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.

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.

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.

MY MOTHER'S CHINA

 

My mother's china -- bone-white, heavy in young hands,
encircled with a pattern of sky-blue flowers
and filigree, tiny leaves pointing in all directions
at once -- emerged from the far reaches of the cupboards
only twice a year -- Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
It was a set acquired, piece by piece, each having its day,
by saving up a small fortune in S&H green stamps
from the local Red Owl -- the delicate teacups
and saucers, the weighted serving tray, dinner plates
and bread plates, a cream pitcher for coffee.
Even butter claimed its own home -- such extravagance!
Yet we could not have know -- how could we? --
what such an ordinary luxury might mean to our mother,
to at last have something simple and fine, something stately
among the brick and cinder block of the projects,
the mountain girl from Tennessee, denied even a doll
or summertime shoes, trying hard to forget one
lifetime while imaging another, brighter somehow,
which might or might not choose to emerge.
But twice a year, at least, we drank our milk from goblets
like royalty, poured our canned, grayish vegetables
and gelatinous cranberry sauce onto what we imagined
must have been the prettiest plates in town,
while that gravy boat, loaded with thick, brown cargo,
sat motionless among the white cloth of its waters,
dreaming already of the long voyage home,
its sturdy bow not to be seen again for months.

PHONE BOOTH

 

Once, you could find one almost anywhere,

a small and unassuming refuge, and sometimes

the only shelter from a sudden downpour,

the floor of an uncertain summer sky collapsing,

casting hard fistfuls of rain and hail against

the narrow panes of glass, tumbling down from

its small square roof, dimly-lit from within.

Sometimes it seemed the only refuge

from the constant clang and drone of the city,

the exact intersection of public and private,

a hand-me-down space that granted legitimate reason

for squeezing in close beside your first girlfriend,

stranded, shivering, calling home for a ride.

I can still feel the weight of those phone books,

suspended by cables, knocking at our knees,

the thick heavy receiver, the unexpected blessing

of a coin someone had left, mistakenly or not.

I remember most my sister, exiled by our mother

to the booth outside the grocery store,

evenings whiled away under its moth-yellow glow,

chatting and laughing with her latest beau,

making call after call with the same lucky quarter.

There were always messages -- a religious tract

to make a child ponder the afterlife, always an expletive

or phone number, or the secret code of initials,

a bright red heart rounded with a Sharpie.

But you knew that someone loved someone else,

enough so to write it down for all to see,

or scratched it into metal, sticky and smudged,

those rough, uneven letters, as close to permanent

as anything -- their messages still there,

long after their houses have all been removed,

declaring themselves, always in the present tense,

far above our cool and collective silence.

DREAMING OF OLD JOBS

 

We still dream of those old jobs, the ones leading only to the next shift, the next break, the next paycheck and day off, to rest and to worry, and start it all over again. Those jobs that we gave so many years to follow us like ghosts, tracking us down in our anxious sleep, as if we had left one detail or another unfinished, forgot to lock up or turn the thermostat down. The waitress balances her tray of trembling water glasses two decades after she has retired, a cacophony of voices still calling out their orders. The bus driver turns his oversized wheel onto a street with neither a name nor discernable stops. Your mother still packs shells at the munitions plant ten hours a day, and your brother tears sheets of steel from the shearing machine into eternity, tiny stars of metal glinting beneath his skin. While you stand on the loading dock of a crumbling factory, ringing the service bell again and again. It's so early the birds are not yet stirring, the winter darkness folding in around you. But you have been here long enough. If no one answers this time, you think, you'll force yourself to wake, and be gone.

UNCLE WILLARD

 

Uncle Willard's hands were shaped much like

my mother's, though larger, with flat-tipped fingers

able to reach and find what my mother called

those fancy chords on the neck of his red guitar,

hollow-bodied -- a box, some players called it --

beautiful and mysterious to the eyes of a young child,

too shy to sing but eager to gather those secrets.

He'd come by on Saturdays, or Sunday after church,

to our place in the housing projects, asking

if she wanted to do some picking, over coffee,

knowing already that she did -- of course she did.

It was only later, much later, that my mother

told me how he had made the trip to the hospital

when I was born, after Dr. Sergeant -- the man

who had delivered her other four babies

and remembered them all by name -- told her

that I was dying, unable to gather and hold

enough oxygen, that I would not last the night.

He arrived, mom said, well past visiting hours, with

his guitar, and his worn and annotated Bible,

anointed my head with oil -- for he was a preacher

as much as a player -- reading passages of scripture,

praying the long autumn hours into morning;

and I am sorry now that I did not speak to him of

this during his lifetime; I am sorry that I have waited

all these years -- decades of unintended silence --

simply to thank him for drawing from my small lips

those first few gasping attempts at song.

By Ear

 

Sometimes, when I am writing, and I can't

quite hear the words in my mind, I speak them --

quietly -- so as not to frighten them away,

listening for the gentle resonance

of vowel sounds repeating themselves,

calling out to one another in a language of air,

their small sheltering caves echoing.

I listen for the well intentioned but uninvited,

the idea lacking grace, the bum note;

and I am reminded at times of my mother

who learned to play guitar this way,

listening closely to the Grand Old Opry

and the Hit Parade coming through that old

wooden radio, like a temple glowing,

pausing her mother's 78s again and again,

lifting its needle and setting it down at the start

to catch what didn't want to be caught,

to pull forth a sound she could already hear.

Sometimes I need to be reminded of

how to listen deeply, of the line that runs

directly from ear to heart, bypassing

all else, the sound of a single strum and a single

voice alone in a room, as simple as that,

the way all good songs begin.

THE SCENT OF THINGS

 

What I disliked most about moving into all those

different places during childhood -- houses

of family, friends of friends, or rank strangers --

was that nothing ever smelled familiar.

The dark scarred wood of dressers and doors

breathed silently in and out, the salt-grease aroma

of food arose from pots and pans long ago

scorched and settled into their particular seasoning.

Even water boiling was somehow not the same,

the grimy tea kettle hopelessly shrieking out of key.

Soap, perfumes and perspiration clung to every fold

of fabric, laundered or not, the musty basements

and dry dusty attics, the damp funk of dogs

had claimed their territory years before we arrived.

Most days I felt that I had stumbled onto a stage set

without the benefit of lines, or even motivation.

Most days came and went with neither incident

nor reason, the cloudy stove clock ticking.

The air outside felt closer to the truth, even in a place

I did not know. I followed my own tracks from

the day before, addressed the birch trees as family.

When I slept, I curled beneath the covers, knees

to elbows, even in summertime, worried that if I lost

the signature of my scent, I might lose myself for good.

PERSONAL EFFECTS

 

The family says that Uncle Leo was too sensitive

for the army, prone as he was to daydreams

and poetic whimsy, his soft, pale hands designed

for painting a canvas or cradling a violin,

not the long rifle and bayonet slung over his shoulder.

In the sepia-tinted photos, he looks like a 1950s

matinee idol on location, killing time between takes.

But he could shoot, like any Finnish farm boy,

could drop a buck or a boy in the wrong uniform

if need be. He just didn't understand the need.

Maybe he never recovered from the scythe

striking his head as a boy, hiding among the tall hay.

Maybe something inside him just kept falling.

When he drown at the foot of Mount Fuji,

the dark envelope of water sealing him indefinitely,

Grandma Tyyne went mad with her grief,

following him there a few short months later.

What was sent back wasn't much -- his boots shined,

uniformed pressed and folded, a few small

souvenirs, family photos, Japanese coins and yen.

I like to think that the birthday card he bought

for aunt Leona made it safely back , warped

only slightly by water, its smudged blue letters

looping back on themselves like waves.

I like to think she smiled at his sweetness

before her eyes clouded and all but disappeared.

SILENT GENERATION

 

I remember my mother's silence above all others,

the long unspoken song of it spooling out --

groggy, distant, and inscrutible, yet

as familiar as the Lord's, equally unknowable,

filling every gray room of my childhood,

breathed in like bits of asbestos,

invisible constellations slipped into the pockets

of my coat and carried off to school.

I could not have understood then that this

was the language she was born into,

brought from the old world into the new,

learned and learned again since she could remember,

through instinct and instruction, coming

to know the difference between each

subtle variety -- whether for piety or protection,

for stubbornness, fear, or the blessed forgetfulness

which she so longed for later in life,

forgetting even the names of my brother and me

when she returned from another round of ECT.

How could I know how many sharp edges of

the world she had swallowed, what secret materials

she had gathered in the lockbox of herself,

every day, week, and year of midnights labeled:

"Keep out of reach of children"?

How could I have known so little about the woman

who had given me life, who taught me to pray,

and washed my mouth out with soap

when I took the holy name in vain,

the woman who had scraped herself raw

on the gates of Heaven, only to spiral back into a body,

half-broken, hopelessly mortal, though never

forgetting the light she had left behind.

It would take many years -- long enough for another

generation to grow beside us both -- for her

to find the voice she lost, to speak openly,

unflinching, of unimaginable wounds and the many

names and guises of survival, while the silence

that had been instilled in me trembled,

turned within itself, searching for a single word,

any word, with which to reply.

MY FATHER'S FACE

 

How many times, during those early years

of childhood, did I imagine the angled ridge of his jawline,

sharp with stubble, rough to the touch,

or freshly shaved, pinkish and smooth, smelling

of Aqua Velva aftershave, rye whiskey,

the faint residue of Lucky Strikes.

How I imagined, too, his ears, their lobes thick

and dangling like bells, his nose -- sometimes wide,

sometimes narrow -- dark pores oily with sweat --

and, of course, I tried hard to see his eyes,

their size and shape, what light might have been

captured there, the level of their questioning,

the depth of their feeling or recognition.

My mother, having not a single photograph

to show, said only that if I wanted to see

my father's face, I could just look in the mirror.

But to me, it might as well have been

the face of God, Jesus, or Job, those mythical

faces seen only in my imagination.

It was, after all, the face that my mother

once held, smiled back at, and breathed in deeply,

if only for that moment, the face that would

refuse, again and again, to look upon my own.

Though it was hard to imagine even

a narrow smile upon that face; and equally as hard

to conjure a look of sorrow or regret

brought forth by the burden of his leaving.

It was, I realize now, the face that was

always there, face beneath my own, long before I could

see or remember, its own shroud and palimpsest,

forever turning and turning away,

even now as I write these lines, a mask

of interiors silent as river stone, unraveling on sight,

a tale to be believed only by its absence.

JASPER

 

When I was a kid, I felt invisible more often

than not -- sometimes through a combination

of will and imagination, and sometimes

through the unseeing eyes of adults,

voices prone to shouting, from the kitchen

or the living room, "Get those kids

out of here! I can't hear myself think."

It was good, then, to have a vanishing act,

to know when to slip away, and when to stay gone.

Now that I am growing older,

gray, unassuming, fumbling for

my reading glasses, I again

feel myself becoming part of the unseen

or what my mother and aunts

used to refer to as a Jasper,

that eternal stranger passing through, ostensibly

harmless, whose name no one could recall.

There's no loneliness like a crowd,

and while this is neither comfort

not revelation, it is not without advantages.

In the coffee shop, I order without

small talk, I sit, off to the side, sketching a few words

the way an artist might sketch

a tree, a cloud, a figure in the distance

a world I may enter, as I always have, disturbing

no one in my coming or going.

SECONDHAND

 

I suppose that I should have been more grateful

for the everyday lessons in transience,

the irrefutable truth that nothing in this life

is ever ours to begin with, only on loan,

and that the end result of all this accumulation

is, inevitably, dispersal. But when you're a kid,

and coolness matters most, the tell-tale uniform

of the poor weighs upon your shoulders

and limbs, the shushing sound of those shapeless

polyester pants, as if you were being erased,

your movements tentative, your steps slightly out of sync.

Nothing ever seemed to fit quite right,

as my own form seemed ill-suited for its design,

growing up and out, lumbering from room

to quiet room, from one pulse of air to another.

But the dog-eared books, yellowing already,

the worn and scuffed record albums

handed down from an older brother or sister

were always a blessing, tangible portals

to a thousand different realms, lives both mysterious

and mundane, which I could add to my own,

wandering through it all unscathed.

The teachers, with few exceptions, took

little notice, handed me down to the next level

of learning, and the next. My mother, too,

seemed already worn out with it all,

hardly interested in raising any of us, eager

to pass us down to a world hovering between

ambivalence and constant danger.

But we had been studying, albeit humbly,

unnoticed, shifting in and out of view, letting go

again and again. We would be ready.