248 Family poems

The poem in which we drive an hour to the beach and Uncle Dave doesn't get out of his lawn chair once. The poem in which we left the yellow plastic shovel behind and everyone is bereft. The poem in which I can't stop talking about how you walked deep into Lake Erie and the water was still only up to your knees when you turned into a speck past the rock jetty. The poem in which everyone listens to celebrity gossip in the car on the way back. The poem in which I pontificate on how ugly the fiancée of that Jonas brother is, and how they're too young to get married, and how my grandmother's old neighbor would have said, "Ugly? She can't help that she's ugly. It's that she's so stupid," and I would have yelled at her for assuming that all former hair- dressers are dim. The poem in which I turn into my grandmother's old neighbor. The poem in which I remember very clearly how they both stored tissues in their bras. The poem in which I think about how this would horrify your mother—the pendulous breasts, the moist tissues, the dipping into the cleavage to retrieve anything. The poem in which your mother tries not to wince when I order whatever I want from the menu despite her coupon for two medium 1-topping pizzas. The poem in which I try to find a deeper meaning for why I notice the woman ahead of us in line at Johnny's Liquor Store who buys a pack of menthols and asks the guy behind the counter if he knows her good-for-nothing brother. She has hair that looks like cats got at a skein of yarn, and a tattoo above her ankle that's dark and unspecified. It's far enough above her ankle that it's nearly mid- calf—like her ankle and calf are two different countries and the tattoo got lost in the borderlands on the way to its actual destination. The poem in which I am territory that is under dispute and no one will occupy it because of fear and uncertainty. The poem in which I reach the conclusion that this feeling is inspired by your mother and the way she hums out-of-season carols while doing kitchen tasks, though it's not really about the humming but rather the time she asked me to light the Hanukkah candles in the attic because it would be better if they were out of the way for the Christmas party. The poem in which you and I are in line waiting to buy a mixed six-pack of Great Lakes and I am staring at a stranger's tattoo and thinking about the fact that I am not Anne Frank while the baby is in the car with your mother. The poem in which I go into Walmart and buy the baby an olive-green cap that looks suspiciously like Fidel Castro's. The poem in which I could eradicate the fact that I ever went into Walmart and bought anything so the baby can one day start a revolution. The poem in which we see a couple on the highway median in a stalled-out Buick and don't stop to help. The poem in which the highway median looks like the spit of land between two enemy trenches and I feel a deep longing for my childhood. The poem in which I remember, for no apparent reason, the tornado instructions taped to the sides of all the filing cabinets in one office I worked in that was on the top floor of a mostly abandoned mall in Overland Park, Kansas. All that was left: decorative fountains, floor tiles, mirrored ceilings, Nearly Famous Pizza, the carcass of Sears. The poem in which we leave Northeastern Ohio, The poem in which we return to Northeastern Ohio. The poem in which it is night and we are lost in Northeastern Ohio and we keep passing Amish buggies adorned with reflective tape. The poem in which the moon is a vehicle for content, and is far less than a perfect reflector of anything. The poem in which we are all in some kind of limbo.

In the backyard of my father’s house a hen’s warm neck once filled the center of my pale fist. Her place on the stump still wears my shadow like a stain.

We speak of rebellion when the kid is a hellion and the folks are as mild as a spoon. Likewise Republicans born of freethinking lesbians seem like reactors, turncoats on how they were raised. Let me offer another concatenation of this explanation. Think of your mother as one discrete corner of a person with a multiple mental disorder. You're one of the others. One that split off. Not a turncoat then, but the expression

I see my mother, at thirteen, in a village so small it’s never given a name. Monsoon season drying up— steam lifting in full-bodied waves. She chops bắp chuối for the hogs. Her hair dips to the small of her back as if smeared in black and polished to a shine. She wears a deep side-part that splits her hair into two uneven planes. They come to watch her: Americans, Marines, just boys, eighteen or nineteen. With scissor-fingers, they snip the air, point at their helmets and then at her hair. All they want is a small lock— something for a bit of good luck. Days later, my mother is sent to the city for safekeeping. She will return home once, only to be given away to my father. In the pictures, the cake is sweet and round. My mother’s hair which spans the length of her áo dài is long, washed, and uncut.

He forgets that he used to call me mariconcito- that I harbored years of hatred toward him while hoping to find my real father. My childhood memories of him reminding me I was my mother's son, not his. I tried to poison him once and scattered sharp nails inside the shoes in his closet. By the time one of his sons died of AIDS I was already lost in contempt for the man I blamed for everything. There was the time I was in love and he met my boyfriend. Now he forgets to go to the bathroom or where he is but he still remembers Michael and asks about him. I help him walk slowly outdoors to step outside the prison cell that is the tiny apartment with no windows in which I grew up abused by both of them. He barely understands. His fate has been torture. I know that I cannot be his savior. I used to pray for him to die but here he is slowly fading. In his eyes I see that he learned to love me and wishes he could take it all back. He is unable to recall those drunken nights and hateful words. I should do the same. I left a long time ago but he still remains haunted by the little boy who wanted to belong. Like him, I want to forget that we made mistakes and caused so much pain. I need for both of us to remember how he taught me how to ride a bike and how to swim and told me, better late than never, that he loved me and was proud of all I had done. I have to help him settle into his favorite chair and let him know that I forgive him. There is a place somewhere where he will call me hijo and I will know him as my dad.

In my grandmother’s house there was always chicken soup And talk of the old country—mud and boards, Poverty, The snow falling down the necks of lovers. Now and then, out of her savings She sent them a dowry. Imagine The rice-powdered faces! And the smell of the bride, like chicken soup. But the Germans killed them. I know it’s in bad taste to say it, But it’s true. The Germans killed them all. * In the ruins of Berchtesgaden A child with yellow hair Ran out of a doorway. A German girl-child— Cuckoo, all skin and bones— Not even enough to make chicken soup. She sat by the stream and smiled. Then as we splashed in the sun She laughed at us. We had killed her mechanical brothers, So we forgave her. * The sun is shining. The shadows of the lovers have disappeared. They are all eyes; they have some demand on me— They want me to be more serious than I want to be. They want me to stick in their mudhole Where no one is elegant. They want me to wear old clothes, They want me to be poor, to sleep in a room with many others— Not to walk in the painted sunshine To a summer house, But to live in the tragic world forever.

Hurricanes, 2005 Arlene learned to dance backwards in heels that were too high. Bret prayed for a shaggy mustache made of mud and hair. Cindy just couldn’t keep her windy legs together. Dennis never learned to swim. Emily whispered her gusts into a thousand skins. Franklin, farsighted and anxious, bumbled villages. Gert spat her matronly name against a city’s flat face. Harvey hurled a wailing child high. Irene, the baby girl, threw pounding tantrums. José liked the whip sound of slapping. Lee just craved the whip. Maria’s thunder skirts flew high when she danced. Nate was mannered and practical. He stormed precisely. Ophelia nibbled weirdly on the tips of depressions. Philippe slept too late, flailing on a wronged ocean. Rita was a vicious flirt. She woke Philippe with rumors. Stan was born business, a gobbler of steel. Tammy crooned country, getting the words all wrong. Vince died before anyone could remember his name. Wilma opened her maw wide, flashing rot. None of them talked about Katrina. She was their odd sister, the blood dazzler.

Did you ever have a family? Dark dining room, bright kitchen, white steam from the big pot my mother’s stirring reaching in wavy tendrils to her face, around her face, all the way around to me at the table, then beyond me into the darkness where my brother is. Were you ever a child? I’m hungry but I know we’ll eat soon, so even the hunger’s sweet. Did you ever really have a brother? He’s singing there in the dark corner beside the stereo, the volume turned down so low all we hear is him, his voice, and his eyes are closed so that there’s nothing around him anywhere that might reveal he isn’t who the song insists he is. And that is? Irresistible, unforgettable, someone to whom as in imaginary gardens where “the nectarine and curious peach into my hands themselves do reach,” love comes as soon as called, comes just as dreamed. Did any of this ever happen? The hunger’s sweet, it’s as if the song weaves through the fragrance of the braiding steam from him to me to her to me to him because her eyes are closed now too; her slippered feet tap, caper a soft shoe while the ladle sways in her hand as she stirs. Were you ever a child? I know I’ll eat soon. Did you ever really have a brother? You should have heard him, his voice was unforgettable, irresistible, his voice was an imaginary garden woven through with fragrance. Did you ever have a family? Their eyes are closed. That’s how I know we’re there inside it, it’s made of sound and steam that weaves between dark dining room, bright kitchen. We’re there because I’m hungry, and we’ll all be eating soon together, and the hunger’s sweet.

I was born in a Tennessee sanatorium hours after my mother’s father died & I know how the womb becomes a salt-sea grave. I was born in the last seconds of small crops & small change rained down on the collection plate’s felt palate & I know the soul’s barn debt to past generations, too. Outside, ditchfuls of chicory flashed in the after-rain sun as melancholia’s purple scent rose & its steepled fog distilled in Tennessee hills. & I know I’m not supposed to be here on account of all those crazy aunts & I know great grandma was five when her Cherokee mother died & her daddy dumped her on the red clay curb of an Arkansas reservation then drove away in a wagon— how she just strode the fields of milkweed back to Tennessee & married her cousin. When I was five I drowned a fly in a piepan of water then spooned it out & heaped a hill of salt on its still body until I could hear a buzz again (as if within a belly) & I know the rush of the resurrected. I was born in the last decade of small town girls wearing white gloves to funerals. As an infant my boy quit suckling long enough to wave to my mother’s ghost— who used to drift in the doorway of the hours. & at three he told me at my age he had red hair & broke his neck falling off a runaway horse—I know the rocking chair’s set too close to the edge of the porch.

There’s a woman kissing a cowboy across the street. His eight-year-old son watches from the bus stop bench. She’s really planting one on him, his Stetson in danger. It must have been some weekend. Seeing no room in that embrace for himself, the boy measures his future, legs straight out in front of him. Both hands hold onto a suitcase handle, thin arms ready to prove themselves.