The house on Golden Ave
a home for four years,
rental with bougainvillea, a green house
a bomb shelter in the backyard with
black widows in its cracks,
and mother driving her Nissan, I am in a car seat still
“you know I don’t think it’s true, about the sins of the father”
Four three two five Keever Ave
Her savings bought this home.
Laminate TV, bunny ear antenna with formidable wingspan
Swiss Family Robinson on VHS, and therein
a snake brings the tom boy to a tremble, a much younger brother dutifully consoles.
Her voice, commanding over this island debacle,
“you know, boys and girls aren’t really different like that”
Dreams of peace drag me further and further
And twenty years pass
I am learning Sweet Jane on guitar
You know that women never really faint
Lou, what joy
and i’m back in that cluttered living room
cat claws sharpening on the back of a front yard couch
Swiss Family Robinson for the eleventh time
She walks in saying
women don’t just stop what they’re doing
to be scared.
You know I don’t think it’s true about the sins of the father.
Anyone who ever had a heart! Oh they wouldn’t turn around and break it!
And still now I try to recall when she could no longer save mine
from breaking.
The longer you live, the more there is to remember
Dreams of peace drag me further, and further.
Mom, can we rent Grease?
Oh is that the one where the girl changes
everything about herself so that a boy will like her?
Her blue eyes narrowed, daring me to agree.
You know I don’t think it’s true, about the sins of the father.
Throw away your rulers
There’s nothing to measure
Except disappointment
Accept disappointment
Don’t leave me in a room with a meteorologist today
I’d have to choose my words carefully
You can’t just drop a snowflake icon on an app and walk away
There are real world consequences
I’d already imagined my footprints
Through a slowed city
My grin was firmly half formed
The roads were salted as if to taste
Following a recipe
None of which was kosher
It’s coming I told the others
Passing along your wisdom
Parroting you
I’ll keep working on my need to know ahead of time
If you keep working on your need to share
I have written and erased
a dozen poems tonight
and none of them are sticking
because I have written you
a dozen poems already
and it seems my days
of writing you poems
are behind me now
you are sleeping in the other room
there is another body next to your body
I made the bed for you
and I will strip it when you leave
and that is alright
In thicker times I’d throw my net wide
Brush hands against all types
Feel the abundance bubbling over
A real surplus that needed dispensing
It was sad that the recipients didn’t quite know it wasn’t personal -
Feeling somewhat deluged and
I think
Maybe misreading the power dynamics
Or it was sadder still that I forgot that too
Too often
Eros was raging
Chi was very yang
It felt broken
But it felt right too
To throw it out in all directions
Irregardless of what may come
Knowing another worthy person
Would mosey up on the horizon
Worthy meaning alive
in that all life is worthy of love
Yes, the duds, the withdrawn,
the sanctimonious, the loners,
Were all rough rocks
I hoped would yield to my touch.
I stared up at the sky in 6th grade
Thinking if I could think of something serious
Instead of targets of my love
And hope for reciprocity
Then I could have some real impact on the world
I guess I could have imagined
The well would someday run to a trickle
That part of the never-ending-ness
Was in the shifting subject
Back in our thicker times
I’d wrap my arms around his neck at every crosswalk
Despite his embarrassment
And when he rebuffed my request for a kiss as we climbed the stairs
I said
There will come a day you won’t believe you refused my affection.
(Maybe it was that day it started a slow descent?)
And so, it’s hard to stay tender
And zero sum games have a way of sneaking in
And in the daily life, does someone need to supervise?
And scarcity is myth - but feels so real
But comfort and deep knowing is medicine too.
I see her bite marks
on my feet after swimming
on my back through the lakes
both lackadaisically and pensively
I thought the pain was cramps
in my feet I paused and they drifted
further down into the cold, nutrient richness
of a place I, well, that grows more comforting.
It means she likes you.
It's a sign of good fortune.
A man told me at the gas station
of an elderly woman who bites the feet of
swimmers in the lakes.
I'd spent the day swimming from
lake to lake, finding secrets and teasing
myself with scary thoughts like:
Why not, maybe, and could it be.
I think I could be.
The scariest answer is that
profound yes and I always feel a
warmth in my belly that
threatens to sink me.
it is a dense heat. as if
I have eaten a white dwarf star
and I'm pulling the time-space-surface of
the water down and my decreated
hands and feet and throat
all orbit my stellar tummy.
It's what I imagined drowning
to be like and the memory
resonates in my belly when I
remember the still
surface of the lake.
Yet the bites have persisted
and now when I swallow
that future that once felt like
paralysis is now in my belly,
alive, anchoring me, pulling me
into this depth by the ankles.
nibbling.
