In my dream I am surrounded

by former students knocking

on my classroom door, all wanting

something that I failed to give

the first time around.  I am running

late, half dressed, wrapped in a towel, bare-

faced.  Some I dismiss, knowing

I can’t or don’t want

to help.  In another moment

I am with my daughter, traveling

somewhere.   Black men surround us, demanding

the car, a cigarette, money–

something I don’t want

to relinquish.  Emma is ready to give

everything up, and I am once more in charge

of her life.  Students gather watching

someone who promises to change

the trajectory of their lives, offering

something they know they will never have,

no matter how many times

they hear the story.  They are

restless, pushing and shoving, escalating

the hurts of their lives: a mother already gone,

splayed on the frayed graying couch, clutching

her purse, somewhere.  Soon the whole school is erupting

into something I cannot control.  I am left

watching, standing still,

empty-handed.

 

Late July, one-hundred-and-one degrees.

Fourteen years old and the sweat trickles down

bodies; rumpled sheets his wife never sees.

The dank sweat, stifling air presses; no sound.

Towering over my body holding

despair and fear, littering ashen dust,

my only teacher; summertime scolding

whispering frangible promises, lust.

Listless and languishing, still stifling gray;

she is a shadow waiting to arrive,

carrying small children, dinner, laying

guilt and blame; an abandoned past, contrived.

The dying sun retreating to dark and stone,

I sink benumbed, tenebrous and alone.

 

I feel on the edge

of something.  Grown daughter jumping

into her real life, here

and gone.  We share tattoos: stick figures,

clutching hands, her design

when she did not envision a life

beyond this one.

 

She is a shadow I took solace in, her

small body curled around mine, her pudgy hand

clutching my own as we drifted

to sleep; summer mornings,

pancakes with whipped cream smiles; thick slices

of French toast, drowning in viscous maple syrup, rivers

of cinnamon butter.

 

Now she tells her lover her secrets,

mine.  He is consuming

my life, my life’s life.  We reach an uneasy truce,

a balance that will never shift

toward me.  And so I stand

on my own precipice –deciding which way

I will fall.

 

After babies and demands, jarring

you from sleep, sucking your life,

your body theirs, the toddler commands I want

 I want at the grocery store stomping down aisles

knocking you into someone

you don’t want to be, red-faced and screaming.  The battle of will

ending with capitulation and desire

for something other than what you are left

holding in your arms.

 

She is standing on the precipice

of her body still demanding

what she wants, rules for behavior, limited

visits to the school, no longer wanting you

to please come, Mama, please come

to every field trip, picking apples with the 1st grade class, clamoring,

demanding more; 5th grade struggles with math–

formulas and numbers scribbled

in composition notebooks over the scarred

dining room table never add up

to what you want them to be.

 

You succumbed to her pleas, hating

every second, every game, every

recital you sat through, the years

of grading student papers in the back

of the assembly, on  the sidelines

at soccer games, half-watching

distracted, waiting for her name to be called, wanting

it to be over so you could reclaim

your life; the ceremony

in 8th grade where she stood

in her sequined purple dress; already too old,

but demanding and receiving.

 

Now you wait, idle, your life

like a plane speeding down a runway, wheels lifting in the air,

suspended between here

and where she will ultimately be, and you

left behind, staring out the window

face pressed against the glass.

 

 

 

In late summer’s light

smoke billows black

over the grill, a gray smudge

across twilight sky; the telltale

smell of summer.

The lawn blanketed a dry, dusty

brown; pale pink cone flowers, tired damsels drooping.  Sweat beading

down your back as you sit on the patio

sipping wine, listening to the neighbor

puttering on his old Buick

propped on cracked concrete, his back

golden,

shimmering in the summer sun.

 

The night sky

a gray smudge,

air sticky and leaden;

Firefiles blink in dusty sky.

 

 

 

——For my daughter

Every night brings

an uneasy truce, a compromise

negotiated between where we were

and where she wants to be.  She is flying

blind into her life: an apartment in Seattle, far away

from the middle-of-nowhere-Midwestern-mediocre life she imagines

mine to be.  She is gluttonous

with power, carrying signs demanding

something, spitting icicles while I rage, impotent,

my mouth an angry dash,

fists clenching and unclenching, grasping

at thin air.

 

 

The third of July

and already they gather:  the aunts and uncles

from Alabama or Nebraska, children in tow, complaining

already about the long trip; Patrice

wandering around, apart from the group, born

“special,” although her mother would say:

She is mentally retarded, the statement bolded

in the still room; not one

to couch her words, to pretend that things were anything other

than what they were.

Her table is set –always–with the white bone

china perfectly placed; silver

knives and forks, spoons carefully

positioned, napkins folded on the plates,

like origami on the plates.

 

Their father expectant at the head of the table, his drink clink clink

in the clear glass; every night a test;

what new vocabulary would he introduce

over the perfectly

carved roast; the day’s fare portioned out, precisely.

Years later, he slouched

in the corner, getting up to shuffle to the porch,

to “Oooh” and “Aaah” with the rest of them, a small grandchild in

his lap, while his grown children looked on with wonder, Who is

this man?  Every word controlled, holding its breath, waiting

to explode

in a burst of color, lighting up

the inky sky.

 

 

You disappear in your dreams.

In your place

someone else.  A man beside you

who he will do what is asked of him:

build a pergola or lay the brick patio,

fix the bathtub drain, pulling out long strands

of golden hair.  Your perfectly well-behaved children will be

perfectly well-behaved, seen,

never heard, dusty with the day.

The manicured lawn stretches

emerald; summertime shadows

chasing mile after lazy mile,

disappearing

in the morning light.

 

 

“Each year/part of a conversation I amost had/with someone I meant to call.”

–Tim Seibles

I should have prepared better

for mid-life or beyond

even that.  One more day

standing at the edge

of something I did not see coming.

My father at 53

an old man, kneeling at the hearth

in his flannel shirt and baggy polyester pants.  His life spent

preparing for what might come, counting

every nickel and dime hoping that this time

something might add up.