The children finally fell asleep. The parents tip-toed to the closet,
unlocked the presents and positioned them under the tree with its
delicate glass balls and constellations of colored lights. Alongside it the
window framed the big oak in the garde n with the children’s swing.
Faint stars shone between the black branches. No danger of a white
Christmas, the children’s wish. The children thought in terms of
snowmen, not of fatal skids. The parents finished the second bottle of
champagne and went, unsteadily, to bed.
The wind woke them briefly at 2:36. At 3:18 he mumbled: “Blowing
hard.” At dawn the house shook them stark awake. In the grey light
outside they saw that the big oak with the swing had fallen a few yards
from the house, a chaos of broken branches.…
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We were in Rocky Point smoking rocks when Morgan jumped from the balcony. He
had this perfect running start from atop the bed and his inertia was enough so that all we
could salvage was his Hawaiian shirt. I clutched that cotton in my fist for hours. His
summersault was faultless, and he was smiling. Two seconds into his heroic leap, his skull
smashed against the sand-strewn concrete beside the ATV rental palapa. Being sunrise,
the blood was dripping tangerine and purple toward the beach and a crowd of
expressionless Mexicans huddled around the corpse.
¨Pinche pendejo güey!¨ locals said.
The policía paraded us through the streets. It was beautiful. Morgan with his head
cracked like a huevo ranchero, seasoned with ethereal leisure.…
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“Western wind, when will thou blow
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! If my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.”
– Anonymous
Beyond the lamp-lit room is a plangent rain
—rescuing trees from their near-drought dyings
and I ponder the thousands of nights
—of our separate sibilant lyings.
The western wind that now does blow
—that down this rain may rain
blows not for us – or too much so
—shuttling shuttered pain.
Through colorful rooms we pass and greet
—snug from the night’s down-pouring
twined in un-twinned dreams
—anchored in our unmoorings.
The thirsty grass and withered stalks
—exalt the liquid ambrosia
while in dry and sighing rooms
—we unmake our beds of roses.…
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There is a tremendous amount of ‘seeing -to’ that our male counterparts never
experience.
The terrifying and sacred moments of intimacy that daughters endure and
subsequently cherish; the anointment into womanhood with the blood of
our predecessors.
My cousin, James, was steadfast and sensitive, concerned and sweet, always.
“It is hard to see Nan like this”, he confided in me on the porch, turning his head from
the May sun and my eyes.
I nodded, “I know, bud.”
And I did know.
I knew the tenacity it required to even kiss my grandmother hello without weeping.
To his credit, I have seen James carry an infant’s coffin on his nineteen year old
shoulder, and that is a weight which I will never know.
He will never know the weight of caring for someone,
the ache of being the maker of meeting ends,
the reader of omens and omissions.…
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“It’s summer again, Papy,” we yelled in his ear. “Where to this time?”
Every June 21, his birthday, it was the same thing. Most of the time
we didn’t get through or when we did we couldn’t understand him and
we’d wheel him around the park, telling him what the flowers and the
sky looked like.
This time he said “B-bordel” and we laughed and poked him, very
gently, and yelled, “Where else do you want to go, Papy?” After a
while he said, “C-craix. B-boat.” He used to talk about it years ago
when he could still talk: young, stripped to the waist in the sunshine,
drifting past nice things. That was way back, before the war.
So we placed him in a rowboat at Craix.…
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The first time you get on a bike is an exhilarating and debilitating experience, and in this
regard so is your first real relationship—which does not include sitting next to your crush at
lunch in the 6th grade and sharing a bag of Vinegar Lays, which you abhor. It’s the
obnoxious giggly conversations about classes and professors you don’t care about and
movies that you saw that one time, vaguely, maybe only half of it—this is you placing
your feet on the pedals and kicking off for the first time. Once you kick off, you’re
conscious that this is the one and only time you can feel the thrill of your first bike ride—
and the terror that follows as you realize you can’t keep rehashing the same conversations.…
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I reply it was a storybook childhood no not as in Princess Bride
just money enough for food piano lessons a dog new clothes
a yearly vacation that kind of thing and naturally there were
the few times in the middle of dinner my mother drew a knife
from the drawer in order to end herself but I don’t remember
those well maybe not at all though I do recall the shininess
and little points yes serrations I later learned and my father
with his hands out in a stop stop and and also a more than
usual problem in getting our broccoli down the three of us
wide-eyed in steakus interruptus and the dog sniffing terror
a bit less tantalizing than snippets of scrap cushioning himself
suddenly in a collective unconscious of couch our father still
pleading no please let’s just … there that’s good just smile
and pass the ketchup and it was over until the next time
going smoothly to cleanup with the floor vacuum
and its wicked wonderful sound signifying another meal
successfully ingested and popcorn on the way the machines
so comforting being in the end all under her control
one night bleeding into the next and in the morning the usual
coffee aroma the dark savior awakened from slumber in the
cupboard all night long above the you-know drawer and off
to school with us after the first cup and then on to all the rest
it was quite full that pot so I knew what she was doing as I boarded
the bus and undid my locker chatting away on a storybook day
never thinking what might happen if she jumped suddenly to grab
the phone and spilled the coffee one doesn’t in retrospect think
that far ahead or behind and truth is anything can be part of
anything like the tiny reflections and refractions dancing like
so many gemstones right there in a kitchen in storybook suburbs
where a woman who wants to die lives the same day over and again
for decades as there are rules so she swallows them like bitter beans
and gets on with fixing beds and tossing laundry and now
she lives and thrives and my father relaxed now
his hands clasped as with some cherished book
upon the chest his final chapter gasped long long ago.…
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