Second Set of Poetry

Grand Island Cemetery

North on Highway 45
the old sycamores breathe
and I can hear the whispers in the marsh reeds
when I walk through Grand Island Cemetery.
The smashed headlights of rusted tractors
watch me with an uneasiness
like the feeling that I often succumb to
in the presence of the gaping doors and windows
of abandoned barns in the desolate fields.

My boots darken with dew
and between the markers and fences it is quiet.
I walk carefully as if I would break the bones
buried beneath me, and I think
of her frail fingers, stains of age spoiling
the pale blue of her hands as they fiddle with a tissue.

I wish I knew her
before she lost her memory,
before she became sick and forgot about her life
and the people closest to her
like it was something she misplaced one morning
and couldn’t find.
She used to stare at me
with a haunting emptiness within her,
void of the spirit I only hear in stories.

She’s not buried here, but I can feel her
shuffling slowly behind me,
soft and cold, the winter air,
mingling with other silent breezes
and spirits found and carved into headstones
to rest for a final time in freshly spade dirt.

I look up into the vacant rows of the walnut orchard
and see her—auburn curls, her dress starched and pressed—
waving to me, beckoning me to follow her
into the fog.

Tiger Eyes

We read poetry
in your room,
our voices floating,
heavying the air
amidst the soft crackle
of the record player,
I sneak a glance
while you speak softly
sitting cross-legged
in front of me.

And you look up at me
with your yellow tiger eyes,
two wildflowers in a barren meadow,
behind the chestnut brown
of hair falling over your brows,
telling me to read aloud,
and telling me silently of the storm
somewhere inside you.

In the yellow
there is sour speech,
the drugs and drink
you turn to,
secrets of the beast
that you are
inside.

CloudWalkers

I took a walk
on the edge of the world,
wondering if you’d follow me
in the wet sand
that reflected the sky.
I walked on the clouds,
on a ground of mirrors,
high above the sea
that flashed the sunlight on the horizon
in fractures from its broken surface.
I was alone for miles,
but kept looking back
seeing my footprints in the cloudy sand
and searching for yours beside mine,
but only saw the pronged etchings
of seabirds that scuttled and scavenged in my wake.
I was walking on water
and thinking of your laugh
that sounds like the hoarseness
of the crashing waves
when it began to rain.
My heart was washed clean,
scoured like smooth driftwood, exposed and weathered
from the heavy droplets of rain and wind.
I walked, tired and soaked through, until the balls of my feet ached
and the sand was no longer smooth,
but rubbed the soles of each foot raw, and red.
The clouds parted once or twice,
interrupting the rainfall
to let the fingers of sunlight
tangle themselves in my hair,
warming me first from the inside.
I hoped if I walked long enough
on these clouds
I would look back
to see you
walking after
me.

Wartime Ghost

You are becoming a number already
even though you haven’t left yet
to die alone in a uniform,
your vitals on a metal tag
around your neck—
your life, you, in a few short words,
black or white in brass glory,
blood type,
inoculations.

You are already a wartime ghost
when you sleep beside me,
acting the killer and the hunted,
mortars ringing in your
soundless dreaming ears.

I wouldn’t die for this country.
Would my country die for me?

You are never coming home,
even when you rap on my front door
after four years
with your heavy, scraped knuckles
to announce,
I’m home.

Jellyfish Dreams

In the blue-gray crescent moons
beneath her eyes
he sees the stork’s gift
slide down the black mouth of drain
like a red jellyfish,
slippery from her womb.

His foot jolts against the
cold sheets and
she wants to fuse her body to his
as she strokes the curled blonde hair
at the nape of his neck.

In sleep he becomes an endless sea,
and she adrift it’s sleek steel surface,
beneath the star glow the girl smiles
at the half-face moon
between his bursts of noiseless laughter,
her eyes silvery fish,
her hair a tangle of sea grasses,
she ebbs with the tide
and the sea of glowing jellyfish below
the bow of her boat,
suspended like stars,
sink into black.

The Cloud Menagerie

In panic
childhood was gone.
Childish visions of the World
disappeared in the shadows
of grass beside the house.

In the meadows
I leaped over holes in the ground,
burrowed tunnels between the
jungle of smooth green blades,
collected ladybugs in my clenched fist,
passed afternoons with a menagerie
of cloud animals.
I daydreamed of childhood things
singing and whispering
to trees and the blue jays.

I watch myself ignite,
flare like the lit end of a match,
on my fifteen-year-old summer afternoon.
I stare at the stranger
in the bathroom mirror.

I feel the flash of my smile,
the fluidity in my step,
the back of a boy’s neck
and grip the shaking wheel of a car,
my breasts sprout
quietly under cotton,
like trees emerging from earthy mounds
I, too, feel my own sap
dripping between my thighs.

And I see all the other pretty girls
watching, too,
beside the men
who smile hungrily.

Clementine Whiskey

The whimpering sounded strange
escaping my throat,
like some pretend surrender
almost filling the room
like my white linen,
blood-stained sheets would,
so absorbed in the humming
of throaty calls,
waving about
helplessly.

And in the heavy grayness of light outside
I saw the supple cloud
of amber-brown hair,
smooth coffee skin dotted
with dark brown beans
beneath the window,
bathed in that exhausted,
perverted
noise.

But I can’t remember what we said
in the kitchen,
poisoning our bodies
in the Clementine sunrise,
whiskey drunk and
whispering.

Welcome to Normal Heights

I look at my brother
as we walk through downtown
Normal Heights, the neon bar
and nightclub signs
illuminating the sidewalks.
We are silent while he looks around,
like he’s lost, glancing into the
crowded clubs—he’s a musician, this
is his scene—loud music and heavy conversations
filling the air, mingling with the smoke
from burning cigarettes and the pungent
sourness of booze. Suddenly, he glances
at me, and I can sense we’ve had too much
to drink back at his apartment.
Hey, don’t get all sappy on me here,
Or be too surprised, he says,
But I love you.
I stare at him, feeling how he
doesn’t want me to feel. He’d never
said this to me before. He gets nervous
and looks away and we keep walking.
He looks like he’s hurting inside.
I wanted to throw my arms around his
tall, thin frame and cry, tell him everything would
be okay, but he stops mid-stride.
This is it. I wanna show you something.
And I follow close behind him.