Category: Blog

My baby speaks in rawrs

and his currency is bubbles.

Proof the prehistoric

can jive with the fleeting.

This is why I banish

alarms in our house

and write a formal letter

to the school board asking

for clock-reading to be

stricken from the curriculum.

My wife says this is worse

than my brick-and-string theory

to keep the kids of the earth

from growing tall and jaded

and I say just wait until

I campaign against waiting and

use sand from county hourglasses

to fill in the infield nicks:

This is where the stegosaurus

will re-emerge from dirt, redefining

fossil as a thing to lay down on

and watch the stars gas out.

of the twelve steps prepared her

for the younger woman who emerged

from vodka’s wet slumber

from the swaddling fat

she shed at the Y—a girl

without a newborn’s innocence

but its same needs.

In a torrent of spring, she overflowed

her mother banks, gave up the care

of those she’d fed like fishes

from her hands. Told her husband,

her teenage children, “You can

clean and cook for yourselves.”

And left them stranded

at a company dance, on the vinyl tiles

of a cafeteria floor—huddled together

like flood victims watching the dancers’ flow,

watching her step higher, faster

than the music

flipping

the red-striped skirt

she’d bought the week before

to catch something

with her new thin body before

it was gone forever. 

The far side of the sky is burning 

red & an orange evening tunnels 

into our tender eyes. 

Heaven light cut the ribbon

of our countries. 

I now understand how moths feel 

around open flames. 

I now understand how immigrants 

feel at borders.

The silent rays that ripple us when 

our foundling feet find new soil

even if it burns – even if it cackles 

I wear the belief of my faith &

I thread myself into prosperity 

Let this black ram stomp the river 

& become white 

Let this marshy land become the river 

that flows for others

Let our eyes see Jerusalem everywhere

even if we enter with a voice of Jacob 

& a hand of Esau

We all need salvation & soil 

to call ours.

I say, think of the cherries

            on the wooden shelves out front,

                        the rosy apricots still sour from the winter.

Do you remember,

            grandpa trekking in the dwindling heat of summer,

                        splitting an orange open for our little hands?

I say, think how nice you’ll feel

            at the table with fresh berries and ice water

                        but you’re not listening.

I say, let’s practice pumping air,

            into our pockmarked lungs, quit squeezing!

                        our heart with all that shallow gasping.

Do your eyes ever stop darting, desperate

            for excuses to hide inside?

Are you scared, little girl,

            of the Big City?

Here, I say, put on your shoes.

            I listen to you snivel

                        all the way down 18^th avenue.

Disobedient child, sloppy snot.

            I want to make excuses to everyone who passes us

                        but no one is looking.

The old men outside of Villabate,

            the kids showing off their light-up sketchers,

                        don’t hear your twitching, tumbling thoughts,

                                    your cataloging of our heart beats.

Do you need your hand held,

            little girl? Will you cry

                        if the store is crowded, a cacophony of eyes

                        pecking at your apricot-thin skin,

                        sucking on your embarrassment.

There is just so much to laugh at—

            look at how you struggle with that plastic bag,

                        look at how your eyes dart, searching for the registers.

When my framework between right and wrong

splinters, I cross myself for willing the return

of those indelicate nights with you in my apartment,

of knowing the wrong as you removed your

wedding band, of not caring to do right, of

watching and laughing as it dropped to the carpet

and on the way down, taking with it whatever

could have stopped me. I cross myself then.

I cross myself for long Sundays that have not arrived,

for the defiant, misbehaving housewife I have become,

for the husband who loves me more than I do him,

for the boyfriends I want as side hustles, for the defiance

that burns me down while I make casseroles and fold

laundry. For the annoyance I feel when I see myself

naked and can’t get a good enough pose to send nudes.

Long before this, I crossed myself in utero, praying

my mother would not abort me, that she would let me

come home to my father and older brother, that she

will not be possessed by demons, so I could grow,

and permit me to return, again, when I lost jobs

and that she does not make fun of me for the men

who left me. I cross myself on these occasions, too.

I cross myself in dreams. In these, my life has

unraveled and there is no one to look after me in

death, where I rest in the box and avoid the sharp

corners of the life I lived, sorry, for all of it.