and students and parents are restless;

I walk the littered halls,

overwhelmed: kids bent on cell phones shuffling

along; teachers checked

out in their classrooms behind

closed doors where

anything can happen.  I lose it

with my own classes: screaming at them like

I did at my daughter when she threw

tantrums at two, feet stamping, small fists pounding against

whatever might come; but now I am the one

throwing things on the floor: whiteboard markers, ball-point pens,

whatever chalk I have left

to get through what remains

of the year.  I stomp my feet and return

to my corner, buried in papers, gearing up

for the next round.

People are
miniature glass
figurines, balanced
precariously on the edge
in a still room, waiting
for a small child to come
bullying his way,
pudgy fingers grabbing,
taking what he wants.  What remains–
tiny shards of glass
sparkling in the summer sun.

Something simmers
beneath the skin, an angry
outburst, a car stopped, a young
man in sagging pants sporting a gold
grille, refusing to back
down. His mouth slashed
across his face, spewing
nothing; havoc
in the still morning air.

 

Peeling paint reveals
faded colors, muted
years. Intricate doorways
to someplace else; someone’s life,
dimming through the years

 

In the quiet still
morning air
golden, the hardwood
glistening, polished;
a speck
of dust floats
in the air,
rumpled white
sheets, the empty
bed, waiting; languid
whispers, white noise
in the air.

 
Years fall away
and we wake up
the same, what we hoped
we’d never be; the insecure high school kid
sitting in the back of the room,
digging into his skin with an ink pen,
greasy hair hanging over his eyes,
seeing nothing; the girl
next to him in her high-waisted
pink-and-white flowered jeans,
big glasses smudged and foggy
covering half her face, disguised
as someone else. Underneath
they are movie stars
glittering like Christmas lights
seen through thick glasses —
their lives a blur, blink
and there they are,
never seeing
what it’s worth.

 

 

 

I wake up drugged

with memory: Stella in her baggy

t-shirt carrying a green bean casserole

that no one will eat; my mother making

pronouncements.  Long ago the family

gathered around the dining room table

saved for such occasions; the holidays

blurring, like looking at Christmas lights

without my glasses; pancake breakfasts

early mornings after Midnight Mass.  The Christmases

I remember with my own daughter

are always the ones where she was

out of control.  Or I was. Yelling at her when she was

seven and eight, nine or ten, the living room window

opened to the patio below, voices

echoing.  Everything I did

or didn’t do magnified, never seeing my life

for what it was, for what I wanted

it to be.

 

She wears her braids piled high

like an African princess,

skin the color of latte, tinged

with a hint of cream.  Her bones sharp,

full fat lips that the boys can’t help imagining

the things they might do.

In tight yoga pants she sashays

across the room like it’s a Parisian runway,

and not the dingy tiled floor of a run-down school

dumped in the middle of nowhere for kids like her—

kicked out of day school for copulating in the bathroom

with two boys from the football team, her best friend

standing by taking pictures.

 

I imagine her in another life—twenty pounds

lighter and sitting in a make-up chair, hyped up

on something.  In front of the camera she is all

glamour and gloss, pouty lips the perfect

salmon pink.  That’s it, baby, don’t move.  You are

beautiful, you are perfect.  And she wants to believe it,

so far away from Normal, Illinois, or Defiance,

Missouri, or a million other hick towns.  It doesn’t matter

where.  She will take the pill put in front of her

or snort the white dust and never look back.

 

She sits in the back of the room,

her flawless face gazing vacuously

out the window at the endless fields of corn

stretching for miles.  This is her life

as far as the eye can see.

 

 

 

The first time my hand

wrapped around it

I was sixteen and on the roof

of a building, the night sky

glittering all around, the music

blaring from the apartment

below.  He pulled it out

like he was offering up

a prize, something he knew

I couldn’t refuse.  He groaned

with desire, but I was indifferent,

drunk on sloe gin and whatever else

it took to feel that slow easy buzz,

my life a blur, my lips and teeth

so numb and tingling my words

garbled –like speaking with a mouth

full of marbles. I looked out

at the city lights from the rooftop

and felt like I was on the edge

of something, dizzy

with power, a man’s life

pulsing in the palm of my hand.

 

 

The diner is a throwback;

step in the door

and you are in

another world.  the woman

behind the counter, starched

and pinkish gray, bent

over the donuts, an up-do

impossibly high, sprayed into place;

tiny veins of lipstick snake

from her blue red mouth.

Every day brings someone else

middle-aged behind the bar,

looking  grim.  You imagine a man

in a suit at the end of the counter, a girl

in a scarlet dress, her cigarette drawing

pictures in the air; you feel trapped

in an Edward Hopper painting,

all alone.