my mother, pearl, with folded hands, in rooms patiently waiting. her hands are a shimmering flame. time is precious in the inspiration. her wriggling in the doctor’s ear. a blanket for a shawl, taking three buses to the hospital in a blizzard to come get me. how is he getting better, when he believes the wall is a piano? at least he plays a real one at home. like the earnest search for the b section of a maple tree. not a figure yet, but the contours of one. he’s even composed pieces on and for the wall he calls “études for chalk piano and penumbral figures on the wall.” quite stunning really. the insistence that we be somebody somewhere impedes assembly. i’m in the middle of the piece with melody all around.…
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I stretch another strip of packing
tape over the three holes and punch new
ones through it. I fold what I think
is a cricket in the bedspread while Lili cries out
for a Kleenex, then rummages through
the bedding bunched in her lap
for a black wolf spider. Which becomes just one
of the reasons I lie awake counting
breaths and commanding my body not
to stir, my ankles not to cross,
my nose not to itch. In the coverless scrapbook
of motorized vehicles I keep with my boy,
we flip though torn service cards, disembodied jeep
doors, a Hummer with Christmas tree
roof-strapped and polar bear in the passenger seat.
When I feel her weight lift
and bedsprings release, late night I cannot sleep,
I find the light on in the study:
my Montessori teacher wife on her phone,
ordering more books on the Scholastic website. …
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Sometimes she says your name just to say it,
just to bring you like a breeze into the room.
She expects something of me, then, and who
knows what. After she said it today, I let it
dissolve in our South Georgia kitchen, not looking
to remember yours and mine in Denver: cabinets
too high, above the basement, which was riddled
with spiders, water glugging through the pipes.
Or our booze-fueled beginnings, or the break
so sharp there was no exploration
and no mend. Our life stopped
like a red light, obeyed without question.
You are a past, and only one. Your name
drifts like weed seed. I do not chase it.
– Katherine Fallon…
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is not like a tree
without leaves. Some spaces
when contemplating
and seeing
beauty—
In the morning
I embrace it in, building
bubbles.
Under the soil
many lie swayed
without gain—…
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Children thought the birds were falling off the buildings,
and they thought the birds were on fire.
―from an article in the Washington Post, September 12, 2001
The first few leaves are falling now,
our smiles and laughter echoing
in memories, or how
we were caught on disc or in a photo.
The unanswerable never stops—
there, at the edge of the idlest thought:
to jump from molten towers before both dropped
as though just sprung from dust. While
looking up, children had begun to weep,
thinking we were birds on fire miles
above. Now grown, some bolt from one sleep:
upon a ledge, narrow as a tightrope,
flames at their backs.
Nowhere but down.
– Mark Mansfield…
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I sit on a pink lace sofa
underneath the glint & hum of poorly lit
chandeliers. Tucked away in the curve of a cellar
cocktail bar, hidden in a one cathedral town,
far from Manhattan.
Sipping gin with lemon, pretending the tonic
is turpentine
or cyanide.
I watch a white wild haired man engage in conversation
at a table for one—
thumbs up, eyebrows raised, chuckles, & tears.
No reciprocating smiles.
He. Is. Glorious—
in his storytelling to the vase of white oleanders;
much more content
than the couple setting two tables left, trying
to find their reflections in martinis.
Billie Holiday’s “Take all of Me”
is being sung out of tune
by a faded blonde-haired,
blue-eyed fool— you took a part that once was my heart…
but it soothes me.…
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Like a balloon with a loose knot,
the air has been seeping out,
and I’ve been sputtering around the room,
dusting under old photographs, checking
expiration dates, emptying boxes,
and rinsing near empty jars.
They asked for recent baby photos
or even a picture of a nephew or a niece.
“How about a picture of a favorite student?” they wonder,
with the keening voice of their good nature.
“Something unique to share with staff.”
And I wonder what to do.
I remember when we clacked shut
the shutters of the boy’s cabin
all at once in the middle of the night.
Later, we shared a box of lemon cookies
on the rippling lake,
fingers white with powdered sugar.
I floated on a kayak all to myself for the first time
on the hush and pull of water,
and we decorated with red hearts
the pictures of the camp counselors
who all looked exactly alike. …
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