In his wallet, Dixon kept his ticket to the concert Lynyrd Skynyrd was flying to when his plane crashed. When he was home from college he used to ride with his friends to the field where Rick Nelson’s plane crashed on the last night of 1985. They drank beer from coolers, passed joints, tried to turn the music loud enough to fill that empty field and the long silence surrounding it. Beneath whatever moon there was and stars shifting too slowly to track, they felt themselves more alive in a place where others had fallen. Graves and the stone monuments cast for the dead are one thing. The places they fell are another, small territories granted mystery because a treasured spirit vanished there. As though some danger may linger, as though blood lost there might rise from the dirt and stain one’s feet.…
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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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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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Funny how vicious a cycle life is, isn’t it? It’s sadistic, almost. We spend most of it picking
up broken glass, trying to make sense of a deadly jigsaw puzzle that only leaves you
bleeding in the end. This is glass that, even when put back together, makes a window
that’s impossible to see out of.
When we finally slink away to lick the wounds, we return to broken sunshine glittering off
of the once again shattered window. Even though our old wounds are scabbing over, we
try to rebuild until there is nothing left but naked flesh, no protecting skin left, all blood
and exposed muscle…
But if we could only stop to see the way that the wicked sunlight shines off of our wrecked
windows or the way that the moon makes the pieces glow at night, then maybe we could
rest for one single moment.…
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The Meaning of More
We stack glass jars in the hallway,
fill them with fireflies and nails.
From the bed, we discover
walls move like water.
The blanket is a psychic’s tongue
draped across our legs.
What is more but what we can’t
really touch, your body sliding
down the shower wall,
where you end up when you
are gone. Spaces left
unstirred down my back.
You can bury me in your mattress
and dig me out later in loose threads
unstitching music notes,
the cigarette-glow
of need. We are objects
just like the things we keep
stored in attics and boxes,
these lonely trinkets, bed sheets.
Keep the pillows from long ago,
your lovers’ names sketched
inside each one, languages
of dead petals, wild pearls.…
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Outer Borough
In Brooklyn, when night begins to fall, a cemetery silence invades the residential areas, punctuated by occasional passing automobiles, or by straggling fragments of a grey mass, three million strong. The more venal and corrupt sections of the main avenues, where night life runs riot until midnight or one a.m., offer dull movies, dingy pool rooms, streamlined bowling alleys and drab ice cream parlors. At one a.m. the night life dies of shame, for dreams have moldered here. Only De Kalb avenue struggles on to the hours near dawn. Rebellious spirits from neighborhoods dormant flock to the scrotum of Brooklyn, unable to resist the siren-call in the desperate search for willing female flesh, waiting to be fondled. …
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