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.

FAST

 

You were always so fast, brother, even when we

were just kids back in the housing projects;

couldn't sit still, your limbs constantly fidgeting,

growing long and quick seemingly overnight,

your lankiness slowly turning into grace.

You were always in pursuit of something else,

something new, risky, while I, the annoying kid brother,

could never keep up, tagging along though I did,

daydreaming, awkward within my own skin.

You drank your first beer, kissed your first girl,

unclasped your first bra as though there was no time

to lose, as though they were the only things

that mattered in a life you could already see drawing

to a close, as though you were on a timeline

the rest of us could neither see nor understand.

When you said, as casually as though commenting

on the weather, that you'd never make it to forty,

I put it down to the whiskey, the dark romance of youth.

Only now, gone so many years, do you linger,

speaking openly as you rarely did before, no need

to rush, or to leave out any detail in the telling.

There is no road. We walk now side by side.

THE LOST CITY

 

We pondered the popular myths of our childhood,

large and small, the blurred and grainy image

of Bigfoot walking through the woods,

so alone that we felt more sympathy than fear;

considered whether to spend our weekly allowance

on those X-ray glasses or sea monkeys

advertised in the backs of our comic books,

those other worlds of myth and muscle,

where humanity, which had been so foolish,

was always saved at the last possible moment.

We wondered, too, where all those planes

and ships had vanished, their signals lost forever,

while attempting to cross the Bermuda Triangle.

Wondered how many miles into the ocean

the lost city of Atlantis -- which we knew to be

true -- could be, and if one of us ever traveled there

in this lifetime without the other, how we might

send word back to the bright world above.

It's the way I speak to you now, brother,

through the weight and distance of all these years,

your reply moving slowly through the waves

while I wonder at the beauty of that city,

sparks of ancient light flashing against its glass,

a story, like you, I am not willing to let go.

THE LAST K-MART

 

The last K-Mart department store in the country

is closing today, and I am reminded suddenly

of those long-ago Saturday afternoons, following

my brother along the forbidden shortcut

through the tall grass and weeds which ran

alongside the junkyard, fresh quarters in hand

for finishing our weekend chores, to be quickly spent

on some small novelty, or if we had pooled

our money, a new hamster to replace the one we

had just buried, our first undeniable shock

at the fleetingness of this world and all it holds.

I am reminded, too, of my brother's name

for the store: Came-Apart, which never failed

to make us laugh, remember back-to-school shopping

with our tired mother, the generic Trax sneakers

and stiff, creased denim of Husky jeans, which

became the tell-tale wardrobe of welfare kids and

project brats -- which is to say, many of us.

I remember blue light specials in the cafeteria,

and our family TV and sofa on layaway.

I wonder what will become of the gumball stands,

the rusted merry-go-round and plastic pony

outside the entrance that you could sit atop for a nickel,

dreaming of faraway prairies and open sky.

No doubt they will be hauled away for the indignity

of the landfill, or to some industrial warehouse,

while my brother sleeps the same silent sleep

that he has mastered for more than twenty years,

not far from here, not far from anywhere.

When last I checked, that shortcut was still there.

FOOSBALL

 

Sometime during the night -- tall, silent trees still

breathing the lingering heat of daylight --

my older brother and his high school friend released

the unattended foosball table from the confines

of the White Bear Lake Yacht Club, where Scott and Zelda

once whiled away their early days, their smart

summer whites billowing like sails against the blue,

like all those blank pages waiting patiently to be filled.

But my brother, in his cut-off jeans and rust-colored

tank top, would not have been thinking of this;

nor would he have considered the first quick sketches

of this game on a matchbox in some British pub,

nor the poet who perfected it so that the children of

the Spanish Civil War could still know laughter and play.

He would have been walking calmly, deliberately,

laughing, I suspect, under his breath with his buddy,

up the four long blocks to our falling-down house

with its equally falling-down porch and garage,

his dying car on makeshift blocks beside it.

He might have reminded himself, as he often did

to me, not to run or look afraid. To be cool.

The next day he polished it the way he polished

that car, a kind of blessing, and we played

outside on our uneven patch of lawn, islands

of dry dirt on either side, bright sun shining down

upon us, and our newly acquired pitch of green;

and for one brief moment, the day, the neighborhood,

if not the world itself, belonged to us alone,

as we spun those black handles into a steady blur,

breaking our own rule, showing off, just to see

who could hit the hardest into that narrow goalpost,

its white plastic ball echoing, even now.

SPARRING

 

My young hands are slow, hopelessly so, hardly

equipped for the instinctual jab and reach

required for this dance; my flat feet, likewise, reluctant

to lift themselves from the cool kitchen linoleum.

This is as close as we will get to an embrace,

my brother and I, the palms of his hands held out

toward me, waving, circling, shifting the air between us,

hands which look like larger versions of my own.

Still in high school, he proudly wears his silver satin

jacket from the White Bear Lake Boxing Club,

the rust-colored spatters of blood, who knows whose,

along its front and arms a badge of honor.

"Protect your head," he reminds me, repeating it,

having twice had his own nose broken of late.

This is the true gospel he is preaching,

fire and brimstone in each of his teenage fists,

where all of his sorrow, anger, and betrayal entwine,

speaking with blunt certainty all that he cannot;

and though I flinch, I know that he would not hit me

in the face, not intentionally, but merely brushes

against my cheek slightly, delicately, my periphery

catching only the blur of sudden motion, of autumn light

shifting through the broken branches of trees,

the movement of human or animal already gone,

just to show that he can, just to remind me

how quickly things can come at you in this life,

and how quickly they can all just disappear.

EVENING DISPATCH

 

I swatted, quite

absentmindedly, a fly

pausing on a patch

of dusty window glass,

the fat yellowing

sleeve of old newspaper

suddenly a weapon,

the cobalt sheen

and barely discernible

wings of its body leaving

a small apostrophe

of blood not far from

my brother's face

and name printed near

the top of the page, fading,

startling me anew,

as if I had just stumbled

upon this news, as if

I had been unaware --

blissfully so --

for all this time.

ON THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF YOUR DEATH

 

Twenty years have come and gone, brother,

as quickly as the space between one

breath and the next, a shrug or sigh, or that pause

after I had asked you something mundane

and obvious, barely requiring words, though

you would answer just the same.

Twenty years gone and you are never

quite an absence; I still slip into the present tense

when speaking of you, still dream you that way,

still send occasional word back from this

strange and broken world. Twenty years, and still

I search for you as I drive the old north end neighborhoods,

though the houses of our childhood, weathered

even then, are no more, replaced by

new frames, new siding and additions, new families

stirring and shuffling inside, doing things they

will remember only decades from now.

Even the housing projects have acquired

a small semblance of respectability, gone now

the prison-like walls of cinder block we used to scale,

hot to the touch beneath the summer sun,

replaced by open patios, brightly-colored pots

of plastic sprouting zinnias, daylilies, and aspidistra.

Twenty years gone in the blink of an eye,

one frame of the scene deceptively the same

as the next, though something of the earth

has been altered, irrevocably so, each season

and slant of light rushing in blindly, barely noticing

who or what has been left behind.

DOG DAYS

 

Those long summer evenings of childhood,

when the air stilled, thick and sticky with heat,

and it became impossible to sleep,

my brother and I would bring our pillows

and bedclothes into the living room,

camping out on the floor like intrepid explorers,

stripped down to our white briefs,

our thin cotton sheets billowing like sails

toward the uncharted waters of sleep.

We could hear the chirr of crickets,

and the thump of moths against the screen,

dreading the high and tiny sirens

of thirsty mosquitoes circling the dark.

We would take turns getting up to readjust

the old box fan, which rattled and shook, never

quite staying put but pulling itself forward

bit by bit, or turning slowly to the opposite wall,

as if it knew a better way out of this misery,

this engine to our imaginary boats,

so clumsy and so stubborn, though it was

all we had, its rusted heart and grimy blades

slowing and sputtering to a stop, then

starting back up again, shaking off its own sleep

for our sake, and always -- we hoped --

strong enough to bring us home by morning.

LAYOVER

 

When I find myself walking through the airport,

the enormous glass walls filled with sky

and my own meager reflection, ostensibly

just another middle-aged traveler wandering lost,

I am, unbeknownst to others, suddenly

thirteen years old again, traversing that strange city

of flight alone, disregarding the instructions given

to me by the kindly airport attendant, a young woman

in a wine-colored smock and neatly-tied scarf

smelling vaguely of vanilla and lavender.

I had never flown, and found myself suddenly

on a solo endeavor, anxiously en route

to stay with my brother or sister out west --

no one had quite determined where

I would end up -- the quietly stubborn kid

enamored with music and poetry, the mysterious world

of girls from which they all seemed to emanate.

My mother, who no longer wanted the job,

would be staying where she was, taking yet another

sabbatical from her parenting career.

So, I found myself on layover, hovering between

cities, and between lives, daydreaming past

the gift shops and baggage carousels,

the lounges overflowing with beery conversation

as the Cubs struggled to pull out a win.

I suppose my mother meant to impart a lesson,

but I already knew how to leave

and not look back, knew how to get lost

in the secret rooms of self, or deep within a crowd.

Overhead, I could hear the formless voice

calling out gate numbers and departure times,

the soft-spoken warnings, as if this were all merely

a game of chance, some tickets better than

others. Who could say which was which?

I walked on, only half listening, for something

that sounded vaguely familiar, the right combination

coupled with a bit of urgency, something that

would lead me, for now, homeward.

BREAKDOWN

 

When my mother returned from the hospital -- the place where I was born a few short years before -- came back after several rounds of what were then known as shock treatments, she didn't come back all the way. Her cool blue eyes seemed to be somewhere else, her words slower and distant, as if trailing behind her from the next room. When she would occasionally forget the names of my brother and me, or get us mixed up, I didn't understand. I wondered who this woman was, and whether the right mother had been sent home to us. She spent much of her time in bed, unread magazines and bottles of pills balanced beside her, monotonous flicker of the black-and-white TV her only window to the outside. But I liked when she played her guitar for us, when whatever had been taken from her seemed to return, at least in part, her voice becoming almost a smile. She would sing those old country hymns and children's songs, murder ballads which I later found she had changed the words to, for our sake. Even within the beauty of such music, she seemed to be saying, the world was a frightening place, violent without warning, and whatever path you chose was yours to walk, and walk alone.

SECOND MEETING WITH MY FATHER

 

After burying my half-brother that afternoon, I asked the cab driver to drop me at my father's shop on Rice Street, two blocks up from the housing projects, where as a child I had so often imagined him, alternately captaining a ship through far-off lands, or swilling cheap wine under a bridge with the other derelicts. But here I was, surprising him, weighted and imbalanced with grief and a lifetime of questions which I could not bring myself to articulate, even now. He moved, at his ease, through rows of carpet and color samples, walls stacked with gallon drums of paint, back to his wood-paneled office. I noticed the pigmentation of his hands had receded, leaving patches the color of lard shining through, or the underside of a painting that has begun to chip. "Well..." he began, offhandedly, "you and I just kind of went our separate ways" -- as if this were an explanation, as if the child had somehow agreed and denied the father as well. He leaned back in his desk chair, hands clasped behind his head, elbows pointed in either direction, asked what I did for a living. I told him that I was a poet, which he failed to acknowledge one way or another. "I mean," he tried again, "What do you do to put money in your pocket?" I shrugged, stammered out one dead-end job or another. It was hard to imagine this most plain-spoken of men ever sweeping my mother off of her feet, however briefly. But wounded people have a way of finding each other, and are privy to a language of their own. It was, in part, why I was here, a product of that wound. This, then, was the earthly kingdom he had constructed, and had chosen again and again. It was, I suppose, a life that he could understand, one of facts and figures, the tangible and the easily stated. I left him to it.

LARRY

 

Larry was the name of the man that my mother

married next, somewhere between ECT treatments

and her daily regimen of pills -- tall, gaunt and ruddy-faced,

simian ears that jutted forward like antennas,

or seashells, glowing translucent and red when

pierced by sunlight, tiny veins like a hundred cracks.

He mistook the marriage, I expect, for one

of love, but my mother needed him for

the much more practical task of disciplining my unruly

brother and me, which he did, following her

instructions like any low-level officer.

He was the first to fold me over a kitchen chair

and strike me, hard, then harder, and then hard enough

to dislodge me from the body, until there I was,

amazingly, watching somehow from above,

as though my own protector, keeper of a hidden

passageway deep within myself, previously unknown.

I didn't think that he was a bad man,

merely someone following orders, obedient

to a fault, perplexed, I imagined, as I was, watching,

as though this were but a poorly acted play.

Though I was, secretly, proud to have not cried,

proud to have left the body, without anyone so much

as noticing; and when I came back, having passed

their test, apologizing for my meager sins,

I didn't come back all the way. Not for them,

and not for a long time to come.

WHAT WE CARRIED WITH US

 

It couldn't have been much, whatever

could be tossed into two plastic garbage bags

and carried, from the station wagon

to the front porch of our foster home,

a word which we had neither heard nor spoken,

but one that would become as common

as a surname, shorthand for others to describe us.

We carried our toothbrushes and combs,

clothes and underwear, carried whatever toys

or stuffed animal could be retrieved,

while the cacophony of sirens sped our comatose

mother to the cold comfort of hospital rooms,

plastic roses, a potpourri of pills to replace

the ones which had not managed to kill her.

We took a blanket or two, worn and pilling,

superhero pajamas, damp familiarity

of our own sweat-smell.

But mostly, we took all that we could not

speak of -- the unshifting weight which

an absent father leaves, ladder rungs of anxiety

we could neither climb nor give name to,

the mutual shame of bed wetting

and the sudden difficulty of common speech.

We carried each other, brother, hardly

aware that we were doing so, always balancing,

always stronger than we looked or imagined.

We carried that grief until it settled in,

quiet and unobtrusive, a gentle tune humming

through the bones. I'm singing it now, though you

have been gone now these many years,

pausing just long enough for you to whistle

through the grass blades, bend that grosbeak's note

just so, rustle the cotton shirts and work pants

upon the line in a pantomime of breath,

the familiar motion of walking away.

LEARNING TO LISTEN

 

If I am being honest, brother, my last words to you were untrue, releasing you from this life, this body, this bundle of worry in the way I thought I was required to do. As if words mattered, mine or anyone else's in that moment. As if you needed my permission for release. I told you that I would be alright. Another lie. I told you that I love you, words we never spoke to each other in this life. Some things, we learned early on, need not be spoken. Some things are weakened in their telling. If I am being honest, I saw no need to pray for intervention, as the others did. You were on your way. I felt that elusive door open and close, my hand resting upon your chest, felt the air in the room shift. What could anyone say then? The silence settled in. I could only listen, in ways I am learning still.

DENOMINATION BLUES

 

When my mother found Jesus again,

after narrowly surviving death by her own hand,

she began opening doors to seemingly every

church which may have housed him there.

She refused to recognize the Catholic church,

which placed a pope between oneself and the Lord,

praying to people and statues, while Lutherans

were simply too formal and reserved.

The Primitive Baptists believed that to enter

into the Kingdom you must also wash the feet

of others, as the Lord himself had done,

become a servant to the servant among us.

But there was no music there, and didn't

the psalms themselves command us to make

a joyful noise unto the Lord, loud enough

to be heard out there among the stars?

The Seventh Day Adventists seemed kind and

welcoming enough, but my brother and I protested

missing our Saturday morning cartoons.

What my mother truly loved, and where she felt

at home, was listening in earnest to those

fire and brimstone sermons, what she called

the old time religion, which threatened continually

the burning, lashing, and gnashing of teeth.

She would nod in agreement, strangely

comforted by the litany of righteous violence,

of Jesus returning next time with a sword.

She was happy to not be amongst those left,

waking on Judgement Day to find a world strange

and unwelcoming, hovering between life and

death, with no way then of repentance

or altering the course of all that was to come.