Today Means Amen Page 2
her face like an astronaut’s helmet
as if to say, I am not of this, I am only
a visitor. As if to say, if you’re coming
for me too, then don’t you dare miss.
Change, it moves like a bullet and
you already pulled the trigger.
For My Niece Livia, Age 8
After Amy Gerstler
It is 90° in Los Angeles this morning
and I am drinking hot mint tea. So much,
in fact, I have probably peed at least six times
in the past two hours. My voice is sore
and not ready to face the day. My throat
is a field, a cavern, a hill up which
a hundred words crawl. Sometimes,
it acts more like a waterslide—thoughts
running to the top only to slip back down
on their bellies. Livia, I realized this morning
that one day soon you will be old enough
to read my poetry. A scary thought
for your parents but no more alarming
than the fact that soon, your child body
will swell and stretch like an unfamiliar
dress, a building uncollapsing. Soon,
you will realize that everyone in the world
is afraid of looking stupid, and therefore,
you too will become afraid of looking stupid.
I want you to know it wasn’t always like this.
Once, you entered the bathroom while
I was brushing my teeth. Mid-conversation,
you pulled down your pants and proceeded
to sit on the toilet, your tiny feet barely
brushing the tile floor. No pause. No
embarrassment. Quite literally business
as usual. You made soft grunting noises
as your body did what every body does.
I know that when you are old enough
to read my poetry and you find this poem,
the one about the sounds you made while
shitting, you will probably be embarrassed,
perhaps even hate me a little. I’m sorry.
Maybe it’s the quirky aunt in me. Maybe
it’s the poet who finds something thrilling
about unapologetic sounds, the dashing glory
of childhood that curdles at the arrival of shame.
How, in that moment, you reminded me of
my own animal, my heirloom fear of being
wild. How you, plank-legged fairy, princess
of wolves, have taught me to screech like
an owl or its witch. Livia, I am warming
my voice today and I feel like I am lacing up
my armor. I feel as though I am off to fight
the dragons or better yet, befriend them.
I am trying to teach poetry in school districts
that only know how to starve. I am trying
to show my students, who don’t know
how to spell, how to write their lives
in anything but blood. I am trying to learn
how to give and foster forgiveness in a body
that wants none of it. When you are finally
old enough to read my poetry, I think
we will have a lot of catching up to do.
I have enjoyed relearning you as you age.
Every year unwraps a new layer. Every poem
is a different thread of me. Soon, you can
read each crude, screeching, slimy,
heart-wrecked line. My sweet firecracker.
My toothy walnut. Your mother has already
given you a bookish vocabulary, which
includes words like feeble, specific, and galactic—
abnormally large for the average 8-year-old.
Livia, your words are weapons; your voice
is the strength it takes to wield them.
Better yet, let’s free ourselves of violence
as you have only ever been a valiant
champion of tenderness. Livia, your words
are lightning bugs. Your voice is the darkness
that allows them to glow. Please know
every sound you have ever made and will
ever make will always lead to grace.
So, until then, until we can swap poems
and cartons of ice cream, I leave you this note:
I am thinking of you on this scalding day
as I drink my tea. I am imagining your skinny
legs and your simmering laugh and your bursting
eyes and the way you climb confidently into
my lap to snuggle with your aunt, even though
you are getting so big and so wise and so soon,
you will be old enough to read all this.
A Thousand Pieces
My mother does not write in her diary,
too afraid someone will read it. Instead,
she writes on scrap paper, rips it up
into a thousand pieces, throws it away.
Once
my husband slammed
a thousand pieces
the screen door
the house thousand shook
pieces fell off I shook—my children
are the only pieces things
keeping from killing falling
a thousand into
pieces my daughter is
stubborn like
the dishes
I can’t
broke
the thousand
pieces
leave.
Progress Report
A found poem from an e-mail written by my grandmother.
He is in a wheelchair and
is pushed wherever he needs
to go. He no longer gets
physical therapy but they
walk him if he wants to.
It takes two people to walk
with him. He has been
eating quite well on thickened
liquids and mechanical foods.
Their goal is for him to
gain weight—has gained
two pounds since being there.
He participates in the activities,
especially the musical concerts.
He has not been roaming at night—
that phase of dementia is over.
It’s okay to bring him candy.
We have been bringing
peanut butter cups (a favorite)
but I suspect anything sweet
is good. When Cindy visited,
he responded with “yes”
or “no” answers. He didn’t
remember Julie was there
yesterday with her new dog.
He thinks he’s in a hotel
and that’s alright. He holds
tightly to our hands when
we say “good-bye” but doesn’t
try to stop us from leaving.
In the Train Station in Munich
The train is late, a woman says to me, except
it is in German so I just smile a confused smile.
I am sorry—I only speak English. Her face round
as a pastry and dark as molasses or something
that isn’t edible but still illustrates how she differs
from me without making her consumable.
It is cold here in Munich today, she says,
and she wouldn’t normally take the train
but she doesn’t feel like walking. Originally
from Ghana, her accent wraps each word
in a thick, wool blanket, her English
stuffy
but warm. She tells me her daughter jumped
from the highest building in Las Vegas. No,
not suicide, she says, she was tied to a rope
and bounced right back up as if the earth
rejected her. Language is the passing of water
from hand to cupped hands. Impossible
not to spill, we lick the bounty off our wrists.
But I could never come to America, she says.
Your police, they are too aggressive. I imagine
the boy, the child playing with a toy gun—cowboys
and Indians, the game every white child gets to play
without being actually scalped or shot. I think
of the unarmed dead. I think of the families.
To hear a mother howling is to believe all humans
are animals and all animals are built to grieve.
No, I do not want to come to your country. I tell
all my family in America, do not resist the police.
Do not question. Do not reach for your wallet. It is
the only place where your money is no good.
Thanksgiving, 2011
As we began our drive home
from Iowa, up the long sigh
of the Midwest, full of turkey
and the kind of fruit salad
that’s made with Jell-O, talking
aimlessly about the desserts,
the tacky upholstery, I did not
expect you to turn off the narrow
road onto scattered gravel,
the parking lot of the graveyard
sagging out like the bounty
of a cornucopia. It would
sound too cliché to write
how the trees slouched just so,
the stone stumps like corn
scattered by some forgotten
god, the green green grass.
When I realized where we were,
where you brought me with
no warning, like death, my tears
came instantly—not because
you learned too young what a body
diluted looks like but because
I knew this was the moment
I would meet your mother, or
at least, where you lost her for
the last time. Back to the earth:
the farmer’s wife, who bore land
and harvest and six strong sons
before that last, long winter.
God Bless Your Fingers
Ten sugar-dipped strawberries. Ten humming sailors. Let the church say amen. Let the chapel doors open and open again. Ten gentle explorers who found my body buried inside itself. Who can see in the dark. Who can baptize me from across the continent. Let the church of my legs say bless. Let the church of my breasts say oh god. You have found the presents I hid from you. You have grown in me a basin I can never fill. Ten wise men. Ten pilgrimages across my stomach. Ten lit candles. Ten holy ghosts. I am a séance. I am a séance.
Your Love Finds Its Way Back
One day, it just showed up on my doorstep.
Honestly, I don’t know how it found me again.
The last night we spent together, I lured it
away with a trail of breadcrumbs—a necklace
swallowed one pearl at a time. Such a hungry
little bloodhound. I led it deep into the forest,
fastened its legs with twine. Dug a hole.
Said I will jump if you jump and it did,
just like I knew it would. And now,
here it is again—on its submissive back,
its pink underbelly exposed and I cannot say
I didn’t want this. That I haven’t waited
by the window. I sculpted your body
from the dust on the doorknob. I’ve hoarded
your name in my mouth for months. My throat
is a beehive pitched in the river. Look!
Look how long this love can hold its breath.
Missouri
The man next to me on the train
smells like cigarettes. Not just one.
He smells like twenty years of smoke
in a house with no windows. I don’t
normally talk to strangers but for some
reason, I ask him where he is going.
Missouri. His mother’s house. Divorce.
Says she never treated the kids right.
Asks me what kind of woman ain’t
meant to be a mother? He speaks like
he is unraveling a scroll in his mouth.
The flat body of Illinois floats past us
as if we were underwater. The train
becomes an eel drawing itself across
the bottom of the sea. We talk about
traveling. About the four states he has
yet to see: Alaska, Hawaii, Washington,
California. I tell him I’m sorry for
his unhappiness. He says he isn’t
and I shouldn’t be either. Just another
ride that’s taking too long and it’s time
for him to get off. In Missouri. Missouri.
He says it twice. Lets the taste of it
simmer in his mouth. Misery, he says.
Huh. Never realized it sounds the same.
Remember
This is your wife, Barbara.
This is your son, Scott.
This is you, in your Navy uniform,
waiting for the train to come.
You always said you only chose
the Navy because the uniform
matched your eyes. Remember?
My grandfather coughs. I hand him
a water bottle. For the past hour,
we have been alternating between
a photo album and me reading
aloud to him from his 400-page
self-published autobiography.
When he fumbles, I open the bottle for him.
Our hands touch and his cloudy eyes
look up at me, wet with recognition.
The first page of the album contains
a note from the nursing home staff.
In big kindergarten letters, it reads:
You have a disease that affects
your memory. We are here to help.
Look, Grandpa, this is the house
you grew up in. The farm.
You told me your sisters used to
put on extra layers before milking
the cows in the morning so the smell
of manure wouldn’t follow them to school.
Do you remember your sisters?
His words come out like shy children,
slow and hesitant. He tells me
he remembers but does not say more.
I read somewhere that people
with dementia might lie or pretend
to understand to avoid embarrassment.
I try not to think about this
and turn the page.
This is you and Grandma
playing guitar. You always said
that she played bad and you
played worse. I remember when
you taught me my first chord.
It was the G chord. Remember?
The bathtub is slowly draining.
The photograph is developing in reverse.
All those words just floating about.
His mouth an empty mason jar.
The fireflies just out of reach.
My grandfather picks up his autobiography,
holds it up in awe as if handing it to God
and says the most words he has said all day:
Did I actually write this? I don’t reme
mber.
If dementia is the body’s longest goodbye,
then let these be the last memories
it pries from your fingers:
This is your wife, Barbara.
You told me the summer you eloped,
her skin was sunburned the color of a cherry.
This is your son, Scott.
He has your eyes, navy blue.
This is the house you grew up in.
This is you, teaching. You were
a teacher. This is your wife singing.
This is your granddaughter.
She wants to be a teacher like you.
This is you. This is it. In the end,
this is all that is left.
The memories, the moments, the people
who love you to the body’s unflattering end.
Just yesterday, it seems,
you were waiting for that train.
It’s here, Grandpa. It finally came.
PAY THE BOATMAN
Happy New Year
If the entire existence of the Earth—
all 4.54 billion years—were condensed
into just one year, accordioned together