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.

SHAVING AT FOURTEEN

 

The tiny wisps of hair sprouting upon

my face, looking more like shadow or smudge

of dirt, seemed so timid and tentative,

so uncertain in their purpose, that

I made the decision to take my brother's

straight razor, lather my face with warm water

and Barbasol, and began what I assumed

would be a clean and simple shave.

I guided the blade as steadily as I could

across a face which suddenly seemed

treacherous, not quite my own, the contours

of cheek bones and chin much sharper

than I had expected, small, unassuming landmines

hiding beneath every pore,

Adam's apple bobbing with each swallow.

One by one, the tiny flowers of blood

began to blossom through that cloud of white,

and I emerged, defeated, my face covered

in bits of tissue, as if flags of surrender.

Later, my brother looked at me and said simply,

"Don't be in such a hurry to shave.

You'll have the rest of your life for that."

It was a gentle way, I suppose, of saying to

slow down, enjoy what was left of childhood.

The world of adulthood would come

soon enough, its own battles and rewards

yet to be named, its map lines gradually

becoming visible, as clear and undeniable as

your face gazing back from the mirror.

7000 PAIRS OF CHILDREN'S SHOES ON THE CAPITOL LAWN

 

Where have you run to so quickly, dear children,

so fast and so frantic that you have flown,

wingless, from your shoes -- the mud-streaked sneakers

and Mary Janes, the summer flip-flops and rainbow

jellies, Western boots and boxy black Oxfords,

reserved for church and family weddings.

You have left no tracks, dear children, your voices

so high that they drip from the tips of branches,

or are disguised among the shrieks of passing birds.

But it's your songs which we miss the most now,

how you narrated the most mundane of days,

called out the clouds by name, laughed

so hard that we worried over your very breathing.

We have placed them here upon the lawn,

rows and rows of them, awaiting your return.

We have left a path between each for you to walk.

You do not answer, even with your silence.

Children, it's getting darker with each passing minute.

How will you find your way after sunset

and nothing on your feet? What could we have

done to keep you away so long?

BAPTISM

 

The preacher pinches my nostrils between

thumb and forefinger, pushes me

backward, hard, into the chlorine sting

of the pool, its deep, still water immediately

closing in around me like a second flesh,

heavy and resolute. Once, then again,

I go under, the former self of my childhood

swimming away, an embryo in reverse.

The age of reason, against every obstacle,

has found me. I am old enough now,

my mother reminds me, to be held accountable,

old enough to suffer those unrelenting

flames through eternity, for lack of belief,

unintended blasphemy, or simple understanding,

Far overhead, the sun blazes on, unblinking,

the world surrounding it seemingly

turned upside down, wheeling, tumbling,

while here below, sudden slashes

of light pierce my uncertain periphery.

My instinct is to reach for it, to kick, flail,

break away; my instinct is to save

myself, to simply not drown -- as I feel I am --

whether by water, wine, or blood of lamb.

Then, as if it were unexpected, I am

pulled back into the world, sputtering, gasping,

the welcome shock of oxygen like pinpricks

to the lungs, as if I had been running for miles,

my first steps back on land uncertain.

This world is not my home, they are singing,

so happy to only be passing through.

But I don't know what could be better than

this -- the earth that accepts us again

and again, sinners to the last,

the one on which we write our songs, the one

that sings them back to us in return.

FIRST APARTMENT

 

When I think of being seventeen, I think

of that dingy one-room apartment above

the nameless laundromat, its dirty glass clouded

with steam, potato-sweat stench and clutter

of that windowless apartment, rickety wooden stairs

leaning wearily against the red brick outside,

ready to collapse, shifting even without the weight of steps.

I remember the anonymous maps of water-stained

walls, so thin that I could hear my neighbors

coughing and brushing their teeth, playing the same

sad songs over and over, could feel the vibrations

of the industrial washers and driers below, like invisible

lovers nearing climax, never quite arriving.

When I think of being seventeen, I think

of walking to school in the dim morning, the afternoon

bus ride to work, bleary-eyed, the endless hours

given over to others in the name of survival,

collapsing at night onto a musty mattress

on the floor; I remember the kindness and mercy

of young women who passed through,

bringing canned soup and the comfort of touch, so new

and foreign, the small curtains of their mysterious

rooms opening just enough to let in the light,

remember the Dutch Bar across the street,

the line of gleaming Harleys outside, where someone

seemed to get stabbed every other week,

and the elderly deaf mute down the hall signaling

to no one in particular, a pinched sound like

a distant bird rising from the well of her throat,

a word of caution, perhaps, or insight that

I could not understand, then or now.

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.

COMFORTING THE CHILD

 

Being the only son of parents who

abandoned their children as easily as one

walks to the grocery store -- one

preferring the soft oblivion of Stoli and

sleeping pills, the other the peculiar balance of

status and anonymity that only money

affords, -- I stand, perhaps, too closely to

my own girl, always on guard,

hovering, worrying myself into sleeplessness.

I am nothing if not vigilant, an occasional

nuisance of concern, golden retriever of a father

at the gate, barely blinking, awaiting my cue.

When she races up the steps of her school,

confident in a way which I never was,

my pride mingles with a tinge of unspoken grief.

Still, I want nothing more than to be taken

for granted, to never be known as an absence.

I want for her the autonomy of knowing,

for love to be as constant and as easily forgotten

as the silent pulse of blood at wrist

and ankle, and my hand upon her shoulder

when she hurts, drawing circles

on her back, comforting, not only her

but the child no longer there.

ERRAND

 

My mother had already broken the eggs,

measured out the bleached white flour, before

realizing that we were out of sugar.

Which is how I found myself -- a child of seven,

hesitant to speak or approach anyone -- standing

at the rusty screened door of my grandfather's

cabin with instructions to borrow a cup.

No one had mentioned this stranger before,

released from prison to die in his own way,

away from others, like any mortally wounded animal

will do, absence being the last and only

dignity most of us can summon.

No one had warned me of the skeletal visage

which emerged, hairless and scowling,

watery blue eyes sinking deep beneath the frames

of his black horn-rimmed glasses.

I looked down, then away. I stammered out

my small request, met merely with a cold, inscrutable

glance, bearing little or no curiosity as to my

existence, the grandson who happened to share

his date of birth, letting fall only a kind of

mumble-grunt meant to convey a simple No,

and a not-so-gentle closing of the door.

Only decades later did I understand why

my mother refused to go herself,

or that the instinctual, visceral fear which I felt

was, in fact, justified. But for now, I was

content enough simply to be walking away,

unconcerned with the minor failure of my mission,

while the old man receded into the confines

of self, offering only the slow certainty

of his departure, a bitter shadow lengthening,

imperceptible, like blood seeping out

from beneath our feet.

SMOKING IN THE MOVIES

 

The legendary smokers up on the big screens

have all but vanished from our lives,

which I suppose is just as well, there being

precious little glamor in its end result.

But there was a time, not so long ago, that

we believed in that nameless hero, strong and silent,

smoking while gazing out upon the plains, far

from everywhere, and the villain, killing simply for

whimsy and fame, always one step ahead.

We believed in the femme fatale blowing smoke

rings that floated off like ill-shapen hearts,

and the hapless men falling over themselves

to offer a light to the blonde bombshell.

We followed the descent of the good girl

gone bad, the private thoughts of the lonely P.I.,

lighting up as he walked on, fading from view.

We winced at the callous boss and his wet stogie,

sighed in the obligatory afterglow of a motel room;

we fell in love with the passing stranger,

even when we knew better, the ingenue gazing

across a smoke-filled room, smoke like a veil

between illusion and the all-too-real.

But we no longer believe. We are, it seems,

wizened, streamlined, our words, like the thoughts

that lent them, reaching upward in wafer-thin

knots, weighing no more than air.

NEW KID

 

We moved whenever the rent increased,

which must have been quite often,

packing up our things into liquor store boxes

and garbage bags, those once-familiar

rooms swept clean, white, our voices echoing back.

Perpetually the new kid in class, slipping in

during the middle of the year, I found

a desk near the back whenever possible,

my voice hesitant and far off, as if part of it had

been left in another town, when asked to

tell the class something about myself.

How could I speak of what I did not know?

We lived sometimes with strangers, or family,

friends of friends, not quite understanding

the politics, daily routines, or household rules,

breathing the strange smell of other lives,

sometimes not bothering to fully unpack our own.

There were so many kids and so many names

that eventually I stopped learning them,

stopped asking, stopped speaking my own.

My role was that of the other, a vague curiosity,

gazing out of winter windows, taking notes.

But I learned to love, if only in passing,

to love from a greater and greater distance.

And to all those who have passed through --

so quickly, so quickly -- I loved you all,

in my own peculiar way, and I can almost see

you now in my rear view, right where you've

always been, growing closer and closer

with each passing year.

THE DOUGHNUT MAN

 

The doughnut man seemed to turn up

overnight, no advertisement in the paper,

no fliers waving from the wipers of cars,

not even a shop sign in the window,

just the soft, milky glow of a kitchen light

signaling through the dark of early morning,

that heavenly smell wafting all the way

up and down 7th Street, drifting

outward with the smallest of breezes.

No one seemed to know his name,

where he came from or when, or even

whether he spoke English; he simply nodded

when we pointed out how many of each,

his thick fingers, surprisingly delicate,

placing each in a brown paper bag,

sending us kids on our way back home

where whatever small crime we may

have committed earlier in the day would

imediately be forgiven and expunged.

Even the body of Christ could not compete;

even the sun looked brighter and fuller

when shining through the greasy window

of that small bag, its warmth rising,

as if the day were something you could

keep close, hold on to, consume.

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.

D.A.V. THRIFT STORE

 

Another nowhere job in my early twenties was

the D.A.V. Thrift Store on University Avenue,

unloading and pricing junk merchandise

as it rolled in off the box trucks.

Used toasters, baby strollers, bedding,

odds and ends, those old man cardigan sweaters

which I had suddenly grown fond of.

Harry, already in his 60s, black brille-cremed hair,

pencil mustache, blue-green Merchant Marine

tattoo fading into itself, chain smoked

throughout the workday, shaking his head

in wonder at the myriad things

people were willing to buy.

He had eyes for Gina, the young, blonde cashier,

doughy-faced, quiet, and disarmingly naïve.

Then, there was the middle-aged man who was

permanently banned from the store

for obsessively sniffing women's shoes,

kneeling before the rack in a form of obeisance

or defeat, a grossly tragic or comedic form of

loneliness, depending on your perspective.

We were all doing time in our own way,

students, retirees, and the occasional criminal,

going nowhere on a daily basis.

Except, as it turns out, Harry and Gina,

who ran away together without notice, sending

a postcard-sized photo back months later

of no determinable location: trees bent

into question marks, and long grass waving,

sparks of blue water in the background.

"Wish you were here," was all it read.

And I would venture that every one of us,

without exception, certainly did.

DEAREST BULLY

 

I can still feel the rap of your knuckles,

brother, striking against my own,

stinging, bruising, like four faceless

skulls declaring their dominance.

I can still feel the weighted air shifting

between us, I who was never quite

quick enough to slip from beneath your

reach, and rarely, if ever, managed to connect.

There are things I cannot pretend

to miss -- the swift punch to the shoulder,

the ever-elaborate wrestling holds,

a perfect pearl of milky spit dangling,

like a lazy thought, above my face.

I do not miss the ghost you pretended

to be, silent, tugging, inch by creeping inch,

at the foot of our childhood bed.

Your ghost is real now, free to wander

room to room. And I no longer fear,

though the world you left compels us to.

I miss you in the ways you were soft,

the gentle humor you held close,

the vulnerable boy hidden from view.

I miss the moments you cried, unashamed.

Tonight, as always, I kiss my daughter,

let her snuggle in, as she wraps her

small fingers around my crooked thumb,

drifting effortlessly again into sleep.

It's the kind of calm that I live for,

and would fight this whole world to keep.