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.

GHOST STORIES

 

Visiting the Finnish Lutheran Cemetery,

the small clapboard church leaning wearily toward

the empty highway, my cousin reminds me

of what the gravediggers told her, how the residents here

grow restless in the evening, walking and conversing,

as if not yet settled on this idea of being dead.

"But," she reminds me, by way of disclaimer,

"they have been known to partake in the whiskey."

Everyone has a ghost story around here:

restless ghosts walking the creaking staircase all night,

opening the heavy doors and windows, shaking

the rusty box springs of the bed, or the mischievous one

who locked the unsuspecting dog in the car overnight,

and the stubborn one who followed the family when

the farmhouse burned to the blackened ground.

My ghosts, by contrast, are so reserved, hardly stirring

from their bodies of air, speaking only from the measured

silence of the page, leaving even the dust in its place.

I told you, dear friend, to visit as often as you like,

test your presence in this once-familiar world,

read the poems you wrote when still a teenager,

amused, I would imagine, by what seemed

so important to you then. Haunt me as you like, love.

Come close. Hover, the way you sometimes did

when I worked, if only to see if you are in the words

I have not yet begun to write or understand.

THE AFTERNOON SHE DID NOT DIE

 

Well, we go on -- one hand floating weightless as a balloon,

the body pulling itself downward again.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind,

and the ocean is so vast before us.

Though a residue remains, like soot from

a long-neglected fire or a thumbprint on the soul,

and it belongs the way a bruise belongs,

the way our shadows spark and smolder without us,

solitary, when shut away for the night.

Today I walk with neither haste nor direction,

the sex and the sorrow of sad letter days

discarded, the fact of my name, age, and profession

lost to the angular wind. I carry your words

in one pocket, your silence in the other,

past the once-familiar storefronts of our past,

the soft glow of your childlike face gazing back at me

and back upon itself, a foreign postage stamp

on an antique postcard you bought but never sent.

How can I answer now, knowing this business of words,

this stooge's religion, to be diversion at best?

How can I speak when addressing you now means

addressing any tree, or cloud, or patch of grass?

You have grown vast by way of vanishing.

You always said it was an art, a trick you could not unlearn.

But we go on, each in our separate ways.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind.

But the body is such a stubborn guest,

unwilling to leave, despite the late hour.

We may as well settle in, make up the spare room.

ASHES

 

For weeks, then months, they sit undisturbed

on a makeshift shelf in your brother's musty garage,

the gray-white residue that once answered

to your name packed neatly into a surprisingly

small cardboard box, unadorned and anonymous.

Drums of exterior paint and car exhaust

surround you now, boxes of tools, and bulky

winter clothing packed in large plastic containers,

the ordinary stuff of life in process.

This is not the respite that I would have wished

or imagined for you, dear friend; though

you will be relieved to know that this stop is not

final, only a way station before the long drive

out of state where you will be scattered,

per your request, out near the railroad tracks

which run the length of your old hometown,

where your mind -- always too sharp and too busy

for its own good -- could wander with neither

weight nor interruption, and your body

could walk and walk never losing its way back.

It's a walk I can't make with you; but should I hear

the call of that Illinois Central, rising

above the chatter of birds and traffic hum,

declaring its own speed and distance, at just

the right angle, I'll say they're playing our song,

as if I could remember the words or tune,

as if the grain and grit of your slender bones

were somehow able to dance again.

VINTAGE

 

I have reached the age when walking into

the local Goodwill feels like nothing so much as

a time capsule of every childhood store

I once wandered, unaccompanied, losing myself among

the latest shoes and clothes, the novelties,

televisions and stereos my family could never

have afforded, days when the mall was a great city

of the mind, and the better half of a day could be lost

thumbing the racks at Great American Music.

I have become, along with my once-youthful peers,

and every generation before us -- vintage,

a word we never would have uttered as kids,

clad in our secondhand polyester pants, creeping

above our ankles, our threadbare sweaters

and enormous collars, nothing ever fitting quite right.

But here are the parachute pants and windbreakers

I once longed for, those white Nike sneakers

with the red logo that all the bratty UMC kids had,

the leather jacket I paid next to nothing for.

I think also of you, my love, how you could always

find something of worth to be reclaimed,

a jumper, a blouse, or dress to mix and match

with something at home, an unexpected pairing,

as perhaps we were all those years ago,

complimenting each other before irrevocably clashing.

I think of the racks of cotton and rayon removed

from your closets, faux fur and pencil skirts,

baubles, beads, and broaches packed up and driven

from your empty apartment to the thrift store.

I see some things you might have liked,

but I'm not buying, just passing through today,

having run this last errand on your behalf,

the bright January sun offering precious little

warmth, casting its unwavering glare in my rearview.

THE LAST SUPPER

 

When Aunt Anita got word from the clinic

that the cancer was fanning outward

like a web of newly shattered glass,

and that it was, in fact, inoperable, she promptly

planned a get together for family and friends,

an informal wake that she would attend,

and which she dubbed -- not without a touch

of gallows humor -- her last supper.

She arrived in a ball gown, sequined and sparkling,

her long dark hair newly styled, flitting

from table to table, bar stool to bar stool,

glasses raised and clinking, remembering both

the good times and the hard times with

those she knew -- and she knew nearly everyone.

She was their confidante, keeper of their

stories, their sorrows, and secrets.

The next morning she slipped quietly into

a coma, one long dream receding into

another, never again to wake.

Born into nothing, into a town so insignificant

that no one had bothered to name it,

she left this world, nonetheless, dressed to the nines,

a benevolent ruler with a Louisville slugger

tucked behind the bar, just in case.

She left, quite simply, glowing.

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.

SEARCHING FOR THE POET'S GRAVE

 

They are searching for Lorca's remains again

today, their big yellow machinery

nudging and clawing at the silent earth,

scooping out rows and rows of doorways

along this withered patch of soil.

Though no one is here now to answer them,

no one to say, No thank you, sirs,

I'm not interested in returning,

and your Bible is no map for my soul.

But they have not questioned the cloud formations

in passing, nor the monuments of generals,

nor the crooked olive trees, unwaveringly lazy

in their beauty, witnesses to all.

No one has called in the sun and moon

to spit out their long and secret songs, explain

their absence when needed most.

No one has yet knocked upon my door,

demanding to peruse the shelves,

where they would surely find the one they seek,

still speaking, unafraid, his linen suit

not even wrinkled.

But the workers, naturally, will go on

with their labors, long past sunset,

coming back empty handed, the shapes of

new countries emerging through their shirt-sweat,

while the poet just goes on dreaming,

as he did a hundred years ago,

the witnesses to his whereabouts

now seemingly everywhere.

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.