Everything is Sexy
When the toll booth sign says
Please don’t stop
I sigh and say, here we go.
Once again, everything is sexy
and the world wants to swallow
me whole. Pushing D69
on the vending machine? Sexy.
Taking the top off
of the recycling bin?
So sexy. Cracking open an ice-cold
sparkling water with a French-sounding
flavor like pamplemousse? Le Sexy.
And yes maybe it's my hormones trying
to trick me into another iteration of God
be fruitful and multiply
or maybe it's just you tending to the garden
that I promised I would water and never
do and yet here you are in your gray
gym shorts and this is the summer
of cucumbers as big as my want
and I’m holding an empty salad bowl
waiting for you to come inside.
Woman Posting in Parenting Forum
Friends, I have come to the end of my rope.
My child has decided that he is the moon
and I cannot convince him otherwise. His entire
face a moon, not a man in the moon, but a toddler
that is the moon, and yes he does give off light
in the darkness and yes some days he pulls the ocean
current towards his body and yes I’ve noticed
that when I take him to poetry readings
or art museums everyone cannot help but stop what
they are doing and begin to draw pictures of him
with images or language and yes there was of course
that one incident where someone shoved an American
flag into his back and yes, it was one small step for the boys
who marked him but a giant leap for me
across the playground and friends there was
that Halloween when he decided to dress like a bat
and a broken superhero showed up on our doorstep
and I had only peanuts to give him
when what he really needed was
purpose, I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know
how to parent the moon and now I’m making this about me
because the scientists are telling us that the moon
is drifting away from the Earth and I gotta admit
most days my gravitational pull
is a dilapidated hug at best
and friends did you know
that scientists predict that the moon was made
when a rock smashed into the Earth
and the more I look at my
son’s birth photos the more I see my body
ripped open by my sun, no wait by my
moon who invites me into the space
of his playroom and smiles
with the fullness of his face
And I guess what I’m trying to say
is yes, I have been eclipsed by love.
Into Oblivion
Someone has accidentally set the forest on fire
and having clocked in for the day I turn
this catastrophe into a little poem.
Some days writing feels like this
an animal presents itself to you
and asks to be remembered
maybe the rabbit chewing dandelions in your yard
or the bat gliding over your head in the auditorium.
As much as you may want to move on, the animals
will follow. Today is a quiet day and I am stuck
checking inventory. The things I don’t want to remember
I shove in drawers that no one will open,
memories where I was harmed,
no, memories where I was loved.
At the market in Odessa
my grandfather waits for me.
It is my turn to haggle over
the price of strawberries,
once again I am too American
for this moment, he wants me to
do what I have been taught to do
he wants me to survive. He is of course
dead, leading me through this life
by hiding images throughout the world,
used paper towels that I have learned to
fold and store beneath the sink, half-rotten tea
bags that I will return to the soil, and pickle
jars that now hold soup and rainwater.
Back at the market, I follow my grandfather
through the meat section and stop
at the butchered animals
be specific he tells me
and I return to my desk
to write about the concrete apartment
building where my grandfather
watered white roses on our balcony
in Odesa, where bombs now fly
into buildings, into this building
into the cracked sink
and pictures of dead
relatives and the rug nailed
to the wall that my father
smuggled on a train
from Czechslovakia
and the books, and the old
domino set with the carving
of the naked woman on the
cover, tits out and bush on fire
and oh the crystal shot glasses
that only remnant from my grandfather’s
wedding, the day he married a woman
who made the best syrniki in the world.
Here,
sit down and eat.
Self-Portrait As Midwestern Grocery Store
As beautiful as an aisle of Jell-o
I am radiant orange, lemon-lime, blue raspberry, and green
grape. I am the entire Garden of Eden in box form,
a powder of pomegranates and apples and I am always
ready for the deli meat section.
The butterball is the only way
I ever want to think of a turkey
and not the wisdom on the face of the old
hen who would perch herself on a weather vane
in my backyard to remind me
to watch my children
who often wander too close to the forest.
And maybe I’m not cut out
for the real world or the fresh produce
section, which makes sense because I was born
right after Chornobyl exploded. And now
I’m in the candle aisle again
and I just can’t leave. A place of smells
where we replace reality with what we
think it should be, cucumber melon,
lilac spring, vanilla sugar cookie, the smell
of the funeral home where you planned
your grandfather’s wake
cedar and sweet caramel.
The warm baloney sandwich
he unwrapped from his pocket
the day you found out
he was leaving his body behind.
Light Crimes, a Love Story
It was our second week in the United States and my mother needed to learn how to drive so she could get a job mopping floors. My father borrowed a white van from the community center where he mopped floors and boiled spaghetti on Italian night. And maybe you don’t see it at first but this story is romantic. The middle of the night, two young immigrants in love in an alleyway, matching leather jackets, and my mother’s red lips shining in the moonlight? No, not shining but radiating like a neon sign that said open. Did she scratch the car on purpose or was she unsure of how to parallel park? The answer didn’t matter because the next day my sleepless father followed the driving test instructor. Noted the 25 feet marked by orange cones and knew he could not teach my mother how to place a vehicle between them. You see she was not born to fit into arbitrary spaces, she needed room for her hair and her eyes and her voice that my father often says fills a room like an ocean fills a fish tank, immediately until everyone is drowning in beauty. Instead, he committed some light crimes and moved the cones minutes before her turn to take the driving test. And listen, I know you want me to tell you whether or not she passed or whether or not my father was arrested, but all I can say is that she wore her fur coat and aviator sunglasses that day, and my father watched her from that borrowed van thinking she looked technicolor, an American movie star playing the role of a woman with no way to return home.
Instead of Ascending
after Gerald Stern
I was going to write a poem
where I make love to the fields.
I would note that the dandelions
just need someone to blow them
and that grass was best when wet and
bowed over in pleasure
but instead of ascending
into the world of the pastoral
I will behave like a Jew
and mourn the dead bird
in my driveway. A fledgling
who had fallen out of its nest
pushed out by invaders, by those
who would erase its song and
tiny dancing wings. I laid down
next to her and saw the sky how
she saw it. Empty of anything
worth writing about except
of course, the body
of her mother.
Tolstoy Buys Another Horse He Doesn’t Need
My favorite review of War and Peace
is from an anonymous account
that thought it needed
“More war and less long descriptions
of women.”
I am one long description
of women. Blonde hair, brown hair,
hair ripped out of the ground
body like tree body like bush
body like meadow made
of bodies. Body young
and beautiful but also
old body like bog and I’m in the dirt again
asking for nothing but to be transformed.
Woman with Hysteria Prescription
Perhaps I should have been embarrassed
when they performed the pap smear and
the doctor said Hold on I think I see something!
and launched his head down the rabbit hole
of my body, but I knew he wouldn’t find
a secret garden of lilacs or peony bushes
but a post-apocalyptic landscape
that only a few survivors had escaped from.
What I should have said was sorry,
I can’t turn the death machine off which seems better
than calling something a babymaker because
my baby maker can’t make babies anymore,
but perhaps it can be rewired to make porcelain angels
each one identical but also a collector’s item. Hysterical
he called me, No, hilarious. I told him, as I took what was mine
and descended into the sea.
