fate's kid

static sunday never you mind

she told with rigor everything she felt:

wine
and cream,
the wind
and sun.

need more never

but
break-
in

a long drive from one center to another
from one site of something-i-don't-know-what to another
and from one old home to one quite different.

jokers taking pictures in front of some monument. but is it the same one? the one they mean to take a picture of?

or something else.

something with the intention of helping us to remember
but that's really only there to get us drunk.

silly silly.
it reminds me of something.
it really really does.

sure, i'll move out of your way. let's take a picture: hold it now, hold it.

that's a good one. cute.

piano bar and some celebrity.
can you believe
he's here?

who cares.

fringe
on [the] top.
so that's
what
they call
a family.

am i annoying that guy or is he too interested?

ok. i'll leave. can i sleep?

so in the morning (or afternoon) a long drive follows the shirtless the gold the advertisement for something old.

an empty mall.

i need to call my father and thank him for the gift
and for everything.
again and again.

my feet hurt. my shoes are too tight
and i've been standing around a lot.

whatever. hover.

it's eleven-thirty and the club is jumpin'.

jump. in.

sinking 2

he’s replaced the sink with a high-wire curve.

you mumble sticky words like caramel.

i wonder where slipping hands meet in a dark room

i remember time with you
a sunday early AM or still just saturday.

the whistles of northeastern massachusetts settling upon us
as i struggle to hold your hand.

we tried for hours – thank you for that

we held on. only seconds away from sleep.

i wanted to hold on forever.

lips locking soft
and you left.
yes.

i wasn’t relieved. i was

sliding into another sad sunday with a broken finger like hard hard caramel.

but the sink in the dark pine kitchen far away – yeah, it’s replaced.

brand new in fact. a high-wire curve.

like your neck on my neck
and your hairy cheek against a clean shave.

sinking

he’s replaced the sink with a high-wire curve –
my mouth slides around your hand and i mumble something about caramel.

i wonder where slipping hands meet in a dark room
and i suddenly remember
or recall
some day with you i think a sunday
early AM or still just saturday.

the whistles of northeastern massachusetts settled upon us
and i could barely hold your hand so you tried
for what seemed like hours – it very well could have been hours. or perhaps just some seconds away from sleep.

and when we finally relaxed our tired fingers into that one firm grasp
i wanted to hold on forever but couldn’t figure out a way to tell you this.

lips locking
and you left
and i wasn’t relieved i think
just accepted the fact and there i was:

sliding into another sad sunday with a broken finger like hard hard caramel.

but the sink in the dark pine kitchen far away – yeah, it’s replaced.

brand new in fact. a high-wire curve.

like your neck on my neck
and your hairy cheek against a clean shave.

angles

love is
your arm around my leg
while i reach for a blanket
and your lips.

i reference sundays with you when what i really mean is the angle of your face from my vantage point on a bed, shades of blue, a stereo on in another room, a faucet dripping.

your face:

i could stare
at your face
for days.

the grey somehow on your chin.

i'm afraid of your attention,
and of the way the sunshine glances your room.

we don't hesitate
to wince while shaking hands up and up and up.

to what?

"i want your wandering."

"do you. oh."

and i say to you - to your beautiful angle: "eloquence, you know, it was a river too."

you

shake

me

alive.

on my mind

on the radio
like saturday morning, or tuesday,
i heard you singing boy from decades away

hold my breath
lose my head

my hand
is loose
with summer

to stay afloat you hit the high note

beautifully

we met on a monday, i think, or friday
and landed on the wood floor like flowers
my arm around your waist.

holding my breath
losing my head

my hand
was loose
with summer.

we called out for one another, you know,

dollar bills.
a foot comfortably in your shoe.

colliding boats hit just the right note:
not exact, maybe, but correct.

like saturday morning, or tuesday,

with georgia on the radio.

and me: i'm humming along.

birth

we wake up smiling when the phone rings
and you tell me cereal is on the way

your roommate answers the phone
i can hear her
and i know that today will be unlike any other
but i'm not quite sure how just yet

like when i first met you i knew there was something happening
or that i felt something but didn't know if it was trust or disinterest
or perhaps the first wave of love

i am buried under the covers
your covers and blue
dark dark blue

the sun is moving like liquid through the blinds
and making thin, perfect parallel lines on the door
that we pretend is a wall

like a blank and unique piece of paper
only not - it's a door.

last night we had celebrated friendships and moving on -
our friends' moving on
because we weren't going anywhere yet
or so we thought or so i thought

and it was magical
like a clear color, maybe lime green or gold

and that's all i can say about it
that it was magical and suddenly, strangely present

that's exactly how i felt for the first time in years
i felt present
completely

but your roommate sarah my best friend
is still on the phone but this is only a moment
only a moment has passed since we woke up together
smiling when the phone rings
and you offer to make me breakfast

and suddenly there you are
without food but telling me my brother is on the phone
like it's a question and it is.

so many things jump through my head at that moment:

had i told him about you - i think i had -
but had i given him your telephone number?
and why on a sunday? in the morning before breakfast?

i consider the possibilities
and reason with a turning stomach and a pierced heart
as you rest the pink 'hello kitty' telephone in my shaking hand,

the look in your eyes like being born.

cleaver (small but meaning revision)

my enemy
is a friend

it's me

friendly like
the neigh of a horse

my arms are tight
but not strong

like water
or a memory of snow

after decades

still making castles
in the bright bright white

out of school we wrestle by
electric wires
and neighbors' cars bend
bend bend

we help one another
with held hands

eyes like the morning

and my mother
a setting sun

but warming
warming warming.

cleaver

my enemy
is a friend

it's me

friendly like
the neigh of a horse

my arms are tight
but not strong

like water
or a memory of snow

after decades

still making castles
in the bright bright white

out of school we wrestle by
electric wires
and neighbors' cars bend
bend bend

we help one another
with held hands

eyes like the morning

and my mother
a warm sun

warming warming warming.

food and bodies place history (version 2)

i arrived home to beef
and to the weight of wealth;

an empty, stripped bathroom -
just two-by-fours, a sandy smell
and a deflated blue and white soccer ball.

i arrived home to my father ironing
patterned sheet after patterned sheet in a large bedroom,
the new wallpaper already lifting and warped at the seems.

i arrived home to a beautiful soft recliner, smothered in linens
when it should have been smothered in love,
food and bodies place history.

i arrived home to heavy clean air

and to pictures stacked in corners
gathering dust
waiting to find room on the wall.

and i arrived home to you
sitting still
waiting for me;

your fingers in a knot
and your eyes on the neighbor's dalmatian -
chasing dusty wind down the street.

untitled.2

in the middle of a cherry orchard there was a room.

there was so much love in this room
appearing in tiny nudges, elbows and smiles

and inside
we cried out over seas of glistening faces
for one another
but younger.

and tension.
there was tension too.
there was so much tension in the room
that you could cut it with a sound.

and we did.

we sliced and served this tension
our hopes and fantasies
like enormous cherries in a tiny orchard

which indeed they were.

and after all,
after a decade

pop:

we've stayed together and alive forever

our arms raised
palms to the sky
every morning somehow like every other morning.

05/08/2007

she told me that hands are always holding everything
and that they will fold out to welcome me home

like the frayed ends of string
and the damp beginnings of spring

i'm up to my knees in mud
holding a shovel
burying love

can you tell the difference between
happiness and an open door?

i can

grandmother

your father told me once just once
that i was a star or something like that.

"yer my star," is what he said.

and you know what?
i almost believed him;
i almost believed the fool!

but when we got married, i guess that star fizzled out.
it always does. you know that, right.
we had you and we cared for each other i guess
but it wasn't anything special anymore.
one always hopes for something truly truly special
but one so rarely gets what one wants.

stars fizzle and die - just like that.
and here i am, telling some story to my only child
who doesn't really care.

oh, i know mere'
maybe you do.
maybe you do care.

damn - what damned fools we all are:

me lying here wasting time when i should be celebrating my long life.

and you - you're face wet, not happy like you should be;
i'm dying, not going into surgery or something horrifying like that.

oh, and those nurses
jumping when i say jump
and returning with juice.

"champagne!" i say to them, "champagne!"

i want to enjoy this
with my hands and throat wet and cold,
with a smile finally on my godamned ugly godamned face!

they just chuckle at me, meredith.
they chuckle and offer my apple juice in a plastic cup!

i'm sorry - i'm running on here and here you are.

how's alma?
and michael?

i told that little bastard to leave you alone
and here you are - right here where you should be,
listening to stories from that old lady again!

give me your hand dear.

i hope i don't bore you meredith.
i'm afraid i've bored so many,
and frustrated too few.

remember that - don't be afraid to frustrate people.
it keeps things interesting.

i love you mere'.
it may not seem like i do sometimes but i do i really do.
you've always been a bright bright star to me.

you are my star.

Daybreak

i love

his

hair.

i just

want to -


i just

love


your hair.

Isherwood, Christopher.

---------------------

To Andrew, Christopher Isherwood meant boys.

Andrew would stand in Barnes and Noble near the books of Christopher Isherwood fidgeting, watching for his parents or his brother or a familiar face, ready at any moment to shift focus away from the small selection of books by Christopher Isherwood on the shelf. Andrew thought that maybe just maybe a boy or man would be near the book or the shelf and he would know that to Andrew, Christopher Isherwood meant boys. And finally, Andrew would feel validated and alive.

The first Chistopher Isherwood book that Andrew touched and removed from the shelf and held and cracked open was The Berlin Stories. Two short novels, really, the cover of The Berlin Stories was daring: a black and white, blury photo or drawing of a woman drinking, bouncing on a smoking man's lap. So, cracking open the book and careful to still watch for the approaching familiar face, Andrew read these words: "I am a camera."

And I am too, thought Andrew. I am watching for my family or my brother or a familiar face like, and like a camera not responding, only capturing their presence or nonpresence. I am standing here holding open a book, back to the wall, like a camera waiting for it all to finally click.

not an outing

you sleep for twenty years
and then you sleep forever.

we stood in this field beside the highway
somewhere in massachusetts,
huddled close like a great old fire

our words the crackling wood.

my fingers, dry and ready to burn,
clenched familiar shoulders
pulling them closer.

and turning hot and blue
i sunk them into your cool red hair

until we returned home.

you sleep for twenty years
and then you sleep forever,
milking it.

food and bodies place history

i arrived home to beef
and to the weight of wealth;

an empty, stripped bathroom -
just two-by-fours, a sandy smell
and a deflated blue and white soccer ball.

i arrived home to my father ironing
patterned sheet after patterned sheet in a large bedroom,
and to a beautiful soft recliner smothered in linens.

i arrived home to heavy clean air

and to pictures stacked in corners
gathering dust
waiting to find room on the wall.

and i arrived home to you
sitting still
waiting for me;

your fingers in a knot
and your eyes on the neighbor's dalmation -
chasing dusty wind down the street.

tuesday

meredith wanted me to hold her.

jerry - i'm shaking - help me, she said.
i couldn't make out the expression on her face

and so i held her.

after a few minutes, her shaking stopped or just slowed down.
she pushed me away and sat on the floor
making phone calls to family, friends, and to the funeral home.

i'm in the garage right now. i don't know
what to say. i hated her mother for 27 years,
though i liked her for the first 2.

she practically beat me onto my knees.

my knees buckle tight and i fall back as if in slow-motion
to rest against a dusty, broken table -
the first piece we (meredith and me) bought after the wedding.
its rickety, but we'll get it fixed up again.

i should get the sunfish ready for summer,
and so i will back inside, fetch a sheet of fiberglass,
and fix myself a drink.

no justice, 1,000,000

when we fight we roll down stairs.

banisters and our grandmother's old furniture
bruise our hips and shins and thighs
as we patter for hours, glasses in hand, negotiating balance,
debating resemblance and the monthly bills.

and through all this, we avoid each other's eyes,
until finally i look up and there you are:

eyes narrowed,
a man rumbling my name awake.

you corner me against the hallway mirror
and beside the wood stained french front doors,
but your already red flesh screams redder
when my fists meet your chest.

this is
my selfishness
and my honesty like a foamy anger.

we are so alike and like him,
it frightens us to the root.

i do love you, i speak to the nonexistent fireplace
and you grab me with your old arms.

our neighbors carry flashlights
and sing songs for us in the dark yard
beyond our creased windows.

this is seamless i know

and these banging radiators will keep our secrets warm.

shrine before the dreaming

1.

"i wish i could see you more than just a little bit."

and the dishes sat summoning spices and food in the kitchen,
and the neighbors screamed, smiling and solid on their side of the fence.

the scrape of my finger along the stained sink's edge
is all that i'm listening to,
and the routine of a neighborhood is all that i'm summoning.

2.

settle on just one more beer before bed,
brush the grime from your teeth and the floor from your sport-coat,
drink a tall glass of cool/warm water slowly and patiently,
spin around the room,
yield at the stairs,
stumble and somersault shoulder-first into the banister,

and sleep soundly, ignoring the neighbors and the neighborhood and the troubled skies and the landlord on the roof.

3.

and later, years later now,
from the white stairs in the hallway in this new home,
i am a witness to a fevered expansion,
the knock of another decade.

and to my own aging hands and arms:
coarse and scarred and gray.

and i realize that no,
i cannot see myself growing old here,
just older.

gothic poetry

i feel like i write a lot of it.

today when i moved my father's lawn
i maneuvered around the forget-me-nots
but plowed over the struggling day lilies.

later on, refreshing myself with orange juice,
dad spoke to me about what will happen to the house when he dies
and i reminded him that he's still young, and not to get too hasty.

i said it just like that: so calm and curt,
like we were discussing a forgettable piece of furniture.

we weren't though. we were not discussing something forgettable.

we were discussing gothic poetry and my father's mortality.

big

1.

the road here is paved red. and wet.

2.

there's a beautiful burst of fire in the sky behind me
a big sky sunset.

i'm driving into
a grey wall storm

and in my fright
(lightening, rain,
wind, a truck
had been pushed off the road)
i mistake a rainbow
for a tornado.

4.

the storm sounds like a storm
and i wait for a moment on the side of the road,
letting my windsheild wipers rest.

a large anti-abortion sign is getting beaten
by the wind and the rain as i count my fingers for the dozenth time,
trying to figure out how many hours i've driven so far

on my way home.

reliance, south dakota

while driving east through reliance, south dakota,
i started thinking about you and wondering
where exactly, which rest stop motel or gas station,
you wrote me that post card three years ago.

i imagined myself finding that spot, looking around,
kicking ground, and then smiling at the beautiful, not barren, landscape.

and the sky.

the sky here is enough to make me believe in god.
at least until i leave early tomorrow morning.

comment for a goodnight, 2

"you know yourself so well."

for once and maybe for this one time only,
my over-used pink toothbrush tangled in my fingers,

i can believe this is true.

here it is. what i'm sure of. what i know:

i know that the wind outside howls like a man or like a ghost against my window and it terrifies me. like breaking glass.

i know the way my hand curls in a friend’s palm from the front, and i know how that hand is smaller than my own.

i know anger like a frayed doormat in massachusetts.

i know new england cities in the spring, how the trees and the people bloom on the very same day.

i know a red notebook on a desk, and a white bearded man carrying a clipboard over the sunny rise of a busy street.

i know the smell of painted iron tables and the brush of wind against my grey sweatshirt, my straining eyes and coffee stained teeth in a square smile.

i know how my father moves around the room and how my brother moves around a room and how a room can usually contain their quiet furies with one deep breath.

i know that when my mother died i fretted around those still rooms and polished silver and saw her face in those of her two older sisters, humming songs i'll never recognize.

i know the curve of my back and the crooked smile of my leg and the dry brown of my hair.

i know fear like a beautiful man spitting air on my long neck, calling me a horse.

i know the weight of his arm against my stomach and the smell of his hand in the early morning, and i know how to chew that smell like jerky, making the taste linger all day.

i know pain and i know how a round plate can peirce a wall.

and i know love like the backsides of so many hands reaching out for me on the uneven bright sidewalks of home - it carries my hope like a razorblade.

monday

my mother is folding laundry
and smoking a long cigarette from a beat-up pack of salem ultra light 100's.

the sky outside is changing colors fast
and she folds the t-shirts first - red, then green, orange and then brown.
she moves on to the jeans, each a different shade of blue
depending upon age, gender, ownership.

dad’s are the most worn,
probably because of all the hours he spends
pretending to fix the buick.
its still not running.
the car sits there with its really comfortable bench seats,
kind of like an ugly sofa we’ve tossed out into the yard.

i heard my mom talking on the phone the other day
with her best friend janet, and that’s what she said.
then my mom asked if janet had any leads on a new
or kinda used car for not too much money.

right now, mom’s sharing a small maroon honda
with my dad. it always works out but its just annoying to deal with.
this last part she doesn’t say to janet on the phone,
though its pretty clear that this is how she feels.

the cigarette caught on the edge of mom’s dry bottom lip
offers dangerous approval to the task at hand (folding clothes)
as she tells me about her day,
about how these god-awful fuckers are stealing money from her and dad and her boss is a stuttering pencil thin prick.

i rub my finger in a counterclockwise swirl
on the beige tablecloth, trace it back,
and swirl again - my eyes a sleepy green.

i sing a song, reminding mom of our monday evening dining ritual.
dad works late on monday night,
and my brother is away at college in boston,
so we always eat hamburger helper.
my favorite is the cheeseburger kind.

“uh huh,” mom quietly responds, catching onto my impending boredom.
the cigarette nods more furiously when mom moves her lips
and an elbow-shaped ash flips off the tip,
floats briefly in the air, and then her exhale scatters it around the room.

a piece lands on my arm
and i think, oh there is a piece of ash on my arm.
i brush it away, but it makes a faint white line
down the sleeve of my black sweatshirt.

i stand up, move to the kitchen and pour myself a tall glass of water.

no small wonder, 2

i'm standing on your porch, whistling through the front door.

i have four hours left until i sleep, my head between my knees,
with you just slipping farther away with each hour.

in the wood silence of the foyer, i can smell you leaving
even before i see your shoulders shaking.

and its no small wonder really: i've seen this coming for years.

how could you hold on to this moving,
broken thing that your love couldn't fix?
and how could i let you try for so long?

when i left you, a friend of mine, your roommate, looked at me in the dark outside with this disgust with this look of sadness and disgust and i couldn't catch her eye to see if i was just projecting this onto her if that was instead how i felt about myself at that moment. it probably was.

i went home, drank too many beers,
and i wanted to call and apologize and need you back.

but i didn't.

i saw you the next day and turned away,
i thought, before you noticed i was there.
i learned later that you did. you did notice me there.

and i picture you watching me walk slowly down the street,
the sunshine sliding through tree branches,
caressing my hair and shoulders and back with warm yellow light.

that was the bravest thing i've ever done.

cemtery archeology

we go to this one cemetery a lot
always for a picnic lunch and never for a funeral.

the high school is just up the hill, but i don’t go there yet.
my brother does, and i am ten years old.

this time, my neighbor erin is with us.
her hair is frizzy brown and her dad’s a police officer.
he mows his lawn without his shirt on.

my parents make fun of him sometimes,
and all with this idea of him not belonging across the street from us.

but i like erin a lot.

we’re ignoring our lunches
and trying to find the scattered pieces of plastic gravestone flowers,
pocketing them and trying to top one another with their faked beauty.

my legs are working hard,
and while flying past all of these names -
noel, johns, horan, babeau -
i find the best yet: a shining plastic daisy, i think.

and it must be new - it’s so clean, sitting atop the freshly mowed grass.

i pocket this gift, but decide not to show it to erin.
she won’t understand.

i'll show it to my brother later because he will.

i still see you in cars

like right now:
your dark sunglasses and that almost grim expression on your face.

i can picture your square teeth lined up beneath your lips
and i can smell the leather and cigarette stench of the car.
there’s one burning fresh between your lips.

we used to play this elaborate game
every time we would ride somewhere together, which was most days.
i would hide my face and my grin in my t-shirt
and you would pretend you weren’t going to open the window,
letting the wind and the speed of the car pull the smoke outside.

then you would. open the window.

i still see you in cars

and this time, your hair is just right,
with the perfect amount of frost -
that’s what we called what was really bleaching.
the cut's not quite what i remember,
but hair changes right?

what’s definitely different or wrong this time is your face:
the shape of it - the way the nose meets the brow.
also, your skin’s not pale enough
and there are too few moles.

morning

i woke up this morning thinking of you:

your hair parted to the left;
the way you walk down stairs.

i remember sky
watching you closely
and i remember that we would hold hands for days.
it was love maybe.

when i woke up thinking of you
i was in the middle of a dream.

it was right before my cell phone went off
vibrating loud on the table
and that sound woke me up
brought me out of this dream of which i was just in the middle.

something to do with spaceships
and travel through time warp holes
and a struggle and a failed attempt to capture the memory
of so many lost people and to recreate them in our new home.

something like that. and lost people meant dead celebrities.

failure meant princess diana
because that’s when my cell phone went off
and we failed,
the buzzing sound an alarm of failure in my dream
and that’s when i woke up.

i woke up thinking of you and your stance,
hands deep in shallow pockets,
staring at me with this kind of menacing smile,
or this grimace of love.

that’s it exactly.

you would grimace with love when you looked at me -
afraid that this was actually happening,
hoping that your cell phone would go off at any second -
an alarm waking you up in the middle of the dream.

in february, 2

the sound of a buzz saw and a mother cooking:

a bowling bowl of milk on a rusty burner.

here, hungover in the bright rain of late afternoon,
cold water suddenly tastes just like the shock of spring to me.

my friend cuts vegetables at the table and offers me some.
i pace the length of the room, accept her offering,
and return to the burgundy-green stripped couch
where i finger chopped carrots in an orange-rimmed bowl.

i press one between my thumb and palm,
feeling its cold sweat pulling warmth from my skin,

as the stumbling thump of your boots on the stairs
marches the evening through these newspaper-thin rooms.

i crush a carrot between my chipped and yellow front teeth
as you emerge from the hallway, carrying with you
the difference between a hope and a dream.

the smell of abundance, i remember,
is strong, so much like the memory
of something sweet on my hand.

it’s all very sad,
like the feel of warming water
inching down my throat.

"there's your thumb...", 2

there’s your thumb sliding up and across my back,
resting in the brief space between my shoulders and neck.

i miss the cylinders in our cabinets -
shining dark, old and not ours at all -
and the window by our bed
with its ground-floor view of a weathered soft blue porch
and, further on, of neighbors playing with and punishing their children.

we would talk about sitting on the porch,
but for two years, the stained wicker couch remained unused;

most of all i miss the sweeping lifetimes we spent
trying to figure out how to fit our bodies together,
and how we would laugh at our successes and at our failures.

we would slide into dreams somehow,
late at night and not too tired,
streetlights casting mangled and shaking shadows
over our cheap blue blanket
and against the door we pretended was a wall.

early in the morning, i would wake up reaching for your arm,
for your neck where i’d bury my face until you had to leave for work.

my arms stretched out and open until you were gone,

the memory of your thumb
leaving me stranded, missing you.

no small wonder

here i am, standing on your porch
whistling through the front door.

i don't know yet that we have only four hours left.

opening the door i can smell you leaving
even before i see your shoulders shaking

and you know, i don't blame you at all,
not then and not now.

recitation, 2

my name is alma.

we don't mince words here.

we buried her on a wednesday,
the sky grey and the clouds too puffy.

everything was just right,
the grass perfectly green and brown,
although the clouds were too puffy.

my mother cried
and my father slapped my uncle.

i wore an uncomfortable
red and blue polka dot dress
made of cotton and polyester.
it was uncomfortable because it caught on my knees.

with my left hand i helped guide
my mother to a white chair under a stained and off-white tent;
with my right i tossed a yellow carnation
onto a stranger's grave.

'marsha lea' read the stone
and i did not recognize the name.
i do not, even now, recognize the name.

after a few minutes of perfect sunlight
the minister spoke - slowly and in a voice
much too large for his small and squinty mouth.

he spoke of my grandmother, of my mother's mother
and, presumably it seemed at the time, of Life:

we breathe deep, he said to the small crowd,
our chests at full capacity,
and hold the weight of entire legions
of death and of stench.

and with so much intentional love
we gather in our hands the dirt
of our parents
and let them slip through our fingers.

when he finished, we shook hands less and less
and finally returned home.

i slept in my dress, uncomfortable, on the long off-white sofa,
but really, i was listening to my mother
cry alone in the guest room off the front hallway.
my father drank alone in the garage
and looked occasionally and with intention
at the lonely remains of a sunfish.

my grandmother, too, floated
through the rooms with us.

but she is dead now.

my name is alma
and we don't mince words here.

my grandmother was buried on a wednesday.
that's today: the wednesday that we buried her.

the sun

my head already upturned, my father whispers to me:
don’t step too loudly or too gently.

as the approaching sun turns hollow and steep,
like mantles we cast our ladders and begin to climb.

my hand strokes the air as you feverishly
devour her memory, your teeth a rhythmic grind.

you know i have witnessed you stretched out,
your belly pressed against the wall
and with this expression on your face
which somehow mimics those many years together

and there’s even this line, your mouth in a frown,
when that part of the story, your years with my mother, suddenly ends

thinking now of this expression,
that time-line on your face,
the eyes stick out to me most.

the look in them like a camera rewinding:
very loud and almost as powerful,
images speeding past in reverse.

i am constantly telling myself and promising you
that when the wind finally howls
i’ll stand behind and not beside you.

my hands holding tight these stories,
ready to push you up and forward should you slip

and to hold your hand with eyes wide open once we’ve arrived.

recitation

my name is alma.

we don't mince words here.

we buried her on a wednesday,
the sky grey and the clouds too puffy.

but wait. no - they were just right
the clouds were. and the grass,
perfectly green and brown.

my mother cried
and my father slapped my uncle.
i wore an uncomfortable
red and blue polka dot dress
made of cotten and polyester.
it was uncomfortable because it caught on my knees.

with my left hand i helped guide
my mother to a seat
and with my right i tossed a yellow carnation
onto a stranger's grave.
'marsha lea' read the stone
and i did not recognize the name.
i do not, even now, recognize the name.

the minister spoke slowly
of my grandmother, of my mother's mother
and, presumably, of life:

we breathe deep, he said to the small crowd,
our chests at full capacity,
and hold the weight of entire legions
of death and of stench.

and with so much intentional love
we gather in our hands the dirt
of our parents
and let them slip through our fingers.

when he finished
we returned home
and i slept in my dress, uncomfortable, on the sofa,
my mother cried alone in the guest bed,
my father drank alone in the garage,
and my grandmother floated
through the rooms with us, dead.

my name is alma
and we don't mince words here.

my grandmother was buried on a wednesday.
that's today: the wednesday that we buried her.

toast

the windows are lined with people
and my mother's former co-worker pam
is wailing and drunk in the wings.

i'm holding lynn's hand and grabbing a beer
from the brown card-table we've set up in the backyard.

we've gone through $400 of beer wine and liquor so far this afternoon.

i toss lynn's hand to the sky and step inside
through the oak stained door
and it snaps shut behind me.

every eye is on me now:
in the hallway,
a broken thing,
not yet old.

her coat is still strapped to the rack by my head.

i maneuver through the crowd,
dodge the chandelier in the front hallway,
and i'm through the house,
back outside and on display for the neighborhood.

falling to the ground and laughing,
along with and coaxing along the smiles and chuckles
of the spectators and friends surrounding me on the lawn,
i watch my mom's former co-worker pam,
crying and screaming, get booted from the party.

drunk as all hell. too drunk.

as she speads away down the tree-lined, sunny street,
i roll toward my brother and bite his leg hard,

the taste of his sweat and my tears like molasses on my tongue.

comment for a goodnight

"you know yourself so well."

for once
and maybe for this one time only,
my used pink toothbrush tangled
in my fingers,

i can believe this is true.

and later, as you turn to go,
you don't hear me say goodnight -

my voice instead a thing you lean on

like the worn curve
in a banister in an ancient house.

"i've been known to..."

i've been known to love those who don't love me to hate those who love me too much to hold men up to want my father to walk through my door to smile when he does to not speak a word to drunk dial

late at night to get in touch far too often with an ex-boyfriend to offer him too much information to eat breakfast alone to not call my family to call them

too much to wander aimlessly for hours alone in a chair to scare my friends to avoid talking about those people that love me too much to love them too much to wander aimlessly for hours alone in a chair to watch my father

wander aimlessly for hours between the kitchen and the fireplace the kitchen and the fireplace to sit back to lift my legs to sit back lift my legs and recline to recline in my mother's empty recliner to shake my father's hand

before going to sleep to sleep to sleep and dream about those that i don't talk to anymore to speak to and dream too much about those people that love me too much to love them too much to hate needing them so much to drunk dial to sit back

legs up in a recliner to sit in my mother's empty recliner to watch my father wander aimlessly between the kitchen and the fireplace the kitchen and the fireplace to wander aimlessly for hours alone in a chair far away from my father to recline far away to drunk dial to wish you were here beside me to imagine your

hands on my knee.

letter to send

you cut yourself in oklahoma
and eight years later moved to los angeles.

i have this picture of you lying down on my roommate's bed
with the warm oklahoma fall outside and the heat on full-blast in the room.
you are staring at me taking a picture of you,
your eyes half-closed and peaking between sunburnt fingers.

my mother got the camera i am using
by smoking pack after pack after pack of salem ultra light 100s.
we had paper bags full of empty packs and cartons,
proofs of purchase, piling up in the dining room,
and then we got the camera.
you'd think we had no money, but we did.
this was just another excuse for my mother to smoke more and more.

i saw the camera, the same one exactly,
at a store that a boyfriend worked at a few years ago.
it cost 6 dollars.
my mother smoked her life away for six dollars to get me a camera.

i still have it, but never use it.
there's a hair in the lens, so every picture you take
has this scraggly thing crawling across the frame

and everything comes out looking like you've made some mistake.

anyway, in the picture you're curled up on the bed and staring up at me
and above you is this sign that my roommate's girlfriend left for him.

"i love you," it reads in sprawling bright red letters.

and right now, looking at this picture of you
that i took with a cheap and deadly camera,
i wonder if it was or if it could have been true.

will you be mine?

you are the only person i ever wanted to give a valentine to.

i bought you a card once
but never gave it to you.

don't laugh:
it was this really frilly, yet minimalist thing.
all pinks and yellows and hearts.

it was meant for young kids,
probably girls,
with a drawing of that female donald duck character
or donald in drag, and with this sweeping caption:

Will You Be Mine...?

i thought it was really funny and kinda cute
but that was the year we didn't celebrate valentine's day.

and instead tossed harsh words
and thin plates across tiny rooms
until our arms couldn't take it any more.

the year of bruises and bloody noses,
a year spent fleeing one another.

so the card stayed in a drawer and then in a box
all the way from massachusetts to seattle
where i live right now.

i held onto it for years
but threw it out a few months ago
in some kind of organizational rage.

i wish i had it right now
so i could show it to you.

it was really funny.

in february

the sound of a buzz saw and a mother cooking:

here, in the bright rain of late afternoon,
honey suddenly tastes just like the shock of spring to me.

or like a boiling bowl of milk on a rusty burner.

my friend cuts vegetables at the table and offers me some.
i pace the length of the room,
returning to the burgundy-green stripped couch
where i finger chopped carrots in an orange-rimmed bowl.

i press one between my thumb and palm

as the stumbling thump of your boots on the stairs
marches the evening through these newspaper-thin rooms.

i crush a carrot between chipped and yellow teeth
as you emerge from the hallway, carrying with you
the difference between a hope and a dream.

the smell of abundance, i remember,
is strong, so much like something sweet on my hand.

it’s all very sad,
like the texture of honey
inching down my throat.

flight 1087 to albany

1.

there’s a fly resting right above where i’m sitting

and the flight attendant is frantically searching the want-ads
as a baby in aisle 23 cries out,
piercing through the plane’s nighttime drone.

and all i want is another beer
while everyone else on the aircraft feigns comfort and sleep.

i shift in my seat and eye the guy two rows up from me
with the crooked camouflage cap and the dark hanky in his pocket.

how long is too long to look? i wonder
and imagine his hand pressing against my stomach,
cold and rough.

2.

there’s something i forgot to tell you:
i’ll never know what you have.

time spent with you was play-do magic.
sitting in a room side by side like souring milk
i would pull my lips back tight against my teeth until they bled,

a taste familiar in my throat.

feeling with my tongue over the marks left years ago
and knowing that the only time i would dare to ask you this question
was while hurtling through the air, so close to death:

do you remember when we danced in your room
slow to the sounds of neighbors shouting hatred at each other?
and how you promised with whispers that that would never be us?

because that makes all the difference in the world to me right now

as the morning slowly buries the plane with life.

"the smile on your face let's me know that you need me..."

i've arrived to late to this, and beating my shoulder.

a purple line from the desk across my back,
and a sore red dent in my chest
brings a smile to my face,

which reminds me:

do you remember when i called you early this morning,
feeling like shit and late for work? i don’t know
what you did or said, but as the room filled with orange
i felt myself come alive
and all day at work i was dancing. i really was.

and to this really awful music we play.
you're so amazing.

at least for now i can credit you with saving me.
i just wanted to let you know that.

i'm planning the rest of my day and week and life right now
and just can't quite figure out that last part. maybe any of it.

i'm still holding out for so much

and i know that love is free and all that

but i can't get past this one thing: at what cost?

yeah, i guess that's where i'm at.
and then there's right now,
red-lining too long,
humming my own tune
beating time (my only drum)

just for you.

"there's your thumb..."

there’s your thumb sliding up and across my back,
resting in the space between my shoulders and neck.

i miss the cylinders in our cabinets -
shining dark, old and not ours at all -
and the window by our bed
with its ground-floor view of neighbors
playing with and punishing their children.

we would slide into dreams somehow,
late at night and not too tired,
streetlights casting mangled and shaking shadows
over our cheap blue blanket and against the door we pretended was a wall.

early in the morning, i would wake up reaching for your arm,
for your neck where i’d bury my face until you had to leave for work.

my arms stretched out and open until you were gone,

the memory of your thumb
leaving me stranded.

07/06/2003

your house is the color of cream
but more like brick red.

we forgot or never planned to put the screens
on the windows, so the storm windows are propped open
throughout the downstairs.
i should try to air out my room, open a window,
let the cool night air replace the stagnant sweat of summer.

it might work and i might sleep there tonight i really might.

you shake in the other room above the music.

georgia on my mi-ind...

when i hear you shake
it's more like feeling
but i don't want to use that word.

so much feeling without touch: this defines completely
your house tonight as i pass a magazine
loosely to the arm of the couch
(a horrible floral pattern so unlike either of us)

and hear the clinkclink of ice.

for a moment i think winter is upon us.
then a pop fills the hallway
and you wipe your face dry

as you swagger like usual into the room.

ginger ale afternoon

i've arrived to late
and beating my shoulder

a purple line across my back.

i wish we could begin each night
without warning
but they stumble upon us.

i remember when i felt like shit
the other morning and called you.
i don't know. maybe just to talk
i don't know what about exactly
but we did talk about sleeping alone.

i can credit you with saving me.
at least for now.

notes for an unsuccessful autumn

i.

i've arrived
too late and
beating my
shoulder.

a purple line
across my back

(you placed
it there remember
rounded corners).

i organize my life
into two plastic jars
on the cheap oak
shelf beside my bed.

this life will
outlast me
i know. and
yours will shine
like your room
in the morning.

simply as a result
of that room.

ii.

i can't remember
the last time that i
laughed without poise:

so beautiful and so ugly.

never

remembering:

that truly

is the end.

"but what end?"

iii.

green gendered
fingers dancing on
your hands i shiver
and hope you'll bring
them to my back.

a warm morning gift.

instead you rest your
chin against my neck.

i settle for that
sweet piercing
as my legs wrap
around the afternoon.

2 parts

i.

i'll never rufuse
an evening shower.

i guess i should
read some marx.

ii.

reading about
love,

windy seattle

you know, when
square napkins
billow in a room
like snow,

and i'm suddenly
afraid for this
glass of water

as a slide my chair
into the sun. and
then after picking up

skidding cans,

i bellow on, white
ankles, sex and
rock 'n' roll,

laughing at myself

hahaha!

a mockery
of sustenance.

i will my shoes
to soak up the
sun, the water

some broken glass.

(but steel candle holders peirced
that wall. that one right over there. i
wear this scar like a, uhhh just like a scar
or like a badge)

oh yeah,
it was some
salamander
old love.

12:44 am

i could stare
at your face

for
days.

the grey

somehow

on your
chin.

i'm afraid of
your
attention.

the way the
sunshine
glances your
room:

don't hesitate
to wince.

limp wrists,
shaking
hands
up and
up

them
giggling
gods.

calm.
crisp.

an eloquent
waddle

"i want
your
wandering."

shooting
through
space.

like a
computer
wait-
ing.

you know.
al-
ways

wanting.

always
on

but
then
you
shake
me

alive.

but
they
say

eloquence

was a
river
too.

soft

i.

that
moment
when
you
first
kiss
someone

and
you
see
them
from
this
new

angle
looking
i
want
this

soft

and
nothing
else

matters;

ii.

when
you asked
to kiss me
the season's
finally
changed.

at least
for now.

your hand
resting
on my cheek

warm
against
my ear,

i can hear.
spring away.
it's summer.

my hands
a cross
tight
against
my chest

i let them
wrap
wild
around
your waist.

to catalogue an argyle

he pierced the
flesh and
it went straight
to the blood.

backs
creak.

standing
on the chair

in the corner
of the room

you bring
me water.

but bring me water
but bring me love:
a loose, creep-
ing, handled,
and play-
ful noose.

20 scratches
on the off-white
molding.

i've grown
so old.
sold to dust.

so sorry, mary.
so sorry mary.
so sorry
harvey

(a legendary
lunatic with
four on me

wrinkled
notches)

mimicking the tied-
down luminous ends
of string.
spinning
to the center
like a 12-foot
erection
or a pink and
pleated-
passive argyle.

we turn.

light
escapes
from every
browned and
dirty pore

brighter than
the sun.

then:
shelly moved
across my back
(across the nipple
and around to the
spine). pinching.
the body bolts.

i sustain
a frown.

i sit
rest
and
peer
from
the plane
that
brings
me
closer to
your
skin.

don't

"when did we
become so old?"

smelling like
rusty metal
maybe coins.

flying home
lining up
tomorrow

and choking
myself
with this scarf.

take note:

you used
to live in
my room.

our feet
cold
caressing
a step home.
our toes

scrap-
ing
pale
sheets.
this salty
curling.

something
spiritual
like resting
steel red
chairs
in the sun.

shoulders

the carpeting
in my hallway
as i write
this down
is worn.

and i remember
my mother and
my father
their home
their warmth
and worn
carpeting

it will take a
lifetime

to forget
the scents
of that
house

and just
a moment
to recall the
taste
of leaving.

"i've never
been touched
with such
kindness.

"its a brass
lantern. a
gateway to
god. it
exists
in these
shoulders."

is
chalked.

eyes
now
bi-
leveled
now

you evaporate
smiling

and we
begin to under-
stand
the metal rake's
scrape
against
pavement

a comfort

like

cursive
letters.

and a water
fall
on a tree
in our
memory
of a
backyard.

and a man
standing
in the corner
of my room
rumbling
my name
awake.

how
long
does
it take
to lose
something?

an entire
lifetime.
a sleepy
life.

stepping
forward

and
stopping

then
still.

you.
shouldering
me
speechless
with
closed
eyes.

dance #4

this sign
is fucking
with me.

and fucking
with me
fast-
er.

"oh look. it's that place we ate italian food that one time."

"what was it called?"

"i don't know. something about justification. you know, like, about being misunderstood."

burn-
red
t-shirts.

blue clamped
hands around
my wrist.
your canopy
of knuckles
and well-timed
collisions.

i liked
something
like this.

"icedamericanonoroomplease."

where should
i sit?

shout!

1

2

3...

"callll
lllmee."

creation

we start out
finding cures

and end up
residually
calm.

could the beat
one
two
free you
for a moment.

oooh it-t
coooouuullld.

creation is
something
like this
like stepping
around
a man
sitting
spread-eagle.

creation
is something
psychedelic.

my hand is
something like
creation.
before i turn
the corner. on
your lap

i'll wait.

my thumbs
pointing to the sky.
wooden.

there are unpoened letters tacked to the wall

what scares me is that we're
supposed to do this together.

immeasurable

sit, please. and sip.

"yes, i do move cautiously around corners. i wait for her there. let me adjust my sweater. fix my hat."

lets lean. until the ground devours metal.

the hand
slow and cunning
on her shoulder.
its size
immeasurable
like salt.

and the soft door
onto her porch.
and loose steel
as it forms around my flexing hand.

to pieces

crying through clear skies

don't remove your
jacket before
the weight of leaving
leaves you.

we fly over graveyards.


i'll visit her again.
sometime.

frantic
and frought with too much intention
i visit when
the phone calls me.
home.
to what's left of front porches
and childhood heroes.


i pretend this patiently
shivering sunshine
and while my best friend
excavates parsely from the garden.
a memory
of abundance.

i won't let her see me stumbling
here.


its nothing.

red sweater.

prepared

we don't stop until we march
single file around trees

my hand grabbing for your belt

a hidden
and desparate
gesture.

this action reminds me
of cleaning kitchens

preparing for mothers

stealing time
through our parodies of experience.

we know
our icebox could freeze tundras.

still now
my head behind hair
fingers scratching through doors

i'll never tell you how

your belt rests high
on your hips.
and your back
carried my weight
as if i were flying
under water.

when i jump
i break every glass we own.

justice

when we fight
we roll down stairs.

the smokey weight
of family and flesh screams
when my fist
meets your chest

movement mirrors your eyes

in this:
my image
my foaming anger.

i do love you.

these banging radiators keep our secrets warm.

to drive home wanting

as few stars as there are cars

on the cold road.
destination: hoarse blue
sepulchral skies.

wind rushing
through my ears

hiding in backseats
amongst the garbage
and the carnage.

i close

lock the window.

figures stand strong
like you. my knees shaking
i sway in my seat
and shut my eyes.

this moment could move me.
this intention. forever adrift
and gone.

my eyes sliver open

i've highways to prove.

my cheeks flush red:
run. i need this love.

i'm not a petal.

burning

we
set
sail
for
the
sun

our
shad
ows
at
our
tail.

steady in this shared
ship and
with these different dooms.
mine
blinding and unsteady.
yours
a quick recovery.

we handle the wind
together
and smile
our faces burning

pale white creases
forming round our mouths.
our eyes.

we do this without revelry
and with our pockets
dangerously full.
loose change and army knives
glinting
like fireflies in the snow.

(a mirror surrounds our journeying.
and this bright white flapping of a job well done.

i cannot breathe for the amount of air it astounds me.
i cannot see.
the light. stinging
weak blue.)

“we’re almost there,” you shout,
speaking through the wind.

thick rope
rubbing
my hand dry and
expressionless.

with an unending sigh
i let the line
whip the sky.
my hand
shaking
as it reaches deep.
water
and fingers grasp
and scratch my scalp.

we stare lost.
you
at me.

i let my eyes burn:

bright white sheets
folding and
unfolding in the sun.

clemency

i.

and cold calling down stairs
i found her hiding

in this argument over the phone
with a lady who was supposed

to be my mother.
and hanging up
i scorned the sender.

your eyes are like the sound of breaking ice.

ii.

as we return home we build these fences
with complete intention.

we peek between boards, then,
our eyes reaching for light like herbs
trapped indoors and in plastic pots.

shaking. our shoulders remove themselves.

iii.

composing in sleep and composing sleep;
our foundations are built in the water:

we begin this again. it seems.

the moon tapes

it's soothing.

this sound strides through until the morning,
and you,
crisp walking down streets -
feeding me secrets.

i can recall more than this -
those echos through hallways,
those early handshakes, those smiles -
but won't.

i want this all in my pocket,
a hiding place close to my thigh.

and i know that
the same moon grasps you
and feeds you today.

i'm away.
forever away.

this journey begins with my foot in your sand.

“and when were the BITCHCAKES created,” he asked.
perhaps in NOVEMBER:

adam, wiping the stray dust of the explosion from his cheek, was the first to break the ensuing silence of creation: "let them eat the dust from our cake!"

bessington and sarah and anders and victors, huddled close together in a contemplative ball on summit avenue, nodded vigorously and uttered a strange chant: "but who shall reap the benefits of our buttermilk pancake frosting? but who?"

the painless explosion had carried them miles or centuries - they'd yet to discuss and decide the actualities of this relocation. looking around them, the only building left standing melted into familiarity. rising and gazing at the unharmed garage-and-condo combo before them, they smiled and approached this stationary victim.

a key appeared, hovering before them. sarah, realizing the key was meant to be in her possession, let it fall gently into her open palm. before anders, a frying pan appeared; he grasped its cold metal handle with a knowing hand. victors felt forming in her arms and mind the necessary ability to wield flame. adam pulled from his pocket a surprising treat - the cake, ready to be consumed and to serve as a marker. bessington, briefly confused about her involvement, welcomed the squid - pink and white, and smiling - onto her shoulder.

finally semi-complete, they climbed stairs, stomped through puddles, and maneuvered around the debris which accompanied them on this explosive adventure. before the door of their dreaming, they clutched their weapons. marrzz would be inside waiting to offer assistance. of this they were quite sure.

they had arrived. they had realized their purpose.

the laughter and joy and mere presence of christopher, dropping his luggage to the ground, would offer them completion. he would become one of them in due time.

with victory in their eyes, then, they whispered: "bitchcakes."

the bitchcakes

and thus the bitchcakes were created:

adam, wiping the stray dust of the explosion from his cheeck, was the first to break the ensuing silence of creation: "let them eat the dust from our cake!"

bessington and sarah and anders and victors, huddled close together in a contemplative ball on summit avenue, nodded vigorously and uttered a strange chant: "but who shall reap the benefits of our buttermilk pancake frosting? but who?"

the painless explosion had carried them miles or centuries - they'd yet to discuss and decide the actualities of this relocation. looking around them, the only building left standing melted into familiarity. rising and gazing at the unharmed garage-and-condo combo before them, they smiled and approached this stationary victim.

a key appeared, hovering before them. sarah, realizing the key was meant to be in her possession, let it fall gently into her open palm. before anders, a frying pan appeared; he grasped its cold metal handle with a knowing hand. victors felt forming in her hand the necessary ability to create and control the flame. adam pulled from his pocket a suprising treat - the cake, ready to be consumed and to serve as a marker. bessington, briefly confused about her involvement, welcomed the squid - pink and white, and smiling - onto her shoulder.

finally complete, they climbed stairs, stomped through puddles, and maneuvered around the debris which accompanied them on this explosive adventure.

before the door of their dreaming, they clutched their weapons.

marrzz would be inside waiting to offer assistance. of this they were quite sure.

they had arrived. they had realized their purpose.

with victory in their eyes, they whispered: "bitchcakes."

whose saintly words - for victoria

You have this tattoo of saintliness. It can be seen be anyone who takes a look, however brief, as long as that look is accompanied with eye contact. You once told me about a time when your art filled you with sadness, and how you discontinued that era or line of work.

Do you remember? Do you remember telling me this or am I creating scenarios?

A sparrow flies overhead and lands with a jump on the sidewalk before me, and in this moment I recall some word, scrawled on your arm with intention. I cannot see the word, now - it is fading slow, and worn away: rescue, dancing, hover.

Finally disappearing,
the word carries more meaning than initially intended:
I see now that I cannot be rescued.
I must be the one to rescue, to dance, to hover.
We all must move through atmospheres with intention.

When I remember you I will stop short while walking, find a phone and forget your telephone number. Searching through old notebooks, I will later discover it scrawled in some corner on a page brimming with otherwise useless and long-forgotten information - bank statements and old work telephone numbers. I will find your number, call and find you've moved on. After years or months or days or hours of waiting, I will find you again, standing in front of me in a line somewhere. We will hug, shake hands, offer updates, exchange numbers, and promise to keep in close contact.

We will speak this with all seriousness, and We will succeed, and We will grow old with one another, whether continents separate us, or simply doors.

This is what winsome really means: saintly handsome hands shaking.

on creation - for adam

I don’t know what I’ll remember the best. Probably when you told me about the town you were from - how it seems to breed or harbor untimely and unnatural death (if indeed any death can be viewed as somehow unnatural, for really, it is all about progression). I can’t remember the specifics of what precisely separated the deaths in your hometown from deaths, say, in any other town - but I do remember believing you wholly because of your descriptions. Stuff about accidents and illnesses more continuous and terrible than I’d ever imagined, perhaps.

What I do remember, however, is that I’ve since wanted to congratulate you on escaping. This escape, this catapulting onto new planes, is what has carried you into my life. I will not say if this new plane is at a higher or a lower level than previous experiences of yours, but I will reach to suggest that it is at least on a parallel with them.

Or perhaps I’ll remember that sketch, a self-portrait, you composed one lazy evening or afternoon: so serious and strange and silent - almost sad. It rests in the corner of your studio, kind of half-hidden by other more thoroughly considered and realized pieces, peeking around them, watching over your guests. It watches over my visit, and urges me to think of my friend more closely and consciously. Its difficult to understand the silence and sadness it lends to the room because it exists in direct contrast to its human counterpart and creator, a person I would and will most often recall visually as smiling and carrying that smile even in moments of seriousness.

It has given me a lifetime of things to consider, not just about you, but about myself and those I carry with me throughout it all.

For really, then, we are quite simply the images we create.

don't read to me

"when did we become so old?"

smelling like rusty metal
maybe coins

flying home
lining up tomorrow

and choking myself with this scarf.

take notes.

back against the stone 1.2

“Is sitting something like beginning to breathe?”

That's what Tara asked Seb as she brushed her hand across his stomach, and placed it on an old jersey-sheet pillow. He was sitting against the wall, careful not to move and thus allow a repositioning on the bed - Tara’s - and set in motion the inevitable development of a more complicated future with someone he both loved and feared in equal proportions.

And now this heaving, thought Seb as Tara scanned, avoided his eyes, and eventually locked with them, and as he, eyes wide open and staring at an orange swirling band poster, struggled to think up a response to that question.

Is sitting something like beginning to breathe?

Seb didn’t know if Tara understood the depth to which her flippant probing had reached: his fear of movement and his polarizing curiosity regarding his friend. And his struggle to breathe, to continue breathing before and during sleep. Seb believed that his breathing problems, in actuality purely psychic in nature, were signs either of a more physical ailment or of an emotional imbalance so severe as to necessitate some form of hospitalization.

“I remember my mother's back,” Tara uttered suddenly, breaking a staggering silence and a stony calm that had entered her room. Their roommates hovered outside the door, unaware of but ever-curious about the whispered happenings behind thin closed doors.

With this new though well-traveled conversational direction, Seb felt a deep hole forming in their apartment, slowly swallowing the weight of he and Tara. So many terrifying questions sit knocking behind scaley walls, he thought and almost spoke aloud. Instead he mumbled something about knees and moved, turning quickly from Tara, resting his head against the mattress, hiding his nose and eyes in the pit of his elbow, and biting the salty, unwashed sheets with his front teeth.

Finally, having negotiated an acceptable response to the probing, half-turning toward Tara though still avoiding eye contact, Seb unleashed in a solitary exhaustion of breath: “I'm aware of mine. My mother's back, I mean. As well as of my own.”

Seb thought to tell her more - to elaborate on and drown what could be an expansive dialogue in deep deep waters: I won't presume to understand, he would have told her. I won't presume to understand how these backs form and function. And I won't presume to understand how they finally unfold and are defeated. If indeed they are defeated at all. But I will say no more to her, he promised himself then, though I have more to say. I will turn away now, again, and commence the pretense of a pleasant sun-drenched napping next to an individual who knows me well and yet does not know me at all - a person I both love and fear.

Having expected further discussion, Tara could not, like Seb, feign sleep. Plucking at the reddish-purple guitar, previously resting haphazardly on the wooden boards and clothing that made up her bedroom floor, Tara curled upright into some version of a ball, shutting herself off and awaiting the introduction of another person to she and Seb’s day. She quietly practiced a song she’d been working on about swimming, and thought: Its amazing that we’ve yet to see a friendly and familiar face in this small enclave of a town and in this house of six. When we speak or fail to speak, Seb and I are like children struggling for the attentions of an absent parent - we are calling home, over time, and resting on already dirty knees.

She remembered that she needed to do laundry and dishes - she knew she would only get to one of these and began debating which it would be. Almost tossing the guitar to the floor, Tara stepped off the bed, opened her door, and merged with the hallway, leaving Seb to day dream and sweat in the early afternoon sun. Almost immediately upon leaving the nest they’d created, Tara regretted her decision. In the living area beside her room, several of the other members of the household were sitting in the dark watching television and drinking beer. I wish there was another window in this room, she thought, entering the troubles and sinewy whispers of what seemed like a complete and separate day from the one she'd been experiencing, windows are essential to our lives. And on a sunny winter day such as today, it would help us prove we are still alive.

Jane looked up, exhausted, offering Tara a beer: "Where's Seb?"

“Asleep,” Tara lied, accepting the beer. She twisted off the luke-warm bottle’s cap and tossed it toward the table in the center of the room (the coffee table, really, though coffee was rarely consumed in this room, let alone using this table). The cap’s tap tap against the table’s top bounced off the tiny room’s four walls, echoing - the sound clearly upsetting the mood created by the quiet movie playing on the teevee’s green-tinted screen. Everyone shifted, then, and simultaneously, in their seats, taking long gulps from their beers. The sound of breath briefly left the room as Tara descended into the spot between Jane and Eric. Liz, sitting on the blue chair in the corner, chuckled suddenly at something happening on the screen.

They looked at the teevee, at the dark images which reflected back upon them in that room: they sipped, secretly itching their palms.

At this moment, Tara, looking down at her legs. And Seb sat suddenly and forcefully upright in his friend’s bed. Together, then, yet quite separately, they each mumbled in hushed tones: "I watched my voice slip stony to the floor. And the water outside, no longer simply rain, filled our lawn."

shoulders

and how long does it take to lose something.

an entire lifetime.

as i was walking down the street today
away from you and staring at the path before me
and kicking leaves
someone brushed my shoulder
nodded
and smiled.

and i remember thinking, i've never been touched with such kindness before.

and the carpeting in my hallway
as i write this down
is worn.

and i remember my mother and father
their home
their warmth and worn carpeting.

it will take a lifetime to forget
the scents of that house.

and a moment to remember the smell of leaving.

this echo

it's astounding to me how quickly and easily we seem to move on.

i can't eat with you or rest with you. we're dying. i can feel it.

and when we leave, who's to say we won't be punished for leaving?

and i remember what you said once: "everything is ringing like a relaxed echo."

this statement has been with me for weeks.

for so long now that it screams, painful, in my ears.

ode

"everything that lives dies."

it's sweet how something acquires meaning.

and how an image in a window
or on a chair
will be all that you can touch.
on paper,
on your wall.

but the calling and the waiting and the bright white:
recall these, curtsey and smile.

i'll miss you.

keep her company.

platitudes, or super-real fantasies of spring

i.

your
fingers
resting
in the space
between
my neck and
my shoulder:

bruised memory of comfort.

ii.

beside our bed is this window
onto a porch
with a view across the yard and into a pasturized neighborhood.

the irony of a view gazing critically back.

I only remember solidly the fall I took with you,
still,
across that room.

then a finite stride away from the place
i would return to.

iii.

i’m lasting.

a step off a mountain’s edge, and still climbing:
hand over hand I will find you well.

and that imprint of your thumb leaves me stranded,
miles high,
indebted to this sky.

back against the stone 1.1

Before he spoke he stuttered, and it was this sound she grasped onto first.

She recalled, then, how when children run, they might as well be walking. They move slowly and are easily damaged.

The damaging: the slow lift into the car that becomes the sudden ascent into adulthood.

But this change, she spoke aloud to herself alone, this change from childhood to adulthood, or even to some hollow place in between, is more like descending: a lowering of standards; a lessening of dreams and ambition; a hot smoking gun.

A stumbling steady fall.

He spoke then, finally, following his stutter and interrupting her contemplation of change and ascension: "left to the left and leaving - and no heart nor star nor getaway car can help me."

Tara heard Seb’s statement. She understood its definitiveness and its calmness and its casualties, one of which she knew herself to be. What she couldn’t quite handle were the poetics: his indirect and strangely beautiful and passionate way of emoting which, because of its measured phrasing, ceased ultimately to express any discernible thing besides the ideas of beauty and passion, and its own measured phrasing. Residing with a haunted safety in this world of emotional performance, Seb fancied himself a writer, a composer of worlds which would shake with feeling, and he fancied himself calm and creative and alive.

In actuality, or at least through the eyes of his friend and roommate and would-be lover Tara, Seb was dying, slowly and steadily and piece by piece. He was, she thought, dying with inevitably. Of course death is an inevitable event in everyone’s life, it’s just that when studied and understood through Tara’s strange green eyes, the inevitability of such an end in her friend’s life was more imaginable and ultimately more real.

Tara thought, now, rubbing her elbow and biting the inside of her mouth, of when exactly her thoughts of Seb changed from a steady love to a calloused contemplation of his life’s more long-term sentence: who facilitated this gradual/sudden alteration of perception in me, toward us, toward us together, and am I different now or are we, and are we falling together or separately?

Unable to answer this or these questions immediately, Tara moved on to think of the various events and experiences which served to both beautifully and problematically link she and Seb - their lives and emotional states and relationship to one another. She thought, then, of her mother, the things she missed about her and the things she discovered about her following her death from cancer several years back. She thought, I miss her height, and I miss the way she sneezed three consecutive childish sneezes every time she would become angry with me to the point of yelling. And when I found her old college papers in a box in the basement, I looked at these documents - boring literary essays, now-defunct psychological theorizing - as her novel, her life, what she physically left behind besides her two daughters, the evidence of her love as encrypted on 21 years of birthday cards, and then a house-full of items which serve to somehow create a legacy for future generations: how I miss these things and love these things. And her death makes it so.

“And her death makes it so,” she let these words slip out of her mouth as she and Seb maneuvered through the small college town they lived in, now as poorly paid, somewhat drunken graduates. The snow falling and the people swarming steadily blocked their way to coffee and some bagels, and Seb’s pace slowed when he heard his friend’s clearly unconscious remark. He wondered at the context of her statement, and if it somehow implicated him to speak, to pull from her its meaning and its history and to comfort his complex friend.

Seb thought, then, of himself as a writer: I should write about this moment, this feeling of awkwardly considering another’s point of view and internalized intentions. Now, with one arm playfully covering her shoulders, I promise to write later about his process of comforting a friend while inside I am gasping for air, reaching for a new life separate from any history besides the one that I will create - not perfect, but full of troubles and horror, but importantly, not my own troubles and horrors, just those of a sympathetic character.

on winning

clenching
my hands tight.

then nothing.

shrine

i.

"i wish i could see you more than just a little bit."

and the dishes sat summoning spices and food in the kitchen,
and the neighbors screamed, smiling and solid on their side of the fence.

the scrape of my finger along the stained sink's edge
is all that i'm listening to,
and the routine of a neighborhood is all that i'm summoning.

ii.

and now there's an ocean in the living room.

i wonder how such a vast body of water
has found its way into this small space,
and when, and how it can maintain its borders?

and what keeps it from spilling through doors and windows and into the unkept yard, flooding what i'm sure at one time resembled a garden?

from the stairs in the hallway, gazing down,
i am a witness to the pool's fevered expansion.

and yet no real visual change marks the room or the water:
the room is the same; the pool, the same,
and calm, like a picture of glass.

its only the actuality of expansion that i see.

i glance away from the water and at my own hands and arms.
they are different now: coarse and scarred and gray.

and no, i cannot see myself growing old here,
i can only see myself growing older.

a tear fell then, slowly grazing my cheek and
after a time reaching into that ocean in my living room,
like breaking glass.

and the borders distended.
and water devoured the garden.

yellow

through the window, stained and with only the memory of translucence, i watched the sky turn from purple to red to black and finally to a solid and unnatural yellow.

but if there is this yellow then there is this yellow and it cannot be denied.

i watched and considered these colors instead of your departure - so necessary and so affected. you catch my glance, then, and understand this:

before you leave me standing stranded in this new room (gazing confused and silent at yellow) remember to remember me exactly this way (gazing confused and silent at what could be yellow) and smile and turn away. close and wait for decades behind the door, listening to and recording my many movements. study them. struggle to visualize my movement using these sounds and those recordings. slide them under the door and go.

walk into that yellow, then, the yellow just beyond my window. i will witness your recoloration: you will be new and vibrant and immediately alive.

and the soundtrack to this event will be my history of movement.

and my eyes will dilate and stain yellow.

before the dreaming

settle on just one more beer before bed,
brush the grime from your teeth and the floor from your sport-coat,
drink a tall glass of cool/warm water slowly and patiently,
spin around the room,
yield at the stairs,
stumble and somersault shoulder-first into the banister,

and sleep soundly, ignoring the neighbors and the neighborhood and the troubled skies and the landlord on the roof.

see how we are

what startles sleep begins on her shoulder.

and then the ease with which the humming begins. and how the breeze that separates her curls enters through the window though its long been painted shut. the humming strands the patient and curious listener, and then this breeze that further complicate a night’s needed rest.

but returning to the shoulder.

fine and sharp,
only 5 and then a million points,
all symmetrically separate.

here, on her shoulder,
new and quickly forgotten, a reminder is this brilliant tattoo:
a sunday in may; grass-stains and starch; two eyes and several shared teeth.

and what you at first considered powerful and profound and formidable became a joke.

when you get enough

before he spoke he stuttered, and it was this sound she grasped first.

she recalled, then, how when children run, they might as well be walking. they move slowly and are easily damaged.

the damaging: the slow lift into the car that becomes the sudden ascent into adulthood.

but this change, she spoke aloud to herself alone, this change from childhood to adulthood, or even to some hollow place in between, is more like descending: a lowering of standards; a lessening of dreams and ambition; a hot smoking gun.

a stumbling steady fall.

he spoke then, finally, following his stutter and interrupting her contemplation of change and ascension: "left to the left and leaving - and no heart nor star nor getaway car can help me.”

back against the stone

is sitting something like beginning to breathe?

that's what she asked him as she brushed her hand across his stomach, and placed it on an old jersey-sheet pillow.

and then the heaving as she scanned, advoided his eyes, and eventually locked with them.

i remember my mother's back, she uttered suddenly.

and then the stoning: he couldn't believe the hole that had formed at his feet, silent and waiting, and then this question that sat knocking behind scaley walls.

his first and final response: i'm aware of mine. my mother's back, i mean. as well as of my own.

he thought to tell her more - to elaborate on and drown the dialogue in deep waters:

i won't presume to understand, he would have told her. i won't presume to understand how these backs form and function. and i won't presume to understand how they finally unfold and are defeated. if indeed they are defeated at all.

"i watched my voice slip stony to the floor. and the water outside, no longer simply rain, filled our lawn."

more on the running

moving isn't really productive motion: its more like shaking, i think.

and when you're watching this countdown - 8:27, 8:23, 8:10, 7:52 - the stillness that pushes itself onto the fingers and into your head is stunning. in all ways that something can be stunning.

i guess i'll have to wait. i'm really good at it. luckily i have someone somewhere no matter the time.

and the countdown is nearing zero and there's someone at your back,
then at your neck,
and then in your place.

but they were smart enough and able enough to demand presence.

september is smoke

i don't know what i miss the most:

its the smoke filling a room in a raining september.
the shoulders that create the smoke.

the running around that's really driving and the hunting that's begging.

this september is smoke: "a long walk from the cell door to the gallow."

red-lining too long

and bessington is scanning the paper - i can tell because she offers an affirmative nod to The Stranger.

she moves on to The New Yorker.

and its a vast space, with high ceilings and a muzak player.
and its where the red is really orange and they trick you into eating olives.