of my project: it would be printed in five pieces, legs, arms and torso with head, printout time: 2.5 hrs. I held my breath and hit the print button. Two and a half hours later the pieces lay on the kitchen table, and my canister of soft tissue thermoplastic was almost empty.

Fortunately I had a quart each of two-part polycement and I glued it together very carefully, trying to make the connections as clean as possible. I say “it” but, of course, I mean “her.” She is beautiful as I had expected, but kind of a funny texture. Well, not funny really, just not quite flesh-like, but close. I suppose I didn’t really expect her to feel like a real girl, but I was hoping. My friend Dominic says hope is the most disappointing virtue of the three, and he’s right.

I dressed her in a lovely silk gown, spaghetti straps, mid-thigh length, a lustrous silver material, very sheer, very Marilyn, very sexy.
I’ve thought a lot about it, and I can’t really explain why I wanted one of her. She didn’t invent the comedic blonde, she only perfected it. In my earlier years no one else was quite as wonderful to look at. And, a good sense of humor has always been important to me.

Now, she’s sitting on the couch in my living room, waiting for me to finish typing this report. She’s absolutely, convincingly beautiful. Time means nothing to her, of course, she’s only a plastic doll. If I get sidetracked with another project, she won’t say a word or make an impatient face.

However, she’s probably wondering what we’re going to do today. Yesterday, I took her for a drive. We went to the park. I drove slowly, enjoying the fresh air and allowing her to enjoy seeing all the trees, birds and people. I thought she might feel connected to them, to us. She might acquire a feeling of belonging, something beyond her extruded teflon reality, her roots you could say being made of primarily petroleum products and all.

She is so beautiful quite a few people notice her in the car and stare. I don’t think she gets embarrassed at all when people stare at her. Marilyn always had a very calm stage presence.

I try to act normal when I carry her out to the car and arrange her in the passenger seat. It makes me a little nervous toting her around like you’d carry an elderly person to their bed or a bride across a threshold. I feel a little nervous and a bit self-conscious, supposing a neighbor might think I’m transporting a dead body. She is kind of limp and her joints seem a bit clumsy, but so far, either nobody’s noticed, or maybe they’ve become used to my quirky projects.

I find that seeing the admiration on everyone’s faces is almost as satisfying as creating her in the first place. Next, I am going to look for every picture I can find of Labrador Retrievers. I want to print one for the back seat so we can look more like a family.

I want to shift my shape and stalk
across a jeweled dew-dropped web
spinning a spiral tunnel as I walk
all corners anchored firm to fight the ebb
and push of errant breeze or stormy blow,
snug against all tricks Fate might deliver.
When it’s finished, I will back on tip-toe
down my chute, stop to sever silken thread,’
patient, curb my hunger, crouching in a
waiting trance, feeling neither hope nor dread.
I rely on heaven-sent sweet manna.
Some hasty, flighty creature on the wing,
too quick to whoop-de-do, dive, zip or zing,
will bumble in my net, then stick there fast
to offer me refreshment and repast.

More cake than fruit than the other fruit desserts, it is much like a coffee cake. It has a cake foundation and a crumbled topping with fruit in between. The history of this dessert says it is much like a crumble, named after its buckled or crumbled appearance with the streusel topping. A kuchen is the German cousin to the American buckle.

Cake Ingredients:

½ cup+ unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for baking dish
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1-pint berries of choice (heaping 2 cups)

Topping Ingredients:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
1 teaspoon milk

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter a 2-quart oval or square baking dish; set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition to combine. Fold in lemon zest.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder; with mixer on low speed, gradually add flour mixture to egg mixture until well-blended.
4. Spread batter in baking dish. Scatter berries on top.
5. For topping, in a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt and whisk to combine. Add cold butter and milk; cut into flour mixture until butter is blended. Form mixture into small crumbs and scatter over top of buckle.
6. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean and top is golden brown, 45 to 50 minutes.
7. With a large spoon, scoop out onto serving plates; serve with a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.

Makes 6 servings.

The top five poems will receive $100 each: Winning poems will be published in eMerge and in the ECHO Anthology and considered for Pushcart Nominations each year. Submissions accepted from June 1 - September 1, 2023.

The other day I was thinking of a new way I might promote my book, Boot: A Sorta Novel of Vietnam. My youngest daughter, a self-proclaimed computer Guru, said, “Pop, you’re pretty damn good at marketing; about the only thing you haven’t tried is bumper stickers.” Bumper stickers, I am thinking to myself, they work pretty good for politicians and whales. So, my daughter and I set off to FayetteNam to one of those chain print stores to check out designing and printing bumper stickers. Normally, I’m much more frugal with my money, I still have the first dollar I ever made (a 1957 Silver Certificate signed by Priest and Anderson I earned mowing my neighbor’s yard with an old rotary mower), but my book is having a good year. I sold over a hundred books in 2021. Why, heck, that’s almost two books a month! My friends tell me it’s doing better than most self-published books, but it ain’t ever going to be a run-a-way best seller. Shoot, a young man could have a pretty good time with that kind of money.

So, we get to the print shop and start looking around. I see a bumper sticker that says, ‘Honk! if you love Jesus.’ Well, the old creative juices start flowing, and I’m thinking, that worked pretty good for Jesus; I hear people honking all the time, wonder how that would work for Boot. So, after some haggling with my daughter, the wordsmith, we finally decided on ‘Honk! If you’ve read Boot.’ I wanted it to say, ‘Honk if you love Boot.’ My daughter convinced me that it was more important to know who read it than who loved it. “Besides,” she said, “We don’t care if they love it, as long as they buy a copy. That’s the American Way, pop. The code of Sam Walton and Jeff Bezos.” So, this big ol’ smile of parental pride spreads itself across my face; I’m thinking, Dagnabbit, I have raised a genius daughter. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my wife about our brilliant daughter. So, after an acceptable amount of time haggling with the clerk over the colors and size, etc., we were ready to make our purchase.

“How many would you like?” The clerk asked. “We are running a special today if you order a hundred.”

“A hundred? I only own one car. Why would I want a hundred bumper stickers?”

I told him that the five dollars and twenty-six cents he was charging me for one bumper sticker was eating into my profits something fierce. He finally capitulated and allowed us to leave the store with one bumper sticker. “The gall of some people,” I said to my daughter, who was putting the bumper sticker on the back of our truck.

“He was just doing his job, pops. You need to relax.”

Dear Lord, I just love my genius daughter, every time I get up on my high horse, she knows just what to say to bring me back down to earth, I was thinking.

So, we pulled out of the parking lot into traffic, and we got our first honk! I looked in the rearview mirror to see who had read my book. It was a man in a John Deere ball cap holding up his middle finger. I asked my daughter what that meant.

As we pulled up to a stoplight, she said, “That is the digitus impudicus, I believe. It’s how folks in Boston talk to each other when they cannot be heard. It’s called, let your fingers do the talking. In Hawaii, it’s called the Good Luck Bird, so I suppose he is wishing you good luck on your book.” Did I tell you my daughter was a genius? Then we heard another honk, and another. My daughter said, “Maybe we should have waited to put it on, pops.”

“No, no, no!” I said. “This is great! I don’t think Jesus ever got this many honks.” I was living in the moment. I was exuberant and filled with ecstatic joy. I even honked a few times myself and waved the Good Luck Bird to everyone. Soon there were cars and trucks all around us, just honking and waving the sign of good luck to us.

A couple of people were so excited that they got out of their cars and started walking toward our truck. Probably to thank me for writing such an inspirational book. It was at this time that I noticed that the light had changed, so I left them with a final wave of the Good Luck Bird as we drove away, filled with love for my fellow humans! I just love folks who can articulate what they mean, whether they use words or symbols or sign language.

When the doctor told me my diagnosis,
I measured the syllables in each word
Bi-po-lar Dis-or-der
Six syllables, two words

Stars shattered
across the blue of my eyes
and my hands clasped in prayer

Now I say this language over and over
Over and over
The long o
An utterance of air
Breathe out, breathe out
Bi-po-lar Dis-or-der

Sit down. Don’t get up. Start. Keep going.
It might be awhile.
It’s the pond; is that
a skim of ice still floating? Don’t test. Don’t
look closely. A foot dangled
will no, don’t! you out of it:
Instead: jackknife. Unfold into dark water.
Emerge. Let your shocked skin burn with joy.
Stand on the old deck.
Shake off water like a blue-eyed border collie.
Put in collard greens. Put in Marrakech.
Cut paragraphs apart with scissors.
Place in pillowcase. Shake well.
Dump contents on the floor:
You’ve found your structure.
Put in itemized bills: each suture, blood unit,
Mr. Robb from the collection agency, who told you,
“I don’t know you, Miss, but I’ll pray with you.”
Put in the girl in cut-offs, secretly walking
the narrow porch rail above the forsythia,
or running, red lollipop in red mouth,
saying to herself the words she didn’t say to Mother:
“See? I didn’t fall, I didn’t choke, I didn’t put my eye out.”
The exhaled whiff of florist’s refrigerators:
cold freesias, lilies, baby’s breath
crackle of green paper, long distance
you’re breaking up I’m losing you there’s only 1 bar:
sweetheart roses would not bring you back, sweetheart
you never had me
Add garlic, ginger frying in ghee.
Put in ripe Red Haven peaches.
Put in the lost skate key, the lost earring,
the khaki canvas duffle SwissAir never found.
Add the smell of a burning bridge
Add the smell and squeal of a tire, burning rubber
I’m outta here
Omit transitions, jump
from rock to moss-wet rock:
The reader will leap with you.
Put in love, death, fear, mercy and deceit
But never say the words.
Don’t say, “The house was drafty.”
Instead, write about the windows in winter, and how,
though they were closed (it being January)
the yellow curtains ruffled with the wind.

Simplicity is a capsule
Holding infinity.

The Cutting Edge

Big talk from big lips
Big promises big slips
Big push for a big grip
Big tumble into bigger dip.

Little handle, little control
Little push into little mold
Little person little too bold
Little took, a little crook stole.

Closed eyes, closed ears
Closed life to closed tears
Closed budget, closed fears
Closed court, closed years.

Simple mind, simple tick of time
Simple reason for simple crime
Simple rent on a simple dime
Simple me, writes simple rhyme.

Outside denies inside view
One mistake a multiple few
One chance to escape you
One word not two.

Don’t look back, I’m on front row
I’ll shrink the image, then I’ll grow
I’ll forget, then I’ll know
I’ll fall apart, to turn and go.

At first, I think I know a story and its timing, but then I don’t, and can only conjecture. There’s a lot that I cannot seem to recall with certainty about my father’s carved wooden slingshot—when and why he made it, how I inherited it. As happens when I look at photographs of him, particularly the one of him smiling, around age eight, sitting on a high-back chair with his arms way up in the air, I can usually hold the slingshot for just a few seconds before the emotions rush and sweep.

Except for its artfulness, it never made sense to me that my father made a slingshot. Until a friend offered the suggestion, it had not occurred to me that the pristinely carved object had been made not for animal seeking, but for use on targets unable to be harmed. Another friend suggested not long ago that boys of my father’s generation who took wood shop might have made slingshots as a matter of course. These explanations make far more sense to me than others, thinking about a man who abhorred violence in any form, and taught me to do the same.

My father told me a story about having pinned a butterfly when he was a boy. At the time of the telling, I was about the same age as he had been when the event happened. All of the other boys taunted him, the only one who refused to kill. He used this story to instruct me about the dangers of peer pressure, wanting me to be my own person, and not live with regret, as he had. His description of carefully pushing the pin into the body and watching the wings stop slowly chills me still. My father died by suicide decades before Neurodivergent was what he might have understood himself to have been, and well before his only offspring grew up to claim a Neuroqueer identity.

At around the same time period that he taught me about animal cruelty and the importance of thinking for oneself, my father offered me kid-friendly examples of civil liberties and human rights. Starting when he was very young, he had friends from many backgrounds. He knew the children from the Little Red Schoolhouse and the neighborhood. One afternoon after school, he brought home a friend to play with him at the apartment. For reasons that my father didn’t understand in elementary school, the doorman wouldn’t let his friend use the elevator, insisting that rules required the child to use the back entrance, instead. My father asked his friend to wait for a moment in the lobby so he could fetch David, my grandfather. Grandma Frances, the breadwinner, may have been teaching or working in a library when this incident occurred, but she likely would have handled the situation in the same way as her husband did.

My grandfather spoke politely while firmly to the doorman, then accompanied both boys to the apartment, using the elevator; the operator pulled the inner gate shut, in silence. In telling me about what his friend and he had experienced that day in the late 1930s, my father didn’t mention the word racism, but I knew what he meant for me to understand. I also knew what she intended when my mother showed me a photograph from her elementary school in Brooklyn. Taken more than a decade after my father had been that age, the photo of my mother with her classmates was a sea of white faces, except for one thin boy whom she befriended when most of the other kids had refused to pay him any mind.

These stories informed my actions when, as a teenager, I sought quiet revenge against the cops who kept targeting my friends who lived a few blocks away from me in Coney Island. One of these families was the one that had lost their brother to a swing and a wall. As a much younger kid, I rode on the backs of the boys’ bicycles. A bit older, we played b-ball and board games, shot pool and drank chocolate egg creams in my basement. During neighborhood fires, we gathered on the street, nervous and curious. On many summer nights, we sat under lampposts listening to cicadas and on lawns waiting for lightning bugs.

When I was in college, a few of the boys from my friendship circle drove late at night from Brooklyn in a cramped car to pick me up in New Jersey. Squished in further, we headed south on the highway to surprise a mutual friend who was attending school in Maryland. Amy’s grandmother lived across the street from my parents; a regular visitor with her little sister and even littler brother, Amy was a central part of our group. After we jumped the fence to go to the beach, the boys were the ones with whom she and I got into trouble, along with some of the other girls. (Back then, I did not know what it meant to call myself genderqueer, and could not have had access to or used that language, because it did not yet exist.) Angry and worried, Amy’s grandmother and my mother showed up with dangling flashlights. These friends were my people, well before I really got what was meant by privilege, inequity, oppression, or institutionalized violence.

My confusion about my father’s slingshot mirrors his departing behavior and presumed choice, the self-imposed toss and smash after a lifetime as a pacifist, someone who taught me about social justice before folx called it that. I think often about the adult conversations we might have had, and the interactions that could have transpired during my adolescence.

Today, I’m wondering again about what he would have thought of my mother having asked me, after she remarried, to pay the cemetery staff an annual fee to take care of the yews in front of the grave he hadn’t wanted. I once typed out a poem, “Exhumed,” on the back of the bill. One Yom Kippur, I took the subway to the cemetery and used Grandpa David’s Balda camera to create double exposures of the two Wiener gravestones, several rows apart. While in traditional terms I might have undermined or even defied the holy holiday, I believed my behavior had been in keeping with the reflective spirit of the day as much as it displayed a grief-stricken rebelliousness. There are many stories, including these, that I wish I could tell my father, that he may somehow already know.

Some people have assumed that my near obsession with Walter Benjamin’s life and writings has to do with his having taken himself out rather than be taken by the Nazis in 1940. Benjamin’s arguably self-protective suicide, in some ways parallel to what happened on a massive scale at Masada in 73 CE, is far less interesting to me than his bricolage. My father’s violent death, while long being a fulcrum of my emotional attention, is far less intriguing to me now than imagining the lives we didn’t get to share.

When I went through my first serious break-up, I told the person with whom I had been lovers that they were the one who would most likely best understand my unhappiness, but they were certainly the very last person with whom I should have discussed my pain with any real depth or specificity—so I didn’t. In an odd parallel, it would likely have helped if I could have talked with my father (other than in my head) about what it was like for me to have lost him, how I felt about him leaving me, and the circumstances, altogether. I believed he knew better than anyone how his death affected me.

My father’s last morning might have been the only one when he didn’t say good-bye to me before going to work. Or, that was the dramatic story that lived in me for most of my young life, the echoing torment about whether or not he knew when he woke up what he would do that afternoon, if the plan had been set in motion, or if he was impulsive after the bad news he received. He certainly knew that he had a meeting with administrators, that day. My mother was none too pleased when two of them showed up at our house to pay their respects during shiva. They were probably the last people to see him alive, and had delivered to him the devastating news that my mother called the straw that broke the camel’s back. For a long time, I couldn’t endure that idiom without feeling bilious any more than I could watch even an animated Spider-Man dive off a skyscraper.

As an adult, possibly prior, I imagined that my father might have had some inkling as he got dressed for the last time that Thursday morning of the very bad update he was about to receive from the pencil pushers—he was being transferred to a school in a new role, one beneath his rank, expertise, and talent, a move necessary due to his obvious sinking and general unavailability. It wasn’t a full-on layoff, but a severe ego blow to someone already far below sea level.

In therapy at the time of his death, he had not been given any pharmaceuticals, but my mother wondered later if that might have helped or even preserved him. My father had what would now be called a nervous breakdown well before my parents met. My mother’s father warned her about marrying and having children with a man 14 years her senior, someone who was never married before and had also been diagnosed with neurasthenia.

My father taught me how to shoot. I don’t think I’m inventing a wish that we played together with the slingshot. I feel my tapered hands, smaller versions of his, looping then tightening the rubber band around the indentations carved about a centimeter beneath each of the two tops on the split V. Gripping the base of the Y, mimicking his every move, I knew he was proud of my good aim.

He had taken me to the shooting gallery in Astroland. For a quarter, you got ten shots with the air rifle. I liked when we shared a gun just as much as when he stood behind or beside me, watching me shoot solo. He and my mother or he alone sometimes shot while seated next to me. At first, my feet didn’t reach the ground from my spinning place beside theirs. It’s odd to me to think now about how accurate a shot I was as a kid, given my not great vision, even with eyeglasses.

The first real gun I held was pink and silver. When I was a baby dyke in my 20s, I thought my herbal medicine teacher’s LadySmith (a Smith & Wesson revolver) resembled its owner: fierce, and more than a little queer. Her Greenwich Village storefront and school had a sign way up on the wall behind the register that read, “Forget the dog, beware the owner.” Much later on, in Tucson, a friend of mine took me out to an unofficial range to try out his registered gun. He warned me of the kickback, explained how to use the safety earmuffs, and ran through the placement of the sights. Aiming at a graffiti N on a trashed horizontal water tank about 50 feet away, I hit exactly where I planned, on the first try. That was the only time I shot a real gun. I’ve handled others, including what I think was a .38 with a silencer that my grad school colleague called his KGB special—no joke.

My parents were both great shots (who, if anyone, taught or encouraged them is nobody’s guess). At the shooting gallery in Coney Island, hitting the owl’s perch resulted in a quick vertical climb and descent sequence accompanied by a hoot. There were many options, including a smaller bird that spun in its cage, a furry creature (I think it was a skunk) that tilted, and my favorite: the piano player. Both of my parents played the piano; so did I. So many stories can be told about the music.

Hunched over his upright, hands splayed on the damaged keys, the dummy musician and his piano were immense when compared to their mostly animal and a few object companions. I knew that I was hurting no one and nothing; even symbolically, we weren’t shooting at creatures and things, only at their targets, and we certainly weren’t killing any piano players, just making a temporarily stuck one move. His bullseye was in the middle of the back of his bench; when it was struck, he lurched upwards, banged his hands down on the keys abruptly, music churning briefly. Often, even if I had hit his target, earlier, I saved my last shot for him.

We took her,
Money was exchanged;
Distraught, Innocence wailed all the way.

Crushed by loneliness,
The others shunned her;
Suffering their own version of
Stockholm Syndrome and
Joining the pack
With the naïveté of Patty Hearst.

Innocence wailed through the night in her confinement.
It was cruel punishment
Until it wasn’t.

With blue eyes open,
Innocence began to see the kindness;
Others broke,
Welcoming the interloper.

A kennel became a haven,
A house a home.

Tails wag in playful repartee,
Puppy paws pound and
Happiness manifests in playful yips and nips.

The white-dipped tail
refuses to surrender to its aggressor
Until dizziness sets in.

Innocence restored.

In March, the heralds of spring
seep through cracks
like the oil spill from my ’65 Chevy.
Their antennaes sniff out food
on the butcher block counter top
to carry home to their castles.

They move in concert
like a flock of birds
separate, yet united.
Helping one another,
with divine purpose, ants
succeed where humanity does not.

Falling off a cliff
into the dirt gray
morning, shuffling
around until hot drink
and the book sits beside
as the gold hair of
morning falls across
the sky; glorious.

Crossing the bad leg
over the better one
as the impressionist
paints with last light,
cold cup and mate beside
until the paint fades back
to gray, a rise and set
in one day; divine.

Am I blue? If you have to ask then you’re probably blue. Billie Holiday asked it. I asked it while climbing a steep hill in the Missouri moonlight. Am I blue? Yes–blue in that indulgent way that is melancholic but also a nice reprieve from the energy of netting joy and complacency, the steady stab of boredom. I am blue like a flat stone under the cold moonlight. I am blue like a Blue Jay feather caught in the slide of gravity. I am blue like a clock that doesn’t tic, stuck in time, blue inertia. I am blue like a low iceberg. Blue breath. Frozen will.

When I reach the top of the hill, there is a ranch-style house with small windows, tiny eyes on a large face. My parents sleep in this vast hollow of land where the woods meet the water and green lichen embroiders the undergrowth.

Am I blue? Yeah, I’m blue. It’s a good song in my heart. A blue refrain. My parents are alive, dreaming. I walk up the hill into a future that has no color. Muted. I feel blue rising though. The lightest of blues fills my throat.

My feet walk in mismatched stride, heavy and light footsteps: Polka and Tango married in blue. It was a good dance, those years when my parents were alive: my dad with his blue-washed work and my mother with her blue-lavender voice.

Am I blue? yeah, blue with a sentimental heart. This is a final blue. It is the kind of blue that comes after a hurricane. I can’t find the moorings except in the watery dregs of blue memory.

They say a little sunshine would help,
“It’s just out there, don’t lose hope!”
But the sun only blinds my eyes,
and dries my throat.

We only felt the same breeze,
stared at the same star,
held the same bar–frigid.
We never talked,
nor even spoke a word.
But in my head,
everything in my world,
there’s nothing you’ve never heard.

I am dreaming I am traveling
I am dreaming a road
A new installment in a series
of recurring dreams, I recognize
some turns, intersections, landmarks.

My map lost, I rely on dead reckoning
I have no destination, only to understand
where I am. The horizon edges into sky.

My fear rises, metallic until the road
reminds me it is just a road

I am dreaming I am climbing
I am dreaming a mountain
rising faster than I can scale.

My magical limbs stretch and grab on.
Cartoon boulders expand and roll,
mountainside approaching vertically.
Until I am falling backwards,
now gently into air so soft it smiles.
It is just a falling. It is just a mountain.

I am dreaming of an opening into
a kaleidoscope of everything. I can see all
of a generation coming in together, a layering tide
just as native councils have taught.

We are travelers aligned in ways we have
not known. On roads, mountains, passages.
I float in gratitude that I can see
this moment that is forever.

I am dreaming I am dying
I am dreaming a gateway.

The triple jump is track and field’s oddest offspring. A circus act. An intentional stumble done for distance. A Seussian hop, skip, and jump. But it requires strength and agility, and when done well, it’s a sight to behold. You might remember Al Joyner in 1984: those high-knees, long strides, the bicycling legs mid-air, the double fist-pump from the pit.

At 14 I couldn’t run all that fast and wasn’t much of a long jumper, but there weren’t many takers for the triple in Newton, Massachusetts in 1987, so I gave it a try.

My personal best was 38’ 3” (roughly twice a giraffe’s height, 18’ shy of a full Joyner), which qualified you for the state meet. Time to shop for running spikes. I found a pair of white 1988 Nike Zoom Lights–blue swoosh, red and yellow accents–that came with a little plastic wrench with which you screwed five tiny metal spikes into the sole of each shoe in the shape of a half-oval spanning from the ball of the foot to the tips of the toes.

Fully outfitted, I was feeling pleased with myself when in the league meet, leading up to State, I got beat by a first-time jumper from Brockton who’d twice fouled before (on his third leap, despite taking off from inches ahead of the board) he broke the meet record. A teenager in a man’s body, Curtis Bostic was a triple-jump blasphemer, a careless trespasser who’d go on to play Division I basketball, and who’d dared to laugh sidelong at our measuring tape spools and chalk-marks.

That evening I was shuffling around my worn red bedroom carpet thinking back on the meet when my mother knocked and said she had something to show me. From a shoebox under a pile of duffles on the floor of my closet, she pulled an ancient-looking pair of black leather running shoes with rusted, brutal-looking spikes. The shoes would have been early Adolf Dasslers, I later learned, running spikes from the late 1920s made by the man who would go on to found Adidas.

“They’re your grandfather’s,” my mother said. “He ran at Stanford in those. Though of course you can’t apply there,” she added, eyebrows raised, “because he owes them money.”

Tucking the curious comment away for the time being, I held the 60-year-old shoes, felt their leather, fingered the tarnished spikes. I imagined the tracks they’d run, the purchase they’d gained, the speeds they’d helped my grandfather reach.

Though I didn’t really know the man, had met him only a handful of times as a boy, and could barely picture his face, I felt different. Turning the shoes over again and again, I felt as if I was part of a legacy. There was collegiate speed in my family dating back half a century. I went to bed buoyant, imagining how my grandfather’s shoes on my feet might put me on a par with big-time jumpers like the one who’d cleaned my clock earlier that day.

The Japanese writer Ryunosuke Satoro put it this way: “Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations.”

But then, wearing not Ben’s spikes but my own brand-new Zoom Lights, I flopped at the state meet. Failed to reach even my personal best. And in fact, despite continuing with track and field through high school, I never again reached that freshman-year mark. I can live with that. When it comes to athletics, I’ve long since gotten used to the idea that I peaked too early.

The part of the story that disturbs me still is that the torch-passing scene–it never happened. Though I remember with some clarity squatting before the closet contemplating those antique shoes and the man who’d worn them, I must have made it all up. My mother has no memory of it, or of inheriting any sports equipment, and we can’t find the Dasslers.

It’s unlikely that the spiked shoes are sitting in a box in my mother’s attic, humming “Das Lied der Deutschen” through spiky teeth. My mother is the type to notice when a doily’s been moved an inch, and she’s prone to comprehensive spring cleanings (attic included), so it’s more likely that I invented both the shoes and the scene of their bequeathing. That at some point, having heard that my grandfather had been a runner, I’d bred that information with the image of my own Nike spikes bought at The Barn and imagined the worn-down Dasslers. Imagined them into my life because I’d so wanted them there, so wanted my mother’s father, the mysterious Ben Kagan, the legendary speedster and college dropout, to have gifted them to me.

“It’s like ‘The Little Match Girl,’” my therapist said a few years ago when I told him the story of the phantom spikes.

Jungians like him, mind you, come armed to the teeth with stories. Literary references. Lines of verse committed to memory. A narrative for every situation. My bespectacled, white-haired, lapsed-Catholic Jungian, in fact, was more facile with stories from around the world than the most cocksure Comp Lit grad student. I’d heard him quote verbatim from Rumi and refer excitedly to black and white films that I could locate only in fragments on YouTube, but Hans Christian Andersen–the creator, in 1845, of the little girl with the matchsticks–was his favorite.

In the comparison, I’m the girl. Which is unfortunate because the girl, out of doors in winter time, suffering from hypothermia, hallucinates what’s inside the house against which she leans–warm stove…holiday feast…happy family…Christmas tree…–and then freezes to death.

But still she has her vision. Her hope, and her dreams. Her match sticks.

She’d planned to sell the matches and appease her abusive stepfather with the earnings, but having failed to do so, she ends up lighting them, one by one, to provide herself a little warmth. And even though it’s horrible to imagine trying to warm up by the staggered heat of a fistful of five-second flamelets, there’s something noble about her efforts, something stirring about her final visions. She sees a shooting star (Someone’s on their way to heaven!) and then, in the flame of the next match, her grandmother. To keep the vision alive as long as possible, she lights, all at once, the remainder of the matches, and the next day she’s found frozen on the street by passersby who see only a small, ice-cold corpse. They don’t know about her beguiling visions.

I’d had my own, my therapist was suggesting. Lit my match. Though I hope not to keel over dead after seeing whatever I might next see, I suppose my writing this story is how I hope to strike my remaining matchsticks into a flourish of flame.

A student of mine here in Chicago, a 17-year-old named Jalia, saw such visions as distinctly American. In her final exam on a June morning in 2018, she put it like this: “Americans prefer, accept, and reward illusion…the privilege of America is that we can overcome the truth…protect the fantasy…it’s better than a busted reality…in this way the lie is moral.”

As for the Dasslers? Such was the mythic pull of my grandfather back then, the way he worked subliminally on teenage me, the way with just a hop, skip, and jump down the runway of my mind, I could transmute his absence into experience as real-seeming as any other. What I had was a vivid non-memory, nostalgia for an experience I’d never had, a dream. What I wanted was to have had a bona fide bestowing, a conferral like those you see in tapestries: wise and wizened prophet gifting winged shoes to young warrior.

In those days, though, instead of the sandals of Mercury, I’d inherited something mercurial. Ben was hermetic instead of Hermes. I’d have to keep lighting matches. Avoid freezing to death. Stay warm long enough for the fire to catch.

He’d been with me in a sense, or I was with him, the way a woman is with child.

But Ben was a ghost. How was I to welcome such freely fanciful visions while also seeking something like the truth? How to find not some two-dimensional rendering of a villain, or a conveniently reductive narrative of the source of evil in the family, or for that matter a whitewashed Genius, but a man, in all his complexity? I’d never really had him close, and now he was long gone.

Luckily my vague longing for the man I hadn’t seen for years and couldn’t really remember didn’t stop with phantom footwear or other fantasies from the closet. As I grew older and my grandfather’s absence more present, my mother’s house became a reliquary. Up on the walls in our ranch-style, middle-class home in a significantly upper-class town hung Art, an array of tangible objects, and they came from Ben, who’d been not just “a runner” but “a good photographer,” “a writer” (that much I vaguely knew since forever), and something of a collector. Hanging on the walls of the house and my mind were:

• a tall and narrow charcoal sketch of Pete Seeger, guitar in hand, done super-thin and extra gangly, as if by Giacometti, a print that Ben had bought for my mother when she was a teenager enraptured by the early ‘60s folk scene;

• a couple of Ben’s own stylish black and white photographs, portraits, one of my mother as a teen, looking back over her shoulder, and another of my elegant grandmother, Hannah, his first wife, captured in a similar backward glance;

• a photograph of an Italian street scene, complete with a brick wall on which is affixed, above a leaning dustbin and a primitive broom, a torn poster, ornamented with assorted camels and bottles, announcing, “caffe BOUR BON primo”;

• and two dark and magisterial portraits of Arturo Toscanini, taken by a professional, gifted to my grandfather, passed on to my mother, and eventually–and still today–featured above her living room desk.

Toscanini, solemn and athletically musical, loomed especially large in my teenage imagination. Together with Pete Seeger, the two portraits of Toscanini combined to form a pagan trinity. In one the maestro suddenly appears with arm aloft, baton in hand, in full, vigorous command of strings or horns or timpani, testing the give of a dark suit jacket dramatically accented by side-tufts of unkempt white hair. With the conductor’s dark suit on a pitch-black background and those conflagrations of white hair book-ending his resplendent face, each portrait looks as if a wispily mustachioed specter has given birth to himself all of a sudden out of the darkness. Like a struck match.

In the beginning was the maestro, spectral and self-begotten.

I know now that Toscanini was the conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra while my grandfather was a producer at NBC. At the time I knew only that he and my grandfather had sort of worked together. That was more than enough: Toscanini stood in my adolescent mind for high culture, dark passionate excellence, and old world elegance, and given that no pictures of my grandfather bedecked our mantle or walls, the maestro stood for my grandfather.

So I drew him in: throughout high school I kept a black, hard-cover, picture-heavy biography of Toscanini in the drawer of my little nutbrown bedside table and, when I wasn’t re-reading Larry Bird’s 1989 ghost-written autobiography (Drive: The Story of My Life) or steaming through my Piers Anthony fantasies or my brother’s racy Ian Fleming novels, I now and then flipped through the Toscanini book, studying the pictures. It had belonged to my grandfather, I was told, so it became my bedside bible.

It felt taboo: Ben wasn’t around, and he wasn’t to be spoken of, but this wild genius was right here. Plus he was called “maestro.” Maybe in some roundabout way I could grow up to be not just another suburban schmuck! And if like the maestro, then also like my grandfather, whom I couldn’t remember ever having met, but who beckoned me strangely just the same.

At the school in Chicago where I’ve taught for the last thirteen years, there’s a volume-cheerily-at-eleven security guard named Rosie who calls me maestro. “Good morning, maestro!” “Hu-uump day, maestro!” “Buenas noches, maestro!” She’s not being poetical: the word means “teacher” in her native Spanish. Still, it gives me an electric charge every time she says it, sends me whipping away to Toscanini, and to Ben, before bouncing back to where I stand in the school hallway, slightly taller.

When I visited Italy with my high school choir, I tried to reproduce my grandfather’s photograph of an Italian street scene, which hung on my bedroom wall. In my attempt: book-ended by umber and tan boxes and a wheelbarrow standing on its head, scarlet graffiti anoints a brick wall. Je t’aime, it reads.

I had the picture printed at the local Osco (so quaint!), framed it, and put it up in my room, my Italian street still-life next to his, my wheelbarrow mirroring his dustbin, my bricks his bricks, my “Je t’aime” his (undeniably less affectionate) “caffe BOUR BON primo.” It was the communion I could compose.

Je t’aime, my picture said to me now and then as I strode through my high school years. Je t’aime, it murmured more intimately as I lay still, burning with curiosity and affection for the man who’d run races and made photographs but above all, I was told, been an important writer in New York.

The poet Joy Harjo spoke to my students once. “Your grandparents, your ancestors are still in you…” she said. “Where do your words come from, after all? Why do you write the way you do?”

What had my grandfather’s sentences been like?, I wondered, as I worked to form my own in school. I could genuflect before his images, but I’d never read his words. Why not? What had he written? Long before I studied his many hundreds of scripts, or practically memorized five letters he’d written to my mother, or explicated his college columns, I had in mind, from what I’d heard and that he was “from New York,” “a writer” and not a poet, say, or a novelist, but a writer of real-life, true stories that packed a punch. A man of dashes and plain, powerful sentences. You could hear it in his plosive, pugnacious name: BEn KAgan.

And still I wondered, Where was he now, the man himself, and why not here, once in a while? And why had he quit us? Wherever he was, did he know I was here in this bedroom doing my writing, lacing my Nikes, watched over by Toscanini?

I never asked out loud. I knew the rules, remembered the rift. That he’d behaved badly. That one shouldn’t expect anything of him, shouldn’t outgrow the shoes of expectation. And yet–

Je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime.

Ingredients:

4 cups Italian or Genovese basil leaves*
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
1/2 cup grated Parmesan-reggiano cheese
zest & juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse or freshly cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions:

1. In a medium-large food blender/processor bowl, chop and blend the basil, garlic, and walnuts.
2. Add cheese, lemon zest & juice, olive oil, pepper, and salt; process until well-blended.
3. Refrigerate in air-tight glass container.
   Makes 1 cup.
   

• If you blanch the whole basil leaves in boiling water for 5 seconds and immediately put into an ice bath it seals the bright green color. Drain and squeeze the water from the basil before adding to the food processor with the other ingredients.

Prickly with a gentle touch.
The sweet smell of childhood.
Sap sticking to my fingers as I sweep the needles with my hands, making a bed to lay my head and be still.
Still enough to watch the creepy crawly bugs marching on your branches.
Still enough, a small bird pops in to work on their nest.
Still enough to hear my mother calling me, knowing she cannot see that I am just a few steps away.
Still enough, I can feel the sun trying to penetrate the needles and shine on your spring branches.
Still enough, I see your skin is brown, black, green, and blue with a hint of mustard yellow.
Still enough, I wonder how many needles you carry and how many you have lost.
Still enough, I have convinced myself when winter arrives, I’m going to climb to your peak and crown you with lights.
Still enough, I wake up and realize I no longer want to be still.
Your canopy is grand.
Your shade is inviting.
Thank you for sharing your space where I can be me while I am hiding.

The moment doesn’t have to be exact.

the dinner table isn’t quite set
hell, might as well mix the forks and knives
for the salad and steak,
let a wine glass break, or two, seven,
make sure the chairs are facing out
so the guests have to seat themselves,

and what about the rest?

what about it?
the candles, appetizers, the ambiance
leave it, away with it, do what will with it

The moment doesn’t have to be exact
I feel more alive that way, more there.

The smell of nature
Craving the tensions of the rose water
Licked the motions desires
Clear blue sky
And the pine
On the hillside
The symbolism is hidden
But the emotions are endless
Colors arise and secrets die down
The hope grows like a tree
And the colors are purple
Savaging the day awakened

Oh, those amphibious legs! Delicious fried frog legs! They taste somewhat like the other white meats such as fish or chicken. Frog legs have an epicurean experience of their own. If you have ever been around Missouri fishermen or outdoor game men and women that know the rivers like the back of their hands, well you will appreciate how those frog legs got onto your plate, a real river-to-plate story.

The Franklin County family farm was a weekend getaway place for some city folks. It had a few outbuildings with tractors and equipment as well as a big 2-room cabin built above the Bourbeuse River. Uncle Floyd and Grandpa George furnished the cabin with white kitchen cabinets, a long dining table and chairs, metal military-like bunk beds, pull-out couches with roll-out beds on the screened porch. Summer family sleepovers could include 8 adults and at least that many kids. With all the family together, sleep was not guaranteed those nights. If it wasn’t the family, it was the Baby Ben wind-up clock’s irregular rhythm tick, tick, tick, tock, tick, tick, tock, tock, tock, tock … that would keep an eye open throughout the night.

Aunt Emma always said, “if you want to marry into this family, you have to catch a bullfrog with your bare hand.” The tradition carried through many generations since the 1940’s. Cousin Karen and your fiancée Manny set aside a summer Saturday night with her father, my Uncle Floyd to go frogging on the Bourbeuse River. That weekend the July humidity and clouds built up keeping everything soupy. The hot summer day finally cooled down 5 degrees with sundown. Those clouds may let loose rain anytime that night.

On the front porch Uncle Floyd and Uncle Bernie gathered hip waders, flashlights, and carbide lights. Outside near the water pump, the empty gunny sacks awaited the bull frogs that were to be caught that night. Karen and Manny finished their last gulp of well water from the communal enamelware cup when her dad and uncle came off the porch and handed them each a flashlight and a carbide light to put on their heads. Each gathered a gunny sack and headed down the trail to the river. That night the moon hid behind the clouds, so those flashlights were handy getting down the rocky trail. Two canoes sat on the sandy bank waiting for the four froggers.

Karen climbed into one canoe with her dad, and Manny went with Uncle Bernie. Down the river they quietly paddled. With their carbide lights on their heads, the four froggers’ eyes were peeled for those frogs. They could hear those critters croak. They banked in a cove where “bloop, bloop” sounds kept up. The bullfrogs were jumping into the river to avoid the visitors. Tall Uncle Floyd led the way into the river, kept the river water below his hip waders while looking for those peepers. Short Uncle Bernie forgets, and one big “bloop” drops down until the river waters are just below his eyes and carbide light. Yes, he is about a foot shorter than Uncle Floyd. Karen and Manny make note and keep closer to the riverbank while wading the Bourbeuse.

Uncle Floyd catches the first bullfrog that night. “Splat”, his big hand flattens over the bullfrog on the overhanging tree branch and swoops the amphibian into his gunny sack. Uncle Bernie catches his first soon after. He’s got to keep up. Manny finally catches his first ever bullfrog for family initiation. Excited, he repeats his strategy to catch another 5 bullfrogs for a dinner. A half dozen bullfrogs makes a dozen fried frog legs. That would make one meal. Karen had been out frogging with her family before, so she let Manny keep his good luck going. Later that night she caught a few bullfrogs, too.

After about a dozen bullfrogs hopping inside each gunny sack, the clouds opened wide. Heavy raindrops turned into a gush of a storm after a loud clap of thunder. All four froggers jumped into their canoes, the three men were paddling as fast as they could. All Karen could think was to cover her head with her gunny sack of frogs as the raindrops hurt coming down as her father was paddling at a fast pace. Lightning and thunder only heightened the urgency to get up that slippery hill and into the cabin. Karen realized as she got onto the front porch that her hair and clothes smelled like river water and frogs. A fragrance only country folks don’t mind, this city girl wished she was home.

After the storm blew over, the four froggers went out to the fillet board hung between two tree trunks. Seasoned after many fishing and frogging seasons at the river, knife cuts decorated the board. Uncle Floyd and Uncle Bernie had hung the gunny sacks with ropes, and had Karen and Manny swing the gunny sack of frogs into the tree trunks to stun the bullfrogs. Uncle Bernie pulled the first bullfrog out, laid him on the fillet board, and with one whack of a sharp knife, the bullfrog was beheaded. The bullfrog’s eyes blinked, mouth opened to croak, but no sound. Uncle Floyd finished filleting the bullfrog, and the legs were put into an enamelware bowl of salted water sitting on the board.

Another night of frogging provided enough frog legs for the big fry. The ladies of the family got the fixings together while the men dipped the frog legs in a cornmeal batter and fried them up crispy in cast-iron skillets filled with hot oil. Frog legs, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad, gelatin salad, skillet cornbread, green beans cooked in bacon and onions, and of course, a choice of pies and brownies delighted the palates of at least sixteen hungry town and country folks that hot July weekend. What an experience, all for a fresh frog leg dinner in the middle of summer at the family cabin up the hill from the Bourbeuse River. Unforgettable.

I’m not sure why my mind keeps returning to my time on the hill, the remote hill in Vermont I so wanted to leave when I was eighteen and felt penned in by the smallness of it all.

The wider world was calling, the promise of college and meeting new faces and hearing stories about places I hadn’t been and hoped to one day see. I couldn’t understand why some of my graduating classmates weren’t doing everything they could to get away. I was ready to grow up and grow out, to get away from the hill, with its dirt roads and modest houses tucked around bends and scattered in meadows. Even the bigger farmhouses, despite impressive sizes, looked worn out beside faded red barns that slumped to one side and wore rusted hats. These homesteads were built to last, built to work sunup to sundown in what was once an active farming community. Their heyday had come and gone before my family moved into one. We had our own slumped red barn, a bleached woodshed attached to it. Tin roof, streaked orange. The 1832 white Cape Cod house my parents bought, like the barn and woodshed, had been neglected for decades. They’d spend ten years restoring it and would sell before they had time to start renovating the barn.

I think about the hill and try to piece together why this is so. The pandemic, perhaps, something we believed could never happen in our lifetimes. Or, could it be the waves of violence and protesting coast to coast in America, and across oceans? It sometimes feels like we may never get on the other side of these lifechanging events, and through it all there’s a growing part of me who wants, more and more, to return to the hill.

To where it’s quieter, where there are more trees and fewer people, more birdsong. Where I remember smelling summer; the lush, wooded, cool scent of things growing. Orange daylilies, wild ferns, pungent mosses along Vermont’s dirt roads. I think about living again among the state’s rolling meadows and abundant shade trees and fields framed by two-hundred-year-old stone walls. Where it feels—it may not be, but it feels—safer. Less traffic. Wider spaces. The home of my childhood. Thirty-five years after I left, as often happens with the passage of time, I realize what I had.

And I want it again.

February, 1977. We arrived in a snowstorm.

My parents moved our family to Vermont from Pennsylvania in the middle of a school year. My sister Mare was fourteen, my brother Pat thirteen, Tom ten, and Sean nine. I brought up the back of the line, at eight. Mom and Dad had asked the seller, an investment property owner, if they could settle on the house in June after the school year ended. She refused.

Dad drove through the night, 400 miles, two puppies squeezed in the back of a station wagon with five kids. We arrived at the bank on a Friday morning. The moving van was scheduled to meet us at the Cape later that day. The overnight drive had felt endless, the environment the next morning foreign. Paperwork signed, we left for our new house nine miles away. I watched my siblings’ faces for clues of what to expect. It felt like we’d landed in what seemed the last stop on Earth. A place I hadn’t been able to find on a map: Newbury, Vermont.

The Village of Newbury has a population fewer than 400 people and is home to a small general store, one bank, a church, a post office, a handful of houses, and the quaint brick elementary school I attended that fronts onto an immaculate, tree-lined, Revolutionary War-era Common where schoolkids sled in winter and townsfolk set up fairgrounds in summer. Newbury Village is what I believe Norman Rockwell strove for when he picked up his paintbrush. Greater Newbury includes the Village, along with West Newbury, South Newbury, Boltonville, Peach Four Corners, Wells River, and Newbury Center, yet still barely tops a population of 2,000. We landed in Newbury Center, the smallest of the hamlets. There’s an unofficial marker where civilization ends and the wilds of Newbury Center begin. That delineation, to this day, is the car-rattling thump as one’s tires drop into deeply rutted roads. While villagers enjoy paved streets through the half-mile downtown, Newbury Center has dirt roads that snake endlessly down narrow lanes and up mountainsides.

Our house sat at the edge of twenty-five acres. Mom’s desire to restore the neglected Cape fueled her every free moment. In the time it took to unpack boxes, she was lining up carpenters and whirling through the homestead like a dervish, punching through walls and ripping down ceilings. Mom embraced open concept fifteen years before it caught on in the 1990s. She’d enlist my brothers for grunt work, giving them sledgehammers, light supervision, and the promise of a hardy dinner before getting out of their way.

As an adult, I reflect with appreciation on the unspoiled beauty of my childhood surroundings. I now understand what my parents gave my siblings and me. They relocated us to a place, a time, sheltered from the societal effects that too often harden landscapes and perspectives. Nestled along a picturesque bend in the Connecticut River, Newbury remains untouched. In the soft light of an encroaching evening, it enchants.

I was in Newbury again for my high school thirtieth reunion a few years ago, staying in an Airbnb in the Village. As I turned out of the rental’s driveway that Sunday morning, headed back to my home in southern New Hampshire, I turned right instead of left. I couldn’t be this close and not at least drive by our Cape. My parents had moved off the hill in 1998, eleven years after I graduated from high school. They wanted to be closer to my sister, an hour north, as my brothers and I lived out of state by then.

I drove past the Newbury Village General Store after leaving the Airbnb. It has stood on the tiny main street since 1840. I walked inside to buy a candy bar and it was a time capsule, with the same rows of wood shelving, bread loaves stacked high, canned items three-deep, chip bags lined up. Jars of penny candy. Milk and beer at the back of the store. The worn black-and-white checkered floor and the jangle of bells at the red front door felt like old friends.

Dad and I, for years, would stop into the general store on weekdays on our way to pick up Mom from her nursing shift across the river. We’d pick up more bread, another box of cereal, and always a candy bar for me. While I could say the reward for my bottomless sweet tooth was what I most valued, I now understand it was the unrushed afternoons riding shotgun with Dad; first, in our yellow Dodge Coronet station wagon he’d named Betsy, and then in the maroon Chevy Impala station wagon that was just slightly smaller than Noah’s Ark. I’d tell Dad about school and listen to him quietly hum, windows rolled down in summer, heater toasty on my feet in winter.

That Sunday after my high school reunion I lingered in the general store, walking up and down narrow aisles. I pulled the store’s jangling door behind me and crossed the street to the Common. I looked up at the monument to the Revolutionary War General, Jacob Bayley, and closed my eyes; listened for laughter, hoping to hear my classmates shouting with the delight of being kids again. I looked down at the grass and remembered how I’d lost part of my front tooth on the Common in 1979. I was playing “Rock Soup” with Joy and Beth, and as werewolves we snacked on stones in an imaginary broth. Joy eagerly spooned a rock into my mouth and as stone connected with enamel, a searing pain bubbled up from my gum and hot tears splashed my cheeks. Joy kept apologizing while Beth dropped to her hands and knees and rubbed the grass, looking for my tooth wedge. We never found it and I walked around for weeks with a snaggle tooth.

I crossed the street, got into my car, and took my time driving up to Newbury Center, the roads as bouncy and dusty as ever. From the Village, I followed Sawmill Hill past Hebb’s Corner, climbing to Scotch Hollow Road. I took a left onto the Lane, a right at the top onto Fuller Road. I followed the dirt road for several miles, then started my descent around Dead Man’s Curve that got its grisly nickname in the 1800s when a funeral procession lost a coffin from the back of its wagon as a horse climbed the hill. I rounded the last bend and recognized the vista that had always greeted my family. I parked the car at the crest and walked. The woodshed and barn had a fresh coat of red paint. The large metal potato digger sat where it always had, on the side lawn. My brothers, in the summer of 1977 while exploring the fields for the first time, discovered several pieces of rusted farm equipment from the 1800s. They rolled up the potato digger and a large manure spreader, Mom directing them where to position each to its best advantage. Friends and visitors complimented my parents for years on the wonderful finds.

The Cape on Fuller Road sheltered my family for twenty-one years, from our arrival in that snowstorm to Mom and Dad’s last summer in the house. Through high school and college graduations, marriages and births and retirements and deaths of pets, it was the place we returned to, as so many families do with beloved homes. For holidays and celebrations and sorrows. To keep traditions alive. Dad loved it best of all the houses he’d lived in. He said it rooted him.

I snapped photos with my iPhone while deer flies chased me, the kind I remembered from childhood that bite and sting. I breathed in the familiar scent of damp, forested air. I kicked stones, watching dust dance in sunlight rays. I didn’t expect any cars, and none came. I reversed course and ended at the cemetery where my father is buried on Scotch Hollow Road. I parked again and walked to a small metal gate, unlatching it. I weaved among grave markers, making my way to Dad’s stone where I told him I’d just been at the Newbury Village General Store and had gotten a candy bar, knowing he would enjoy hearing that I still fed my sweet tooth.

Though we may leave a place, many times a place does not leave us. I think it’s because of this that I feel, more often, a calling to return.

I’ve made no plans, the idea just percolating in my head for now. I sometimes scan Vermont real estate listings, calculating—for fun—how much I’d need for a down payment. The idea of a second property appeals to me; something small and within driving distance that I could use as a weekend escape. I scroll through the limited listings online, ruling out most. My mother and I saw a listing in the spring of 2020 for a circa-1880 one-room schoolhouse. We knew immediately where it was. The schoolhouse had been converted into a small, two-bedroom home in the 1970s. I flipped through online photos, and imagined children in the early 1900s practicing penmanship at small wood desks.

The schoolhouse is a half mile from Newbury Center’s small cemetery. Since Dad’s death, several of my parents’ local friends have been buried there and my mother will one day join them. The headstone already has her name and birth year. She’d insisted to my sister when they were planning Dad’s funeral that she wanted her details carved at that time. Why, I don’t know. I don’t like to think about the date that has yet to be added, so I’ve not asked her about her earlier decision.

I’d planned to take a drive to Newbury Center to see the schoolhouse but decided against it as the pandemic worsened. A year passed. I pulled up the listing again in April of 2021 and discovered it had been sold the previous November. I didn’t think I’d be as disappointed as I was. I recall how eager I was to leave as the eighteen-year-old who believed she’d outgrown what this place has to offer. I consider, again, how several classmates never left. Whatever they saw that I couldn’t all those years ago seems enough to have kept them there. I think about my father in the cemetery, just down the road from the schoolhouse. I think how it would have been nice to buy that one-room schoolhouse, to be closer to him. To be closer to where Mom will eventually be buried.

Our family plot can accommodate four, and as the only unmarried sibling in my family, it’s been a long-held assumption that I will take one of the remaining spaces, upon my death. I like knowing I have a final resting place secured. It feels like coming full circle. Though my siblings and I were born in Pennsylvania, I consider Vermont our family home, the place where we all set down roots and budded from childhood into the adults we would become. Only my sister remains in Vermont.

I sometimes daydream that I bought the schoolhouse. I think how I could have turned it into a weekend writing retreat. A place to escape the demands that pull at me, like the job that affords me the opportunity to work from a home office, but with the expectation that I will be available early, late, and always. I think about the traffic that surrounds me. The news that comes at me, at all of us, nonstop. I think about Newbury Center’s trees and fields and quiet and memories. How my parents left behind a life they’d built in a city and struck out for new land and traditions and community. The feeling of safety it reawakens in me, of recalling what we’d been given, soothes me in a world that feels increasingly provoked.

A resting place in Newbury Center waits for me. Yet a calling to return, perhaps sooner rather than later, whispers.

I
The Answers

I ask the night,
but it has no answer,
except for this—
headlights and taillights remember, forget
passing through the dark;
snow falls in livid slants under streetlamp light.
I ask the day,
but it has no answer,
except for this—
no children play,
and adults are afraid.

I ask the crow,
but it has no answer,
except for this—
fly to night roost at the setting sun;
fly from night roost at its rising;
be black ink on a paper grey sky.
I ask the seagull,
but it has no answer,
except for this—
let the winter wind carry you sideways,
far, far from the sea.

I ask the dusk;
it cries, Despair.
I ask the dawn;
it answers, Hope.

I fold the shirts you have no need of now,
buttoning the buttons,
soothing down the arms and back.

II
Ways of Being Lonely

Dawn is always hours away.
And it’s still winter, always winter.

The cold insinuates itself through a crack,
cooling coffee in a forgotten cup.

Water chokes through gurgling pipes.
The furnace ohms an alto A.
The fridge drones on, then off, then on.

A cut lemon blues with mold,
oranges transmute into morbidness,
and casseroles know endlessness.

The CBC runs earnest docs,
rightfully exiled to 3 a.m.

The coffee maker bleeps off.

Dawn is always hours away.
And it’s still winter, always winter.

I tiptoe through the empty flat,
forgetting that I can’t wake you.

III
White Fog

White fog shrouds everything
ten floors below as rain streams through
the open screened window. Obscures
the greening that you’ll never see.
Settles like death over life, over time,
over memory. Fades all to silence.

I could not run
fast enough
across our front lawn
on Denver Drive
toward my father’s bright
blue eyes
his outstretched arms
St. Augustine grass
thick around my toes
palm trees
swaying through
the salty sky
the joy
that surged through
my tiny body
as he picked
me up
to tell me
he loved me
my three-year-old
curls caressing
his sunburned cheek

Who could
have imagined

the disappointment
shame and sorrow
that would creep
between us

when Daddy stumbled across
our living room hardwoods
Winston in one hand,
Jack Daniels and Coke in the other,
and I was fourteen gliding
through steps for my Saturday recital
my auburn braids flying with me
as he slurred his praise,
his grin sloppy with pride

these unwelcome
visits that came
too often
and

now the squeak of my soles
on the Comet-scrubbed floors
as I reach across
the rail of his bed
cold like his sallow cheeks
now empty of smile
the damp brush
of my lashes
against his forehead
as I pause
to see a blink
a quiver
anything at all
in those bright
blue eyes
gone now
to gray

At boarding school, I
the only Jew; the only
son of Abraham.
By fiat Baptist
come Sunday mornings.

Trays passed;
body and blood
from box to box—
bread, then wine.
The preacher robed
Genevan black
spoke of host.

Am I invited?    
What kind of celebration may I attend?
Infant fore-skinned, how do I belong?

Dressed in charcoal Sunday grey
we’d walk from school
and file into latch-box pews.
The trees koyo, then bare,
then budding green:
resurrection nature’s idiom.

Unbaptized, unshriven, unsaved,
I learned hymns
and prayed, chewed, swallowed god.

Who bakes holy matzo?
Jesus’s body. Mary Magdalene?

Does god love a party crasher?
Bring my own bitter herbs,
walk roads that do not pass
Damascus or Calvary.
After church we’d share
hard apple cider and laugh
at girls who squirmed
to look.

There were a few
I would invite
had I but known
the party’s moment,
its final destination.

Life happens
even to musicians
harmonize motets
birth death encores

At the library the homeless woman reads obituaries
wishes somebody might write hers

A blue sedan abandoned to weather
waits for a tow; crammed migrant occupants
picking produce flow north

Mayans from Guatemala search for pueblos,
sing in languages no one recalls
like Welsh Shamus Scot’s fiddle
Gaelic wailer of ancient odes
frame drum pipes
war chants mysteries Druid magic
blood trail written in squash, beans, corn

Appalachian danced squares
moonshine love affairs    feuds
Hatfields McCoys  colliers’
hymns don’t get black lungs to heaven

too proud to bend
giddy-up fiddles
banjos do-si-do burlap and calico
worn from plowing

Guitar frets worn as the women
who toil in endless sun
rounded bridges carry overloaded SUVs
children dropped over an angry wall
Mariachi songs for bunioned feet
poverty
never retreat
rainbow serape
maracas, trumpets, bravado

or is the word machismo?

music language life
deep furrows souls

The birthday cake woman
wrapped in rags and Homberg
spits and coughs death’s rattle
lacks laces for castoff men’s shoes
hums a dirge from mother’s
funeral she cannot remember

A man, drunk by noon, sings
offers his bottle to a brother

Sympathetic strings reverberate;
next time comes around.

She uses yesterday’s newspaper
to sole her Goodwill wingtips
Rest assured, she ain’t going nowhere
just dancing to the music
no one else can hear.

On the border, the detention guard,
salvaged from Germany
says nada,
mutters, wonders
how many have crossed today
his great-grandmother played the zither
sang We Praise Thee, King of Kings,
In darkness when we waited

Carouselina slouches on a broken bench in a laundromat near her apartment. Hands vised in her lap, legs jittery about more than splinter stabs. Her least favorite chore is halfway done, thank God for tiny favors. She leans forward, snags a glimpse at two dryers several feet away. They’re still tossing her clothes around—half pissed about their job, half on a what-the-hell-let’s-finish-this cycle.

Like me, she thinks. I’m half here and half out the door. On my way to…

Nowhere. She slumps against the window behind her, springs forward. The ooze from countless heads of hair gel smearing that window? Now it’s on her head. She could throw a damn good pity party right now. Maybe she ought to go in the room where her clothes are drying. Check how many minutes until the cycles end.

But then she’d come face-to-face with the two chicas who muscled her out of that room. As soon as she went to put her wet clothes in the dryers, the two of them slammed their bags onto the bench she’d emptied. Stared at her, shoved a try-it-bitch glare onto their light mocha faces. Scarlet lip gloss on smoochy mouths, painted eyebrows pointing up, then down like weapons. Tight jeans they must have held their breath to squeeze into, cropped tops with denim jackets, one sleeve slightly off the shoulder. Blinding white sneakers they either just got or spent hours cleaning, probably with old toothbrushes. Shooting what sounded definitely like hardcore half-threats in Spanish.

Carouselina puts them at late teens. Maybe they just got dumped from foster care. Spending their days stroking their phone screens, looking for anything. Looking for someplace legit to be on a weekday morning. She spots their empty garbage bags dangling over the bench. She pictures them walking around with the bags: defiant, desperate. Maybe they escaped a gang thing in Central America and they’re overcompensating.

She flips open a notebook in her head, scribbles “overcompensating” on a page of other Words That Fascinate, “chicas” and “smoochy” and others she wants to remember before they drift away. It’s a 20-year-old game she plays when she’s in the laundromat. To chase away boredom, stop flicking spitballs at where she is and isn’t, shoo shit that keeps buzzing at her. Always ready to remind her how close she is to the edge.

It nearly got her this morning. Nervous energy jack-knifing through her, upping the risk of splinters. Daring her to write down all the stuff in her head, like she keeps claiming she’s gonna do, someday. She pushes down on her knees to keep from jumping up. Going where, she couldn’t say. What little money she has, from a proofreading job that only took nine weeks to get paid for, she sank a lot of it into a plane ticket. Supposedly a good idea. At first. Head to DC for two nights. See a nephew get married—something she doubts will ever happen to her. Stay at a hotel. A friggin hotel, with a big bed and two, no four pillows. Premium channel TV. Maybe even room service, although that’s probably pushing your luck, C.

She’s about to ease ahead with her DC fantasy—what the hell, may as well, that’s what they’re for—when somebody’s voice breaks through in a smooth, clean way.

“And so I told her, I said, you can’t do better.” Mid-range tone, nothing remarkable.

Piques her curiosity. Do what better, C. wonders.

“You got that right. Girl, I’ve worked third or fourth shift for close to 15 years. Good pay. Nobody’s benefits are better.” A deeper tone, scratchy. Decades of cigarettes?

C. is fully perked. Ready to listen, gain some advice her bank account can use.

“Uh-huh.” Mid-range’s response is muted, her head level with a washer as she dumps clothes in. C. winces, her grimace hiding under her no-name baseball cap. The woman’s face is awfully close to touching the gunk circling the washer’s inner ring.

“Only two things I’d change. Never hardly get to see my kids. Have to trust God to take care of ’em while I’m at work. Sometimes I pull double shifts so I’m gone from 9 at night ’til now, then got laundry so time I get home—”

“They’re gone. I know. That’s why I moved to first or second shift. Did not like my husband spending all that time without me.” The wheels on a laundry cart argue with the linoleum floor as Mid-range scoots the rest of her clothes to another washer.

“Whole lotta trouble two Black kids can get wrapped around without me watching them. But what else can I do? Got rent to pay. Groceries to buy. Trying to save a bit.”

A dryer door slams shut. Coins pop in the slot.

“Pray, that’s what,” says Mid-range. “When all else fails . . .”

“Pray,” they tell each other in unison. Chuckles cool the tension of having to make do with next to nothing. C. knows.

The woman with the problems introduces herself. Thelma, she tells Mid-range. Loretta’s her name. She starts telling Thelma about the church she attends. Says it helps her feel a smidgen better. Just enough to get her and her husband through Sunday dinner, dessert and dishes. And then it’s back to that Monday stuff again.

Thelma says, “I got a bad back from hauling mail bags. Whoever’s thinking about a job at the post office? Tell ’em they need a mule’s back.”

C. likes the sound of them. She hadn’t thought about working at the post office. But it couldn’t join her fantasies—her back is too weak. She grabs her semi-legit laundry bags, one cloth, one recycled from plastic, doing extra duty for groceries and library books. Pushes off from the bench and heads back to where the chicas reign. Screw them and their hard eyes and tough words. She will play herself: a strong-spined woman with a bitch in reserve.

I once had a mother who loved me before
she fell into the ocean of lost words
and speech. We journey to play on the beach
where I lose sight of her on the horizon.

Grey clouds march across the sky. We are not
certain of the monsters they push in. Finding
ourselves unprepared, we run for shelter, seems
the smart thing to do before being plummeted
by memories. We leave a drowning blue bird

on a blue wave. It is hard to look into “old”
eyes, painful to see their disturbing questions
staring back. Best to pretend we don’t know
the answers. Instead we keep busy counting
our blessings, and our lists of accomplishments.

We travel alongside the Tin Man collect our heart
medal from the Wizard so we can get out
of this place. There is one, though, who stays
behind, who does the heavy lifting, who brings
mother’s hand to her lips, understanding

the value of touch. When it rains it pours
heartbreaks and the caregiver is there to mend them
in ways our loving “too much” causes us “too much”
pain. So she goes back, back to find what she
sees as life but we see as dying.

I thank God for the angels among us
who understand the “long good-bye”,
who see sandcastles in the sky
where others see storms.

An excerpt from my diary on July 3, 2020

My husband bought me a motorcycle today.
He has the idea that we can pack our things
into tidy bundles, rev up motors,
already having found someone to love
and leave the pandemic behind,
as we outrace the upcoming Kansas City
hotspot of our present-day existence,
zooming off into a blazing saddles' prairie sunset.

Her name is in my notes
in a journal at the bottom
of a cardboard box in the
back of a storage unit in
northeastern Oklahoma
and I am so sorry that my
age and Covid-brain have
made it temporarily impossible
to remember her name.
And I apologize to her.

For more than sixty years
I’ve had a subconscious
routine when I shower

Let water run over me
Shampoo my hair
Rinse then condition
Rinse then soap all over
Then final rinse

for sixty years

This morning I forgot
the routine and just
stood in the shower
with water running
over me and not sure
what to do next
How do I begin?
Where do I start?
What do I do first?
Why am I standing here?

I eventually stumbled
my way through and
made it out of the shower

But now for the first time
in my life I fear tomorrow’s
shower and the unknowable
when routine is no more

by Todd Sukany

No wonder you take the high road as you whittle
words into a poem.  You suggest: concentrate
on a task, say . . . shoveling snow in your driveway,

and let your mind fly like the powder,
blowing back to the area just vacated
by your red scoop.  Focus that fine powder

swirling past your fogged, frosty glasses
and just before non-Sunday-appropriate
oaths join the ice fairies

that the wind puffs past your scarf, down your parka,
to mingle with the fat flanking your vertebrae.
At your leisure, you would, of course (or naturally),

begin to identify each vertebra by its Latin name,
harp some song about a random event
from childhood or adulthood or some other hood,

and make a tired reader type into the phone,
pro biscum latinatio expresso.  Expresso is American
for espresso and yet, reader, you knew that.

Oh, the surprise of crema entering this poem
on a dark night before your summer celebration
sips away the blizzard of confusion. (Note how I

brought you back to the opening lines again
to remind you of snow blowing itself into
a healthy poem? Sweet conceit--get my drift?)

The way to Carnegie is left,
left, left, right.  The path to the Gillioz
Theatre is slightly less known.  More like

Google Satellite peers into downtown
Springfield (MO, of course) and there,
one can watch The Great Russian Ballet,

or probably more accurately,
a Russian troupe, headed by someone
whose lamb chops are dusted in

Thanksgiving flour.  But the highlight
of the evening is granddaughter
in the aisle, lockstepping with a stage

full--the Doves of Peace, the Waltz
of the Flowers.  She raises both hands
into a blossom above her head

and I feel her left hand circle
my right to complete the move,
never blinking, never dropping concentration.

It was socially acceptable in the 1970s for two women to dance together. They danced together in nightclubs, street fairs, and on telecasts of the popular American Bandstand show.

The same was not true for men dancing together. It was so taboo that when I lived in Memphis in the 70s, it was illegal for two men to dance together. I don’t know if it was a city law or a state law, but it was one that was enforced in Memphis. Arrests did take place. Four male couples were arrested for dancing together at a bar, the Closet, and the arrests were reported in the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper.

My partner Dick and I enjoyed dancing. On weekends we went to a bar called the Psych-Out on North Cleveland in Memphis. The bar closed at midnight on Saturday. However, no one left the bar at closing time.  The tables were cleared from the center of the floor, doors were locked, and we would have a “private dance party.” The cops were aware of what was happening inside the bar and would periodically show up.

The bar owner kept a lookout on duty and if the cops pulled into the bar’s parking lot, lights inside the bar would flicker on and off. Everyone would quit dancing. By the time the cops were let in, we were all seated. After the cops left,  everyone once again danced.

The popular ‘70s song, “Miss American Pie,” was a favorite of the bar patrons. When that song played, everyone would stand together, place arms over shoulders, and form a huge circle. The circle, with up to 40 guys in the formation, would then go round and round in the bar. We whirled around the room for the entire length of the eight minute song, locked together, having a great time. We were young and reckless, and enjoying an activity that was perhaps made more exciting because it was illegal. We were brothers, arm in arm, sharing a secret that involved more than dancing.

We would dance all night long. At dawn, we left the bar, and several of us would go to the Ohman Inn, a diner on Union Ave, where we ate breakfast and made plans to do it all again the following weekend.

“While the sergeants played a marching tune, We all got up to dance,” American Pie.

Crust Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
½ cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes and softened
3 tablespoons heavy cream

Crust Instructions:

1. Preheat oven at 400°F.  Lightly spray a 12-count cupcake tin.
2. Whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl or food processor bowl.
3. Add butter, and blend together until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.
4. Add cream; stir until crumbs are damp and hold together.
5. Divide mixture into 12 parts, and pat into 12-count cupcake tin covering bottom and sides of each cup.
6. Bake in oven at 400°F oven until crust is golden for about 10 -12 minutes.
7. Let cool completely before filling.

Filling Ingredients:

2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
Whipped cream for garnish

Filling Instructions:

1. In a small saucepan, combine sugar and eggs until well-blended.
2. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches 160°F and coats the back of spoon.
3. Remove from heat; stir in chocolate and vanilla until smooth.
4. Cool to lukewarm about 90°F; stir occasionally.
5. In a small bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy.
6. Add cooled chocolate mixture; beat on high speed for 5 minutes until light and fluffy.
7. In large bowl, beat cream until it begins to thicken.
8. Add powdered sugar; beat until stiff peaks form.
9. Fold in chocolate mixture.
10. Pour evenly into crusts.
11. Chill for 6 hours before garnishing and serving.

Makes 12 mini tartlets.

by Thadeus Emmanuel

Where has the morning mockingbird gone with its songs—
Those exciting rhythm and blues of melodious symphonies?
For I hear no more of their mellowing whispers;
that comes through my open window panes at every dawn,
When the cooling gentle breeze of the morning blows.
Or was it all a lonely wandering music maker;
That has lost its home to the glooms of the day,
And now left with the cold; that shows no mercy
Even at its fluffing feathers to catch the warm?
Or was it all a lonely lost mockingbird
Making vocal concerts on the balcony of anxiety,
And now waiting for a loved one to lead its way home?
Perhaps, if for these reasons the mockingbird sings no more
Tell it my restless mornings have missed its sounds;
Those exciting rhythm and blues of melodious symphonies.

I’m a bungalow with an airplane wing
too hot to inhabit except in winter.
Did I mention I could fly?

I’m a rambling ranch going to town
and back to the country again
to plop myself down in a den of sunflowers,
annuals with faces large as platters to face
down the darkness until we all turn to sleep.

I’m a Victorian in great disrepair
on the edge of what was once a great dome
of a city. It rains here, mostly drizzle now
that we’ve lost our thunder, but in the flash
of moon every October, my attic ignites
into a miniature circus of curious and lost
toys come home to roost and play.

I’m a yurt full of flies in summer,
a dusting of snow in winter,
three sets of bunk beds but always
enough blankets, which is good
since I live at higher elevation than most
humans can stand, and I love the solitude.

I’m a house of dreams draped in snow,
my roof starting to sag, but look what comes!
Crows large as house cats, tiny juncos afraid
of nothing, female cardinals with their orange
tails and tailwinds propelling them and all
the others to my bird feeders spilling
across the yard, welcoming everyone.

When the short days feel  
inexpressible. When    
nothing's left of fall. When  
the dark entry of winter makes    
each of us shrink. When   
relatives finally call.

Some of us burrow. Some    
of us bake. Some of us    
leave the year behind.    
Some of us take. Some of us    
travel into the cold,      
ice, and snow—the moon's    
crescent reminding us to go     
easy. We've been here before.

Looking out my window, I see the Madonna blessing the white Matilija poppy on my windowsill.  It's a showy flower  baroque petals, paper thin; glowing golden heart  the kind of thing she's used to.  They grow wild in the empty lot next door.

A hundred decades of unanswered prayers echo through my brain.  Hail Mary, full of grace…  Please let…  Please make…  Please get…  Please take…  Candles flicker; stale whiff of incense, beeswax, hair oil and perfumed soap.  Shabby coats brushed, shoes polished, hair slicked back, whatever the poor can do to impress the Queen of Heaven.

Holding my breath, I slide the long nail of my index finger, filed thin for just this purpose, beneath a scale of skin and pick it off my arm.  Geese trail sad goodbyes across a blue sky. A car honks on the street below.  Somewhere a door slams.  My collection of blue glass quivers on the sill.

Sound waves move in tiny shocks of pain across my naked skin.  Rosy welts blossom at their touch, itching, twitching, screaming to be scratched.  She watches me rip myself.  Bare-assed and blotchy, I blush beneath her tranquil gaze.

Aggravated by prickling sweat, a red itch blooms in the tender inside fold behind my elbow.  It burns and swells, demanding surcease.  Denied release, the tortured skin cracks and oozes, trickling thin rivers of platelets and plasma.  Like lengths of frayed red ribbon, they spill along my forearm, pool crimson in my up-turned palm.

Mary isn't expecting it, the scarlet spot like a bright nail hole.  A tiny tsunami travels across the fixed sweet smile; a moue of grief, a flicker of rage.  Lest she be troubled, I ease across the floor, sliding each flat sole in careful increments across the waxed boards.

There’s always water everywhere.  I pay Charlotte, the little girl downstairs, fifty cents a day to fill bath, basins, wide-mouthed jugs, bowls, pans and platters.  She tops them up once a day while I hide behind the screen in the corner.  Water sometimes drowns the itch.  I spend hours in the bath, reading and writing, sipping whisky from a jelly jar.

Reaching the nearest vessel, I plunge my arms up to the elbows.  Liquid works its magic once again.  Inundated in relief, I cry a little then lift my hands to show her.

The teapot whistles.  Startled, I flinch.  My skin tingles, nothing more.

Our Lady steps across my windowsill, brushing past the poppy to pour.  The itch subsides.  I sit naked across the table from her, sipping Earl Grey.  She speaks Spanglish with a soft lisp.  We tell knock-knock jokes and eat two jelly donuts that a small attending angel drops in her lap sometime through the second pot of tea.

She cries about the crucifixion.  I tell her about the crib death of my little boy.  It gets hazy after that.  I remember poppies in the bath water. She holds my hand while the angel pours boiling water from the teapot into the tub.  She washes me head to foot.  She swaddles me in soaking linen sheets. I sleep.

I wake to shadows.  Geese trail sad goodbyes across a pale sky.  A car honks on the street below.  Somewhere, a door slams.  My collection of blue glass quivers on the sill.  I touch my skin, soft as a baby, tender and luminous in the evening light.  Soon, I will dress myself, walk to the cathedral and light a candle.

Hail Mary, full of grace...

Serves 2
1/2 – 3/4 hour to prep and cook

2 medium Yukon gold potatoes cut bite-size

• Throw potatoes in cold water and bring to boil.
• Boil 8-10 minutes while preparing rest of dish.

Splash of oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 servings pork cut in bite size pieces ( I use two thick boneless loin chops)
I large onion chopped
I/2 sweet red pepper chopped
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
Ground cumin to taste
2 or 3 large handfuls of greens (more if you like, I prefer spinach)
dash or two Pickapeppa (my preference) sauce or green tabasco
1/3 cup blueberries
2 tbsp. heavy cream
2 tbsp. blueberry (or other flavor) BBQ sauce

• Heat oil till hot. Add cumin seeds and give a quick stir.
• Throw in pork and stir-fry at high temp till just cooked through.
• Remove pork and seeds to dish. Reduce heat.
• Add another dash of oil and onions – sauté till translucent.
• Add peppers and garlic, sauté till peppers soften.
• Sprinkle with ground cumin to taste (optional).
• Add greens and stir till leaves wilt.
• Drain potatoes and add to pan, mix gently.
• Return pork to pan, stir till hot.
• Add blueberries, stir gently till blueberries glisten and warm.
• Mix cream with BBQ sauce and stir into mix. Heat till hot. Dish and serve immediately.

Alternatively boil potatoes just until tender before stir-frying pork meat. Let potatoes drain while meat cooks. Add a tsp each oil and butter to hot pan after removing pork and fry  potatoes till they get a bit of color. Remove potatoes, lower heat and continue with recipe.  Return potatoes and pork to pan together before adding cream. (I once substituted chicken for pork, but it’s not as flavorful or satisfying).

by Carra Leah Hood

disappearing part by part first

hands then feet then chin then mouth the way

I smile your smile upper and lower

molars clenched leaving a gap between

incisors that cuts my lip when you eat

popcorn and call my name from inside

a dream or a shadow slinking away

from view into view and then you are

gone and touching silence you become

me becoming you disappearing

blue skies and winter sunshine
moves me forward
as I sit here framed in light
bathed in morning’s warmth
as full glass windows hold out the cold
while also holding all of Lake Ann’s Bear Cove

a blanket of diamond sparkles lights up the waters
moving in quick time across the lake — seemingly, forever moving towards me
in such a delightful dance
pulling me
straight up to
blue skies,
my spirit rises

and I standing bare
stark and naked
pale against a winter sunshine

if for only a moment
free . . .

by Vicki Mayk

Get a notebook. It doesn’t have to be fancy, the hospice nurse says. A spiral one -- the kind kids use in school -- will do. Pick the cheerful blue one. Use it to make a list in case your emotions get the better of you – or because you are moving robotically through the day due to exhaustion from getting up during the night to check on your mother.  Just consult the list. No memory required. It works nicely to record the daily duties that are the equivalent of laying bricks on the path to the grave.

Administer the medicine. Count the pills looking like brightly colored beads into the day-of-the-week pill case. Prime the injection for the dose of insulin that Mom insists on giving herself – her last opportunity for self-sufficiency.

Ignore the bruises. The marks, blue-black and purple on her paper-thin skin, are necessary. They confirm attempts to handle the pain, balance blood sugar, remain among the living.

Make the appointments. Oncologist. Chemo. Blood work. Coordinate the schedule so that everyone in the family knows who is driving to what appointment on which day. Never miss a day of work while ensuring Mom never misses an appointment.

Drive to chemo appointment. Engage in idle chat on the way to the doctor’s office, distracting Mom with a story about Aunt Betty and her drinking. “She drinks, she smokes and she’s going to out-live all of us,” Mom declares in a tone that indicates she finds this unfair. Switch to describing the antics of your dog, Barkley, who she refers to as her grand dog. This will help her to avoid anticipating the miserable hours watching drugs, the equivalent of poison, drip into her veins. Pull up close to the building’s entrance and help her out, then go to park the car and scurry back so you can ride the elevator up with her, holding her arm gently as she exits and totters toward the oncologist’s office door.

Make chicken soup. It’s the one thing she can eat, even on the days when chemo sours the stomach and wrecks her appetite. Peel and chop the carrots. Dice the onion. Thinly slice the celery. Pull chicken from the carcass. Add it all to the chicken broth and simmer until the kitchen is fragrant and there’s no scent of decay.

Clean the television screen. This guarantees a clear picture for Mom’s viewing pleasure. There’s nothing like “Dancing With The Stars” to distract an 85-year-old woman with lung cancer. It’s not exactly the dancing that distracts her. It’s Maxim Shmerkofsky, the handsome Russian ballroom dancer, who takes her mind off her disease. Later you’ll remember what Mom always said when she saw him: “He can put his shoes under my bed any day.”

Do the laundry. Mom’s soft pajamas, feminine and trimmed with lace, pass through your hands from the laundry bag to the washing machine. Pretreat the stains. Add the detergent. Wash and dry. Fold them like the relics they soon will become, laying them with reverence back in the drawer.

Make the arrangements. This is another suggestion from the nurse who told you to get the notebook. Do it now, while Mom is still alive, she says. This euphemism for visiting the undertaker and picking out the box for her ashes doesn’t make it any less grim. The nurse tells you that you’ll be glad you didn’t wait to do this chore. Nothing about it makes you glad.

Call her friends. It’s important to do this while she’s still lucid enough to enjoy the conversations. Get out the address book with the picture of the cute puppy on the front. Begin to methodically go through the list of friends. Follow the letters of the alphabet: They lead you to names signifying life-long relationships. Call them first. Dial the numbers and hand Mom the phone. She doesn’t tell her friends that she’s calling them for the last time. You don’t either.

Watch her die. She falls asleep one day and is never awake again. The hospice nurses call it actively dying. Months later you’ll try to remember the last conversation you had with her.

Listen. Play the last message Mom left on your cell phone. Repeat over and over again. Hear her voice reminding you that she needs you to go to the bank for her. Remember when you added that chore to the blue notebook.

Adjust to the loss. You can’t. You wonder what you’re going to do now that you’ve got all this time on your hands.

Annie stood outside the arrivals area of terminal 4, Kennedy Airport, her hands already numb from the dreaded cold in New York City. She was waiting for a cab to take her to Chinatown where her grandmother lived in some rent-controlled dump.

Annie was in New York because she had nowhere else to go for Christmas. Her parents won a cruise for two in some sweepstakes drawing and were gone for two weeks. Annie didn’t want to spend Christmas alone, so she came to visit the only other family she had. The annoying grandmother in New York who always smelled like medicinal oils and didn’t speak a word of English.

It took only a few minutes before her grandmother started nagging her about grades and boys. She rolled her eyes, aware that she made a big mistake coming to New York for the holidays. This would last all week. She threw on her coat, her grandmother still droning on behind her, and headed into the city.

It was Christmas Eve and there were many places to go, but some friends told her that a dive bar in the West Village had the best wings and tater tots. That’s where she would go to first.

It was still early in the day so the place wasn’t crowded. Annie ordered her food and sat down by the window. She checked her phone but no one sent her any texts. All her friends were home for the holidays.

“Are you Japanese?”

Annie looked up and saw an old man, seated by himself at the next table, looking at her. “I’m Chinese,” she responded.

“You look Japanese,” the old man said.

Annie turned back to her phone. “Whatever.”

“I had a Japanese friend once.”

“Yeah?” she asked, not paying attention. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know his name and I’ve never spoken to him before.”

“What did you, meet him in some S&M chatroom?” Annie glanced at him once with a sneer and turned back to her phone.

“We didn’t have the internet then. This was in 1942. I was a marine in Guadalcanal.”

“1942?” Annie looked up for a moment. “What is that, like World War I?”

The old man smiled. “I’m not that old. World War II.”

Annie looked back at her phone. She was trying to text her boyfriend but the reception was bad in this dive.

The old man turned and stared out the window, emitting a deep sigh. “We were there to fight the Japanese. We landed in October, and by December, we had the Japs by the throat. They were outnumbered and they didn’t have food or supplies. We were already hoping to go home for Christmas. But the Japs were resilient. They held on.”

“Uh huh,” Annie said, pretending to pay attention. There was finally signal and she was hoping the old man would shut up so she could focus on her text.

“It was Christmas eve,” the old man continued. “One guy still had a bottle of bourbon and we shared it. We partied. I had some bourbon with the boys on Christmas Eve. We slept very well that night.

“I woke up with a bad headache in the middle of the night. There was someone else in my tent. I thought it was one of the guys getting up to use the john, but I looked carefully, and it was an enemy soldier. He was all alone, and he was going through my stuff.”

Annie looked away from her phone then and turned to the old man.

“I grabbed my sidearm and pointed it at his head. He froze. Then I saw what he was stealing. He was after my food. He must not have eaten in a week.”

“Did you shoot him?”

The old man shook his head. “I lowered my pistol. I pointed to the food, pointed to him, and waved for him to get out of there. Let him eat tonight. Our bombers have been pounding their positions for weeks. He may be dead the next day. Why not let the guy eat.”

Annie was silent. She placed her phone in her handbag.

“The next day was Christmas day, and we were making a push up this hill that the enemy were holed up in. But someone made a mistake and we walked right into an ambush. I didn’t know what was going on. Someone stepped on a landmine and then, bullets were flying from all directions. I was hit in the leg and I had shrapnel in my back. I couldn’t move at all. My group was getting wiped out and the enemy was running right through us. I forced myself behind a bush and tried to stay hidden. One Jap ran right past me, and then turned around to stab me with his bayonet. But he stopped. I looked at him. I recognized him. He recognized me. He stole my food just a few hours ago.”

“You gave him the food,” Annie said, quietly.

“I did. He lowered his rifle, he took a step back, and he shouted something in Japanese. I guess he said something like “all clear”. I don’t know what he said. He gave me one last look and ran off. I never saw him again.”

“And that’s your Japanese friend?”

The old man smiled. “A friend I shared dinner with on Christmas eve.”

“Where do you think he is now?”

“Probably dead,” the old man said, shaking his head. “We were killing them in Guadalcanal. Even if he survived, he’s probably dead by now.”

“Why?”

“I’m 91. How old would he be?”

“You’re really 91? What are you doing in a bar?”

“Having some bourbon with the boys on Christmas eve. So I can sleep well tonight.”

“That’s nice,” Annie said, her voice low. “That’s nice that you remember your friends like that. And then you go home for Christmas Eve dinner.”

“Oh, I won’t eat at home tonight. Dinner is cheap at the senior citizen’s center.”

“But, aren’t you supposed to have dinner with…”

“She passed on. She left six years ago. Six years, three months, twenty-four days ago.”

“Oh my God…”

The waiter stopped by with the old man’s check. He slowly counted out some cash to pay for his bourbon before turning to Annie again. “It was good talking to you, young lady. Enjoy those tater tots.”

“Sir, um. Are you all alone tonight?”

“Oh no. I have my radio. I listen to the news, political commentary. I have my routine.”

“All night?”

“I turn it on at 2 AM. The city is really quiet at 2 AM.”

The old man climbed to his feet, reaching for his cane, and headed for the door. Annie wanted to say something else to him, wanted to invite him over for Christmas dinner at least. But she was just a visitor herself. She watched his lanky figure slowly push through the door and disappear into the streets of New York.

That night, Annie could not sleep a wink. She thought of the old man’s Japanese friend, an enemy soldier that they were almost destined to meet in battle. And yet, without knowing the man’s name, seventy years later, the old man still considered him a friend. She wondered whether many years later, this old man whom she forgot to ask his name, would still be her friend.

She turned to the digital clock against the windowsill and noticed that it was already 2 AM. The city really was awfully quiet. She wanted to turn on the radio to hear what the old man would be listening to. There was no radio nearby. She tried to download an app on her phone so she could get radio signal, but after several attempts, gave up. There was no app that would help her hear what the old man was listening to. It was futile.

Annie sat back and threw her phone into her bag. On Christmas Eve, the old man was all alone thinking about a friend he did not know the name of. And so was she.

Static time
Big old stupid city

On the embankment of rug and tassel

What could lap
At a shore this old

But pruned and petted candies

Strings of sponge
From tops of heads

A boat rocks aside: a hand meets charge: a tide shifts: a mountain learns a new name

Water doesn’t need to set aside time
To say yes

It laps it over and over again with nothing to count

An ancient time can now be pixels
But don’t forget to bring your enchanted gloves

The water hurts but it must be bottled

In line for sparks
Outline the scores

Found that shape was mine

Come down on down
Pale comparison

A faceless man attempts the biggest grab at the moon

A little of its wobbly oil to be the perfect mirror
And a fortune to be made if the right buyer ever wanted some reflection

Now what will light the way for night shifts and rendezvous

Buy the batteries from that same monstress man
To find a place and a time for toying with myself again

Hoping to fit into an angle that machines don’t yet know how to navigate

I awoke this morning, as I have for almost forty-six years now, angry, discontented, irritable and world-weary. Thinking back, I seem to have come into the world this way. The few respites from this baseline state gleam like gems in my memory, links in the shit-sausage of this long jump from vagina to grave.

My AA sponsor tells me to pray. Having been raised an atheist, I find this ridiculous. But he says it works and everything else he’s said has, so I listen. That old Irish gangster starts his day talking to God. Together, we have fashioned a prayer of sorts for me, and it goes a little something like this: “Please don’t let me act like too much of an alcoholic today.” I say another before bed: “Thank you for not letting me act like such an alcoholic today.”

This morning I forgot and leaped out of bed. I had decided to sleep in, eschewing my daily yoga practice, a two-hour ritual of Ashtanga yoga and meditation, in favor of catching up on some badly needed rest. I am, as a recent New Yorker article about pre-post-Covid anxiety put it, “burned out.” One and a half years of teaching high school online has finally caught up with me and the push to the last day of instruction feels like quite the slog. Until then, it is taking a lot of loin-girding to meet my students with the openness, patience and integrity they deserve.

After waking, I made a coffee and moved my chair to face the corner of the window in my apartment where, through a small porthole in the thickening trees, I can still catch a glimpse of the East River this time of year. I looked up and saw a pigeon soaring over the area like a hawk.

The pigeon who thought he was a hawk.

And I remembered to pray.

“Dear Nature/Homeostasis/Symbiosis/Big Bang/Entropy/Mystery…”

I quickly readied myself for class. I ran water through my hair and arranged my bedhead into something resembling an outline that would appear kempt against a zoom background, threw on a collared shirt and opened my two computer screens, one to project the power point presentation and PDF of the novel we are reading and another for managing the Tetris-like attendance software that texts parents about tardiness and helps me respond to their sometimes-frazzled messages in real time while I facilitate the first minutes of class. I set my third screen, an iPhone, on its chrome pedestal so I could manage the class’s comment stream and arranged my background to look as professional as possible by throwing some unfolded laundry beyond the purvey of the webcam.

As tired as I am of it, it’s always fun when I get to class. My co-teacher was absent today, so the kids quickly commenced the online equivalent of throwing spitballs, which I volleyed like the drag queen I am. “Loving the EMSR breathing today Darren,” wrote one. A maddening echo at the beginning of class had necessitated switching to a plug-in mic. Thus, the outmoded iPhone cord, hanging haphazardly from one ear, had been picking up my grunts and sighs as I worked out which device was the culprit. “The end of the world will be averted by steam-punk tech,” I responded forebodingly into the reverb before I disconnected the USB-C adapter. We managed to read the final chapter of Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle and have a lively discussion about the intersections of gentrification and squatting.

What is prayer? For many years, my protracted morning routine has been crucial in mitigating my congenitally miserabilist disposition: I awake, contemplate a lesson from my Guru, a reclusive spiritualist writer who, via his bi-weekly correspondence course, imparts to me what he, himself, sometimes terms the “new age mumbo jumbo” that I use as a playbook for life. (He once asked his own guru about all the earnest weirdos who read his “lessons,” and the great Baba is reported to have replied, “Healthy people don’t go to the doctor.” I think this describes me perfectly.) I also practice Kriya Yoga, the dynamic meditation technique taught by Paramahansa Yogananda, an initiated practice, passed down from empowered teacher to fire-ceremony-initiated student in an unbroken line for centuries. “I go through all this before you wake up…”

Prayer is all those practices, of course, but today I am reminded that it is, at its core, just what my dear sponsor admonishes me to do, and which this morning I failed to:

“Say your pleases and thank yous.”

The pigeon is gone now. After circling for a long time, it disappeared over the East River. It’s been almost a year since I’ve received an animal sign like this one. If you aren’t familiar with this divination practice, the crux of it is that you know you’ve received an animal sign when a non-human being comes into your field of perception in a surprising or serendipitous way, and right then is when you need to consider the message it brings, which can usually be deciphered by contemplating its physical attributes, interactions with humans and other organisms, place in the food web and some general associative cultural symbology. Before you cancel my culture-as-costume aping of Native spiritual practices, please consider that we were all indigenous at one time and entertain the possibility that perhaps its exactly that that white people need to remember. Alternately, I’m Irish so put that in your authenticity pipe and smoke it if it helps you read on:

I’ve written about Pigeon in my musings several times before, once when he came to remind me to pay attention to my inner child, once when he came to approve of reentering therapy (to tend so said inner child), and once to remind me to cherish my relationship with my sister. Hawk has also made many appearances, mostly when I need to be reminded to take the most expansive view, to pull out to a wide-angle lens, to remember whatever is greater than the little I that I think I am, that which I still struggle with calling You Know Who.

What wakes me up some mornings with rage? I was once told by an astrologer that I had a “tough row to hoe” in that the particular array of planets in my natal chart predisposed me to an unrealistic but unrelenting quest for harmony. That’s fucking true.

Not too long ago I was at a party, sipping a soda and cran and holding up a wall, when someone I’d never met before walked up to me to say, “No offense, but I don’t like white people” and then proceeded to make some untoward presumptions about what I must think of people like him. Spit ball launched. I replied, “Oh stop your flirting” and walked away. I have found sass to be the only sure remedy for preemptive strikes against white supremacy and/or bully-flirting, with which I am intimately familiar (thanks French and Russian lovers!) Nonetheless, this interaction saddened me. Because, well, I have a hard-on for harmony. How we can’t all just take the most expansive view still baffles me, perhaps inordinately.

I know I should let that go. And I think that’s exactly what prayer is for, but, as I said before, I simply can’t believe in a capital G God. It’s just too ridiculous and always will be. Ironically, I am working with two sponsees in that “fastest growing club that no one wants to be in” (Alcoholics Anonymous), who are struggling with “giving over” to a higher power. If you’re not familiar with the tenets of AA, turning your will over to a power greater than yourself is pretty much foundational to the program. One sponsee comes from a Christian background and the other a Muslim one. Both are scarred by their upbringings. Nonetheless, this “giving over” is happening for both of them.

It’s a mystery, you see, like this little morning meditation I’m doing through this rambling essay. We don’t know how it works. If I told you I did, you’d be wise to disregard anything I say.

Pigeon and Hawk. The pigeon who thought he was a hawk. The hawk Darren thought was a pigeon. We are both human and divine. That’s why we can give over to a power greater than ourselves, and how. As my Trump-and-IRA-supporting sponsor tells me, “Kid, there’s only one thing you have to know about God and that’s: ‘It ain’t you, motherfucker.’” We exist on different levels at the same time. I have come to understand that there is absolutely no contradiction between loving yourself as god herself and reveling in the smallness of yourself against her gracious relief. But we must “give over.”

I realize this is rather easy for me to say. Summer approaches. This last push is just that: For me, there is an end in sight. Not so for many dear friends, whose gluttonous companies have managed to maintain surprisingly high profit margins throughout the pandemic, it appears to me, by working fewer and fewer employees harder and harder. And when my friends get company-wide emails about “mindfulness practices” like “take time for a walk” I feel that I finally understand the true meaning of ‘gaslighting.’ “Be sure to take those summer half-days,” says HR to the overworked managers who are now tasked with merchandizing, “as long as your project’s on track.”

So, being told to “give over” can be maddening. Being told “why” to give over is perhaps a little less maddening. Being told “what” to give over is approaching helpful. But, for me, being told HOW to give over is preferable. Many people told me that I “should,” some told me “why,” fewer told me “what,” but only one told me how, my woo-woo Guru, who, I am told, is on Lexapro.

(The needle and the damage done)

I couldn’t make my hands abandon
the comfort of that crazy fur
sticking up everywhere at odds
like a little gray bear’s coat.

More than cat, you were joy and muse;
an easy companion so true that
I had to be reminded,
“Come on,
it’s just a cat, not a little man
in fuzzy pajamas.”

Still,
we never should have had to part
in that one curious flicker
of surprise and surrender
as you grew very small behind your eyes
and finally disappeared…
leaving me holding only…well…the cat’s pajamas.

The vet asks what I want to do with your body.
The impossible, of course:

Cradle it on my shoulder and
re-ignite the joyful purr,
feel you nestle against my neck as always,
while my weary hands find solace
in the friendliness of fur.

The air is different here.
My block in Royal Oak Township on Detroit’s border has become relatively bereft of trees.
My block in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a mere forty-five minute drive away, is lousy with them.
My husband Shawn cut down a healthy, old growth maple so he could better sun himself on the back deck. I still mourn the tree four years later.
I can see ten mature trees through the narrow view from the windows of my office. Littleleaf Linden, Red Sunset Maple and Emerald Green Arborvitae trees grow in our front yard. I take a census and find 115 hearty trees from my block to the main street, Packard, and back.
I want to transplant some of these trees to my old neighborhood.
I could take them at night. On a truck. Stack them five high
And they’d hardly be missed.
Why should Ann Arborites have all the shade?
Trees are the lungs of the Earth.
Trees reduce crime.
Provide jobs
Clean the air,
filter water.
Cloverdale Avenue needs all that
more than Kensington Drive does.
Cloverdale needs me
more than Kensington does.
After nearly two years away because of the pandemic, the contrast is stark.
Hardly any tree cover over the street where I grew up. Long gone are the days when my friends and I would climb the oaks that lined our street.
Insect infestations and oak wilt caused many to be cut. My childhood friend and neighbor Angie tells me that a few remaining trees were blown onto power lines in recent storms and had to be removed.
They were not replaced.
Angie says the black squirrels that she used to see only in neighboring Oak Park have replaced the brown ones that used to be so commonplace in the Township and wonders whether it’s because of the dearth of trees.
The grass is still perfectly manicured on Cloverdale.
Lawns are uniform, like the white and red brick houses, and a deep shade of green. Angie tells me that even our carpet-like lawns were patchy in 2020, the year when nothing was as it should have been.
In Royal Oak Township
Or Ann Arbor
Or anywhere else for that matter
I long to breathe easy in both places.

Especially if you fly on Christmas,
the hours in the air a meditation
upon the months and year. You think salvation
might be yours if only you shake your fist
at some old slight, look ahead to this
in-between state, a place of transition
between east, west, north, south. It’s like fiction,
you think, these strange and busy weeks. Success
seems elusive. Yet isn’t it success
to think freely, as you’re doing now, high
above clouds, imagining how your art
will sustain you. Colorado, Texas,
Arkansas. Guitar, paintbrush, canvas. Why
make the mind do all the work? Invite the heart.

I tried to save a spider
from my station
where I was working
with nails and hammers;
wooden splinters flying.
How was I to know
dust would overpower her?
That she’d be stuck
in a web of my own neglect?
She stayed fast to the window,
clinging to a light
she couldn’t taste.
And I turned back,
hastily,
my own project
taking precedence.
Telling myself that I was
busy.
But the truth is
I couldn’t bear
to watch her waste away.

If I had a porch, I would
want to sit with my grandfather,
learn to swear like a sailor and
listen to his stories.

Of sailing the oceans on
four masted ships and taking
months to return home.

Of blowing his bugle as the
horse Calvary charged,
during the Moro Rebellion in the
Philippines.

Of firing the 155mm artillery
piece during five battles in WWI.

Of the Gold he was paid
as a mercenary with
Pancho Villa’s Army.

Of his teenage bride, the
only women he ever loved.

That is what I would want to
do–if I had a porch.

I am
colors
on the outside

I brush
up against my insides
rushing forward

I trace myself
back into life —
living

folded up
against the world
charting a course

I am pressed
like a
grain of sand

it’s crystal clear
I’m cut off from my own sight
imagine

I am
neither
mix nor colors

I find
not a hue
of myself

only the
spirit of
shadowleaves

Tulsa is a fun town
but it’s not a funny one

Sam Kinison lies buried
in Tulsa just eight miles from
the Center of the Universe
and just ten miles from
the center of the massacre
that started with a
stumble and a scream

Then fifty years later Sam
Kinison was preaching
the Gospel on the
streets of Tulsa Later he
brought his comedy and
his scream to town with
a plan to return to
preaching A plan that
ended because of the
inability of two speeding
objects to successfully
occupy the same space
And Malika screamed

So now Sam Kinison
rests in the beautiful
Memorial Park Cemetery
in Tulsa and Tulsa
remains a fun town
but it’s not a funny one

Death came
barefoot
to the door,
wrapped in
downy wings
the color
of dusk.

Wearing eyes
of pale blue sky,
she bent low
to kiss cold,
parched lips,
taking a last
breath.

“At the end of my suffering,
there was a door.”
~ Louise Gluck

Always. Across the once-green expanse
hilling the horizon edged with cedars
leaning into each other in the sun

right before the wind returns
to clear us of all this humidity,
the righteous angst of being human,

which is not to say it was easy:
we were lost here, like hurricanes stationed
in place against their will to dissolve

into oceans. We were afraid often
of it never ending, pain so fluent
in speaking the language of forever.

We were separate from each other
below the cusp of so much sadness
that even the dragonflies avoided us

or we were trapped in the timbers of pain,
piercing our temples or aching in our calves,
keeping us awake no matter how hard we kicked.

It didn’t, doesn’t matter if we cried out
or tightened the long vertical muscles in our necks
to hold in our curses or screams
or especially if we felt nothing but the bank
of fog become an ocean so deep and tilted
away from the light that we thought we lived here.

Somehow—a miracle, a piece of luck, a strange
happening—there was a door, and then,
on the other side, we found each other.

Red turkey wheat heads bob above the flat horizon
Mimicking war bonnets bouncing on galloping steeds.
Beating drums of hooves pound the earth
Charging red-hot sparks of friction
Winnowing the shaft from the wheat.

Howling winds whoop out haunting war cries,
Echoes reverberate from Mesa to Mesa.
Shouts, entwined with shadows of twisting smoke signals,
Scalp creek side cottonwoods.
Skinned naked of their dry foliage,
Skeletons quiver.

In drunken concentration,
Metal dinosaur rigs move in phlegmatic rhythm,
Craning their necks, hypnotically dipping,
Sucking up black gold liquor, mellowed by ages,
Reserved in Nature’s hidden still below,
Intoxicated by the speed of light.

Harnessed wind power circles like a striking hawk.
Taut aerial cables bisect the blue grid works overhead.
Faded Conestoga ruts run parallel below.
History’s map dries in the dust and is lifted aloft,
Taking new direction.

After William Wordsworth

There was a time when I did not fear
the future that lay ahead of me;
I did not hesitate to go near
and never would I flee,
but ever-present were tears.

My mind was fresh and witty,
I lived forward in a dream
which to me never did seem
the likeness of a pity.

The pale brain sops with worry;
gooey reminiscence, recognizing
that somehow, it is always in a hurry.
It abates the trauma, finding
those years truly to be surly.

It was the last good year for innocence,
so often I think about the warm sun,
the way I could always have summer fun,
yet I’ve lost that company, in a sense.

It’s how the smell of sunscreen and sweat
annually toss me into emotional debt.

“Friday it rained all day - there was no ball game. So we stayed home, we listened to it on the radio.” - Chico, in the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup

In this evening’s

lack of a game worth waiting for

in this evening’s

distortion of the spacetime’s damp
moral arc of ground, fence, and ball,
call it a toss-up, the raincheck

of this evening.

The same thump as thumbs
Meets you
And greets you
Push down

With
The pink cross on the music man’s back
Who taught us to
Teach time and waiting

Reach for stupid places and incubation
Cause any bed is big enough
And no price is high enough
Sleep a little longer

It is all the tiniest tidal wave
And every time arms disappear the legs do too
Something else grows
Like the shallow of eyes in use

Could we have a year of hibernation
In a carved out pink den
I’ll soak it up and you can keep rolling it out
With a title to my name and more life to yours

Of joint and afternoon mildness
Everything made of squared
Even the soup has no shape
And the stench that always climbs

Higher and higher
To the best neck
Layered and layered
Of filo pastry

Moistened and moistened of buttered marmalade
And crumb of crispness
And shy of cluttered folds
Fought for but never worn

Anything could be success
But the easiest is to stop planning
Call off the straws
And just bob over

And hope the thread finds me
It can’t stop falling and growing and getting tangled
Close enough for one eye
Stand mirror to mirror

And the bones tucked away in a sleeve
You’ve known all these
But can never hold them down
Once you throw away their clues they will grant it all

Three points touching
I’ve promised myself that nothing grew for you
But everything is
So much so that they could be reaching the pinnacle any minute now

We don’t run
in the same circles

But she’s there for
every time I read

She always comes with
someone I don’t know

But she always comes
whenever I read and
sits on the front row and
follows every word and
one time as I finished
she stepped up to me and
ran her hand down my arm and
then she left with someone
I’d never seen before

Three thirty in the morning
She sat up in bed
Wearing the nightgown with holes
Mechanical pump on her breast
Staring out over the backyard
Despairing

Her mind told her “Your life is over.
What’s the point?
You’re a mess.
Existentially, you’re going to raise this girl and educate her
For what?
To one day feel like this.
Like her life is only for her daughter
God, you’re a shitty person.
This was all you ever wanted.
So malcontent.
So ungrateful.
Don’t you have the decency to feel guilty that you are such
A. Bad. Mother?
They’d be better off without you.
The life insurance would be more useful than you are right now.
You can’t even have sex yet.
Body broken
A desiccated flower trodden underfoot on a sidewalk
Never to be whole
Damaged
You’ll never feel pleasure again.
Your body belongs to the baby.”

Nothing was more exhausting than this conversation with herself.

She switched the pump to the other breast
And smoothed the hair on the angelic baby next to her.

This glimmer crossed her mind:
“If I died, I wouldn’t be able to taste strawberries again.”
This one thought, a tether
A rope to the hope
Of ripeness
Of sweetness
Of summer
And as the tears rolled down her face, she talked back to her mind.
“We’ll see. I’m gonna hang around one more day.”

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
3 cups diced raw cooking apples (Granny Smith, Braeburn, or Honeycrisp)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Sugar Topping:
¼ cup butter, melted
½ cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven at 350°F. Grease and flour a large Bundt pan; set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
3. Add the oil, sugars, eggs, apples, vanilla, and cinnamon to the flour mixture; stir until well-blended.
4. Pour batter into prepared Bundt pan, spreading evenly.
5. Bake for 60 minutes at 350°F oven.
6. While cake is baking to make topping: In a small saucepan melt butter; add brown sugar and vanilla. Stir until smooth.
7. After cake is finished baking while cake is hot and still in pan, pour the topping over the cake allowing it to seep into the sides.
8. Invert onto a serving platter after the cake has cooled for 15 minutes or so.
9. Garnish with whipping cream, if desired.

Makes 10 – 12 servings.

Winter fruit—
less sweet, more sturdy
—doesn’t tempt
the palate like
summer’s fragile offerings.

red for the whore
you called me, pink
for the party girl,
any color at all
to call a man,
color determines
which man comes
(or if one comes at all,
perhaps). Lipstick,
once not
for feminist lips,
now shapes words
of liberation of
equality, of rising
up, of justice.

Lipstick, a mask,
a disguise, enhance-
ment, fantasy,
for you, for me.

Lipstick, or
lack of it,
may define, out-
line, ignore what
or who you
call me, high-
light who
I call myself.

Lipstick leaves
lip mark graffiti
on glass, on
cheeks, on
teacups out
of the dishwasher,
the only way
some of us
are remembered
at all.

Is it on my teeth?

For Mark Tamsula, Richard Withers, and Sam Bayard

Where does this music come from?
How to make fiddle and banjo dance
in and out, make sounds sometimes
simple as a single shot of whiskey?
Keep an ear out. You’ll soon enough
enter an era tough as these hills. Go back to
Yaugher Holler, near Dunbar, Fayette County.

Lights rise on a cutting board on which rests a turkey. A serving-dome covers the bird. DAVIS holds a carving knife; his daughter SARAH holds a piercing fork.

DAVIS
You really want to do this?

SARAH
Yes, yes, yes a million times yes.

DAVIS
I just, I kind of think you’re messing with me.

SARAH
I want to learn. It’s a tradition, something I want to know how to do. Is it ‘cause I’m a girl?

DAVIS
A young woman.

SARAH
Dad. Ugh—

DAVIS
Young woman is wrong, disrespectful?

SARAH
No, it’s just— Can we just attend to the matter at hand. How to carve the bird? …

DAVIS
I just don’t understand why you, of all people—

SARAH
Oh my god, it is ‘cause I’m a girl!

DAVIS
No, no, I’m it has nothing to do with you being a young woman-girl—

SARAH
Ladies and gentleman, I introduce you to my dad: protector of the rituals of the patriarchy!

DAVIS
NO! It’s ‘cause you’re a vegetarian!

SARAH
Vegan.

DAVIS
When did you turn vegan? (. . .) I swear, nobody tells me anything.

SARAH
Dad, I can just look this up online—there’s videos for everything.

DAVIS
Ok, OK. I admit I’m a little confused why my daughter—a beautiful, smart, young-woman-girl-vegi-vegan—wants to learn how to carve a turkey.

SARAH
It’s part of reclaiming my personal empowerment.

DAVIS
Carving a turkey is going to make you powerful? Actually, strike that, I actually get that, but I don’t understand why now?

SARAH
It’s (. . . ) it’s part of my therapy—

DAVIS
You’re in therapy? Why aren’t people telling me things?

SARAH
It’s recent….after Pete left, I ( . . . )

DAVIS
Your mother told me you left Pete.

SARAH
I did leave him, that’s right. ( . . . ) What else did Mom tell you?

DAVIS
She said you left him because he was turning into a pothead.

SARAH
That’s true, anything else?

DAVIS
He’s messy, leaves his socks all over, that sort of stuff. Which surprised me, ‘cause I always found Pete so tidy, so neat. Even his name is neat: Pete.

SARAH
You always liked Pete.

DAVIS
I did, I do, so I was surprised when you told us two weeks ago he wasn’t coming for Thanksgiving EVER again. I still got him on speed dial, thought 100 times about calling—

SARAH
Don’t call him, Dad! Now could we please not talk about—

DAVIS
Look, couples go through these things, especially when they’re young, but it can be worked out. So help me, if your mother left me over some dirty socks—

SARAH
Forget it, I’ll just find a video and do not call him.

DAVIS
That’s what your mother said, but with a bit more color. Alright, let’s do this.
Sarah opens the cover and reveals the bird. She grimaces a bit.
You really don’t have to do this.

SARAH
I have to do this.

DAVIS
OK. You start with a nice sharp knife, five to six inches.

SARAH
And a fork?

DAVIS
Don’t really need the fork, piercing lets out the juices. Actually, after removing it from the oven, you first want to let it rest.

SARAH
Why?

DAVIS
It absorbs all the juices. That’s the goal in carving to keep it juicy, you don’t want a dry bird. It’s like in a fight, you don’t want to just keep yelling at each other, you want to cool off.

SARAH
Dad!

DAVIS
I’m only saying, maybe think of this as a cooling off period with Pete, rather than the end—

SARAH
You know what—forget it.

DAVIS
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but you two were great together and headed towards—

SARAH
I’m so tired of hearing men say they’re sorry and then: BUT.

DAVIS
Well, I am sorry. And if you don’t want to tell me why you left Pete, I guess that’s your right, but haven’t I always been there for you?

SARAH
Yes, you have, Dad. Thank you.

DAVIS
And you know how much I love you, Sarah.

SARAH
And I love you. (Long, expectant pause.) Which is why I’m not going to tell you.

DAVIS
Oh, come on Sarah. You don’t think I would understand?

SARAH
It’s not about understanding, it’s more complicated—

DAVIS
Complicated!? Sarah, you know I smoked out of a bong in college once; I’m not a choir-boy. So, I mean how much dope are we even talking about here?

SARAH
How long do you let it rest, Dad?

DAVIS
( . . . ) Till it’s cool enough to touch with your hand, ‘cause then you can use your hand when carving it instead of a fork.

SARAH (touching the bird)
Feels warm, but not too hot. So now what?

DAVIS
I’ll carve the first half, showing you, and then you can do the second half, OK?

SARAH
OK.

DAVIS (he begins carving, removing the leg)
You position it so, and you start with the leg. You want to push the leg down towards the cutting board, and with the top inch of your knife you’re going to start cutting and just slice right through? This is called scoring it, it makes it so the meat will peel right off. You keep slicing until you find the joint that connects the leg and the body right here, and you push down with your hand while you cut right through the joint removing the leg.

SARAH
Who taught you all this? Scoring and everything? GrandP?

DAVIS
Hell no. Your GrandP was mean, brutal (. . .) when it came to butchering the bird.

SARAH
What, what was that pause?

DAVIS
Oh, nothing, he just— didn’t know how to carve and look you knew him as a sweet old man.

SARAH
Who gave me silver dollars for each year I was old on my birthday. Last stack he gave me was six, I still have them. I don’t know why; I just could never spend them.

DAVIS
He was sweet with you, mellowed as he aged.

SARAH
But?

DAVIS
It’s complicated.

SARAH
Oh, look who’s complicated now.

DAVIS
Now you want to separate the drumstick from the thigh. See this V? Take your knife, cut straight down that V through your next joint. You put your leg on the platter there, and now take out the thighbone, by cutting along the bone on both sides, until you can grab the bone, and while still cutting it, twist the bone and it literally rolls right out of the turkey like that. And now you slice the thigh meat. ( . . . ) Sarah? You OK?

SARAH
Sorry, yeah, it’s just, it’s making me a little sick is all.

DAVIS
You really don’t have to do this.

SARAH
I want to, I have to. It’s ok, I’m fine. It just, it’s kind of terrifying to see how something so strong and well put together looking can be so quickly torn apart.

DAVIS
It’s actually much worse when you watch someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

SARAH
Like GrandP?

DAVIS
Yeah. It felt disrespectful, like a violation, the way he would just hack (. . .) and hack at it.

SARAH
What else did Mom tell you?

DAVIS
Huh?

SARAH
Nothing. So now what?

DAVIS
Wing’s next, and I just pull it down like that. See there’s another V, you just cut right down that V, through the joint like that, pulling as you cut until you pop the joint and remove the wing. You still OK?

SARAH
Not really.

DAVIS
We can stop.

SARAH
Is there more popping?

DAVIS
Not so much, cause now we’re on to the prize, the succulent, juicy breast.

SARAH
Don’t be creepy, Dad.

DAVIS
Oh, hah, sorry I didn’t even think— Um…so the breast? The best way to maintain the juices is to cut the entire breast off the turkey. So first, you find the breast-bone, it’s in the middle here and is curved. Now, with your hand begin to peel the breast away from the bone, while you score and cut down the bone. Keep pulling as you cut and the breast just rolls right off, like this.

SARAH
Now you cut that into smaller slices?

DAVIS
Yup, but see these grains in the meat, you want to make sure you cut across the grain—

SARAH
Why across the grain?

DAVIS
It keeps it tender. The “grain” is really muscle fibers, not that freaky grain you like to eat—

SARAH
Freekeh, Dad. It’s a super-grain: freekeh.

DAVIS
Right, well, as they say, everything’s super to someone. Anyway, these fibers are chewy, so cutting across the grain does some of the work for you and makes the meat easier to chew.

SARAH
And that’s how you carve a turkey?

DAVIS
First half. Second half awaits, knife’s all yours. ( . . . ) Whenever you’re ready.
(She looks at the knife, hesitates.)
You know what’s funny, funny not the right word, but anyway— last time I saw Pete, you know, fourth of July where I do the ribs, and anyway, we were talking about cooking and he asked if I could teach him, cause of course, you know his Dad never— Anyway, that got us to talking about Thanksgiving and he said he’d like to take on more responsibilities and learn how to carve, like so he could be a good dad, like me, instead of like his… And I joked, joked, not being the right word right now, and I said: Are you asking my permission to marry Sarah? And he got very emotional and, while there was a lot of smoke from the BBQ, he teared up and nodded. And, of course, I gave my permission because I love you and I thought that is what you wanted, but now I just don’t know. I’m lost in all this.

SARAH
It’s confusing I understand.

DAVIS
I thought I would be doing this with him this, but now everything has changed. Sarah, you can tell me anything, you know that?

SARAH
No, I can’t Dad—

DAVIS
Why can’t you?

SARAH
Because I don’t want you looking at me differently. I need you actually to always look at me how you look at me.

DAVIS
You’ll always be my beautiful and smart Sarah, nothing can change that.

SARAH
Dad, there’s just somethings you don’t need to know.

DAVIS
Like?

SARAH
Like GrandP. Pete is this sweet, neat Pete to you. And he really respected you.

DAVIS
He laughed at my jokes, but maybe that’s because he was stoned.

SARAH
No, he thought you were funny, he really liked you Dad and he loved our visits.

DAVIS
But?..

SARAH
Isn’t that enough?

DAVIS
Did he hurt you?

SARAH
Not exactly, it’s really complicated, Dad….
DAVIS
I’ll kill the son of a bitch!

SARAH
Dad, put the knife down.

DAVIS
WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU?!

SARAH
Dad, give me the knife.

DAVIS
WHAT DID HE DO!?

SARAH
This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you. Give me the knife.

DAVIS
If he hurt you, I’ll—

SARAH
Give me the knife!

DAVIS
I told you I would always protect you—you’re my, my beautiful girl. Tell me what he did.

SARAH
Give me the knife and I’ll tell you everything.

DAVIS
Everything you told Mom? I knew she was lying to me.

SARAH
She wasn’t lying, she was protecting me.

DAVIS
From me? (. . . ) Why would you tell her and not me?

SARAH
Because I knew she wouldn’t pick up a knife! OK? I knew she would be upset, but she would also let it rest. Let it rest, Dad. Give me the knife.
He gives her the knife…she begins carving the other half.
I start with the leg, right?

DAVIS
Sarah, you don’t need to go through with—

SARAH
I do, Dad. For so many reasons that you won’t understand. But, you’ve taught me so, so well, let me try this on my own? I start with the leg, pushing it down towards the board—

DAVIS
( . . .) And you’re going to start cutting, slicing, find the joint and just / slice….

SARAH (she begins to carve the bird)
Slice right through. ( . . . ) So Pete was sweet, but he also liked it a little— ( . . .) Dad, do you really want to hear this?

DAVIS
I have to hear this.

SARAH
He liked it a little….rough in the… Dad, you’re already getting emotional, I don’t need to—

DAVIS (fighting his emotions)
The goal of carving it to keep the juices in, I can handle it, tell me.

SARAH
In the bedroom. It was playful at first, but after we moved in together last July—

DAVIS
After the fourth?

SARAH
Yeah, and as you know, we were headed down that path, but when we moved in something in him changed, the play went out, and it became something else, something….

DAVIS
Mean ( . . . ) brutal.

SARAH
Yeah. And one night last month, it was like he was trying to test me, and he pinned me down, hard . . . twisted my arm till I felt it might break, and…

DAVIS
And then?

SARAH
Then he proceeded to…
Lights fade as Sarah continues carving and telling him. End of play.

“Nothing seems to be right anymore. Everything tastes a little waxy.” —Bembo making moan

After a visit to the dentist, friend,
consider the bitter truths of the ancients:
how our taste buds mutiny, our teeth
grow long, and the globed fruit
of our being, about which
Archie discourses, sticks
out the calyx of its tongue
and talks back. Oh for the
days of mute regressive glory!
We look back, poking our tongue
into memory’s corner, reconnoitering
the moments when everything we probed
tasted good, so good, our dinners exquisite,
our thoughts divine, our old ladies young ladies,
and we ourselves bursting into bloom. Ahem.
Your attention, please, one moment, you old dozer.
Your forbearance, if you would, whilst I extract the wax
from my hairy ear. What exactly is your bellyache?

It happened at the mall
Like most of my formative experiences
I was eight - maybe nine - years old
Looking at the captivating perfume bottles in the cosmetics section
The gilded liquids flooded with lights
Mesmerized me

When I looked up
I saw an old lady
And she was somehow familiar
I tasted sublime terror for the first time
It was my other
Grandmother

I don’t know
How I knew who she was
What level of my subconscious mind recognized her
All I knew was the tension between feeling
Like I knew her
Like I was part of her
But knowing she did not care about me

I ran to find my mother
Among the nearby sale racks
Who confirmed my confusion
This was my daddy’s mama
That old bitch she said
We’d been estranged from them for as long as I could recall
So I dealt with my anxiety the only way I knew how
I took action

When we got home
I said I want to meet her
My mom said okay
And she arranged that Jackie, her best friend, would take me on a visit
My dad would not come
And so I went to meet my dad’s mom
My grandmother for the first
Conscious time

I had a new outfit
Pressed khaki pants and a charming mint green striped shirt
Further adorned with a peach seashell design
It felt like I was going to a job interview
Position: granddaughter
And we arrived at an unfamiliar door
To a foreign house

I don’t remember much of what
We talked about
But I saw in her eyes a steely determination
That I shared
On her dressing table
(She had a real dressing table with a mirror and chair and everything)
Was a bottle of perfume
Shaped like a crown
About half gone
I admired it
And she gave it to me

After the visit, my mom offered an olive branch
And my dad’s mother
Said there would be no relationship with the children
If it meant interacting with my mom again

So we went about life
And I didn’t feel anything for her
But I thought much about her
Because I didn’t understand how I could feel
Nothing

I kept the crowned perfume bottle
For years
And never used a drop
It was some sort of totem
I don’t remember when
Or why
I threw it away

Started as breast milk with lullaby
Source cuddled me to sleep when I could hardly
Containing so many minerals like a valley
Filling me, leaving protruding my little belly

Graduating from milk in six months, seemed too early
Now it’s funny but then I hated it badly
Ingesting flakes soaked in artificial milk
In a month or less, I felt sick

I healed with mum’s love and pills forced to swallow
But then as a recovery gift came an introduction to swallow
And started feeding in a regular and fixed pattern
Breakfast, lunch but the dinner with a lantern

We live where their shells litter the land,
where their songs spice the hot air.
Roaring and deafening little insects
sweetening our summers like lemon
to cold, bitter tea.
This is where we are from, you and me.

But up where the corn scrawls across flat fields,
where fat firs and thin pines thrive,
it is so quiet one could sense
the clatter of a pin against cracked concrete,
the unfurling of a patterned quilt,
the wind’s soft sighs of frustration.

No cicadas sing in this northern town.

Only when we returned to the rocks,
the hills, and the heat did we
notice their absence those three
long and dreadful days.

Is it right?
The truck rattles like a thousand
cicada wings, cliffs crawl
beneath armies of old oak trees.
Finally, familiarity is what we see,
for our hearts hound the hum
of many dying bugs
calling us back home.

1 whole chicken roaster or 3 bone-in chicken breasts, fully cooked in a large stock pot or slow-cooker crockpot, stock reserved
Reserved stock
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium carrots, cut in ¼-inch slices
3 medium celery ribs, cut into ¼-inch slices
3 cloves garlic, minced
64 oz chicken stock
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
8 oz uncooked egg or kluski noodles

Instructions:

1. De-bone fully cooked chicken; chop chicken into bite-size pieces; set aside.
2. In a large stock pot, heat olive oil. Add carrots, celery, and garlic; sauté until slightly tender, about 5 minutes.
3. Add to the vegetables the reserved stock, extra chicken stock, salt, and pepper.
4. Bring to a boil; simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Add uncooked noodles; boil for at least another 15 minutes or until noodles are cooked.
6. Add chopped chicken; stir and simmer through for another 5 minutes before serving.

Makes 12 cups.

In the voice of Samanta Schweblin

Gravid, rigid, inexact, orality
has always made me uncomfortable.
Consider how easy it is to open the mouth

and say something that afterward we’d rather
not have said, how terrifying to name out loud
this thing that hasn’t been said and now it’s

something real: angry, irrevocable action,
reaction, whirlwinds provoked by words.
This is why I would rather give up speaking,

you see, and stick to putting down on the page
one word after the other, choosing carefully,
eschewing the noises and dangers of speaking,

so stopping the cacophony of the all too merry
go round, giving me the time I need to say exactly
what I want to say to master this little world.

Last breaths dilly dally like colorful fall leaves falling
To the ground
in reverse.

They dilly dally upward
Out of the building
Into the sky
Past the clouds
Into space
Into the universe

Last breaths are kissed by the sun
And land on stars
Where they become light and energy

Last breaths are what you see
when you look up at the sky at night.

Last breaths are what make the stars twinkle.

When you see the twinkle of a star
Your soul becomes one
With the one
You grieve

And what stays between you and the universe
Forever
Is
Love.

Thus thinks the poet
There might just be somewhere
else, elsewhere words are spread into

Thus the paper is convinced already,
it handles thoughts thrown up by the poet

There comes in the paper as it
got to gather together those running
words through the gate within the poet’s mind

Though thinks the poet
There might just be somewhere else,
elsewhere words are spread into

Thus the paper, ill-mannered, laughs

Your memory scrabbles
at my waking dreams sometimes
like starving juncos in winter’s wind
scratching at the snow for food.

It seems you slipped away
down some ice-bound North Slope of the mind,
inexplicably charting a course
beyond the hope of thaw.

From there you wield your absence
like a frozen whip of silence,
meant to punish those you loved
and will not name.

I sadly feel the lashes cut
then slice their cruel path
back to you,
disfiguring your image
in the eyes of all who cannot see you.

This morning, gray and white
among the feast of seeds
fallen from my hand,
the juncos bob in thanks
outside my door;

while somewhere, you,
mistrusting truth
and all of love’s warm gifts,
hunger in the frost
of your own
mistaken
winter.

For Jennifer

Dawnhead flashes improbable ground
of essence. Then thunder. Then leap
from bed to computer only to find
philosophical twaddle: Aristotle
and his to ti en einai (Metaphysics, VII, 7),
that whereby a thing is what it is,
fundamental ground of the soul,
whatever the soul is and who knows?

Return to bedrock, then, wife’s soft
round rump rising with her breathing:
content, for the time being, all we have:
pull duvet up, pat ground of essence softly,
softly murmuring love, love, love.

I

Castle by the shores of the sea,
Sea of blood tainted the precious silk,
Silk of deceit woven in lies,
Lies here great tragedy of the greed,

The sheep herded in circle, blindfolded,
Blind, oblivious of the wolf pack,
The wolf cunning, rotten, merciless,
With mercy of Thou, would they perish,

Puppets are at the disposal, ready,
Ready to be played to the tune of power,
Power so potent, they emerged a saint,
Saint or Leprechaun herded the pot of gold?

II

Democracy is all but functioning and fair,
Killed by the one at the top and below,
To whom should it serve? To whom should it work for?
Like a weapon, obey to the command of the wielder,

A gentle breeze is, but a deadly blow,
For verbal punches are just that, powerless,
Useless against the devils whose words are the law,
For once be fierce, be courageous, my fellows.

III

Black smokes engulf the city, the whole nation, painted them all in ash black.
A speck of light gleaming like moonlight, shines up above the dark sky.
The reflection of the sun it’s not, but the dazzle of castles of precious stones.
The heavenly beings, untouchable by the worldly plight, flaunting their ornate robes to the pheasants.

Sitting on their thrones, built with lies and deceit with no ounce of shame.
Heart is a big diamond, in the colour of ruby, cold and hard to touch.
Blessed with silver spoons and golden wings, scoffed at the weeping peasants’ bowl.
For the lowly beings’ tears are worth less than the water dripped from the eaves.

When I had a regular practice of sitting meditation, I sat early on a summer’s morning on a zafu in my screened porch before going to our large organic garden. Now, at 80, with diminishing energy and strength, mindful work in the garden has become my morning meditation. Better for my arthritic joints, this exercise produces as beneficial an effect for quieting my mind as sitting ever did. I internalize external sounds (cawing of crows) from the natural world as mantra—a keen reminder to pay attention, to be in the environment, to listen to all that is around me, to feel the air as it stirs, the shade and sun in their shifting dance, drops of dew clinging to leaves, different textures—all without judgment.

Despite the difficulty of growing cucurbita in southern gardens (the jokes about sneaking onto neighbors’ porches with bags of zucchini ring hollow and sardonic), I persist, searching out resistant varieties, changing locations, and exercising good garden sanitation. The products allowable under organic guidelines are pricey, and big rains invariably fall immediately after application. Also effective in controlling the menacing Anasa tristis is the avoidance of mulch around the base of the plants. Early in the season our vines and bushes grow luxuriantly and shade the ground with their foliage, making mulch unnecessary. Another suggestion is the placement of boards near the plants; one turns the boards over and stomps the hell out of the hiding insects. However, the most recommended method for controlling small plantings of squash and pumpkins is hand control. Even when we plant prodigiously, I prefer the tedious hand-picking method.

The physicality of stepping carefully, stretching, and bending to turn the vines as they snake through the hills of inter-planted beans and around pepper plants in the adjacent row energizes me after the relative stillness of my night’s sleep. I love to feel my muscles warming in the morning sun. The repetitive motion—always through the same pathway but with varying results—clears and focuses my mind and signals to my visual cortex that I am in search of subtle distinctions in color and shape, attuned to the slightest movement that reveals adults, whether frozen in stillness on a stalk, under a leaf copulating, or scurrying along the ground to escape the pincers of my thumb and fingers. A rare but thrilling event is catching one as it dribbles out the tiny, slightly oval, coppery-colored eggs, piled like a miser’s hoard of shiny coins. The eggs are usually clustered on the undersides of leaves and easy to spot. I swipe my thumbnail along these deposited eggs and feel them pop between the nails of my amazing opposable thumbs. If I miss the newly laid eggs, they darken before hatching into swarms of pale-green, spidery nymphs. Empty eggs are a signal to search for the various stages of nymphs, which emerge greenish white with hair-like legs, like whiskery little warts on the chin of a Halloween witch. They cluster briefly then disperse in search of food and reproduction. Soon the whiskery legs become serious appendages intent upon escape. In this state, it is easy to eliminate them with a smearing motion of the fingers or a crumple of the leaf. The eggs and nymphs, while harmless enough until they begin to feed and reproduce, are a reminder that if left to live, they will become armies, battalions, legions, intent upon sucking the life out of the plants. Once they begin to locomote along the ground, I shake them off the plant and stomp on them. Friends who grow the lovely, green-tipped yellow Zephyr variety for Little Rock’s organic restaurant market all summer have an end of season ritual. He goes through the rows with a blow torch, burning the dried vines, listening with glee as the tiny eggs, which every surviving adult female has laid in an end-of-season frenzy, pop. There is a grim pleasure in the elimination of this insect juggernaut that would kill every vine and fruit of the harvest.

The ironic second part of the title of this essay is completely intentional, and while I am aware that there is nothing Buddhist—Zen nor any other tradition of the Eastern philosophy—about killing a life form, even a form so low on the scale of sentience, I believe that the degree of mindfulness exercised in discerning the various stages of this insect among the great camouflage of its prey qualifies as the same kind of awareness sought and achieved by long hours of sitting meditation. Buddhism explains sentience as the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Applying that meaning and carefully observing the behavior of squash bugs over forty-five years, I have come to the heart-deep belief that the plants—whether the bush or vining varieties—possess more sentience than the bugs at whose mercy they manage to grow. It is difficult to imagine a male and female squash bug pair pondering the act of reproduction after their mechanical coupling and declaring it the “best sex” they have ever had. Equally impossible is picturing them, replete and satisfied after munching on the tastiest squash vine they have ever eaten. All their actions appear involuntary and machine-like. Their urge to escape seems as mindless as their drive to reproduce and eat; so while they seem to avoid a painful death, I cannot imagine them experiencing pleasure.

However, the sinuous growth of the vines and upright habit of the bush varieties seem more zoological than the dreaded insects: the seeds sprout into dicotyledon leaflets and develop vigorous stems, tendrils, a profusion of leaves, male and female flowers, and finally delicious, nutrient-rich fruits. This process appears more complicated and aware than the robotic activities of squash bugs. Horticultural research states that individual plants remember early traumas and “decide” whether to languish or put on bursts of energy and flourish. There are no growth variations among the bugs, I am certain.

So, it is with full conscious responsibility that I wage my holy war against squash bugs and urge more fastidious gardeners to go bare-handed into their gardens and know that they must choose between automaton-like insect life multiplying like viruses gone awry and the intelligent, sensuous life of their squash plants. Take off your gloves and squish squash bugs!

After Norman Rockwell, “Tough Call” (1949)

Play ball, Rocky:
hey umps, yes, I’m weighing in here,
play ball, Rocky,

a minor inundation; hell,
possibly because it’s April
the season’s young, you may as well

play ball, Rocky.

O Lord, you God of vengeance,
you refute the idea of coincidence.
For example, solo, known also as alone,
can separate into so low, which is
how many (myself included) feel when solo.

A show about God and planes shows
after my anxiety-ridden flights.
To the Golden State I go with an ill
feeling; anxious, therefore low,
and that’s no mistake when it happens solo.

Surely, I try to ease my mind when I make
connections, find patterns, human-like.
During turbulence I close my eyes and repeat
in my mind, Dear Lord, thank you
for this life, I want to live, even if I’m alone.

(With apologies to Vincent Van Gogh)

Suffering spiral shadows contorted in angry pain,
Wrung by a controlling force, Taurus rages
And rams his skull forward tearing the blue-black cape of night,
Snorting sparks singe pox scars of hot embers into the rippled
Cloak of darkness unfurled across the infinite ring.

Birth pangs force his budding horns,
Puncturing the whorled foreskin
Stretched taut between his ears,
Pushing forth his sole means of self-defense
Born in a distinctive crown of glory.

This magnificent muscled form, pared sleek
By the sharp edge of the grinding whetstone
Of shrill winds shrieking in turbulent storms,
Bows down a threatening head.
His hooves dance, stomping impatiently, scattering the inconvenient dirt.
Gapping clouds swallow flying clods of stinging dust.
The powerful trunk of his body sways
With the invisible rhythm swelling in the dark air.
He charges.

Paralyzed in suspended animation
This mighty creature fails to pierce the silent hymen
Separating heaven and earth.
OLE’.

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When I die, I don’t
want the cat’s papillae
to tear me apart.

I don’t want my flesh
to be stripped
from my bones.

I don’t want the maggots
that gather in Henry’s pocket
to burrow into my orifices.

I want the cat
to smell the decay
rising from my body.

I want it to
walk in its prints
so as not to wake me up.

I want it to
pass through my skeleton
wherever its head can fit.

Mark told the story of Fred, how he sank when the light came.
Fred told the story of Mary when she continued to sweep up the dead birds at the foot of the high wall.
Mary told the story of Mark when he had cheerfully hidden the future.
Mark told the story of Fred facing beyond the skies when the light folded.
Fred told the story of Mary patiently listening to him.
Mary told the story of Fred, but he was not listening.
Fred and Mark touched tongues and told the story of Mary passing between them.
Mary and Mark touched intimately and conceived the story of Fred.
Fred and Mary stood beside the dead birds and recalled the story of Mark.
Mary’s story of Mark lost its way.
Fred’s story of Mary grew still.
Mary told the story of Mark seeking Fred beyond the high wall.
Mark told the story of his longing.
Mary told the story of silence.

How many molecular functions were swiped up by dust rags from behind the cookie jar, thesis statements spun around mixing bowls with room temperature butter and vanilla, legal challenges that couldn’t escape Monday’s mopping even tucked under the bottom edge of the cabinet, peace-talks threaded and stitched into new curtains, full minds swept the front porches before 8am each day, soothed teething infants while daydreaming in binary

The spring I graduated college
she took my hand
in one of hers
told me she was
so proud
of her granddaughters
of how free we were
free of our wombs

[I am] one of the burning hillside trees.
[Fire] jumps from leaves to bark.
My arm and torso break. I am [fractured]
and still, I love the [Earth] I am from.

[Cosmic] night shape-shifts me
into a hot crunch of [embers].
When fire is gone, coals still [burn]
through to [the core] of the Earth I am from.

Come morning, I sing the [sad]dest notes
from what [remains] of this Earth I am from.
My trunk no longer [stretch]es to sky.
Its blackened stalk [tremble]s even in still air.

My voice calls the breeze to [reach] me,
though that same [air] pushed me to my knees
before it brought my death. I beg [for] it
to give [me] wholly to the burnt Earth I am from.

[Charred] trunk, ashen limbs, burnt hollows
my singed [tongue] creaks, new flowers grow
at my edges. This is the time for [a rebirth]
[for the Earth] I am from.

You should be home
helping me
string slate and russet gems
into our lives’ fortune.

We could be on fire
slow dancing
under a new moon.

Instead, I am here sitting with you.
The only slate: your grey T-shirt
The only russet:
your orange prison pants.

I once wrote a poem of medievals,
their two sleeps, two awakenings.
“The first stirring phase came thence in the middle
for the peasant’s night hours did divide.”
Soon, I too, began a midnight phase, a mystical twofold sleep.
During the day my lines were dull and languorous:
“She wrote me daily. I long for her words.”
But, during the mystic hours the verse became:
“Her cursive scripts, her dazzling wit, a few words
each day on the trip.”
During daylight I wrote:
“We did not foresee her deathly malady.”
With my nighttime pen I wrote:
“We did not foresee, did not previse, our
lives existentially fraught.”
My daytime verse was morose:
“There is little time left to read her glowing words.”
At night they were refined:
“For, now we are sure, not long to endure, no pages to share,
the words are not there.”
I wish I had such magic to see her again.
But, she is gone and there is only one line left to write:
“A churchyard stone becomes a home and poets as they do,
they heal and move on.”

My father once told me
about a time before I was born
when he was in the Navy
and a big war was going
on around the world
and he was sitting in a booth
in a bar with several other guys
and one of them a big bully got mad
at him and said he was going to fight him

My father said he accepted the challenge
but before the other guy could get up from
the table my father trapped him in the corner
of the seat against the wall and hit him
and hit him and hit him
and hit him and hit him

The guy’s head lolled against the table
and everyone in the place stepped aside
as my father walked out of the bar
and back into the war

Murdered on the tarmac.
Jonestown, Guyana, South America.

He wanted to save those captured by cult leader Jim Jones.
The messiah of the Peoples Temple.
A San Francisco evangelist group.

But he failed by order of that Devil.
Becoming the first and only Congressman
to be assassinated in office.

Before Mr. Ryan became a congressman, he was a teacher.
One of my teachers.
He taught me how to drive.
He taught me about politics and politicians.
Took a group of us to a Kennedy rally in 1960.
I would work at a Kennedy election headquarters,
introduced by Mr. Ryan.

As a teacher he treated all students with respect.
Even the ones that did not return that respect.
When around him I felt like a man.

The day he died – I cried.

If you died tomorrow,
God forbid, says my friend,
the insurance agent provocateur,
if there is a God, it’s his guess as good as
mine, forbid that you should die tomorrow,
that is. The day after tomorrow might be more
convenient, I reply. Tomorrow, you see, is fully booked,
I have events up the ying-yang starting with my morning
coffee with the boys, and as for today I’m afraid the calendar
is already chock-full. Damned if I wouldn’t have a helluva
time finding time today to pay down even that measly
one dollar on the one-hundred-thousand-dollar life
insurance policy. God forbid indeed such a thing
should happen to a mere mortal man. Can’t
Principal just mind its own business today?

You didn’t text or call
I find instead a short illegible list -
Reminders for you? Me? Someone else?
I peer at the writing whose form I recognize
but can’t piece together

I flip through the notebook knowing
I’m looking at what you don’t want to be seen
Commit the open page to the pencil cup
of my memory so I can return it the way
you left it when – if - you come back

I smooth the crumpled sheets
nervous you will appear and catch me
searching for you
searching for what I haven’t found
when you are here

The way the soft skin snaps
And separates as the knife
Runs through it
How the metal thuds when it
Reaches the stone
The crackle of fruit ripping
Away from the pit
As the juice drips onto your hand
Slurping the outside pinky edge
So the floor won’t get sticky
Then you take a bite
Sunset bright
And sigh over the beauty
Of slicing this summer peach
On the solstice

Walking down the circular path
to the vaulted room – Radiation
treatment soon.

Turning the corner, she looked up
smiling at me. She just finished her
treatment. Seven or eight, I think.

Snuggled in her arm, she carried a
Teddy Bear.
“Does that help?” I asked.
She smiled, “Yes.”

The next day walking the path
there he was, sitting on the hand
rail – her Teddy Bear.
“Oh no, look she forgot her bear.”

“No, she didn’t.”
I looked at my guide confused.
“No, she left him for you.”

My Dad always told me that:
real men do not cry.
But I did.

And yes, it helped.

An earlier version of this piece was published in the memoir Tilted: The Post Brain Surgery Journals (2015).

My mom had started wearing her dead mother’s clothes.

“See, she was the same height as me, but much wider,” she said to me, bunching the back of a grey plaid wool jacket, or maybe a short mink coat. She would be standing on the porch of my and Nick’s bungalow, and I, distractedly picking dead leaves out of the hanging ferns, would nod and make a noise of approval, while wondering how to get my mother off this slide she was hell bent on going down.

My mom had started wearing her mother’s, whom we all had called “Grammy,” old clothes almost every day — they were “perfect for work,” she said, like a navy blazer with shoulder pads and gold-braid detail, and baggy polyester slacks the color of putty. She had even gotten into Grammy’s costume jewelry, chunky coral necklaces and silver rings with big, black stones. This was a textbook case of grief, I thought. But how to stop grief? Could it be stopped? What harm would this do, anyway?

Grammy had died unexpectedly several months earlier. She had fallen to the floor in front of her closet while deciding what to wear. Heart attack, early in the morning. Mom and I had agreed that was how we wanted to die, also. Granddad had been shaving in the adjoining bathroom, hadn’t even heard Grammy fall, and when he found her it was already too late. They had been married sixty years. He was bereft, miserable, depressed — which was why Mom was wearing Grammy’s clothes. She wanted to help her father feel better. She missed her mother. Take your pick. Fur coats from Russia, turtlenecks from Land’s End, sequined sweaters and painted silk scarves. It was all still usable.

These days, my mom would drive the 90 minutes to visit me once a month or so. I lived in a college town that had hip restaurants and gourmet supermarkets, so we would get lunch and buy groceries while chattering away. My mom would always treat, she was unfailingly generous. I would seldom protest, sometimes buying our afternoon coffee for posterity’s sake. But I was a graduate student who made a pittance by teaching composition classes, and we both knew I didn’t have much to give.

“They’re perfectly good clothes, some of them quite expensive,” Granddad would say to my mom. “No sense in letting them go to waste.” Mom repeated the same words later to me, walking the downtown sidewalk in some bizarre outfit, half Grammy’s red silk blouse, and half her own blue jeans. She had looked into getting the clothes tailored, but it was abhorrently expensive, so made do with safety pins. Mom and Grammy had the same shoe size, too, so in the winter she started going around in some black fur boots with brass toes. In the springtime she showed up at my door in some dirty white cork sandals. I just shrugged.

As time went on, I tried to be more blunt with my mom, saying things like, “You don’t need to prove anything by wearing Grammy’s clothes,” or “Granddad will be O.K. even if you don’t want to go around in that sweater.” The most plain I could get was, “You really don’t look great in Grammy’s clothes, Mom. They’re not you.”

What I said was true. All her life, she had been a terrific-looking mom: thin, with muscles from tennis and running; dark brown hair that was long and thick. She had a classic style of crisp white blouses and soft chinos, with sharp black stilettos and red gabardine cocktail dresses for nights out. She was a pretty lady. It was just a fact, and I could see in her face that my words finally sunk in a little bit. But then she would lift her chin, and the conversation was over.

At the end of an outing, after my mom drove away, home to her tiny town with Kansas yellow fields and blue skies, and her household of her husband and Granddad, who had moved in with them after Grammy died, I was home alone. As I put away the bag of groceries she had just bought for me, things like edamame hummus, rice crackers, and salad greens, I would think about how my mom was grieving all wrong. I stored these thoughts for Nick and then unrolled them for him later, when he got home from his job at the newspaper, where he was a photographer.

“It’s a little twisted,” I said after telling him her latest antics with the clothes. We were driving home from the hardware store, a box of ribs we’d bought from the food truck in the parking lot on my lap. The ribs had smelled so good, but I didn’t really like eating them. “Don’t you think?”

“Definitely,” said Nick, who loved ribs. “Why doesn’t your mom just say ‘no’ to your granddad?”

I waved my hand. As if. “And she criticizes Grammy for the smallest things she used to do. Like good things — the way she used to go and pick up trash in her church parking lot, or clean the pews with furniture polish. Write checks for five dollars. Why does she focus on the bad?”

Nick shook his head. I got quiet. We drove on. I had never had to worry about my mom before, not really. She was an extremely capable person who took risks, someone who had divorced my father, whom I adored, packed up my younger brothers, and moved from Michigan to Kansas (which I have never quite forgiven her for, which she knows). Sometimes, a person you love makes choices you can’t ever get behind. But you move on. In ways.

During our visits or conversations on the phone, Mom and I would talk about how Granddad was grieving all wrong, too. He would not go to any support groups at his church. He would not meet the rest of the old men in town for coffee at the McDonalds at 6 a.m. All he wanted to do was drink gin martinis after work, without eating anything. Mom and Granddad worked together, running the town’s daily newspaper. They were good at it and put in long hours.

On the phone, Mom went on and on. “Did you know that Dad divides all the utility bills into thirds, and pays his portion in exact change?” she said to me. “He wears tennis shoes he’s owned for twenty years. I wish I could keep shoes for that long!”

I wanted to talk about something, anything else. Mainly myself. Maybe Nick and I’s upcoming wedding. Maybe graduate school, which I alternately liked and wanted to quit. But usually I stopped myself. Mom had her hands full. “One night he says he can’t go on living, and the next day he books a trip to Borneo!” Mom said. He had the guest bedroom at her house but his clothes were still in suitcases. He didn’t make the coffee in the morning, but sat in his room dressed and with the light on until Mom got up and made some. But they managed. At least that’s what Mom told me.

One day, after a lunch at our favorite health-food café where we both got vegetarian Reuben’s, Mom gave me a heavy paper bag. It had been about six months since she had begun wearing Grammy’s clothes, and now, finally, she had stopped doing it so frequently, folding the Faire Isle sweaters and long wool pleated skirts with tissue paper and stacking them in cardboard boxes. She was unsure of what to do with them still, but had begun to believe me about how she didn’t need to wear them, at least all the time. After Mom left, I emptied the bag on my bed. It was nothing but Grammy’s stretched-out sports bras in colors like hot pink and purple, socks, and a filmy blue nightgown. I didn’t know what to do with the stuff. I couldn’t give the items away, but didn’t want to wear them. What would Mom do? Then it occurred to me that she was doing it already.

I don’t know what to do
with the kettle bells of your words
because the curl of your hair
just above your ear
makes my fingers itch
My thoughts spin around
the rollercoaster of my mind
but never make it out of my mouth
Their screaming stays with me
So this is how I speak
In thoughts that come hours after
In smooth lines strung with all
that I wanted to say when I couldn’t
While your quick questions skipped
across the pond of my stillness
I turned inward
looking for answers
collecting in the deep
hiding from prey in dark crevices
until breaking at the surface
my response found the sun set
the breeze cool
You were no longer there to hear

Instead my voice traces itself
onto this thin paper
my answer
for now
for you to read

How can I think about a future
when I’m still busy fitting myself
into everyone else’s playlists
trying them on for size

There’s no need to respond

Or you can

Just know I’ll need time
to get into my wet suit

Race of many drops
Sending in many dops
Many wins, some draws, many losses
Quite severe, filling the air, few pauses

Generous cloud feeds the thirsty land
Grateful plants maximize the moisty sand
Pedestrians release sounds of utmost outcry
An idea to wait and challenge the falls they wouldn’t buy

A beautiful painting from a vehicle splash’s brush on a pedestrian’s canvas
An apology from a dry cloth on a warm body in a car, surely seems like arrogance
Strokes from the cloud gets farmers on a quest to feed the earth
Not only them but also their family, as the rain moves down, have to move up the mat

The girl sat in the middle of the field
With the wind whipping her dark hair
She stared straight ahead holding out
A handful of dandelions

She wore a crown of clover blossoms
And her countenance was carefree
Her mother, many lengths away
Rejoiced across the lawn

She did not notice the others approaching
Her mother began running to her
Attempting to shield her from them
Her mother alone could see the enemies

Though bathed in light she would soon be
Overtaken by a cloud of garnet poison
Issuing unseen from the orifices of all
Those friendly folk

She ran and washed her treasure’s hands
As Jesus washed the feet of his disciples
In the middle of the muddy soccer field
She applied the stinging ointments

And even in her Ursa aspect
She felt as though she failed her star,
The beautiful child, for she wanted her
To trust the world and hope

The massive crowd cheers as they enter the Great Hall. Aadya, now wearing a rich cerulean gown designed specifically for this moment, is a little unnerved by all the attention focused on the two of them. The warm glowing feeling that made her head swim during the ceremony is still full blown in her body as it was in bed with Poma. The freshly imprinted hours alone with him are circulating through her veins as a new pulse of life bonds her with her husband in unspeakable ways. Could this all be real?

YES, IT IS.

“No!”

Poma is visibly surprised at her response. She gives him a shrewd, lascivious smile to taunt him. “I will not have you reading my mind unless we are in the bed and my thoughts are only of the way I wish to be pleased.”

He takes her hand in his, laughs and kisses it ceremoniously. “Aadya, you are full of surprises.”

“I mean it.” She gives him the sternest glare she can muster and then sucks in her breath. I can’t believe I just spoke to him like that, but he does not mind. Going to bed with him has already changed the way we are together. YES, MY LOVE YOU ARE RIGHT.

The realization that Poma could now be so easily in her mind causes her to hold her breath close. Squeezing her hand tightly, Poma leads her through the throng in the great hall. The swath of people parts in sporadic waves before them until they reach the head table where King Larsa stands and salutes his son. The crowd, having cleared a large circle around them, roars as he returns his father salute by raising his arm while still grasping hers in a tight clutch.

Aadya is mortified as she realizes the meaning of this dramatic exchange and feels her cheeks flush hot with the shame of it. But no one notices. They are all too busy having a good time.

Hunger claws at her resilience and she folds into her chair when she finally reaches it. To her delight, succulent meats buttery tender and falling off the bone are served to her. She still doesn’t quite understand what Poma’s relationship is with meat. He still eats small amounts. She encourages the server to keep coming with the slices of red meat and plunges into the feast. No one has told me not to eat meat.

There were also fruits, candied bitter and salty, berries, breads and cheeses both sweet and tart, nuts of distinctively sodden tastes, dishes of creamy roots and tendrils of forest vegetation, wine of many colors and sweetness, and tiny cakes, fermented, sweet and savory. Of particular interest to Aadya, are the sugar crystalized flowers still aromatic from the ground they sprouted from, which are delicate but crunchy when you bite into them. Aadya looks over to Poma to guide her through this maze of delicacies, but he is busy toasting with his family and friends. There is a ring of tables on the outside of the crowd filled with the same delicacies the royal table is being served, but people are mostly snacking and roaming, rather than sitting. The few tables where guests are sitting are filled with elders and children who pop up sporadically to ramble.

Aadya’s uncle makes his way to her table with a ludicrous grin on his face, making her realize just how drunk he is.

“So, little one, you are a princess now!” He raises his glass to toast her. Your father would be so proud.” Would he?

“Thank you, uncle but I have accomplished nothing. I have only followed my heart.”

“It must be a good heart to follow.” He says with more kindness than she has ever evidenced. “You have found your path and it is favorable.” Aadya cannot contain her sour expression. Favorable to fill your own coffers as well.

With wobbling knees, her uncle wavers and his wine teeters on the edge of his goblet. Aadya is afraid he might collapse there in front of her, but suddenly a hush falls over the boisterous crowd as a man and a woman enter, and the crowd again parts ways.

The man, bearded, dark and naked from the waist up wears golden serpents' bracelets twisting up his muscular arms. The woman’s body is mostly bare except for a few well-placed pieces of gold cloth secured with cords of gold and gems. She is both buxom and petite, with well-defined body features that men notice, and women envy. A small corps of muscular men, naked from the waist up also, appear pounding on drums as the two begin to dance. Their movements flow like liquid grace, and all eyes are riveted on their performance. As the drum sounds soar, the din of the jovial diners dies down and the dancers began to leap into the air in a captivating, erotic display. Aadya, who had just hours before been introduced to the fine art of physical expression with a man, is overwhelmed by the beauty and eroticism of the performance, and despite how hungry she is, succumbs to the rapture of their dance, only occasionally dabbing some new morsel clumsily to her mouth.

Poma grasps her hand and with the look of desire, slides their two clasped hands down between her thighs. Compelled by intense pleasure she momentarily fades between the present and the immediate past of their time together in their bedchambers. Shaking it off, she gives Poma a modest smile and continues to watch the dancers who spin and leap with pure grace and synchronicity. The dancers finish with a deep throated kiss and a dramatic fusion pose making the crowd roar and stomp their feet.

Poma jumps to his feet clapping vigorously. The dancers approach and dramatically bow to the matrimonial couple. Poma hands the woman one of the flowers placed nearby for such a gesture. The female dancer smiles and bows even deeper, her plump breasts nearly cascading out of her costume. Her smile for him makes Aadya feel uneasy, but Poma quickly takes Aadya’s hand and lifts, helping her to her feet. He gives her a peremptory nod, indicating she should honor the male performer, which she does rather awkwardly, feeling out of place presented with yet another unrehearsed moment. As she hands the performer his flower, she is startled at the lustful look he gives her. Poma laughs when he sees his bride falter from the gaze of another man. MASTER BRUTUS KNOWS WHEN HE SEES BEAUTY. She shakes her head.

NO, IT IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK. I ONLY DESIRE YOU.

Poma’s smile lingers as he lets his pride soar.

The crowd begins to chant and stomp their feet. “We want Princess Aadya, we want Princess Aadya!” This is the part she is sure they are supposed to dance. Because Poma had been in exile before the wedding, Aadya had been trained with a surrogate, while Bodie chanted the measure of the steps to music with all the passion of a bored animal trainer.

I feel sick. I can’t do this. I’m going to disappoint everyone! Then Poma lifts the ceremonial cup, sitting on the table before them, drinks and then puts it to her lips. It is the same pearly white elixir given to her before the ceremony, and again, as soon as it touches her lips, she is instilled with all the confidence she needs. They begin to dance before the crowd effortlessly. At some point she almost feels airborne.

Their perfunctory performance is brief, and they sit to listen to hours of endless enunciations of blessings and toasts from everyone in the room of social significance until at last the King and Queen speak.

Queen Mesa stands and lifts her goblet toward the nearby couple. “My dearest son, we partake in the fulfillment of prophecy tonight and bless this union which shall commence a new era. It is your first born who will lead this world of ours into a new day.”

What? No one has mentioned prophesies about the future. Aadya lifts her heavy goblet unsteadily toward her new mother-in-law and smiles, genuinely appreciative for the acceptance she has generously bestowed upon her, but leery of her words. And what will the King say?

King Larsa still looking like an older version of his son, he has the same smile and steel blue eyes. “My dear son and his bride, we lift our cups in celebration of the years ahead and welcome our new daughter, Aadya, into our hearts.” Short and sweet. No apparent negativity. No spilled secrets.

This night is almost over. I am so exhausted. Aadya turns to Poma and with her eyes pleads to leave. He takes her hand and escorts her to their chambers where a roaring fire awaits them.

What is a cobbler? According to the Oxford Dictionary the word traces back to 1859 and is “a sort of pie, baked in a pot lined with dough of great thickness, upon which the fruit is placed; according to the fruit, it is an apple or a peach cobbler.” This pastry evolved into a “waste not, want not” fruit dish; whereas, hard or overripen fruit would be used, not necessarily the perfect pieces of fruit. Essentially, cobblers are “deep dish dessert casseroles made of a sweetened fruit that forms a thick syrup when cooked.”

Ingredients:

6 large or 8 medium peaches, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons minced candied ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, divided

3+ cups all-purpose flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

2 cups half and half
2 tablespoons melted butter, cooled slightly

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Grease eight 4” ramekins or 8 or 9” baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix the peaches, ½ cup sugar, cornstarch, ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and candied ginger.
3. Pour peach mixture evenly amongst ramekins or the bottom of a 9” inch baking pan.
4. In a large bowl using a whisk combine flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, salt, ground ginger, 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon, and baking powder.
5. Add 2 cups half and half. Gently fold the liquid into the dry ingredients, taking care not to work the dough too much.
6. Add additional flour in small amounts as needed, until the dough is slightly sticky. Some dry spots are fine, just do not overwork the dough.
7. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Dust the top with flour, and gently press the dough into a flat circle with your fingers, about 1” thick.
8. Use a floured cutter to cut the dough into at least eight 3”– 4” shapes. To keep from overworking the dough, cut the shapes as close together as you can to get the most out of the dough.
9. Top with dough shapes; brush melted butter and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon atop dough shapes.
10. Place the baking dish or ramekins on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet. Bake until the tops of the biscuits are golden brown and the peach mixture is bubbling all over, rotating halfway through. For ramekins the bake time is about 20 minutes, and for the baking dish the bake time is about 30 minutes.
11. Serve with dollops of whipped cream or ice cream.

Makes 8 servings.

The androgynous sirens of the Buffalo River—
they are not female destroying angels—
appear to me in the full moon light around alternate bends in the river.
They take the form of loose-limbed, fluid-dancing otters
dressed in miles and miles of light-spangled, flowing black silk.

Dip your hands into their essence, the water,
warm as a sensory deprivation tank.
But no sensory deprivation here,
only full sensory immersion in holy water.
Lower your whole body into their embrace and
allow them to wrap you in their liquid silk.

Listen to their songs:
the basso profundo of the bull frog, the tenor tones,
trumpeting-whaas of tree frogs and saxophone squawks of herons,
the lamenting whippoorwills and be-here-now tail slaps of the beavers—
lest you drift into sleep and your boat drifts
into overhanging tree branches.

The sirens disguise themselves as beery-breathed, big-breasted
biker babes for the red necks in the rock-smashing aluminum canoes,
raucously making their way from one gravel bar to the next.
The rednecks serve the sirens in their own way;
for that and their good-natured alcoholic haze,
ya gotta love ’em.

They ask if they’d seen us earlier,
all kayakers look alike to them.
We agree and laugh and tell them ‘nowhere’
when they ask where we’re going.
We laugh and tell them ‘we forget’
when they ask where we’d put in.
We laugh and float downstream on that
warm, wet-shining silvery ribbon of a river.

Sometimes the sirens hide near the turtles
behind rocks and logs when there’s
heavy traffic on the river in the moonlight in the summer.
‘When?’ we devotees of the sirens ask,
‘When did full-moon floating get to be so popular?’
‘Used to be…’
‘15-25 years ago!’
‘only us river rats on the river.’
‘Remember the time…?’

My boat floats off into a cove on the other bank;
the sound of my husband’s ever present pennywhistle
wafts up river from his boat.

Two of us drift apart from the rest, just staring
at the dark indigo and forest green washes
in pools of black-sequined water and stay long
after the others paddle on.

Lights and soft voices appear from a cove on the left.
‘Ahoy?’ I question.
‘Ahoy…?’ comes a timorous young voice
on a cloud of marijuana.
‘Sorry, wrong ahoy.’
I dip my paddle into the current.

The sirens send out the teenaged, otter-incarnated sylphs
who’d slept all day.  They’re listening to Andalusian lute music
on their waterproof headphones.  In the cool night air,
they seek the rapids, playing roller coaster,
riding the floaters on their acrobatic backs.

Our convoy comes together around a fire on an empty gravel bar,
and we linger long, savoring the last sips and nibbles, savoring
each other, savoring the river and moonlight, inhaling riverine air.
A heron flies across the yellow disk already near to setting.

Could someone please tell me the name
of a bird in Oklahoma
that makes a sound
like a telephone ringing
in 1963 as you rush to it
with a good idea of who’s calling?

I’ve been hearing it for awhile now
but it’s in a tree and I can’t
see it to describe it to you
and that’s all I have to
go on at this moment
but isn’t that something?

Beads of rain slide down window glass
Prisms of colors reflecting back
The afghan made by a distant relative
wraps my body in warmth and clarity

Eventually, the pitter-patter ends
and then, a whole new world begins
I go outside to inhale the freshness
and let a bird’s song leave me breathless

(An older woman, Dorothy, is looking with strong intent into her cellphone. She is looking at some instructions on a piece of paper and is following steps as she uses her phone. She points the phone at her face and hits a button.)