COUPONS

In those days, our parents didn't spend

the better part of the afternoon reading stories

of local kidnappings and bank robberies,

nor the president's plans for another far-off war;

no one bothered with the crossword puzzle

or asking where all our fathers had gone, or why.

What mattered most was clipping coupons 

for all household things imaginable -- fifty cents off

laundry detergent, fifteen cents off toilet paper,

dyed pink or blue, or buy-one-get-one-free 

for the generic brand puffed rice cereal.

We mixed our milk from powder, a gray-blue 

substance which reminded me of bone,

and of chalk-dust at the end of the school day.

Those coupons, that secret language of

nickels and dimes, transcribed on paper so fine

that you could rub it all but away between your fingers, 

inevitably found their way into 

our mothers' oversized purses, clipped

neatly together, pulled out and pondered, traded

the way we boys traded baseball cards.

Which is to say that we managed somehow,

all of us; we entered each far-fetched sweepstakes,

and all of those wars, we paid for those too.

THE SHADOWS OF CHILDREN ON SWINGS

Their shadows have become entangled,
their limbs thrown flat against a broad wall
of sunlight, rising and rising, as if they were never
coming down again, as if flight and motion
were as essential as their own breath and blood,
these groaning knots of metal releasing them,
unharmed, into the open expanse of air.
They are tied, in this moment, only to the sky,
their bird-like bodies suddenly beyond our reach,
the chains holding them having become
ladders, lengthening ropes thrown into a future
unseen, but strong enough to hold them,
the shrieks of their laughter a language
of energy, easily understood between them.
Their shadows have become entangled,
their voices converging into one, demanding
only this day, this world, or nothing at all.

GHAZAL FOR MY BROTHER ON HIS FIFTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY

Even your photos now rush by, receding in a blur.

Only the young will tell you that life is long.

It's four below today, earth crunching underfoot;

your grave is everywhere, your memory long.

Do we measure time merely by its absence?

In winter we can see that our breath is not so long.

The forest reminds us that it's ok to be lost,

though there must be a reason we came along.

We'll never know the last time for anything.

I cross the room slowly, my daughter grows long.

If there is no time, there is none to be lost,

and love has been holding us all along.

THE NOTE

My brother and I never said I love you

to each other. Not in the three decades or so

we were in this world together.

We were guys, after all, and guys --

at least the ones we knew of -- joking,

mumbling, and cursing their way

through each day at school, or gazing

cool and distant from the flickering canvas

of a movie screen -- just didn't do that.

When I was a teenager, being shipped by plane

to our ailing mother fives states away,

he walked with me to the boarding gate

at Sea-Tac, surprising me by slipping a piece

of paper, neatly folded and creased,

from the cellophane of his cigarette pack,

and placing it calmly into my hand.

"Read this on the plane," he said quietly,

as though its contents were something covert,

instructions to be burned upon reading.

But his words, painstakingly printed in all caps,

were simple and direct, words which

he could not speak but had, I imagined,

carried from place to place within himself,

until he was certain they were right;

I, too, have spent the better part of a lifetime

trying and failing to find the right words --

sometimes even one -- circling, eventually, back

to the source of whatever needed saying,

and everything that never did.

MY MOTHER AFTER HER SECOND STROKE

When I call her on her eighty-sixth birthday, her words

come out slanted, complete within themselves, 

but unattached to any discernible subject or reference point. 

They rise like invisible threads into the air, circling, 

lingering, then going their separate ways. 

Sometimes she pauses, longer than expected,

as though trying to re-enter the doorway of thought. 

Sometimes a sound takes the place for a word or phrase. 

Her speech has become a palimpsest of sorts, 

her stories overlapping in time, ignoring the rules of 

present and past tense, refusing to stay put.

She speaks of her sister, gone now for decades, 

paying a visit, how they laughed and ordered chow mein. 

She tells me that her mother, my Grandma Artie, 

is sleeping in her room with her, an arrangement that 

she seems to find both comforting and amusing. 

"I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me," 

she says in wonder, "but she's right here."

She tells me how they drove out to the old house 

on Western together, as though not a year had passed. 

"What do you think about that?," she asks, though 

it's less of a question and more an exclamation. 

I ask her what she thinks of it, then add that I'm happy 

they're getting this time together. She agrees.

But sleep is never far off, and she is tired again. 

Still, I hope there are one or two more stories to be told,

in whatever form. I will do my best to follow.

SCHOOL LESSONS

 

    I'm waiting on Timberlake Road for the school bus to rumble up the curve from below and take me to Wheelock Elementary. It's cold, as it always seems to be when waiting for the bus in the morning. There are a couple of other kids, but no parents in sight. Parents are known about, generally speaking, but never really known, not unlike stage hands shifting props around, giving cues, then disappearing again.

The snow is hard and patchy. We draw patterns and miniature roads on the frozen ground with our boots, blow clouds of imaginary cigarette smoke into the air; and though I know envy is a sin, I am secretly envious of the cooler kids' moon boots and silver NASA-inspired jackets. Imagine walking around looking and feeling like an astronaut all day! The closest I will get is drinking Tang for breakfast, that powdery nuclear-orange concoction that the commercials promise is what the astronauts drink in space.

Kindergarten itself was not so bad. In those days, it functioned more or less as a daycare, and as an introduction to the routine, discipline, and socialization of school. We listened to record albums on the boxy metal phonograph, enjoyed story and nap time, and a snack of Graham crackers and grape juice. Already I had some favorite books, with Curious George, and The Pokey Little Puppy at the top of the list.

First grade, at Farnsworth Elementary, presented some new challenges and anxieties, especially for a shy kid who much preferred an interior life of his own design. The school was bigger, and the kids were suddenly louder and more aggressive -- and there were simply more of them, crowding the hallways and classrooms, and the high-fenced yard we used for recess.

A stern-faced teacher by the name of Miss Johnson had straight blonde hair reaching nearly to her waist, and long red fingernails sharp as daggers. I knew this firsthand, as she liked to dig them -- hard -- into the back of my neck for continuing to write my letters with my left hand, which was still viewed by many as incorrect. It might even indicate that you were a bit slow, or backwards. To me, of course, it was the only way. Still is. And as self conscious as I was about some things, this was never one of them. I've been surprised to learn that a couple of people I know started out as lefties, but were bullied enough to make the switch as kids. This would have been unthinkable to me. I was as stubborn as the day is long when I needed to be, and I figured the issue was theirs, not mine.

WHERE THE OLD HOUSE STOOD

 

After your funeral I walked, by memory, to the old house,

as if I might somehow find you lingering there,

as if the years had waited all this time, unchanging.

But the old house, dear brother, was nowhere to be found.

A new one stood in its place -- charming and respectable, freshly

painted, with an impossibly green and manicured lawn.

Nothing you would have recognized. Only the trees

seemed familiar, the old and stately oaks grown older still,

the fan dance of their shadows wavering at my feet.

They would know you, I'm sure, as the lake water would,

as I barely had time to before you were gone.

We are becoming part of the past, dear brother,

a world which we had no idea we were creating as kids;

and it's something I can just about see if I narrow my eyes,

the way a rough sketch hidden beneath a painting

can be seen when held up to a particular kind of light.

Would you mourn this loss with me, I wonder.

Or would you perhaps be grateful, as I am, that no one now

can sleep where we slept, dream where we dreamed;

no one will smoke unfiltered Camels on the slanted roof,

the chilly autumn sunlight looking on in silence.

Those rooms where we laughed, where we fought, talking

long into the night, stand within these walls of words --

every door and window intact, every creak and groan of that

shifting house familiar. It all belongs to us now.

BEGINNINGS

 

We are lined up quietly against the wood-paneled wall of the hallway, my older siblings and I, as if we are under inspection, or about to give some sort of recital for which we have forgotten to rehearse. But this is not a performance. Certainly nothing that could be prepared for. This is the moment our mother is being wheeled out on a stretcher, hovering somewhere between this world and the other, a bleached white blanket thrown over her, not unlike the heavenly robes in my illustrated children's Bible. This is the decision she has made, for reasons we cannot fathom. I am the youngest, and therefore the closest to her face as it passes. I want to say something -- anything -- want to reach out, but I have only been instructed to stand here, and to remain as out of the way as possible. The EMTs speak rapidly in their practiced medical code, all abstract phrases, acronyms, and numbers. None of it sounds clear. Time makes no logical sense in these moments, everything rushing by in a whir, then to an almost excruciating slow motion. The wheels of the stretcher squeak and clack in rhythm, the screen door slaps open and the ambulance departs, its siren spilling out in all directions. Then, there is only the silence between us, strange but certain, as if it has been waiting all this time to fill each corner of these rooms. Someone will come to check on us, they must. But for now, we are five kids suddenly on our own. Our mother is gone, and will be gone for some time. In some ways, she will never return.

AUBADE IN OCTOBER

 

I've missed these slow-moving autumn days,

the gray and muted morning easing

imperceptibly into afternoon, the hours,

neither short nor long, renegotiating their borders

and sovereignty among the chill mist of river,

threads of woodsmoke without source,

dogs nosing bits of earth suddenly remembered.

I've missed them in the way that I miss you,

and I miss you in ways I do not yet understand;

you who exist to me now only in the telling,

and in the silence between speech, grown longer

with age, not with hesitation but knowing.

I've missed trying to write it all down,

the familiarity of leaving for the sake of leaving,

when everywhere is suddenly north, the steady work

of window gazing, the very luxury of failing.

I've missed the leaves flaming up in their descent,

becoming as open as books, their veiny spines

withered and cracking, each life a secret

unto itself, each history whispered in passing,

each an ending, and none of them final.

DREAM DOOR

 

In the dream there is a small hidden door in my mother's bedroom, the kind that was once used for ice deliveries in old apartment buildings, or a crawl space leading to a tangle of wires, spiderwebs, and rusty pipes. But when I bend low to open it, the exact same room appears on the other side, the same bedside table and lamp, the same red bedspread, the same bottles lined up like a miniature skyline. In fact, the whole interior of the house is there, in reverse. Though I am very young, I can walk through it by memory, taking a left where normally I would go right. I can hear and smell coffee percolating from the kitchen, a television sounding low and far away. But nothing happens in this dream. It is merely a feeling of calmness I have walked into, the very strangeness of the mundane. No one is shouting here. No one is leaving. There are no sirens wailing outside the window, no red lights reflecting against the glass. It is impossible for me to tell if this is before, or after, or never was. It is a dream that I tell to no one, for there is nothing to tell. But after I wake, it's a dream I immediately want to get back to. But of course I can't return. I can never return.

THE WATER WOMAN

 

I hold the divining rods loosely, as though they were fragile things, the slender legs of something wounded or at rest, waiting for them to tap out their simple message on the air. Divination implies a pull toward the sacred, toward the promise of water underfoot, which in turn pulls forever through itself, its source a continual mystery. The superstitious call it witchery, as though it were something sinister, though they make no argument or claims to deny it. I tread lightly, as though I were already spirit, sometimes without shoes, until I get a twitch, a signal, an indication of the hush and the hollow below. It's not magic, not in the way you might think, but merely listening with the body, the whole of it, the way our people always have. Water, after all, answers to water. On a good day, when the wind is calm and the trees drink up the light, I can lead you to the right spot. I can tell you where to begin digging, where to build. The real work -- a whole lifetime of it -- is up to you.

MY MOTHER AT EIGHTY-SIX, RECOVERING FROM AN ISCHEMIC STROKE

 

This isn't the first time she has left this way -- hovering between sleep and awake, speech and silence, breath and no breath. When we were kids, the pills and the Stoli nearly washed her away, bringing her only partway back. The ECT and barbiturates softened her eyes to a blue-tinged fog, a weather we could not grasp. But this time she seems closer to the further shore, more resigned to stand among its trees and shadow. Her body sleeps on one side, like a child nuzzling closely in the first chill of autumn. The words that come now, if they come at all, tumble out in fragments, like the torn scripture of some long lost gospel. They break free of source and context, uncertain but continuing, trailing off like the memories she has spent a lifetime trying to erase. This woman, stubborn as the sun and moon, whose version of Jesus brandished a sword toward the open sky, offers neither confession nor consolation. She travels silently on wheels now, waiting without expression for her lunch and medication, for whatever can be easily recognized, waiting for her own version of leaving to return.

FIRST GENERATION

 

Our grandparents sent long, descriptive letters from across the ocean, while we recited the pledge of allegiance to a flag of forty-eight stars in a one-room schoolhouse, the familiar language of home left at the door, along with the breath-damp wool of scarves and mittens in winter. I am an American now, we were made to recite again and again, and to write it in our notebooks until it became as familiar as our own names, the names which others could not or would not pronounce correctly, and could alter with the stroke of a pen. Our prayers, too, were in English, but only when spoken out loud. Our parents, aunts, and uncles braided the old language with the new, sometimes losing track, beginning again, sometimes inventing a new word where no other could be found. But our silence, in endless variations, was easily understood, neither awkward nor American. It sat as easily as a hammock stretched between two pines, swaying gently from east to west, responsive to the slightest breeze.

EARLIEST MEMORY

The first thing I can remember is water -- not a lake

or river but the rising level of it in the bathtub, the untroubled

sheen of its surface splashing over the lip of porcelain,

below which many imaginary explorers went in search of

new worlds, new creatures, new routes of escape.

I am holding my favorite rubber alligator, the one I will

soon bring with me to foster care. But not just yet.

I have locked the door, but cannot remember

doing so. I can hear voices calling on the other side,

going back and forth, but do not answer.

I like the hum and gurgle of the water. I like the quiet.

But my older sister, convinced that I am drowning,

has scaled the creaking fire escape and kicked in

the window with her flimsy summer sandals, throwing

shards of glass across the smooth tiled floor.

They are like small jewels, aquarium green at their edges;

I want to pick them up and turn them in my hands.

We are fine, but we are both in trouble now.

Though our mother does not stir from the sanctuary of

her television-blue room, the permanent dusk she cultivates,

and does not bother to unlock her door. It is not time

for us to break that door in, its frame dangling

like a broken cross, nails bent downward. Not just yet.

For now, she stays in bed as though tethered there,

drifts in an ocean that is not quite oblivion,

steered by starlight we can neither follow nor understand.

We are fine, we are; but we will be in trouble soon.

ON THE RURAL ROUTE

 

We arrived in the heat-thrum of summer

without warning, two young towheaded aliens from

the land of housing projects and junk yards

commandeered as playgrounds, spent the newly

lengthening days wandering, seeking out box turtles

and toads, garter snakes, plucking fat shining ticks

and the dark tongues of slugs from our sunburned arms

and legs, setting out on small, rickety boats, each

painted a different shade of ever-peeling blue,

puffy orange life vests smelling of must,

of those thick, watery seasons long since passed.

In the winter months, the school bus sometimes

could not get through, and the snowplows were slow

to find us, scraping their stubborn way up that

narrow curve of road to our small scattering

of cabins barely visible, the deep-frozen lake on one

side and the deep hibernating fields on the other,

furrows grown hard as gravestone beneath.

The small black-and-white TV was mostly snow

as well, only one local channel's signal strong enough

to reach our clothes-hanger antenna, giving us

the news we could easily see for ourselves.

The weighted sky hung low, the white earth rising

to meet it, growing closer from all directions,

while all else in the world became hopelessly far away,

our lessons for the day stretched out before us,

waiting to be written, before the early fall of dark.

RITUAL

 

In those days, back in the hills of Tennessee, you knew why

the church bell tolled at an unusual hour of the day,

sometimes signaling with a few short hammer strokes,

sometimes slow and sustained, going on and on,

ringing out once for each year of a life now passed.

Someone had to cover the windows and mirrors,

lest the spirit enter and be trapped inside the glass.

Someone had to edge the stationary in black, and to stop

the clocks, as they had stopped for the departed.

Someone had to wash the body, a sacred rite for the closest

of kin, neither to be hurried nor turned away from.

Someone had to stay up with the body, keeping watch,

wildflowers and juniper masking the smell of decay,

mingling with the warm comfort of constantly brewing coffee.

My mother has not forgotten placing silver dollars

on the eyelids of aunts and uncles, of touching

the hand of the deceased in the belief that it would

remove a blemish, which she says it did. But my mother --

having buried her parents, siblings, and two children

at early ages -- is a lifetime removed from that wide-eyed girl,

and from that sepia-tinted world of front porch songs

and white whiskey, of tobacco leaves on bee stings

and a pair of good overalls for Sunday, a Ball jar of pickled

pig's feet and a can of bacon grease above the stove.

She has requested for herself that there be no ceremony,

no tributes, no songs to be song or scripture read,

and above all, no one gazing upon her body.

Perhaps she is simply removing the trappings of this world

in advance, blotting out the unnecessary, the gaps

in her memory becoming the narrowest of bridges now;

her prayers -- whatever they may hold, in whatever

order recited -- require no words to be lifted.

MY GRANDFATHER'S DAY BOOK

 

Worn and dappled with age, it creaks slightly upon opening, must in its creases, a small narrow door leading immediately into the past. The winding blue script within -- all of it in Finnish -- I can only translate in part, a reminder that language, like memory, can only take us so far. What is left out of this ledger -- this list of dates, facts, and figures -- must write its own story elsewhere. There is no listing for the cost of whiskey and cigarettes, no mention of the son drowned on the other side of the world, nor the wife who followed soon after, no price mentioned for the arsenic that took her. The margins are narrow. There is room only for what he is willing to record, that which makes sense and can be easily measured. I don't know where my own days stand, so many squandered with laziness, the stubborn refusal of youth, so many unaccounted for. I know only that their shadow grows long, no matter which direction I stand. If I am found lacking, grandfather, let these words be a start, let my debt be paid in the telling.

FROM ROOM 104A

 

Overnight, with little warning but a small stitch

turning in your side, and a bit of blood where blood

should not be, you have entered the land of the unwell.

This is the kingdom of white surfaces and sanitizer,

of hushed voices and bedpans clinking, IV stands that

resemble coat racks, and curtains behind curtains,

of paper shot glasses and silent shuffling feet.

You are wheeled from one cool room to another,

quietly and efficiently, the ghost-flicker of ceiling lights

passing like the lines of a highway leading nowhere.

You count backwards. You repeat your name until it sounds

like something foreign, far removed from its source.

You listen, while the faceless man on the other side of

the recovery room coughs and moans all night,

talking, in fitful sleep, to the mother who is not there.

You wonder if your daughter will visit, wonder what day

of the week it might be, and whether you will be

able to write a poem without a window, something

you hadn't realized was essential all this time.

That's where the world is, after all, the one you wish to

return to, in spite of it all; and if it's not exactly new,

or all you had hoped for, it will never be the same

as it was when you left it only days before.

SNAPSHOT FROM MY MOTHER'S WEDDING

 

My brother stands just outside the door frame,

a small coffee cup in hand, while I sit on a folding chair,

thin and lanky in a too-big secondhand suit,

hunched forward, scribbling in a moss-colored notebook.

Neither of us particularly wants to be here -- though

of course we cannot say -- the pastel carnations pinned

to our chests belying our expressionless faces.

Our mother is marrying for the third time -- this time

to a good old boy from south Texas who no one

cares for or trusts more than the weather here in spring.

This was before he spit her name out like a curse,

his hands having become more menace than comfort,

and certainly before he held a shotgun to her head,

threatening to paint the wood-paneled walls with whatever

thoughts and dreams she might have left inside her;

and it's a few years before my brother lifted him

by the neck, dangling like a scarecrow in stocking feet,

eyes popping like buttons, holding him there calmly,

steadily, breathing hard but slowly, until our sister's shouts

convinced him to at last let go, allowing him to fall.

But this is not that moment; this is merely a snapshot

of that young man, having found a quiet corner

for a moment, writing his way towards all he cannot

know, his left hand curling above the page, pale sunlight

filtered from another room, hovering like smoke.

WHERENESS

 

I had never considered it that way --

the simple state of being in a particular time

and place -- until you let the word fall,

suspended between us, both strange and familiar.

Where else could one be?, I wondered.

You loved words that way, trying out the new,

settling on favorite phrases, turning them,

chewing on their shapes and sounds, following

their threads wherever they might lead.

Now, all those years having gone wherever

the years go, I can only be grateful that

my whereness and yours found each other,

however briefly, breathed the same air,

shared the same silences, laughed at the same

absurdities you couldn't help but challenge.

You demanded much but expected little,

your lack of faith in others a religion unto itself,

yet never questioning where we belonged,

and never doubting that we would live forever.