Poetry

Midmorning abeam, abuzz, aubade about

walking our old block, applauding the view

that Yonkers is fair facsimile of my twenties. I can’t.

I can’t unthink pariah dogs queuing on rain’s garnet,

canines bared like tracer bullets at the street – nothing new

about collaborating with synecdoche of oneself.

The past. I could touch it                    almost, open

the day like a devotional book, work its clasp like

a dog’s flews and stare down its gullet, gasp

into living dark. Wycliffe called it

vtmer derknessis in St. Matthew’s account

of the healing at Capernaum (the desperate centurion

with his palsied son), translating Christ’s address as                                    Parable of the Weeds

ther schal be wepyng and gryntyng of teeth.                                       

My mind works through this forecast of tears

and how it was ten years before I first came to New York 

that I last took the bus from Echo Industrial Park,

believing it possible, then, to be reborn as morning

is, shedding night’s clothes at the close of shift.

Now I dog the blunting of an uncertain future

at midcareer. Health to the new bosses, sure.

As Christ sat at meat in Matthew’s house,

loud as a beaten dog, perhaps my namesake knew

the thousand ways to be shameless in a small town.

Perhaps knew that for small men, leaving leaves

nothing to choose between living & the life.

When the next-door neighbor

Molotov cocktailed our house

just after a midnight in June,

all four of us were asleep, we

who’d moved back home to the

Pacific Northwest after two

decades of lake effect snow,

thanks to those bodies of water

known as the greats. Their

delivery, similar to his, dropped

a cold so quick we’d often wake

like we did when the firemen

lumbered through our house

that hot night. Sometimes, the

Michigan snow kept closed

all that could open. Sometimes,

our next-door neighbor stood

out in the rain, his neck craning

at the possibility of drones above.

Snow can fool you, if you look

at it long enough. Everywhere

starts to look like it’s down.

If you don’t have an opening,

thoughts can take you there,

too. At the trial, our next-door

neighbor confessed to thinking

we were the bad neighbors from

years ago. I opened a door in the

place where I live. I asked him to

come inside.

I ponder on the idea of great fields,

            Petals falling from yellow roses,

                        How their stems wither upon departure.

The winter mornings resist blooming,

            Dandelions carry away until spring,

                        Frost creeps over their corpses.

Their memories live in the depths of summer,

            November air fades the tint,

                        And no small hands

Reach for them to carry inside before dinner,           

            As mom cooks over the oven,

                        And dad comes home too late.

The grass of the fields never stops swaying, even

            As the air begins to dim

                        And flowers wilt.

I think it’s funny you chose a cheetah print notebook with a hot pink stripe down the middle. On the cover, you wrote your name. Harry. Your lines and curves in each letter are crooked, shaky like my hands as I flip it open and thumb through the pages. Your rich brown thoughts poured on each page, stained by the tobacco on your fingers. I imagine you, sitting on the left end of the couch, journal teetering on the rounded arm, a Pilot G2 in hand. Names, a doctor’s phone number, the bank’s phone number, medicines you were taking, why you were taking them, dreams you had—all written in slanted black ink on cream pages. I hold a portal to your thoughts in my hands and every time, with no ounce of hesitation, I jump in.

Asking why on the White River,
you tell me about the time you tried
to kill yourself, dropping to the side
of a California highway.

Later that night
I’m spitting tobacco juice down the drain,
remembering how I laid crucifix in the grass,
touched it with trembling hands in triumph
at the memory of a near six year drawl
prophesying over me: the grass
           would never be greener.

Known only by the glow of cheap cigars
I tell you why I won’t sing hymns.
You tell me you were in love once.
     I ask myself how to know what it feels like
and why time is a mechanism
                                of middle grade clarity.

The spin and ache of hours draws truth
from history, admissions staining the water
in incantations of suffering. Nicotine
behind my eyes, beneath my tongue
              like a rudder as I say to the sky
I never wanted the grass.

I wanted what is now in front of me:
tall trees casting silhouettes on black water.

Noun

the state or quality of lasting forever I wish I remembered the last time I rode in your car. I do remember other rides. Climbing into the cramped backseat of the ‘96 Sentra—always behind the passenger’s seat, never the driver’s—ingrained in me to always buckle up first. The resounding click of the belt locking into place and I could relax, slumping back against gray seats, the fabric like soft fuzz on the skin of a peach. Mema hated to drive so you were always the one behind the wheel, the one to always reach a hand back, crossing through patches of sun warming my legs until you found me. A knee. A calf. A hand. The small fingers of a child curling around your doughy skin, aged with wrinkles and rough work but always gentle with me. Maybe it’s better I don’t remember the last car ride with you where your eyes were failing, tires crossing the double yellow, your mind shaded by clouds. Instead I am six, seven, eight years old, forever safe in the bubble of your blue car, sunshine bathing my legs and your hand clutching mine.