Six Stories, Six Voices

January 27, 2014

Six Stories, Six Voices

One.

We’re having drinks at a pub in town, all sharing stories about whatever comes to mind. He tugs on the sleeve of his oatmeal-colored sweater, giving a snorting chuckle at someone else’s comment.

Yeah, when I got my wisdom teeth out,

we found out I have this really weird heart disease

or something, because I actually died right on the table.

They hooked me up to a heart monitor out of routine,

you know, cause of the anesthesia,

but I don’t think anyone expected it

when I just flatlined

for about fifteen seconds.

They probably just looked at each other, like

“What just...?

What do we...?

Aaaaand he’s back.”

But yeah, apparently my heart stops

every night in my sleep.

I’m guessing it’s not for fifteen seconds

all the time, but... I mean, I always wake up.

He takes a sip of his ale as the rest of us laugh a little in shocked awe. “Wow, uhh... you should really get that checked out or something!”

Oh, I did. Yeah, I went to U-Mass General,

and they gave me this huge heart monitor

I had wear strapped to my chest for a week.

It looked like a bomb, all wires poking out.

We had to call and tell the high school

I wasn’t a terrorist or anything.

That’s how we know it happens every night.

Took it back to the doctors, and they said “Yeah,

we...have no idea what this is.”

And this is U-Mass General.

So like, a pretty big deal. But they couldn’t do anything about it.

So I just

die every night in my sleep.

I guess I’m so relaxed that I just

pass on to another life.

Two.

We’re all discussing school, the future, and the scary reality of graduate study, when someone asks her, “Don’t you have that weird post-doc in your lab?”

Distance

September 11, 2012

distance

Consider

the space between the gull

and the sea, its separate levels:

here the disparate mist,

still cold and white despite

the sun’s heat, a chilly rainbow or two;

here nothing but air and particles

of dust, floating in the currents; and here

other seabirds, swooping and calling

in scattered swarms,

and the one gull,

apart, eyeing the horizon

or the sand, until,

diving downward, crossing through

air and dust and sunlight and water,

it makes the tiniest of splashes

as the open beak touches the waves,

and emerges, and soars back up.

I consider

the golden-red stain of this October, and how

the leaves in free-fall drift along rivers,

tracing the miles between here

and there, as I, with hands

and feet, slowly pantomime

whatever I’m asked to

without you.

I long for the kind of moment

when the night sky is streaked with rain,

the stars like ocean spray: a moment when

two strangers walk past each other, and one

decides to smile.

9:10 Metro-North to Stamford

July 27, 2012

9:10 Metro-North to Stamford

i hope i have the right train she

did say track 19, didn’t she or maybe

that was just 9:10 no, it was definitely 19, this is

the right train i sit down

in the back car, the first one i come to i

don’t want to miss the train

a man with a blue cotton shirt and a sweaty forehead walks

up to the conductor in the aisle, asks for the bathroom

every other car, the conductor says

we’re leaving in like five minutes, right the man says

no, in like one minute, the conductor says

the man says, that’s okay and walks

off the train my mom tells me this story

of one time she was on a train and i was

a baby and she had to get off to use the bathroom

because the one on board wasn’t big enough

for both of us, only the difference is this man

doesn’t have a baby, and my mom

got back on the train

i slide down a little in the old vinyl seats, their

familiar colors burgundy, navy, dirty beige,

like a faded fourth of july parade, like the ones

i went to as a toddler with my family, when we sat

on the hot brick half-walls near the sidewalk on the corner

of our street and main street and as the parade

passed, my brother and sister and i clutched little

paper bags hoping some of the parading people

would throw us some candy we didn’t care much for

the fire engines or police cars or girl scout floats

or the really loud guns they fired sometimes, right in our

ears, it seemed, but we just wanted some treats

for wearing the right colors and being very good

at mamaronek, a large woman in a dark blouse,

pencil skirt, tiny high heels moves up from a different car,

sees so many seats are full, and slumps with a sigh

on the bench facing backwards, right next

to the doors and i remember the times we used to ride

on the metro, when it wasn’t as busy as this, no tired

late-night commuter ghosts with silent mouths and white wires

stringing from their ears, but when i was a kid in an empty

train, if i ever sat down it was in a backwards seat,

because it was like a rollercoaster, and i never got sick,

just like if we spun our swing at home around and around

and around and then let it go, sitting tight curled up

on the seat, we would ride and ride and ride and ride and never

ever get dizzy

in the seat across from me, a routine man has hung up

his black suit jacket on the luggage rack, making him black, white,

black, from his hair to his shirt to his pants, a sitting barcode

on the red white blue seats in his hand he has a can wrapped

in a paper bag and it makes me stare for just a second because

i didn’t know people actually did that my dad

never did, but he never drinks except two beers with dinner

every night, and sometimes when we were younger he’d let us

taste just the smallest sip of it, and it tasted awful,

but i remember a few times i was very thirsty and i didn’t want

to get my own glass of water and i would want to drink down

all of that awful stuff and maybe

there are just a whole lot of really thirsty people

a few hours ago today i walked through the dark city

streets for the first time in seven years

as the rain soaked the thirsty earth

and all the lights made the wet asphalt glitter like fireworks

i must have been grinning like an idiot even if

my throat was choking up a little, not

because it was really beautiful, but because it might

have been mine if i’d stayed, and now i was just

a stranger there was a man with stringy gray

hair that mopped his head wearing a cardboard sign

saying why life, live 4 beer, and he did a sort of

half-dance as i watched him and walked past, and he said, you

have a good night, smiley

regarding the man from the Congo

November 8, 2010

regarding the man from the Congo named Fabrice Ilunga who came into our classroom, sat at one of our laminated desks, and told us about his country with a soft, uncanny smile

ebonized eyes and

long fingers linger on

the small handout

in front of him. 

a keen gaze and such smooth skin,

he begins to speak

with quiet words as pale yellow

as his palms.

his small hesitations,

he remembers civil wars and

corruption and places like

Kinshasa.

he knows five languages

and the definition of

injustice

in all of them.

it’s a country of diamonds and gold,

he tells us. 

but it all goes out

and doesn’t come back. 

his laugh is deep and

throaty and real as Mrs. Jones

makes a joke about infrastructure

or electricity. 

it’s difficult to get things done,

he tells us,

if everyone works independently.

and they do.

here in our little classroom,

none of us really get it, because

we’re still staring into space,

or worse, at maps. 

the bell rings

and the class ends;

as we walk away,

he shakes our hands.

for a moment before we part,

my fingers slip smoothly through his,

as though they were piano keys.