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.

MYSTERY LIGHT

 

Sometimes, when I'm in an old building --
marble floors and dark wood smelling of history --
I can't help but press one of the light switches
on the wall, those ancient metal buttons
blackened by the touch of countless fingers,
curious to see if they are still functional.
I did the same as a kid, in church basements
and schools, houses with unfinished attics,
half-expecting someone to storm through the door,
demanding to know who flipped the switch,
the one that controlled the whole neighborhood.
We certainly lived in enough places with wiring
from the turn of the century, lights flickering,
unsure if they wanted to work or not;
some you'd have to flip three times, rapidly,
to wake, or press with just the right force.
Not surprisingly, more than one of those houses
burned to the ground after we had left.
These days -- so many years turned to shadow
in my periphery -- I can't help but wonder,
against my own reason, if I'm turning on the light
in some distant room of the past, my brother
blowing ribbons of cigarette smoke, balanced on
the narrow window ledge, my older sister
curling her hair for a date, telling another corny joke.
There are rooms I would not want to enter --
some known, some forever closed -- but I'd take
my chances to see those faces lit up again.

SUBTITLES

 

I don't know when it happened, but I have grown

too old or too lazy to read the subtitles of foreign movies,

snippets of dialogue scrolling across the bottom of

the television screen like a stock market ticker,

another language I can never hope to understand.

We used to watch them nearly every weekend,

caught the classics and the obscure at film festivals,

along with the old Hollywood variety, all those beautiful

made-up faces speaking as though they came from

nowhere in particular, a place we longed to be.

You always said that people should come with subtitles,

and -- most of us, at least -- with warning labels.

I sometimes wish for a translation of all the things

you did not say, every ellipses when you looked away,

though you are now beyond the world of words.

I do miss sharing a language, speaking in shorthand.

Last week, I let an old black-and-white movie run,

the sound turned down to a muffled whisper,

while I dozed off. I could comprehend the passion

well enough, occasional bursts of anger, the wariness

that men and women always bring to each other.

I could understand it this way, the sudden slamming

of a door, sad eyes gazing from a cloudy cafe window,

the rushing toward a train, its smoke a signature.

I could imagine then how it all worked out.