Her dress shimmered tiny pink and green flower gardens

like a tablecloth in a rural twentieth century 

American farmhouse, something tender

you never saw since you were a child too,

pleats and folds along the bodice,

tucks and stitchery made with a patience

that barely abides anymore, her hair tightly braided

and coiled in circles against her perfect head

with tiny red ribbons at elegant intervals,

but when you said, Memories, her face fell.

She whispered, we left them, we had to 

leave everything in our house, 

my cabinet, my doll, my books,

my pepper plant, my pillow.

Nothing now we knew before.

But we have a few pictures.

My memories live in my mother’s phone. 

 

Sorrow, O sorrow, moves like a loose flock
of blackbirds sweeping over the metal roofs, over the birches, 
                    and the miles. 
    One wave after another, then another, then the sudden 

                                                            opening
where the feathered swirl, illumined by dusk, parts to reveal 
the weeping 
                     heart of all things.

^{A translation of Konstantin Cavafy’s “I was asking about the quality” 
 
         For Felicia, Kipper, Oscar, and Kevin. 
         And for Ted and Barron, in memoriam}

I came out 
of the office

where I had been 
hired in another shitty, low-paying job

(My weekly pay was nothing more 
than fifty dollars a week, most from tips).

With my waitress shift over, I came out 
at seven and walked slowly. I fell out

into the street, handsome, but compelling. 
It felt as if I had finally reached the full potential

of my own beauty (I’d turned 
sixteen the previous month).

I kept wandering all around 
the newly-cemented streets,

the quiet and old black alleys, past 
the cemetery leading to our home.

But then, as I’d paused in front of a clothing store
where some skirts were on sale

(polyester, cheap), I saw this face 
inside—a girl—whose eyes urged me

to come inside. So, I entered—
pretending I was looking

for embroidered handkerchiefs.
I was asking about the quality—

of her handkerchiefs—how much
they cost—in a whispery voice breaking open

with desire—and accordingly came her
shop-girl answers—rote, memorized—but beneath her

words, her eyes kept ablaze: Yes.
Mine, too, were a psalm of consent.

We kept talking about the handkerchiefs,
but all the while our one and only goal was this:

to brush each other’s hands—quickly—
over the handkerchiefs—to lean

our faces and lips
nearer to each other, as if

by accident. We moved quickly,
cautiously, yet deliberately—

in case her grandfather—sitting in 
the back—were to suspect something.

This afternoon, discomfortable dead
Drift into doorways, lounge, across the bridge, 
Whittling memory at the water’s edge, 
And watch. This is what you inherited. 

Random they are, but hairy, for they chafe
All in their eye, enlarging like a slide;
Spectral as men once met or crucified, 
And kind. Until the sun sets you are safe. 

A prey to your most awkward reflection, 
Loose-limbed before the fire you sit appalled. 
And think that by your error you have called
These to you. Look! the light will soon be gone. 

Excited see from the window the men fade 
In the twilight; reappear two doors down. 
Suppose them well acquainted with the town
Who built it. Do you fumble in the shade? 

The key was lost, remember, yesterday, 
Or stolen—undergraduates perhaps;
But all men are their colleagues, and eclipse
Very like dusk. It is too late to pray. 

There was a time crepuscular was mild, 
The hour for tea, acquaintances, and fall 
Away of all day’s difficulties, all 
Discouragement. Weep, you are not a child. 

The equine hour rears, no further friend, 
Intolerant, foam-lathered, pregnant with 
Mysterious grave watchers in their wrath
Let into tired Troy. You are near the end. 

Midsummer Common loses its last gold, 
And grey is there. The sun slants down behind 
A certain cinema, and the world is blind
But more dangerous. It is growing cold. 

Light all the lights, heap wood upon the fire
To banish shadow. Draw the curtains tight. 
But sightless eyes will lean through and wide night 
Darken this room of yours. As you desire. 

Think on your sins with all intensity. 
The men are on the stair, they will not wait. 
There is a paper-knife to penetrate
Heart & guilt together. Do it quickly.

I walk the world with a locked box
Lodged in my chest. Doctor, it hurts
But not as much as it should. In Bucha,

On the roadway of the Street of Apples
A woman lay four weeks straight
Unburied even by snow. They saw her red

Coat and rolled right over, Russians,
Tanked and vigilant in their to and fro. 
Doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me

That isn’t also true of many others. 
At night I sleep under a vast epiphany
That hasn’t descended upon me,

Pinpricks that shine a white writing 
I can’t read. I don’t want to know 
Yet. Instead I ask to stay here, greedy 

For the smell of autumn. Before 
Leaving, I’ve made a miniature of me
To witness the raising of the sea, 

To watch over the unimaginable,
To greet this revelation of a future 
With those new names it will need.  

“Save your hands,” my mother says,
seeing me untwist a jar’s tight cap—

just the way she used to tell me
not to let boys fool around, or feel

my breasts: “keep them fresh
for marriage,” as if they were a pair

of actual fruit. I scoffed
to think they could bruise, scuff,

soften, rot, wither. I look down now
at my knuckly thumbs, my index finger

permanently askew in the same classic
crook as hers, called a swan’s neck,

as if snapped, it’s that pronounced.
Even as I type, wondering how long

I’ll be able to—each joint in my left hand
needing to be hoisted, prodded, into place,

one knuckle like a clock’s dial clicking
as it’s turned to open, bend or unbend.

I balk at the idea that we can overuse
ourselves, must parcel out and pace

our energies so as not to run out of any
necessary component while still alive—

the definition of “necessary” necessarily
suffering change over time. 

The only certainty is uncertainty, I thought
I knew, so ignored whatever she said

about boys and sex: her version of
a story never mine. It made me laugh,

the way she made up traditions, that we
didn’t kiss boys until a certain age, we

didn’t fool around. What we? What part of me
was she? No part I could put my finger on.

How odd, then, one day, to find her
half-napping in her room, talking first

to herself and then to me, about a boy
she used to know, her friend's brother,

who she kissed, she said, just because 
he wanted her to. “Now why would I do that,”

she mused, distraught anew and freshly
stung by the self-betrayal. So much 

I still want to do with my hands—
type, play, cook, caress, swipe, re-trace.

The things I know 
are almost completely 
in the direction of the familial, 
like a bird who 
is flapping and not
thinking, it just 
infinities into air, 
and hovers 
around a seed 
shoot—
all instinctual all
reactionary, like 
me dabbing 
a cracked phone 
with cotton when I 
swiped a slit out 
of my thumb; 
like a different bird 
who, peaking into 
a blind, watched 
something unchirpable 
happen; 
as I wait for them 
to see past what I am 
chasing, I long to be 
myself today, or a version 
of myself today; like a bird 
cawing other birds 
to its sounds 
pointing with its 
beak at us shifting 
angrily 
in our deluge of name, 
as I command a pattern 
most violent, to 
dissolve; 
like a human bird, 
working to not be thrown 
down the stairs because
he shouldn’t fly in the
house, and like a house,
I don’t own, being
painted by 
the ambulances that come
to pick me up with
bandages for my 
wounds— 
you never liked birds
anyway they filled our 
broken chimney, infinitying
around the dusty black 
mats and holey birch 
wood, you called 
sparrows, hummingbirds 
and crows, dogs; you 
called me, son; like a
bunch of birds breaking
out of their comfortable 
prisons 
into prisms of flap
and fold; like a boy 
sharing his name 
with a 
mockingbird—
am I supposed to 
be like you, are our 
names just an 
assemblage 
of funneled angsts 
that we’ve felt from 
our fathers?—am I 
supposed to be stronger; 
look at my chest; 
look at my flank and foot; 
my rump and bill; 
shadows of broken wing.