August in Fewer Words
Yesterday I picked up a ticket
Wondered what that meant, in the thick of a thicket
ADMIT ONE to the John Wilkes show
“Booth” was my favorite word til seven or so
Yesterday split my thumb cutting shallots
Thought about Mary sleeping on thin wool pallets
ADMIT ONE to the Western Theater
Grandma had to run cause granddad beat her
Yesterday tried to do a good deed
Went and unlearned me how to go read
ADMIT ONE to a bona fide college
Words like scripture, hands like knowledge
Today I closed my eyes and tried to sleep
Watched your eyes as they tried to weep
Admit one, God said, little secret
“A hand drew back and I didn’t seek it”
Guess I’m thinking bout the ends of summer
Hearse is coming in the crawl of a hummer
Admit one to the kingdom of heaven
And other words I unlearned since seven.
Transatlantic Telephone
went away for a year and the grass grew.
when the mower choked out back you said we’d glue
it back together and you weren’t kidding.
that’s the difference in between us but it ain’t hitting
like it used to do.
you smoke when you’re sad or you lost that too?
i used to call you dad and now we say “pa.”
somebody different to everybody is better than nothing at all
when you almost made it bigtime and lost your shot.
if there’s room on the couch we might make it a melting pot.
got a stoner, a loner, and a baby doll.
remember when i stood by you, i was this tall?
eclectic is what we call you knowing you’re crazy.
you got eye surgery but i know your gaze is still lazy
cause you take a break before you finish a fresh buzz.
read a couple mags and blink, now little brother’s got his peach fuzz.
the pay phones made you sound hazy.
could you push the coin instead of daisies?
i come up the stairs now just to sermonize
but think of you looking at me with an unbeliever’s eyes
and looking at you there and giving up.
i pretend not to, and sort your meds in the yellow cup.
you always said the party’s not over till somebody cries.
tell me dad, when we became strangers, did you realize?
Today's Weather
A frost-crusted jacket at the basketball hoop thaws.
Outlaws, we devour an egg-yolk sun, our knuckles
Buckling under the cold of the basketball pole and one sip
Drips from the hoop to our up-turned lips—it baptizes.
Prizes like water live forever, or God does, Al thinks.
Sinks dripping out there, we avoid them. To see straight
We wait a minute, and discuss. Just to sanctify cold that itches
In kitchens this morning, when the frost thaws.
Maws bit by sweaty teeth jeerin out, we come in and gape
Draped on the chairs, peerin at ourselves, our dignity lyin there
Starin, a funny thing for dignity to do. It wins and loses.
Who’s comin? asks Stan and Al shakes his head.
Dead already from the stare of forever.
Ever wonder where that water done come from?
Some of us laugh as the sweat on the window cries.
Dried up sources swelter like shelter from the sun.
Run? Stan asks. Who’s runnin? Somewhere, a kid
Hid under his baseball cap carries a bucket.
“Fuck it” he says under his breath, “I’m
Dime a dozen, I’m runnin.” None of us say
Hey man let’s go. None of us go on carrying water
To daughters and sons of frost that thaws.
Claws of an animal at the door send us scrambling
Shambling in like Stan’s father comes a frankenstein
Fine sweat on his shoulders. “Pack it up boys,”
Cloys the voice—it is Stan’s pop but he’s changed.
Rearranged by the alcohol, who can blame him for the sweat?
Setting course for the lake we tumble out of the place
Racing for nothing but the fear of forgiveness
Missed by an inch, chasing our tails. Only the tails whip with certitude—
Crude labor, dead-eyed wives, alcoholism, and the sting of the law.
Raw cold alone can wear us down into a bitter sleep.
Heaped over the bank we lay under the rain
Plain-sighted, losing the shine of our promise.
“Miss me, will ya?” Al says. He’s moving to the dry west in June.
Noon comes around with the lap of the lake. Stan speaks first. “Nah.”
Ah, the truth like drought. And under us, we pretend not to notice it—the frost that’s gone.
Alice and Rebecca
the electricity was redone that year
and we were stuck on the other end
of the school, what used to be
an elementary school according
to the crayon up the sides of my desk
like racing stripes. they took a whole
thursday which they said was to
switch out the old bulbs from the
elementary-school days
for new bulbs for our
new, improved days.
but in some freak trick the bulbs over my desk
were not the same as all the other bulbs.
the electricians packed up the next day.
i sat next to them glowing under
the overhead which spilt over me
in neon tears. i wondered about vision
loss a lot back then. “like an angel”
alice said. the janitors couldn’t
figure it out. rebecca was
kinder: “like a lamp.” on my direct left,
she bumped my elbow fourteen
times once in history—my
fluorescent elbow. i counted. “damned
mystery,” the janitors said. “damned—”
i was moved to the other side of
the room in october by a crack
in the wall that resembled our president
harry truman. learned a lot about
thoreau in october. not much about truman
though. he would sometimes grimace and i
would think about that old question
again. maybe i am blind, i would say
to myself. but i wasn’t blind. i saw
too much that scared me
to be blind.
a rat ate a fish right out of the
fish tank on veterans day for example
and this is when i realized death is not
the scariest thing. rebecca
was the first to see it so of course
no one knew really not to laugh.
a rat? it was too truthful to be true. “let’s
think about this,” ms. anderson said
with her hands steepled like in
prayer. “let’s see, is there a crack
behind the microwave somewhere?
is there a piece of food, rotting
behind the cabinet?” why would we
look for more rats, i thought.
it sat mocking her,
hands to the heavens. “ain’t nobody,”
rebecca kept whispering, “ain’t nobody
listens.” yeah, i did.
i listened when she would sometimes
say I Love You to alice under her breath
while i stared at harry truman
who had no eyes. I Love You so much
don’t you hear me? she would
sometimes say and i would
blink. my eyes hurt a lot then.
i got really sick from food poisoning
in the fall but how can food
be poisoned so bad as people
already are. they found a bottle of rat
poison in ms. anderson’s desk
drawer after the day the rat came
and we had a new teacher
after that. “what the hell
is up with that light?” are the first words
i heard come out of his mouth.
he didn’t say anything when alice
and rebecca were gone
for ten days and their chairs hunched
forward empty as if vomiting, into the
shaft of light. he made us talk a lot.
someone mentioned how they killed rats
at our school with a shotgun and he
asked how that felt. “how does that feel?”
he would ask when our fat tongues let out
‘divorce’ or ‘uncle jimmy’ or ‘shotgun’
from between our poisoned teeth. we would
shrug. “worse for the rat,” someone said.
the day before they came back, shrouded
in an untouchable truancy like martyrs
suddenly sitting up on the battlefield
somebody said the word lesbian: that was
a word we all knew but had never
thought to say, before. “let’s
talk about that,” the new teacher said.
let’s not, i thought.
now I sit next to them in my dreams,
under the shaft of light, glowing like it used to.
certainly most people remember
what they look like. it surprised me,
yesterday, when i saw the grim
line of my smile on me.
or was it one of the other lines,
which surprised me?
“certainly” is a word i try not to use much,
anymore. sometimes i ache
for when i knew that i was pretty,
and when my smile would melt on
smooth as beeswax,
but i ache of pity for myself.
because the year i sat next to
alice and rebecca, i thought
i was enchanted.
when they fixed that light the day
the two of them came back, the word
lesbian still hanging in the air, i realized
it was never me who was enchanted, after all.
in fact, i didn’t even know what that was.
*****