what i remember best

is
your ghost in all corners of the world,
slurping life through a straw and standing on chairs,
your grin wide as Nevada, engulfing the sky.
what i remember worst is the reason.

driving at six PM along an unmarked highway at the end of nowhere

you, deprecated,
your hands tucked like little fidgety starfish
under your stubby bare legs,
humming something irrelevant against
the low whir of the car, rubbery,
the thousand naked bees mating furiously in the engine.
the little pinpricks of salmon in the evening's blue;
our eyes burning holes into the freeway.
through cataracts, still seeing:
we, unidentified.

quaint (rant)

when i grow up i want to have a cat.
and a dog.
and maybe a bunny.

i want to have a quaint little house,
and maybe a quaint little husband.
and then we will need a quaint big house,
for quaint me and my quaint husband
and the four-to-six quaint quaintly well-behaved children.

maybe i'll be a missionary.
maybe i'll be the missionary English teacher to little orphans in South Africa
or Thailand or Cambodia or India or Romania or Peru.

and then my four-to-six quaint well-behaved children will learn
Swahili and Thai and French and Hindi and Moldovan and Spanish.

how quaint we would be!

we would come home to visit Grandma with her wide hugs and her chocolate chip pancakes(although we would have no home; we would be strangers, always and only strangers)
and people would say, my, how well-behaved they are! how quaint!
and we would rattle off idioms in Swahili and Thai and French and Hindi and Moldovan and Spanish like smug-faced little simultaneous interpereters and people would say,
how quaint!

quaint us with our languages, with our cats and dogs and maybe a
bunny. quaint us with our four-to-six well-behaved children.

quaint me with my maybe-fashion-magazine-internships and my
maybe-record-contracts and my maybe-international-business-classes and my
maybe-third-world-discipleship.

me. yes, me.

how quaint.

this is the table

where you kicked my knee out of its socket.
this is the table where we wrote that sonnet,
(the one that took flight and then failed so miserably.)
this is the table where, two years ago,
that boy with the reddish hair stole my pencil.
i hope he knows, that skunk, that bandit,
that delinquent stealer of writing utensils,
that he ruined our writing careers
and quite possibly is responsible for these two botched-up lives.

my mother

is an indomitable soldier.
she is the steady pulse of the IV
cementing moment after moment as life
drips on.
my mother is the closest to heaven,
she is the light at the end of the battle.

poem starters

the deeper meaning, sprawled from wall to wall-

the Valencia pavement, all picked and polished (like an overused bathing suit)-

the disgruntled sister.

the outgrown sweater.

"the french," she spat, "are one translucent eyeball"-

the forgotten labor of forgiveness, burnt like silver to sand-

the dusty crunch of gravel under flattened feet-

the scrap of fabric fluttering like an injured moth from the picture window-

the light refracted, in its sedentary effervescence, watching-

the brisk retreat, yet slowly growing stagnant-

the scent rising, tatsing deliciously of home-

the rest. all the rest-

the lime-scented tragedy of loving and being told, "no."

good evening, miss polly baker

i know you had a feeling like
burning gravel in your stomach
when you turned your plastic smile
on me and squeaked,
Congratulations!

zillie

the world was clean and cold,
ripe with the scent of sanitized linoleum
and the hopeless old.
the nursing home squatted, its own wobbly ecosystem,
its brick legs tucked indian-style
under the neat rows of white gardenias.
round wrinkled faces sat propped
limply in wheelchairs like debilitated rag dolls;
blank, nameless, empty.
"maria, mi querida,"
wails senora guerra,
always sweating, always plump-faced,
always cheered.
"yes," i say,
says ten-year-old-me with the conditional identity.
(for i am not maria and i am nobody's querida.)

"sun-day," my grandmother announces blandly,
obediently,
but there is no recognition in her eyes.
she is twenty-three, unmarried, beautiful.
i am Ruslana, the dark-eyed banker's wife.
"yes," i say,
says ten-year-old-me with the conditional identity.
(but i am not Ruslana and i am not Czechoslovakian.)

these grey walls are her israel.
the symphonic whir of the air conditioning is the throaty laughter
of the commanders on the naval ships at bay.
it is nineteen forty-one and Aunt Frances is having a baby.

"zillie, zillie, zillie," charlie moans, his eyes wide with,
haunted with, twenty years of ghosts.
for twenty years zillah has slammed that door on that
four-door camaro,
on the crumpled faces of charlie and those two
snaggle-toothed children.
he drowns always,
his ears swishing with that liquid
slam, slam, slam.

slam. this is what it is to have lived.
his eyes dilate. i fear he is more alive than anyone.
more alive than i am.
"i'm not zillie," i whisper,
and i shrink inside myself.

my sister

should have red hair.
she is a Mexican jumping bean,
dancing up, up like
a springy exclamation mark,
like peppermint toothpaste,

like the word flambé.
she snaps her fingers at life like
a hiccup in the rain
and sings the same same song
as the alarm clock in the morning.

birth

five days after my fourth birthday an underpaid
leggy blonde babysitter arrived on the doorstep.
she smacked sugary gum and drank dr. pepper
and was not bilingual.
no father's fussiness.
no mother's caution.
promptly locating the landline,
dialing her boyfriend, and leaving me
alone in the living room with my infantile dr. seuss.

the banned beckoned.
lizzie russell with her scabby knees and full-fat peanut butter
poked her head through the window,
grinning all toothless and vapid, six years old.
i opened the door and stole carefully outside.

admittedly, marco polo on the rocks was
not the best idea we've ever had.

my first consequence hit me like a deflated balloon,
lapping waves smacking and sucking at
my indignant nerve endings.
something black and sticky seeping
through my size two trousers.
leaving them dark-stained and blood-soaked
over the shattered skin of my raw knee.

pain like that was illegal. unlawful.
i suckled the second wave, letting the sweetness
slowly settle in my stomach.
wickedness did not arrive grandly or with fanfare,
it was covert and stealthy,
the rip of a knee,
babysitter's horribly inconvenienced grimace,
the stuttering slap of the screen porch door.
some vital thing has cracked in my embryonic sac
and i have let the world in.

you are

emotionless, the smooth ticking
in God's great brass stitches,
holding the world together.
knotted feebly
in great loose threads, beautifully,
without tangles.
unhappy speaking, delicious,
the several luscious seconds
between bread and tea.

shivering, like the herniated. like the cold.
touchable. readable.
under my parka, humming alien lullabies
like some homesick foreigner watching
the silver glint of spare change and cows eyes,
the perfect stranger, seeking no home.