Tuesday First Drafts

Renovation

A house is a palimpsest
A familiar retelling of stories,
Of paint samples and plaster,
Renovation and rebirth.
You may cleanse insistently
The traces of lives before you, but
They will continue to speak, to breathe
Within the ancient hardwood framing,
The modern metal joist hangers, the
Copper water lines, and the thick black
Wires hiding and seeking, taking refuge in
Green-grey junction boxes covered with
Rust and damp and dryer lint, and coursing in
Ungrounded current, threatening to flame,
To spark the destruction of these pages.

When Daniel pulled the ceiling panel
To access the upstairs plumbing,
A frenzy of rat droppings washed over him
And he jumped off the ladder, alarmed
By his mind's interpretations of what next
Might fall from this long-neglected sky.
Outside to brush off his clothes, face,
To catch fresh breaths, he shakes off the past
Before returning to his work replacing
Cast-iron (when you cut it, the taste stays
in your mouth for days) with PVC fittings,
The sort the kids and I later tossed
By the dozens back in a bin on the driveway.

I wasn't there the day a different crew
Prepared that ceiling for drywall.
When I returned, it had been covered over,
Sheathed in self-righteousness and new, and
I was left wondering about the nest:
Had its inhabitants long ago abandoned it,
Or would they remain our neighbors,
Decorating their new space alongside ours?
Would I, years later, hear their children,
The certain scritch of their claws, and
Dream of their life within my life,
Their story between my stories?

Tuesday First Drafts

And We Shall Clap Our Hands

Sylvia Poggioli’s morning-deep

Announced the Easter death of

Madame Nhu, the Dragon Lady,

Tight sheaths and soup bowls. 

He is risen this morning and always,

But she, no longer able to anticipate

Omnipotence in her next life,

Is dead in her diamond-studded crucifix,

Talisman against her particular judgment.

Her remembrances must include those

Immolated monks, still protesting the

Police-brutal clatter, an unbalanced

Answer to their robe-quiet grace.

At her conversion, she cast off the Buddha

And wed herself to the gleeful violence of

The Roman Catholic Church, cheered its

Legacy of force, of reverential knees and

Epiphanic proclamations of power.

On the first morning of November,

The Times of Vietnam spoke its last.

That afternoon, the coup began, and

Rioters burned the paper’s offices,

Celebrating the assassination of

Diem and the exile of his First Lady.

The words of his regime, her words, fired

Fitfully, and they stood in small groups,

Not talking, still fearing the unwritten.

The heat pushed back, they had to turn,

One mumbled, uncertainly: Let them burn.

Tuesday First Drafts

The Play's the Thing

I didn't read a single page
Last night, Mama
I turned on my booklight only
To count and make sure all
The diamond beads were
Still there
No
I don't want to practice
My line for you, I say it
Every night before I sleep
But not loud like I will today
Just quiet for me and
Mary Beth to hear
My teacher said we can
Wear green (tortoises are green!)
Or brown or black or
Any dark color instead of
Just brown like the note says
I can't wear white socks
They will think I'm on the hare's team
They are wearing all white
I don't stand up
To say my line because
I'm one of the smaller ones
I just sit on the ground
Like this
You will be so proud
When you hear me say
My line.

Tuesday First Drafts

Villanelle

This tightrope walk between boy and man

Your rank unknown from my distant shore

You hold my eyes; he took my hand

What rite to pass and how alone?

Leather office chair or college tour

This tightrope walk between boy and man

A gesture, yes, your words, perhaps tone

Will expose your youth, his age, no more

You hold my eyes; he took my hand

Will I see it in her son, my own?

The switch flipped sometime after four

This tightrope walk between boy and man

My son steals my lap, head crown to chin bone,

A locker room, a bedroom door

You hold my eyes; he takes my hand

Now you have found that point to hone

Returned victorious from aging war

This tightrope walk between boy and man

You held my eyes; he took my hand.

Tuesday First Drafts

The Transaction

When Shaquan sits in her mother's kitchen
The grease-coated metal of the chair
Presses the flesh of her thighs
Not so much supporting her -
Her life a burden upon it -
Rather an assault, a public
Stoning in reverse.

She stares emptily at her mother's back
Stares while her mother raises the
Stench of morning eggs
Stares while her daughter's bare feet
Strike the chair legs
Stares while her boys fuss on the floor
And her mother fusses at the stove
Like a short-order cook who knows
She's about to be shorted a tip.

Her mother pays the child support
Supporting her child - now grown -
Her child's children growing,
Feeding them, sheltering them,
Letting them squander her investments,
A daily disregard which is paid back
With her only currency:
Her words reminding Shaquan
Of all she's lost - the job at Dairy-O,
The father of these children, the money
For shoes on what should be
The little girl's first day of school. 

The air was thick the night before
When her mother withdrew her legal tender
Acting instead as judge and jury
Her back now turned to the stove
To face Shaquan and her failure.
She stopped hearing the words long ago,
But they leach out of her mother
And she continues absorbing them,
Feeding on them,
Aspirating them,
Drawing an awkward strength from them.

Once her mother was asleep,
She went to the boys' room
And stopped their breath,
Silenced their cries,
Then lay between them, dozing,
Before waking in a terror,
Lifting them quietly onto the porch,
And fastening their limp former selves
Into their car seats, ironically
Securing them against automotive harm.
She did not linger, nor
Smooth their hair, nor
Touch their brows, nor speak
Their names one last time.
She just drove in the raw light
To the Edisto River boat ramp,
Opened her door, released the brake,
And walked to the trunk,
Turned her back on her children,
Assuming her mother's posture,
And leaned just firmly enough
To feel the wheels begin to turn.

After, she said she wanted to be free,
But I think she wanted them to be free.
She made the only possible deposit,
Buried her talents in the field,
Rather than see them lost
In the words of her mother,
Rather than see them be killed in that way.
She has been denied all power, but this
She could choose, this outcome she controlled.

Tuesday First Drafts

High Winds

Outside my window, the night is impossibly still
Not even winking at the calamity
Forecast for later tonight:
Buses and SUVs are at risk
For rollover.  Use extreme caution.
Prepare for possibly lengthy 
Power outages. 
One time, with no severe weather alert,
the deck gate was ripped off its hinges.
What can you do to prevent such a thing?

There was no meteorologist to
Predict your tempest this evening
When the bath was over
And the water turned off.
I opened the drain and unknowingly
Destroyed your emotional center
Tilted you at the windmills of sanity
Caged you in your suffering rage.
I was not prepared, but I did
Try to contain the whirling dervish of
Your tiny naked body, tried to
Quiet the demonic storm in you.

We've put the bikes and toys inside
And lowered the bird feeders.
We've parked the high risk SUV and
Laid the patio umbrella beneath the benches.
We've made the preparations,
Boarded the metaphorical windows.
And somehow, I doubt it will blow.
I've already weathered tonight's storm.

Tuesday First Drafts

Cori Spezzati

Each day, my right hand repeats
A running major scale
On the brassy handrail of my ascension,
And I sing a song
Of myself, all the versions of my
Self, plucked from between the shirts
And boots and scarves of my identity.

The intermittent rain cloaks the day,
Wears the sky like the mantle of the
White witch, just as threatening,
With none of the false sweetness of
Turkish Delight.

And Pilate's song for Hagar
Keeps pealing in my head
Her words like a basso continuo
The strength of her voice bleeding
Into me even as I know
That strength was not enough to save,
Was not enough to cover the loathing
That killed Hagar's smile
And emptied her eyes.

Oh, mother of Ishmael,
Sarah tucked you in and thrust you out.
The Code of Hammurabi forced her hand
Carried you into his bed.
You had no voice,
But you were seen by God
At Beer Lahai Roi,
And you brought forth a wildness
And carried on.

I wonder if it will rain on that day
Or if the sun will blister
The mourners and force their eyes
From the darkness.  I wonder
If the wind will carry their voices in
It's woven yellow basket or if the clouds will
Burden them with their oppressive weight,
The antiphony of life and death running
Like scale patterns across the sky.
I wonder if I will pronounce of myself:
And she was loved.