The Great Giving Up
I’ve repainted the room with the red stripes.
They’ve always bothered me, the stripes.
I used to paint dorms for summer cash.
Steady cut and roll, no drips.
No drop cloth?
I’m eyed suspiciously.
No.
*
I have a Master’s in Chinese Medicine.
Took me 4 years.
In graduate school,
I worked part-time,
practiced qi gong,
rolled organic tobacco.
After graduation,
a girlfriend ten years older
with a son in college
took me out to celebrate.
There are no salaried jobs,
I bitch, yet so much debt.
A bank would have refused you
a 100k loan, she says,
but student loans
are different.
Fuck, I say.
Yeah, she says.
Consider it your mortgage, hon.
I shrug. She buys me a beer.
In my last year of school,
I explain,
I learned the debt to salary ratio
was wildly skewed.
When asked about it,
the President of the college
gave a rambling story
about an old man in Tibet.
Fucking Predatory Ed, she sniggers,
private interest poisoning public good.
She holds up a dripping
shot of whiskey.
It ain’t gonna be easy,
but you can do it.
She clanks the rim of my beer,
throws the shot back, whew!
Buckle up, no whining,
be relentless.
Just kill it.
*
I call around for work, voice
laced with nerve I lack.
After 2 months, an interview.
I wear a red jacket, black heels.
$120 initial, $90 return.
My cut is $30.
Independent contractor,
no benefits.
Show up early,
look good.
Payment upfront.
Cash is king.
I wonder about the $30 cut,
say nothing, I want the job.
Rich ladies change
into white gowns.
They recline on tables covered
with organic cotton sheets.
I learn about the breathability
of linen,
the consistency
of their bowel movements,
exes and anxieties,
renovations, restaurants,
cancers, dogs,
and dreams.
*
I move home.
Open a clinic in a poor city.
You’ll never make it,
some said.
Too violent. Too sad.
Too lazy.
I provide group acupuncture,
quiet space, comfy chairs,
25 bucks, no questions.
People come, roll up their jeans.
There are so many types of pain.
Pain that floats. Pain that sinks.
Pain that evades language.
Pain that makes you mean.
What does acupuncture do?
they ask.
It opens windows.
Sweeps the stairs.
They nod.
They nap.
The jaw unclamps
when the body is loved.
Things that were stuck
move downstream.
*
I closed the clinic during the pandemic.
Seemed the right thing to do.
I stayed home with my kid.
I longed for my work.
My kid missed her friends.
We got a trampoline.
I was the best teacher.
The worst teacher.
My daughter cried.
I worshiped a red oak.
Crows roosted above our heads.
A groundhog ate my garden.
I stopped mowing the lawn.
Found maypop, wild sarsaparilla.
Mud froze.
Snow gathered.
I collected tinder,
burned a cord of wood.
From my phone, I watched nurses
enter hospitals without protection.
A local MD posted a video:
How to Sterilize an N95 in the Oven.
Doctors cried on television.
They begged.
A hospital in Brooklyn
ran out of body bags.
In April, a New Yorker died
every 2 minutes.
Liars, some people said.
The virus is a Marxist invention.
Some said it to the people
who kept them alive.
Some said it to the people
who watched them die.
*
A yoga studio advertised NO MASKS.
A massage therapist with children died.
A chiropractor said you wouldn’t die
if your gut was good.
ENTER EMAIL FOR WEEKLY TIPS
ALWAYS SOAK YOUR BEANS
HEALTH IS AN INVESTMENT
NOT AN EXPENSE.
Probiotics, $78/bottle,
10% MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNT.
My wife’s coworker got the jab,
A day later, BOOM, dead.
My nose feels like it might bleed.
I unsubscribe.
The email software gives me a box
to explain the reason:
Frequent and unnecessary
capitalization.
*
A colleague sent a group email.
The dying are diabetic, obese, or old.
We should not be forced
to suffer their sins.
They want soda, fast food? Fine.
BUT I WANT TO LIVE!
On Facebook,
she shares a meme
that implies she’s being treated
like Anne Frank.
The unvaxx’d are being FORCED
into concentration camps!
Ignore it, I tell myself.
Ignore it, says my husband.
Ignore it, says my sister.
I comment.
Anne Frank died in 1945.
Bergen-Belsen.
Epidemic typhus.
Infected body lice.
17,000 prisoners dead.
Fever, delirium, shock.
The slaughter of millions,
Jews, Roma, Poles, disabled, gays,
is not the same as a mandate.
When you make this comparison
I type, furiously,
hands shaking,
your rectum is indistinguishable
from your face.
She keeps it classy.
Posts a link.
Compilation of research,
published as a book.
Evidence of the harms
of vaccines.
About the author.
This was his second book.
His first, a guide to communicating
with extraterrestrials.
*
Ideologies of alt-right intersect
the Gospel According to Goop.
$2,000 Ouija boards, jade eggs,
LED lights in cursive font
for the vanity:
You are everything.
Blood libel. 5G.
EMFs, ascension.
Sex rings, Fauci,
fatness, freedoms.
Global paranoia burns.
Shrapnel of disinformation.
Grifters offer salves.
People die.
*
A friend of mine doesn’t trust vaccines
or pharmaceutical companies.
His daughter died of an overdose.
Fentanyl. She was 30.
She broke her femur skiing
when she was 15.
Family doc prescribed Oxycontin.
Thankfully, it’s not addictive.
She was an addict by age 17.
An uncle helped with that.
He talks about Purdue Pharma,
his ears turning red.
The fucking Sackler family
is inconceivably rich, he spits,
legal fucking firewalls,
corporate fucking immunity.
My daughter was gone a decade,
he says, fists balled,
before she was
gone.
*
I’m back at work
and things are busy.
I’m stuck, people say.
I’m empty.
Many are women.
Caretakers.
People who gave and gave.
Moms.
Not always though.
Some bagged groceries.
Some dumped cocktails in mason jars
handed them through windows
to parents desperate to slake
unslakable thirst.
Some cleaned hospital bathrooms.
Some processed the food we ate.
YOU STAY SAFE, I’LL STAY FREE
read the shirt of the unmasked man
in his 30s, standing behind
the elderly woman
who placed on the freshly
disinfected countertop
a sympathy card
Tic Tacs
politely asked for 20 scratch tickets,
$5,000,000 Ca$h Riche$.
You play too? he says,
incredulously.
Because of the mask
covering her nose,
the mask that threatens
to wrest his freedom,
she smiles
with her eyes.
*
Everyone shouldered a burden.
All of us are sick.
In a fit of stress my husband
called me a tyrant.
Excuse me? I said
extra ‘scuse.
Nothing is mine, he said.
It’s all yours.
Pain can float. Pain can sink.
It can detonate, make you mean.
I count backwards from ten,
feel a nosebleed coming on.
ALL CAPS FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
the bones
of the house vibrate,
he looks at me
and cries
*
My rage is deep
and burns
like an ember,
like a thief, like a wolf,
like a snake, like a woman.
*
The red room
is now green and gold.
I bought a velvet chair
and a potted plant.
I’m taking everything back.
Cryptozoology
Age 1: I screech when my mother leaves the room, fitful for a nipple, her arms powdery, unconditional.
Age 2: I bite. She stops nursing.
Age 3: I throw things. I can read. DOG. MAD. GO.
Age 4: I climb the bathroom shelves and cannot get down. My mother snaps a photo before lowering me to safety. The next day, I do it again.
Age 5: After watching a comet of bare-chested boys jump their bikes off an exposed foundation, I dump my bike in the dirt. At the base of a towering pine, I pick gravel from the heel of my hand and swallow tears. I realize it’s not only speed necessary for flight.
Age 6: My father is cold in the morning, ablaze at night. At church, I learn the concept of sin. I repeat, “Fuck you, Jesus” in my head, worrying I’ll go to hell. I get my sister in on it, just in case.
Age 7: On a warm day in May, I bend to open the garage when the first strong rays of spring hit the back of my neck and detonate a grenade of joy. I imagine a million pennies. For the rest of the day, I pop wheelies in celebration of big numbers.
Age 8: Miss Ouellette is my favorite teacher and her gray hair is a halo of kindness. I feel safe when I’m in her classroom, so I eat everything she offers.
Age 9: I am tall, dangerous, fast. I dream of flying. I sharpen sticks, hunt creatures lurking below the surface of puddles that reflect the sky.
Age 10: Retainers on my teeth. I have a crush on my 4th grade teacher even though he cares little for my loud mouth, my desire to be captain, my hand waving with answers. I am the quarterback at recess. My mother shows my sister and me the fine art of soundlessly latching doors behind us.
Age 11: My father threatens my mother with one pistol, two bullets. At school, I get in trouble for talking too much and my seat is moved to the back of the class. I fashion a dunce cap from construction paper and place it on my head. Perfect the smirk.
Age 12: I am wrongly accused of cheating on a test and a giant red zero appears to the left of my name. Injustice lodges in my throat. Rage is fuel, I realize. Coldness creeps in and stays.
Age 13: Cruelty is the culture of junior high. Small homogenous groups of pubescents laugh hysterically when confronted with difference. I question what’s funny, and drop a few rungs on the social ladder. I’m called weird for the first time. It rings true, so I adopt it.
Age 14: My eyebrows are furry caterpillars. A boy asks if I can touch my elbows behind my back, and when I try, he stares at my chest laughing moronically. At home, my father interrupts my chocolate ice cream by predicting my large body will only get larger, then pulls his truck out of the driveway before the ice cream melts in the bowl. That night, I gaze at myself in the mirror and wonder if I’m gross.
Age 15: I do crunches in the bottom bunk. Eat less. Smell better. I want clothes we can’t afford, so I steal them.
Age 16: I take off my stolen clothes for a boy who takes his stolen clothes off, too. I adore his bottom lip, his white teeth, his delts. Adults hate how excited we are to touch each other, so they heap their shame onto us. We ignore it, fumbling our way into pleasure.
Age 17: I finish my homework before the last bell, ace my tests. Chronically bored, I seduce my neighbor, a man twice my age who wears white tube socks with white hi-tops. I scramble up a ladder into his bedroom at night, slip under the sheets, mock him when he trembles.
Age 18: I’m sick to death of my mill town. I drink Tanqueray and eat hallucinogens. I write “Pink Floyd changed my life” on the back of a tee though I can’t name a single member of the band.
Age 19: I am accepted into an esteemed liberal arts college where most of the students don’t get me or don’t notice me. With no credit card, no car, and no dry cleaning ticket, I realize what makes a collar blue and what makes one pop. WASP seems an appropriate word for the sting they leave behind.
Age 20: I fall for a man whose unsettled weather raises the hairs on my arm. He’s a handsome, swirling, low-pressure system. A month into our fling, I’m introduced to his habit of discharging old trauma through violence. In the bathroom at my mother’s house, I tend wounds before slumping into the kitchen to burn a piece of toast, making a vow while slathering butter. A few weeks later, I board a plane for England where my new, bespectacled Liverpudlian flatmate tells me he’ll piss on my clothes if I don’t let him into my bed, so I do.
Age 21: I’m fat, depressed, my head stuffed with John Donne. Over the phone, my sister asks probing questions and lasers through my hazy answers. When she arrives, she glares so hard at the Liverpudlian we all hear the ping of his retracting cock. When it’s time for her to leave, she takes me with her.
Age 22: My father and his fiance are killed in a motorcycle accident. I agonize over his last moments, convinced they were shaped by regret. I request a viewing of his body. The bruises on his knuckles are visible through layers of concealer, his hair politely combed.
Age 23: My friend, Sadie, convinces me to pack my bags and head west. We rent a house. She feeds me, shows me how to grow vegetables, and lets me borrow her car. I start regular therapy.
Age 24: I get a job working with broken children. I get punched, kicked, and bitten. I make them breakfast, braid their hair, restrain them from hurting themselves. Most mornings, I’m up at 5:30am to ride my bike forty minutes through dull Pacific rain. It’s a crucial, minimum wage job.
Age 25: A rejection letter tells me that I will not get my MFA in writing. I have pistachio ice cream, shake a blanket out under a silver maple, and fall asleep watching quaking leaves.
Age 26: I fall in love with a Scorpio poet. He is Italian and Irish with eyes that burn. His nose is beguiling. We are glorious together, self-destructive.
Age 27: In all senses, I have no shame.
Age 28: I enter graduate school and ditch the Scorpio for a man with liquid brown eyes, like a doe. He smells good and pays for brunch. I decide this is it.
Age 29: My brain is exercised daily, as well as my body.
Age 30: In the company of women, I cook, laugh, cry, dance, and learn.
Age 31: After a match every Thursday night, the women’s soccer team I’ve joined gathers at an English pub to swallow beer, grub fries, and sing songs. I get engaged to the doe-eyed man, his addiction to pornography a problem I can solve.
Age 32: I have an affair with my fiance’s best friend, who is married to my friend. I’m a friend fucking a friend. One night, I’m startled from sleep by an ominous hiss: rot will reach the core. Two weeks later, I board a plane and fly home, slamming the door on a city that allowed me a decade of growth.
Age 33: Back in Maine, after a spiritually and financially impoverished winter, I meet a woman who smells like toasted coconut. She’s mastered the charcoal grill and howls with approval when I snarl, ripping fat from perfectly seasoned ribs. We play card games until sunrise, sleep in her backyard tiki, float the river in a dinghy. I leave her late-summer, heartbroken. I’m disappointingly straight.
Age 34: AffairMan flies across the country with a novella of reasons why we should give our relationship a go. Nine months later, we have a daughter. Infancy drains me, so I ask my stylist to give me a haircut that will make me look like David Bowie. My long hair falls to the ground.
Age 35: My heart bursts with love for my daughter but the sleepless tedium of new mom-hood has whittled me to a nub. I discover most new moms feel the same way, except the religious ones, who are lying, and the rich ones, who aren’t.
Age 36: Spontaneity is a raisin in the crack of the couch. My daughter’s eyes, a mighty green river.
Age 37: A Mi’kmaq man who loves men and sushi holds a fat piece of unagi between chopsticks and announces it’s time for me to journey. He offers to guide me, but I decline, fretting appropriation. He laughs at how white I’m being. I befriend Black Water Snake, but write about her carefully.
38: On most days, I’m irritated with my husband and argue relentlessly for domestic equity. A couple’s counselor advises us that it’s never good to keep count. I ignore her advice and tally my husband into submission. Good sex keeps our marriage afloat. He’s a musician, I tell my girlfriends, so he can do ten different things at once. Their reaction tells me who is having regular orgasms, and who is not.
39. I hang art and dig flower beds. Organize my closet, scrub floors, cook from scratch, wash and dry endless dishes. The unparalleled sweetness of co-sleeping with my daughter is an easy gratitude in a world that can feel cruel. My husband and I discuss the prospect of opening our marriage. Instead, with his help, I found a nonprofit.
40. I eat magic mushrooms on my birthday and have repeating panic attacks in a bar strung with Edison bulbs. The next morning, after a shower, I examine my body and hate nothing. I do a celebratory dance. Within seconds my daughter joins me, celebrating what she doesn’t understand, her crystal laughter refracting through the neighborhood.
41. Chaos erupts in our leaderless country when a pandemic is allowed in with little fight. Overnight, my role changes from devoted professional to stay-at-home mom. My husband - busier than ever - scurries away to his office after breakfast, a bunker of normalcy. Spring is long, dull as dishwater, my normal coping skills whisked downstream by a steady current of stress.
42. A line from Samuel Beckett makes its way to the front of my face, glowing from the page: Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. I crack books instead of beer, force myself to read the same sentence over and over, words leapfrogging until they settle. Readitating, I call it. It helps. I polish off a stack.
43. Back to work I go. Back to school she goes. Miraculously, we’re still married. It takes a year to heal.
44. I’m bitter, but my sense of humor outpaces my bitterness. Our daughter fills the house with song and dance. Her bright eyes and pink cheeks are facts.
45. I spend an entire week arguing that anger is a primary emotion, pissed off that it’s typically understood as secondary. Occasionally, I let go of everything and dance ecstatically. I walk three miles every day, identifying weeds and trees, acquainting myself with them through every season.
46. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” I come across these words and and they free me from a sticky trap. “Love may not always exalt, but it should never debase.” I read those words, too, and the words remove an ancient splinter.
Pine Street
In my dreams,
you’re a hermit
whose hands shake,
spilling tea,
holed up in the block
across from Bourque’s,
reticent to connect,
painfully lonely.
I visit
three times
before you crack
the door,
your apartment tiny,
stale, 3rd floor.
Smoke curls
from an ashtray
dropped atop
a stack of books.
Where have you been?
Do you know I have a girl?
The slat back chair
where you sit
at the window
is short a spindle.
A flutter
grabs your gaze,
- a bird -
your fingers twitch.
Hello, I say, Hey.
You look away.
In the center
of every dream,
a riddle, how
to end a story
that’s missing
a middle.
In my hands
your feet are brittle,
birdlike, your beard
still brown.
Jesus washed
the feet of Peter,
Judas, too,
sole to palm
slowly,
lowered down,
in my hands
you fade
before what aches
is laved away.
The bird outside
is a just a pigeon,
cousin
to the dove,
the washbowl empty,
water snaking
down
the drain.
Outside
your door,
trapped within
the building’s wood,
a pervasive must,
sorrow in the grain,
my hand along
the varnished railing
collecting
years of dust.
Outside,
fist open
to the air,
À tout à l'heure.
In bitter
summer heat
I saw your truck,
it’s rust,
watched it
disappear,
hurrying east
on Pine Street.
Just A Nice Lady Enjoying the Beach
Stretch of sand.
Unforgiving sun.
Walk around freely.
In your bra and undies.
Basically.
Time to relax.
In this very loud, public place.
Feel that endless gaze?
Assessing your worth?
Swimsuits aren’t for swimming.
A tiny wave can remove a top.
Shake your hair out.
Let loose.
Bikini bottoms are made to be too small.
Don’t pick your wedgie.
Run to the water.
Sprint toward it with joy.
Feel your ass quiver as you run.
Butts are where fat is stored.
It shouldn’t look that way.
It should be smooth.
Like a bicep.
Tight and round.
It should lift as if it wants to take flight.
Like it wants to crawl up your back.
Men are looking at it.
Women are looking at it.
While they watch men look at it.
Men feel watched.
Don’t make them upset.
The men.
Or the women.
They’re at the beach!
Don’t ruin anyone’s day.
With your body.
You’re 64?
Why don’t you look 16?
You’re fat?
Better strut.
Or get eaten alive.
Wear bright colors.
A neon green sarong.
Confidence is hot.
Big juicy butts are sexy.
It might be too much.
Men will decide.
The ocean is freezing.
The water feels like winter.
Nipples poke out.
Sexy.
Obscene.
Jesus.
There are children here!
Go back to your towel.
Freshly shaved legs love that salt.
Lay down.
Just chill.
Wet legs attract sand.
Brush it off.
Exfoliate raw meat.
Flip over now.
Uneven tans are for farmers.
Tan the backs of your thighs.
If you don’t you’ll look dumb.
You can’t be healthy without Vitamin D.
It has to come from the sun.
Not a pill.
Don’t get skin cancer.
Excess sun causes wrinkles.
Sunscreen is necessary.
Sunscreen is overkill.
Are you hydrated?
Dehydration wrinkles skin.
Beer?
White Claw?
Monster?
We’re out of water.
A seagull is harassing a child.
The seagull steals a potato chip from the child.
Right out of his hands.
The child is shrieking.
Wait, is he bleeding?
The mom can’t stop laughing.
She is taking pictures of the shrieking child.
A seagull shits on someone’s cooler.
OMG. Used condom.
Full of seamen. Heh.
Heh. Heh.
What?
A Great White was spotted a mile off the coast.
You cannot see your feet in the water.
Too much seaweed.
Come back in!
Further!
The ocean smells funny.
Something is rotting.
Your lips are blue.
Let’s get out.
Here’s a sandwich.
There’s sand in it.
Let’s go for a walk.
The ground collapses.
It’s good for your knees.
Those small, stabilizing muscles.
So important.
What’s that over there?
Wtf, is that a tampon?
Who does that?
There is no public restroom.
Public restroom is $3 to use.
Cash only.
We should climb those rocks.
The ones slick with seaweed.
In flip flops.
This tide pool is full of orange foam.
Beautiful.
Your lips are burning, hon.
What is that transparent gob?
It looks like a booger.
Don’t touch it.
Might sting you.
Even if it’s dead.
Oh, yeah, sand fleas.
Itch cream fell out of my bag.
Last summer.
I have some aloe.
There’s no actual aloe in it.
Look at the ingredients.
Crazy, right?
Let’s go back.
Here’s some fruit.
Covered in sand.
Is that woman blasting Celine Dion?
That is not beach music.
That man is scowling.
He asked her to turn it down.
She turned it up.
Dizziness is Vitamin D flooding the system.
You’ll be fine.
You’re thirsty?
White Claw?
It’s basically seltzer.
Chill.
OMG, look.
His and her MAGA hats.
That’s actually kinda sweet.
Makes me think, though.
That article.
“Top 5 Things to Know Before Taking Your Firearm to the Beach”
Look!
A banana hammock!
No way!
Hero.
Oh dear.
That child is pissing in the sand.
Right next to the sleeping woman.
Dang, she’s lobster red.
That’s gonna hurt.
Weird to think the sun can poison you.
Skimboarder just bit it.
He’s laughing but he seems hurt.
Selfie?
How about 500?
Don’t get me wrong.
I love the beach.
Restorative.
facebook algorithm
it was the guy I broke up with in high school
after only two weeks that was most aggressive
in the 67 comment thread on Facebook
never making a coherent argument
making wild accusations and strangely
insinuating that he keeps a secret wisdom -
anyone who dared question
deemed fools clowns radicals
our hearts halved by grief
19 children in their classroom
making music cut down by a boy
with venom in his veins
ceaseless bullying a stutter
his wrath turned 18
armed with a weapon
so powerful
there was nothing
for parents to hold
guns don’t shoot guns
fucking snowflakes
fucking clowns
in high school I dumped him
because he shotgunned
a rack of beer
burst into tears
yelled at invisible objects
and farted like a dog
the two of us alone in the woods
cans at my feet his anger rising
Gotta go I said
his rage barreling round
eyes swollen nose dripping
he punched a tree
for the next two days
he parked in my driveway
head on the steering wheel
I want you back he wrote
in a note stuffed under a wiper blade
in the school parking lot
I’m sorry it didn’t work out
my car door swinging open
It’s not going to work out
But the note I left? he asked
head cocked leaning forward
grinning oh the flash of fury
when I drove off
I heard he hated me
he fucking hates you
can’t wait to read
what the libtards
blame this on
he comments on the post
of a woman grieving
senseless violence
oh, oh,
let me guess
toxic masculinity
Okay, Boomer
Richard, born in 1949,
who insists on Richard,
never Rick or Dick,
sips Coors Light
from a glass,
lights a cigar,
and tells the story
of how he clocked a man
in the street
who catcalled his honey
- the nerve, he called her Honey -
is now going on
and on about why
he finds it discriminatory
that Black people
can use the N word
but he cannot.
Love Games
You’ve been deeply depressed and complaining about shit for nine months straight.
It occurred to me today that I should remind you how in our 20s, we spent evenings
relentlessly board-gaming, your competitiveness and tendency to win up against
my performative cheating, sliding my red pawn Home with the edge of my pinky
when you glanced at your phone, dropping unearned pieces into my pie
when you left the couch to dig through the fridge for a beer,
but now you grump all the time, you’re overwhelmed and sad,
intolerant to noise, your voice buried in a mantle of stress.
Once, long ago, your holy lamentations sprung from too little time in a day
to give life to the swell of song in your body, but now the dog has to shit,
the dishes are endless, your work knows no bounds, and there’s a patch of ice
on the bottom step waiting for prey.
Like everyone, we carry new hollows in our hearts,
these past two years the wreck of how we used to know things, how we did them.
We tucked ourselves into a small, protective ball and I unfolded before you did.
I’m waving to you.
Please come out.
Everything is still broken.
Do you remember how I hated that song you wrote for me once,
about how you’d love me even when I was old and no longer beautiful,
and how I lectured you about how lame it was that you were the hero
saving me from inevitable erasure, how the patriarchal lie of fading charms
would not stop me from savoring the passage of time, from perennially-blooming,
from dancing in wild elation at the fucking improbability of our existence,
and here we are a decade later, pouring love into one concentrated place,
our kaleidoscopically clever child who is kaleidoscopically challenging,
the only person I’ve met more prolific than you.
Come back to me, mischievous friend!
I can see you.
Do come play!
Will you break from the stress to remember how long ago we collapsed in the grass
of a golf course, exhausted from all of the touching, sprinklers set to midnight timers
suddenly releasing powerful jets of water, your face below mine
contorting when your asshole took a direct hit?
You couldn’t run away - in our communion you’d lost your glasses -
and from the safety of a summer maple I watched you high-step
like a newborn fawn through the wet grass, blind, naked from the waist down.
When you reached me, water dripping from your hair, back in the grass we went.
Honey, stop scowling!
Don’t make me buy you a shotgun and a rocking chair.
A wool blanket for your lap.
Don’t let this world bleed you of word and song,
all your shades of blue.
Come close.
Look around.
Let me whisper some blasphemous thing in your ear, wait, wait,
are you laughing, just one more, let me find a pointy stick to slay the raptor
that daily rips your liver from your ribs and pecks it to shreds,
let me yank open your folded arms, kick you from the cliff,
plunge your head into icy waters, douse your heart with kerosine and throw a match.
Honey, I can see you.
Come play with me, goddammit!
When you’re not looking I’ll slip an extra piece into your pie,
edge your blue pawn Home with a subtle finger,
blend color into your monochromatic sleep.
I’m a profligate cheater and I’m helping you win, you won.
Let us hold hands and together be unrepentant,
let us see what gold we can mine from our grief,
let us see what greets us in the warmth we make
from these long cold nights.
Talons
~for Ted, as groomed as he is fictional
Big night tonight.
Had a glass of water
and didn’t refill the Brita.
Didn’t smile in commiseration
when my husband shed a tear
at the years of practiced patience
keeping me steady while helping
our 10 year old with a devastating
set of math problems.
“When I tried,
she was uncooperative,”
he reports, gloomily.
“Yeah,” I say, blandly,
sipping room temperature water,
“I’m a real miracle worker.”
I created a profile
on Match last night.
I’m so sick of things!
No, I don’t hunt.
Wow, big fish, bub.
Sure, I’d eat your venison.
Hard pass on the MAGA hat,
the gun guy, the feral-faced
50-something named Boobs.
Are you filthy, fit, fat,
hairy, smooth as a seal?
Age, race, weight, height?
I don’t care about that shit.
I just want a tender pot roast,
a heavy fork, a generous pour.
I suppose he should be vaccinated
for polio and tetanus;
no bubble to click for that.
Now that I think about it,
I write from under my king-sized
comforter, screen dimmed -
Do you snore? Moisturize?
How often do you change
your sheets?
Do you regularly trim
your toenails, I ask.
Can you julienne a carrot?
Thoughts on chatty dentists?
Your mouth cranked open,
packed with steel tools?
Wait, here’s a good one.
Would you wash my bra
with a dog blanket,
scrub everything
in the sink
but the greasy pan?
Seriously, will you
leave that for me?
I need to know.
I’m a straight, white,
middle class lady with bangs,
bored with being bored,
each deepening wrinkle
the zipping up of rage
- laugh lines, I’ll say -
touch them up with filters
that lighten disappointment,
direct the eye away from erosion
of seaside cliffs, dying coral reef,
and drink enough wine to text a friend
a picture of my tits, le sigh.
Kidding, too classless,
instead I'll scroll Zappos
or West Elm
since everyone knows
privilege isn’t hot
and best saved
for overpriced cocktails
with loud groups
of exfoliated women
enchanted by what
they don’t have and
exhausted by what they do.
In the morning,
dehydrated, idiotic,
I’ll place my hands
around my husband’s waist,
gaze lovingly at my daughter,
and use the last of the cream
before driving into
a blood red sunrise
for breakfast and a motel
with Ted, who texted
a pic of his feet,
toenails freshly
clipped.
Necromancer
for Shauna
The chicory is in bloom
and the solidagos are taller
than me, their hairy fingers
gilded with golden dust,
quaking in the afternoon
breeze, whirring with bees.
Pearly Everlasting, yellow eyes
wrapped in thin paper husks,
stare uneasily in all directions.
*
The landscape is blazing
with amber and gold,
and on this quiet stretch
of trail, I can recall
your voice, how you
shook a ponytail free,
how you gripped
your pen when your
time was wasted,
how you wore a watch
set to the needs
of your dogs -
and in these memories,
darkness blooms
beneath my feet,
panic coiling,
springing loose,
supersonic scream
dropping dead two fawn,
the doe, the fat groundhog
with its mouthful of clover.
*
Every August
we lounged on a blanket
by the river,
years of friendship,
fingers wandering piles
of green river rock
we’d collected after lunch,
huckleberries, cashews, cukes,
and cherry tomatoes,
sitting cross legged in cowboy hats,
I praised your breasts
in your black bikini.
You waggled them
in response, dark hair
burnished by the sun.
They’re mighty, aren’t they?
You tossed a tomato at me
which I caught in my mouth.
Indeed, I said, seed squirting
loose, making us laugh.
Worthy of great celebration.
*
Later, on the hike to the car
you paused on the trail,
uncapped your canteen
and casually mentioned
the vast stretch of sorrow
that lives just under the surface,
offered me a glimpse, as if by mistake
- frozen winter lake reflecting
mountains capped with snow-
and I slowed, confused,
leaned closer to peer,
questions forming
when you drew the curtain,
capped your bottle,
shifted your pack
and began to walk
at a quickened pace,
your back stiff, turned away.
*
Later we met friends at a club,
squeezed lime into frozen mugs
frothing with PBR and danced.
I love you! you said,
and we waltzed to a pop song
in order to catch our breath.
We shared a pillow that night,
our ankles touching,
carafe of coffee in the morning.
Don’t talk until the second cup,
you warned.
I loved you for that.
*
Today, horror feeds
a furnace of rage
-you died by suicide -
and my thoughts lift me
like a bad spirit,
feet hanging,
eyes bulging,
supersonic scream
shriveling apples
from the branch,
draining color from the
cornflower sky, leaving
a stretch of steel,
a surgical table,
a bad omen -
I need to ask
questions
that smolder,
I need to howl,
toss you in the river,
pat you dry,
hold you close
and kiss your forehead
like I would a child,
whisper Come Back,
I Loved You,
and Why.
Your last moments
taunt me, twist soft,
unprotected places,
make me feel
I might suddenly,
violently, unwind.
*
I can
feel you here
with me.
Tell me
your demons
by name
let me shake
a broom at them,
a fist,
shake from you
the grim ending,
shake from me
the thoughts
I’m left with,
your face twisted
with suffering
I can’t
understand.
Come closer, listen.
Please, just
wait.
In the past ten years
when I thought of joy
it was you I recalled
ankles touching,
green stone,
black bikini -
and now when
I think of you
I’m scared.
*
There is
a terrible
silence,
before the levee breaks,
before the body
hits the ground,
before the waters
drown the path,
flood
the forest,
homes,
and cities,
the beds
we no longer
share.
Grief flows
downstream,
the direction
of shattered
hearts, each surge
of sorrow
the language
of a hand
that reaches
for what it can
no longer
hold,
each salted
drop filling
unbearable holes
with cold lakes
reflecting mountains
capped with snow.
We didn’t know
what you couldn’t
tell us,
we didn’t know
and now we
collect memories
like stones,
the sky
blooming
blue as the chicory
that lines the path,
sneakers on pavement
palms wet
with tears -
that’s just it, friend,
I love you
like you’re still
here.
*
What
I’ve learned
from speaking
to the dead,
from speaking
to you,
is that grief
assures us
that we loved
and it’s that necessity,
to love, then,
to weep,
that makes less
the depths
of grief.
*
Memories piled
like river stone, you -
sun in your hair,
me - collecting,
refusing to forget
our joys.
Lists
My mind
is overgrown
with lists unending,
malignant, their own blood
supply of attention, obligations
bloated and unchecked, dependent
on a steady diet of unfinished business.
My mind became overgrown with growing lists.
I promised to take shears to their rootlets, pour acid
where growth continued, snaking and tough. To the list
I added Do what you must to stop multiplication and worked
diligently, head down, one by one crossing through with black
marker the extensive catalog of tasks, but when it came time to
retrieve shears, buy acid, I found desire turned to rot and instead used
the day to help my husband make space in our garage for his shiny new Ski-Doo.
20 Instances of Death
I.
I think he’s waiting for you, my mother hisses inconspicuously into the receiver of the landline phone.
Mom! I say, horrified. Can he hear you?
She’s pressing buttons on the microwave. There’s a deafening scratch - she’s dropped the phone - a whirring, then a ping.
Whoops! she says. Gotta go.
*
The table in the dining room is covered with unopened mail, pill bottles, and old receipts.
His neck cranes above the backside of the brown recliner - C-SPAN, volume maxed.
I sneak up behind his chair and drop a kiss on the top of his bald head, inhale Bay Rum.
Lauren! he says.
Leaning in for a hug, I set off his hearing aids.
Happens every time, he laughs.
*
I’ve been warned that dysphagia and cookies don’t mix, he says.
I’ve unpacked my enormous suitcase and a sleeve of Oreos.
I plop onto the gold recliner and wiggle to get comfortable - it’s still stamped with the shape of my grandmother, gone a decade.
We eat forbidden cookies and share secrets.
He chokes the rest of the night.
II
On my 15th birthday, he took me to Friendly’s for a coffee Fribble and a chat about spelunking.
If you’re brave enough to explore the darkest caves, to jump in even when you can’t see the bottom, he said, you’ll discover creatures it will take a lifetime to understand.
The rewards are not immediate, he cautioned, reading my brow. But it’s how you avoid becoming a dull adult.
*
Clever move - tricking me into introspection and examination - by offering up a dare.
III
He moans in his sleep.
I should pull a chair to his bed,
keep the covers tucked to his chin.
Instead, at the threshold of his bedroom,
I count breaths.
One, two, three,
nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I’m about to shout his name, pinch his arm,
when his eyes snap open,
legs thrashing under the sheets
before he gags,
sputters,
sinks.
*
Scuttling back to the couch, Us Weekly from the Boston airport
turned to pulp on the coffee table from its use as a coaster,
I nurse an awful hunch: I’m a lily-livered, yellow-bellied rat.
*
No.
Dirt-stained, astride a bay mare
galloping forest edge to headland,
an ungodly shriek stops us cold.
Chin upturned, battle axe skyward,
my ruby lips part to release a war cry
so fierce a killer whale breaches.
The thought fills me with embarrassment.
I eat.
IV
Cheyne-Stokes.
He stops breathing for 62 seconds at a time.
My mother times it on her watch.
I can’t stay underwater for that long, she says.
V
He spends his days underwater,
a steelhead swaying over pink river rock
and mats of blue-green algae.
Whirligigs blur the surface.
Moving closer to examine
the speckled olive of his back,
slick of rose, I cast a shadow.
His caudal fin snaps,
propelling him upstream.
VI
You should learn how to play World of Warcraft!
says my brother over a bowl of spicy Pad Thai.
Sad? Just kill an abomination!”
VII
His heart is failing, reports the nurse.
My mother strokes his forehead.
My sister holds one hand,
me, the other.
A failing heart can be fixed
by a closed circuit of love
I think foolishly, childishly.
VIII
We think he is minutes away.
We think that it will happen in the next few hours.
We think we should start making phone calls.
We think we should page the nurse.
The doorbell rings.
“WHO IS RINGING THE GODDAMN BELL?” he roars, foaming.
IX
When he dies, I suspect it will snow.
Or it won’t.
I read my horoscope.
X
I dream of falling
backwards into a pot
of black ink.
Clawing for the surface,
lungs burning, fingertips
scrape the waxed bottom.
Wrong way.
XI
I had an affair.
Lied to my friends.
Quit my job.
Moved home.
Unpacked my bags.
Settled in to help him die.
At night, I fluff the feather pillows from the couch,
tuck them close and imagine myself curled at the center
of a bear’s winter den, its dense animal-heat protecting
a child who is me dependent on an adult who is me.
XII
I must leave the house.
I meet my brother at a dive bar,
suck down a beer and a cigarette.
In the wooden booth,
I can still smell it.
It’s impossible to escape, I tell my brother,
swallowing my fancy beer.
You can’t trick death, he shrugs,
swallowing his unfancy one.
XIII
This hospice nurse smells like Downy and cigarettes,
her voice a potato peeler catching a fingernail.
“MAURICE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?” she yells into his ear.
If I were him, I’d pretend I’m dead too.
XIV
We crush Lorazepam
in a spoon, add water,
mix it into a syringe of morphine.
When we administer
the medicine, we lift
our tongues, too.
XV
I need my nephews.
I need them to jump from furniture,
say stuff they shouldn’t.
When they show up, they’re hushed.
It’s just too much right now.
They leave.
XVI
My mother, my mother, my mother.
She doesn’t know what to say,
so she crouches close and shouts:
“I’m 61! My birthday was yesterday!”
His head rolls toward her voice.
“Can you believe it?!” she says,
her face the sun on his horizon.
His eyes open slowly. He smiles!
XVII
I want a man to rescue me.
I want never to make mistakes.
I want never to lie.
I want death to be silent,
bloodless, painless, quick.
I want, shamelessly.
The thought fills me with shame.
I eat.
XVIII
I sit in an uncomfortable chair repeating a mantra:
Death is oceanic, your courage a raft.
The mantra morphs:
Death is a shiver of sharks, your fear the chum.
XIX
The hospice nurse suggests
we tell him that we will be okay,
that he can let go, that the dying
need to hear they’ve been enough.
My mother points out that he is heavily sedated.
Yes, she says.
XX
The door to his bedroom is cracked.
A sliver of violet light
crosses the carpet,
halves the cotton sheet tucked to his chin,
climbs the bone-white wall.
On the edge of his bed,
I grab his hand
kneading warmth
until it softens,
unfolds,
in the center,
a dark hole,
whorled,
widening,
mouth of an
inkwell,
black ink.
*
Not a dull adult,
I dive in.
Blinded,
sediment sinking
into dark hum.
*
Breached levee
floods his bedroom
with memory,
rawhide mitt, black soutane, beach rose,
garden tomato, filigree pen,
Roman missal -
current gathering strength,
ripping,
propelling us past an eddyline,
folding us under
to the mud-black bottom
where hulking monochromes blur -
iron gate, oak pew, barber chair,
marble headstone, stone bénitier -
water filling throat, lungs burning,
legs cramping,
regret, fear,
regret -
No.
Thighing through eddyline,
bay mare hitched to shore,
dirt-stained, ruby-lipped,
war cry, battle axe,
clutch,
raft,
release,
float.
A stretch of sunlight and fern,
a warbler’s chipped, bright song,
marsh grass,
driftwood,
silver maple,
bulrush,
a bend in the river,
sweet air.
The water ringing with truth:
You are enough.
*
There’s a still, clear pool.
Speckled olive, slick of rose.
With a flick of his caudal fin,
he disappears upstream.
I.
Whirligigs spin across the water.
Dusk gives way to dark.
A car pulls into the driveway.
I lay his hand by his side and head to the kitchen
to join the hushed uncertainties of the living
where we’ll brew coffee and pencil lists,
sift for meaning, trading myths.