Time Is a Mother, page 2
like boulders blurred
in Serengeti rain it doesn’t
have to make sense to be
real—your aunt Rose gone
two years now like
a trick they forgot
to finish & the air holds
your voice as
it holds its own
vanishing maybe you
are the true soldier
ant hoarder of
what’s so massive
it could crush you into
a twitching
comma Sara
your name sharpens daily
against the marble
of your mother’s teeth there
are sparks in every
calling & called we press
our faces to the womb
till we’re jokes on
our way to cracking up & maybe
you’re right little ant
queen with your shoes
the shade of dirty
paper white desert
your pink & blue pens
untouched after all
who can stare at
so many ruins & call it
reading this family
of ants fossilized
on the page you slam
the book shut look out
at the leafless trees
doused in red April rain
where none of us
are children long enough
to love it
American Legend
So I was driving
with my old man. The day wasted
save for the cobalt haze
closing around us.
We were on our way to kill
our dog, Susan. I mean, we had to
bring her to the clinic
to put her down, this
murder or maybe
they meant put her in
the ground—though I knew Susan
would be ashed in
the incinerator
out back. Puffs
of smoke, little ghost
poodles. Where was I going
with this? Right—the car,
the rain, the legend of joy
& pain. My old man
& I, the Ford big enough
for us to never
touch. & maybe I meant to
make the hairpin turn
too hard. & the thing flipped
like a new law, going 80. Maybe
I wanted, at last, to feel him
against me—&
it worked. As the colors spun
through the windshield, wild
metal clanking
our shoulders, the sudden
wetness warm
everywhere, he slammed
into me &
we hugged
for the first time
in decades. It was perfect
& wrong, like money
on fire. The skin
around his neck so soft, his
aftershave somehow
summer. It lasted
not a second but
he was smiling, his teeth already
half-gone, as if someone
wiped them away to make room
for something truer. Put it
down on the page, son, he said
one night, after telling me
why he did what he did
with his life, shitfaced
on Hennessy. We were sitting
at the kitchen table before his shift
at the sock factory. His eyes: raindrops
in a nightmare. I touched him, then
let go. The car stopped
rolling, we hung upside down
as things dripped. Steam
or breath. I did
what any boy would do
after getting exactly
what he wanted: I kissed
my father. He grinned
I think. His pupils
elsewhere. I reached back, unlatched
the cage. The dog
stepped out, sniffed
my old man, still warm, then ran
into the trees, into her second
future. I walked from the wreck
till the yards became
years, the dirt road
a city, until my face
became this face & the rain
washed the gasoline clean
from my fingers. I found
a payphone in the heart
of the poem & called you
collect to say all this
knowing it won’t make
a difference, only
more. So hello, hi, the blood
inside my hands
is now inside
the world. Words, the prophets
tell us, destroy
nothing they can’t
rebuild. I did it to hold
my father, to free
my dog. It’s an old story, Ma,
anyone can tell it.
The Last Dinosaur
When they ask me what it’s like, I tell them
imagine being born in a hospice
in flames. As my relatives melted, I stood
on one leg, raised my arms, shut my eyes & thought:
tree tree tree as death passed me—untouched.
I didn’t know god saw in us a failed
attempt at heaven. Didn’t know my eyes had three
shades of white but only one image
of my mother. She’s standing under an ancient
redwood, sad that her time on earth is all
she owns. O human, I’m not mad at you for winning
but that you never wished for more. Emperor
of language, why didn’t you master No
without forgetting Yes? Sure, we can
make out if you want, but I’m warning you—
it’s a lot. Sometimes I think gravity
was like: To be brutally honest . . . & then
never stopped talking. I guess what I mean
is that I ate the apple not because the man lied
when he said I was born of his rib
but that I wanted to fill myself with its hunger
for the ground, where the bones of my people
still dream of me. I bet the light on this page
isn’t invented yet. I bet you never guessed
that my ass was once a small-town
wonder. That the triceratops went nuts
when I danced. How once, after weeks
of drought, I walked through my brother’s laughter
just to feel the rain. O wind-broke wanderer, widow of hope
& ha-has. O sister, dropped seed—help me—
I was made to die but I’m here to stay.
II
Rise & Shine
Scraped the last $8.48
from the glass jar.
Your day’s worth of tips
at the nail salon. Enough
for one hit. Enough
to be good
till noon but
these hands already
blurring. The money a weird
hummingbird caught
in my fingers. I take out
the carton of eggs. Crack
four yolks into a day
-white bowl, spoon
the shells. Scallions hiss
in oil. A flick
of fish sauce, garlic crushed
the way you
taught me. The pan bubbling
into a small possible
sun. I am
a decent son. Salt
& pepper. A sprig
of parsley softened
in steam. Done,
the plate fogs its own
ghosts. I draw a smiley face
on a napkin
with purple marker.
I lace my boots. It doesn’t
work—so I tuck them in. Close
the back door. Gently
the birches sway but never
touch. The crickets
unhinge their jaws
in first light, last
syllables crackling
like a pipe steady
over a blue flame
as footsteps dim
down a dawn-gold road
& your face
at the window
a thumbprint left over
from whose god?
The Last Prom Queen in Antarctica
It’s true I’m all talk & a French tuck
but so what. Like the wind, I ride
my own life. Neon light electric
in the wet part of roadkill
on the street where I cut my teeth
on the good sin. I want to
take care of our planet
because I need a beautiful
graveyard. It’s true I’m not a writer
but a faucet underwater. When the flood comes
I’ll raise my hand so they know
who to shoot. The sky flashes. The sea
yearns. I myself
am hell. Everyone’s here. Sometimes
I go to parties just to dangle my feet
out of high windows, among people.
This boy crying in his car
after his shift at McDonald’s
on Easter Sunday. The way
he wipes his eyes with his shirt
as the big trucks blare
off the interstate. My favorite
kind of darkness is the one
inside us, I want to tell him.
&: I like the way your apron
makes it look like you’re ready
for war. I too am ready for war.
Given another chance, I’d pick the life
where I play the piano
in a room with no roof. Broken keys, Bach
sonata like footsteps fast
down the stairs as
my father chases my mother
through New England’s endless
leaves. Maybe I saw a boy
in a black apron crying in a Nissan
the size of a monster’s coffin & knew
I could never be straight. Maybe,
like you, I was one of those people
who loves the world most
when I’m rock-bottom in my fast car
going nowhere.
Dear T
on my desk this field of snow
where you’re lying too still
all I have to do is write
the right words & I’m
beside you (again) but
all these letters &
nothing
says your face—fashioned
from nouns muscular
inflection bones
hardened with the
alphabet’s reduction see? a flick
of my wrist & a house rises
from the snow
a wide porch—like you wanted—
sunflowers in the front yard
late afternoon light
on the latticed apple pie
a bed with cloud-white blankets
& a fireplace that won’t
look—a bit of ink on the pad
& we’re running down the street again
after the thunderstorm
platelets still plenty
in veins beneath your cheek: green branches
in a sunset sky which is almost
impossible—is too much
so I scratch it out I make laughter
instead make a song
on the radio that erupts
into static the moment I enter
your throat opening
into Whoa but
let me spell out
these m-a-p-l-e-s just right
so we’ll have a few more seconds
in the shade
look you say the trees
are falling they’re being
axed down
pressed into white fields or
tax forms or discharge papers or
you won’t stop coughing up blood
maybe
we should go home now you say my father
will kill me I haven’t told my father
I’m on it
I’m on it all
it’s all
over now stay
a little longer I say but your voice
is already pieces
your grin peeling off
in dusted sheets & I saw
this coming: each night the pen gets so far
& runs out of
nights you write the letter dear you
& it doesn’t work so you write the poem
but the birds are
just holes in the gunshot
sky oh man the aubade
left to rot into afternoon
when every word
was forgotten as soon as the hand moved
across the page away
from the car crash
but we deserve more than this you said this
is only the beginning each night
the same snowfields
crushed & littered across the room
maybe I can build a boy
out of the silences inside maybe
we can cease without dying fuck
without tears falling
into the truck stop urinal
& we’re just too tired
to walk home we’re
just two boys lying
in the snow &
you’re smiling because the stars
are just stars & you know
we’ll only live once
this time
Waterline
If I should wake & the Ark
the Ark already
gone
If there was one shivering thing
at my side
If the snow in his hair
was all that was left
of the fire
If we ran through the orchard
with our mouths
wide open
& still too small
for amen
If I nationed myself
in the shadow
of a colossal wave
If only to hold on
by opening—
by kingdom come
give me this one
eighth day
let me enter
this nearly-gone yes
the way death enters
anything fully
without a trace
Not Even
Hey.
I used to be a fag now I’m a checkbox.
The pen tip jabbed in my back, I feel the mark of progress.
I will not dance alone in the municipal graveyard at midnight, blasting sad songs on my phone, for nothing.
I promise you, I was here. I felt things that made death so large it was indistinguishable from air—and I went on destroying inside it like wind in a storm.
The way Lil Peep says I’ll be back in the mornin’ when you know how it ends.
The way I kept dancing when the song was over, because it freed me.
The way the streetlight blinks twice, before waking up for its night shift, like we do.
The way we look up and whisper Sorry to each other, the boy and I, when there’s teeth.
When there’s always teeth, on purpose.
When I threw myself into gravity and made it work. Ha.
I made it out by the skin of my griefs.
I used to be a fag now I’m lit. Ha.
Once, at a party set on a rooftop in Brooklyn for an “artsy vibe,” a young woman said, sipping her drink, You’re so lucky. You’re gay plus you get to write about war and stuff. I’m just white. [Pause] I got nothing. [Laughter, glasses clinking]
Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold.
Our sorrow Midas touched. Napalm with a rainbow afterglow.
Unlike feelings, blood gets realer when you feel it.
I’m trying to be real but it costs too much.
They say the earth spins and that’s why we fall but everyone knows it’s the music.
It’s been proven difficult to dance to machine-gun fire.
Still, my people made a rhythm this way. A way.
My people, so still, in the photographs, as corpses.
My failure was that I got used to it. I looked at us, mangled under the Time photographer’s shadow, and stopped thinking, get up, get up.
I saw the graveyard steam in the pinkish dawn and knew the dead were still breathing. Ha.
If they come for me, take me out.
What if it wasn’t the crash that made us, but the debris?
What if it was meant this way: the mother, the lexicon, the line of cocaine on the mohawked boy’s collarbone in an East Village sublet in 2007?
What’s wrong with me, Doc? There must be a pill for this.
Because the fairy tales were right. You’ll need sorcery to make it out of here.
Long ago, in another life, on an Amtrak through Iowa, I saw, for a few blurred seconds, a man standing in the middle of a field of winter grass, hands at his sides, back to me, all of him stopped there save for his hair scraped by low wind.
