248 Family poems

You bring a stalk of bamboo to the flu room. Hot pink Buddha offers some bullet-like pills from his plastic fingers. Oh high above the pecan tree, my dead grandfather walks Basil and Maestro, our two standard poodles. One’s beard is oily from the wheel of brie he’s stolen from the kitchen counter. The world works. Even from here. I can hear the buzz of machines, the clicks of pens, the secretary’s repressed anger (bites the inside of her cheek), the weird light of computer screens. The world works wonders: the cashier at Kmart rings up another self-tanning lotion. She rings up August, the ocean, a string bikini on younger flesh. Nude on bronze. Saltwater fish. The sand is piled high. It makes a wave over the pecan tree. Soon a tsunami will wash away the house, nursery. Nothing left but a palm frond, white long bone. Goodbye dog, tree, grandfather with your elk-tipped cane. The world works but not today. Not for me. Fever and the walls painted with sharks and starfish. There is so much aqua, histamine. Buddha, bring me another slice of pineapple.

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee. What you been doin', suh — makin' san' pies? Look at dat bib — you's es du'ty ez me. Look at dat mouf — dat's merlasses, I bet; Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's. Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit, Bein' so sticky an sweet — goodness lan's! Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, Who's pappy's darlin' an' who's pappy's chile? Who is it all de day nevah once tries Fu' to be cross, er once loses dat smile? Whah did you git dem teef? My, you's a scamp! Whah did dat dimple come f'om in yo' chin? Pappy do' know you — I b'lieves you's a tramp; Mammy, dis hyeah's some ol' straggler got in! Let's th'ow him outen de do' in de san', We do' want stragglers a-layin' 'roun' hyeah; Let's gin him 'way to de big buggah-man; I know he's hidin' erroun' hyeah right neah. Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do', Hyeah's a bad boy you kin have fu' to eat. Mammy an' pappy do' want him no mo', Swaller him down f'om his haid to his feet! Dah, now, I t'ought dat you'd hug me up close. Go back, ol' buggah, you sha'n't have dis boy. He ain't no tramp, ner no straggler, of co'se; He's pappy's pa'dner an' play-mate an' joy. Come to you' pallet now — go to yo' res'; Wisht you could allus know ease an' cleah skies; Wisht you could stay jes' a chile on my breas'— Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes!

FOR BAILEY We were entwined in red rings Of blood and loneliness before The first snows fell Before muddy rivers seeded clouds Above a virgin forest, and Men ran naked, blue and black Skinned into the warm embraces Of Sheba, Eve and Lilith. I was your sister. You left me to force strangers Into brother molds, exacting Taxations they never Owed or could ever pay. You fought to die, thinking In destruction lies the seed Of birth. You may be right. I will remember silent walks in Southern woods and long talks In low voices Shielding meaning from the big ears Of overcurious adults. You may be right. Your slow return from Regions of terror and bloody Screams, races my heart. I hear again the laughter Of children and see fireflies Bursting tiny explosions in An Arkansas twilight.

When news came that your mother’d smashed her hip, both feet caught in rungs of the banquet table, our wedding rebroken on the memory of the long lake of silence when the stones of her body broke as an Irish fence of stones, I saw your wet dugs drag with the weight of our daughter in the quick of her sleep to another feeding; then the shoulders dropped their broken antenna branches of fear at the knife running the scars which had been born into the colon for the misspent enema, the clubbed liver unclean with the stones of the gall bladder, and the broken arch of hip lugging you to the lake, the dough inner tube of lading swollen with innerpatching. I pick you up from the floor of your ringing fears, the floor where the photographs you have worked into the cool sky of the gray you love, and you are back at the compost pile where the vegetables burn, or swim in the storm of your childhood, when your father egged you on with his open machinery, the exhaust choking your sisters, and your sisters choked still. Now this voice stops you in accusation, and the years pile up on themselves in the eggs of your stretched sons, one born on his birthday, both dead. I pull you off into the sanctuary of conciliation, of quiet tactics, the uttered question, the referral, which will quiet the condition you have seen in your mother’s shadow, the crutches inching in the uncut grass, and the worn body you will carry as your own birthmark of his scream.

Two sets of family stories, one long and detailed, about many centuries of island ancestors, all living on the same tropical farm... The other side of the family tells stories that are brief and vague, about violence in the Ukraine, which Dad's parents had to flee forever, leaving all their loved ones behind. They don't even know if anyone survived. When Mami tells her flowery tales of Cuba, she fills the twining words with relatives. But when I ask my Ukrainian-Jewish-American grandma about her childhood in a village near snowy Kiev, all she reveals is a single memory of ice-skating on a frozen pond. Apparently, the length of a grown-up's growing-up story is determined by the difference between immigration and escape.

San José, Costa Rica Tortillas clap against floured palms, steaming bowls of avena, frijoles black as the rumbling sky, arroz con pollo simmers. Against the kitchen window, small clouds rise. Papá dances to the electric beat of the marimba, his cheek bristly against Mamá’s neck; his thick fingers sift through her wispy hair. I am nowhere to be found, neither in the foreground nor background. Today I sit in this chair, in the corner of my house, covered with a poncho of blue flowers, looking out at asphalt roads overflowing with rain, fogging the glass. Along the road, steam rises like blotchy fingerprints.

How large was Alexander, father, That parties designate The historic gentleman as rather Inordinately great? Why, son, to speak with conscientious Regard for history, Waiving all claims, of course, to heights pretentious,— About the size of me.

On Magnolia Avenue there are no magnolias. Someone bought the house of the one survivor. All morning I heard the chainsaw sever its limbs from root to bud. No more scattered flowers, star city. No pink galaxy. Now the yard is a parking space, one Jeep SUV, one older car. Next door a woman comes out, late afternoon, a child in her arms. She speaks low, as if there’s just the two of them. She says to him, Listen to the little birdies, and he listens to the common sparrows talking in the hedge. He listens as they argue back and forth, their dialect of nature, as the street clatters with commuters taking a shortcut home. She says: Listen. And he turns his head to follow the fugitive motion, the small streaked wings unfolding, folding, the relentless chirp from a tiny blunt beak, the sound almost within reach.

her grandmother called her from the playground “yes, ma’am” “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old woman proudly but the little girl didn’t want to learn how because she knew even if she couldn’t say it that that would mean when the old one died she would be less dependent on her spirit so she said “i don’t want to know how to make no rolls” with her lips poked out and the old woman wiped her hands on her apron saying “lord these children” and neither of them ever said what they meant and i guess nobody ever does

I have no name I am but two days old.— What shall I call thee? I happy am Joy is my name,— Sweet joy befall thee! Pretty joy! Sweet joy but two days old, Sweet joy I call thee; Thou dost smile. I sing the while Sweet joy befall thee.