Julie

February 8, 2014

Julie 

Tractors.

That’s how she starts the story,

her mouth taking a shape between

grin and grimace. Tractors.

I see her mind working

backwards, trying to recall

each detail as it was

or should have been

the first time. This

was not her first time

“at the rodeo,” or so she termed it,

so after a few boring hours

sitting on the couch in his parents’ house,

watching TV and occasionally making out,

she lets him lead her up the stairs to his room

where they find each other

under the cover of sheets

and darkness.

Afterwards, rolling over,

he reaches for a lamp that for some reason

revs like an engine, then illuminates

the room in bright John Deere green and yellow:

John Deere wallpaper, John Deere

photographs, John Deere models

on the dresser. Tractors

everywhere.

She might have yelped in horror, might have hid

her face in a John Deere pillow.

Me, I would have laid back and laughed.

How perfect this was, what a testament

to the sharp thrill of gasoline,

an engine’s sudden excitement,

to fields plowed fresh and new.

D.E.

February 28, 2014

D.E.

“...This research was carried out on D.E. who was born in 1954. In 1970 he was involved in a motor-scooter accident. A bilateral carotid angiogram...revealed almost total occlusion of the left internal carotid artery... His speech output consists primarily of 3-4 words arranged in simple syntactic structures... He is currently employed as a store keeper...”

His name might be David, or Donald,

or Daniel. He might have blond hair

or brown, blue eyes or green. He is currently

employed as a store keeper.

At sixteen I still held my first kiss as precious,

I daydreamed about what I might want to study in college,

and I began to learn how to put words together in just the right way

in an attempt to form something beautiful.

He speaks softly, maybe with a self-conscious smile.

He is currently employed as a store keeper.

Scavengers

February 15, 2014

Scavengers

Skunk:

the smell of wartime,

and our backyard the battleground.

It was striped stink-bombs

versus masked nighttime bandits

in the war to end all wars,

the spoils to be the banquet of spoiled food

from the unlocked dumpsters

of the restaurant next door.

My parents fought with the managers,

the dumpsters being their responsibility,

on their property, not ours.

My siblings and I fought amongst ourselves,

although that had nothing to do

with food, or territory, or wild animals.

I don’t remember who called the skunk-catcher,

or if the dumpsters were ever locked, but in the end

it seems we gave some kind of victory to the raccoons,

whether the creatures earned it

or not.

Tree swing

February 14, 2014

Tree swing

A sturdy plank of wood, coarse-grained

but smooth to the touch. A thick rope wrapped

several times around a tree branch, twenty feet up,

two strands snaking down to loop through holes bored

in either side of the plank, knotted and tied up,

secured with a metal figure-eight.

I loved to shimmy up the rope,

inching up and up, past

the half-way mark where the two cords

twined together, up

until I could touch the rough oak bark.

You could have someone spin you, sitting,

and the cabled rope would twist and bunch up

until you were high off the ground, and then

they’d let go, the world spiraling into a kaleidoscope blur

as you sat tight curled up on the swing, and after, to prove

you weren’t dizzy, even when the world swam drunkenly

before your eyes, you would walk the edge

of the driveway, tightrope-style,

one foot at a time, perfectly straight.

Holding onto the back of the swing,
the grown-ups were strong enough

to run forward and push you over their heads,

sending you in long gliding strokes

back and forth. Once, my younger cousin

overwhelmed by the rush of exhilaration,

the height, the speed, let go.

           

                                    He flew

for one breathtaking,

heart-dropping moment,

his little body cutting all ties

to the ground, hurtling

through the air

like a stone

or satellite.

Home videos

February 13, 2014

Home videos

So as to capture the taste of everyday life

my dad would turn on the video camera,

point it at us, and let it run. If we knew

he was filming us, we only wanted to see

our own faces on the screen, the digital

moving image more impressive than what

we saw with our own eyes. A mirror

with a memory.

What curious, greedy things we were.

And now, old enough for our own video cameras,

if we wanted, we still watch our lives play back to us,

still laugh as my brother takes his tumble

into the inflatable pool. We watch

again, and again, as someone always touches

the irresistible flickering tip

of a birthday candle.

Annadale

February 11, 2014

Annadale

In the town where I grew up,

in the gray, green-shuttered house, our yard

teemed with crocuses in the spring.

Like spearheads or neat rows

of pale pointed teeth, greedy fingers

digging up through soil and snow,

heads of scepters, regal crocuses,

sprouting in unmistakable, glossy,

royal colors—pure eggshell, deep yellow,

lavender and violet—petals growing

thick with secrets, until finally unfolding like dawn

breaking, hungry flower mouths opening

wide. I would tuck the thin,

waxy stems behind my ears as charms against evil,

or make the blossoms a crown and become

the Faerie Queen of Annadale, barefoot and wild,

breath like magic blooming in my chest

as I commanded swarms of pixies and sprites

against the shadows of snap-dragons,

fighting and dancing until falling back

breathless, glowing in the late sunlight, my arms

outstretched, my hands turned skyward,

my toes curling in the cool grass.

And even now in these winter days, these waiting days,

days that wear gray skies and thin light,

I test the air, and watch the ground,

listen for the distant drumming:

the sign that the world is once again

on the cusp of crocuses.

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

Whispered thoughts and curled fists

June 12, 2010

Whispered thoughts and curled fists

Somewhere in the past, lightning

tears silently at the sky

until a sort of insatiable thunder rings out

and tumbles down.

You heard it.

I saw you, flinching like a jack-in-the-box,

you and your wet

artichoke heart.

Charisma, you spat.

That’s all we have.

You began to throw at my feet

every compromise you ever made,

and crushed them under your toe

until they resembled the residue of that marrow bone

your dog chewed for hours

yesterday on the hardwood floor. 

You imagined any possible

tetrahedral, stained-glass afterthoughts

we might have had,

and threw the biggest rocks you could find

until it was all just a heap of shattered stars

in our heads.

But let’s face it:

we both did.

After all,

we dreamed up such big futures for ourselves,

much too grand for the lives we led,

and for the overwhelming reality

of the way we are.

Way before us,

a thin rain starts to fall.

I needed a good storm.

You and other failed wishes

June 11, 2012

You and other failed wishes

I think I might be starting to see things differently.

Every time I catch a glimpse of you,

my heart does something funny and unpleasant and

it makes me wonder how many bruises it has,

dropping from such a height

into my stomach.

You were never one who could see constellations

in the freckles on someone’s skin, and you

never understood why my spine would crack sometimes

if I breathed in too deeply.

You never knew that I didn’t like

the things we kept in coffins to stay there for long,

or that every time you hid behind your smile I had to fight

myself a little harder.

So many things began to go unspoken

until I had so much trouble distinguishing

the truth from the not-so-true and I

never truly realized that behind your eyes

you never cared about my mental health, anyway. 

You could always keep pushing it

because in all honesty, I never caught on

that I needed someone

with much better intentions and many more words,

someone who could appreciate in the same way I do

the folds in the jeans at my knees,

or the way the trees in my backyard can sometimes catch

the sunlight.

But I blink.

And I see you

seeing me

differently.

You see the way that my voice is a little too loud and

my laugh a little too much and

how every second I have, I feel the need to prove myself.

You’re beginning to recognize

that I never really had a life of the mind after all,

and I’m actually just one of them

with a very convincing disguise.

My eyes are dead and I still smile mostly

because they tell me too, but I could never manage

to watch my words and not much has changed after all, has it.

No, nothing has changed: you’re just beginning

to get that you really did fool yourself in order to cope

with some reality that sometimes still bothers you

even though you don’t let anyone see it. 

I give a fake little scream at

a ghost or a spider and I believe all the while that I’m

wearing my own clothes when I don’t even own

the thoughts that flow through my head. 

I am so disgusting and obvious and shallow and

it’s killing you now that you ever thought that someone like me

could be beautiful

or in any way good for you. 

I have to close my eyes.

I see too much.

I think about how I have to try not to look angry

even though I am nothing of the sort,

and I feel this creeping hurt in my bones

and in my head and still it makes me tear up

to think that these are the only things

we ever accomplished together.

I still scatter the dandelion seeds,

but if my pride will ever let me,

someday

I think I’d like to look back on what became of us

and wonder,

what kind of wish was this?

Garland Girl

June 7, 2012

published in on the cusp's magazine "cycle" Summer 2012

Garland Girl

My sister, she sits on her summer swing, dressed in red,

the wind making her skirts billow, and all the cotton

seeds drift and scatter.  it seems like something more

should be happening, as she clutches a handful

of faded white daisies, flowers from her youth.

she stares off at the coming autumn, as I stare at this photograph

of her.  Years ago, she used to photograph

everything, especially the valerians in their dying reds,

the ancient daisies as they lost what youth

they had.  She’d sit by the foot of the poplars in a cotton

dress, watching summer disappear just like the handful

of dusty petals she held.  She would say, no more

are the days of sun and daisies.  And no more

were her days of sundresses and songs.  The photographs

she’d taken she burned until all that remained was a handful

of ashes and aged coals, the embers left burning red

only in her eyes as she watched the snow come down like cotton

quilts over the earth, like down plucked from goslings in their youth.

She longed for something golden or green, for the youth

of saplings as they stretch up to the sun, needing more and more

every day.  She wanted once again to dance through the cotton

fields as they spread their seeds.  Like a postcard photograph

the poppies would all bloom, gold and violet and red,

and their pollen would cling to her hair and her dress, a handful

of summer fairy dust.  In the long winter nights she had her hands full

of old daisy chains and pressed petals, stripped of youth

by january’s chill.  One by one, she pasted them all onto little red

valentines, her fingers shaking and tired, until she had more

hearts and dead flowers than she could count.  No photograph

could keep them alive, as no enchantment of the sun could keep the cotton

from blowing away in the wind.  While the world was draped in a cold cotton-

white she sat resigned, but in march was she ever a handful!

when the first green appeared in the snow, slowly showing through like a photograph

developing, her body remembered all the wildness and youth

it had lost when the leaves fell and the flowers wilted.  She needed more

of the life she saw growing, digging through snow and earth until her hands bled red.

Growing with the cotton, changing with the seasons of youth,

living and dying as inevitably as a handful of daisies; it’s hard to tell anymore,

but in this photograph, as we sit on her summer swing, our lips are stained red, red, red. 

beasts

January 25, 2011

beasts

we began in the air,

at the top of the mountain,

skis poised for a moment

at the very edge of that narrow trail.

but then ready-set-go we flew down,

reckless, careless,

yelling laughing taunting down

as the wind whipped our bare faces raw,

and at the end,

our bodies each tucked tight under,

you would somehow always win. 

we never noticed how close we came

to the trees,

to the edge.

we would still be gasping, grinning

as the chairlift freed our feet from the earth,

until the air around us was only filled

with the quiet vision of our exhalations

our chests would still throb

with hushed rabbit-breathing as, always,

his head tilted carefully to the side

and rested on my shoulder. 

a soft snowfall brushed, stung, numbed our cheeks;

our blue eyes stared straight ahead;

our mouths said nothing. 

we both watched

as the peak of the mountain approached us,

as it always did.

we each wished silently

never again to touch our skis

to the slick, steep ground.

if only we could have stayed in the sky

forever.