Like everything delicious, I was warned against it.
Those mornings, I’d slowly descend the stairs
in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, find my parents
eating behind newspapers, coned in separate silences.
The only music was the throat-clearing rasp of toast
being scraped with too-little butter, three passes
of the blade, kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, battle hymn of the eighties.
When I pulled the butter close, my mother’s eyes
would twitch to my knife, measuring my measuring--
the goal, she’d shared from Weight Watchers,
a pat so thin the light shines through. If I disobeyed,
indulged, slathered my toast to glistening lace,
I’d earn her favorite admonition, predictable as Sunday’s
dry communion wafer: “A moment on the lips . . .”
I couldn’t stop my head from chiming, forever on the hips.

Hips? They were my other dangerous excess.
I was growing them in secret beneath my skirt,
and when I walked the dog after breakfast
and a truck whooshed past from behind, the trucker’s eyes
sizzling mine in his rear view, I knew my secret
wouldn’t stay a secret long. They were paired, up top,
by a swelling, flesh rising like cream to fill, then overfill
the frothy training bra. Everything softening on the shelf,
milk-made. Meanwhile, at breakfast, sitting on my secret,
I’d concede, scrape kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, lay down
my weapon, dry toast sticking in my craw. I’d think
of the girl from school, seventeen to my fourteen,
who crawled out the window of first-period bio
to meet her boyfriend from the Navy base. She’d collar
his peacoat, draw his mouth to her white neck,
or so I kept imagining. Slut, the girls whispered, watching
her struggling back through the window, throat
pinked from cold and his jaw’s dark stubble,
kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr. Only fourth period,
and already I was hungry for lunch, or something.

Thank you, Republican parents, thank you,
Catholic education, thank you, Reganomics—
words I never knew I’d write. But I hereby acknowledge
repression’s inadvertent gifts. Folks who came of age
in liberal families, permissive cities, the free-love sixties,
how far they must go to transgress—
Vegas, latex, sex tapes, a sugaring of the nostrils?
Yet how close at hand rebellion is for me.
Merely making married love with my married husband,
I’m a filthy whore. Merely sitting down to breakfast
and raising the butter knife, I’m living on the edge.

—2019

^{Do you know what I was, how I lived? —Louise Glück}

It is a goldfinch
one of the two
 
small girls,
both daughters
 
of a friend,
sees hit the window
 
and fall into the fern.
No one hears
 
the small thump but she,
the youngest, sees
 
the flash of gold
against the mica sky
 
as the limp feathered envelope
crumples into the green.
 
How many times
in a life will we witness
 
the very moment of death?
She wants a box
 
and a small towel
some kind of comfort
 
for this soft body
that barely fits
 
in her palm. Its head
rolling side to side,
 
neck broke, eyes still wet
and black as seed.
 
Her sister, now at her side,
wears a dress too thin
 
for the season,
white as the winter
 
only weeks away.
She wants me to help,
 
wants a miracle.
Whatever I say now
 
I know weighs more
than the late fall’s
 
layered sky,
the jeweled leaves
 
of the maple and elm.
I know, too,
 
it is the darkest days
I’ve learned to praise —
 
the calendar packages up time,
the days shrink and fold away
 
until the new season.
We clothe, burn,
 
then bury our dead.
I know this;
 
they do not.
So we cover the bird,
 
story its flight,
imagine his beak
 
singing.
They pick the song
 
and sing it
over and over again.
 

            for my grandfather

We don’t have heirlooms. Haven’t owned things long enough. We’re hoarding us
in our stories.                         Like October 26—the Oklahoma Quick
Stop gas at 90¢ and, in 158 more days,

Passion of the Christ in a wildlife
refuge with Rabbits foot and Black
Capped birds—when Edgar Whetstone shoots

himself. Like August 4, 1919. Like Ada Willis births
the boy conceived with Boy gone somewhere. Like her prayers and circa 10
years past and Mr. Charlie saying, Edgar reads (you call that 
       clean?)

but please, girl, coloreds don’t become
doctors. Like Edgar trashed his books.
Like served, discharged. Like funeral

director close to doctor as it got.                  Formaldehyde wrecked him
like Time to get up out the South Detroit inspect dynamics burn
a house down torch the county jail.             Like now, October. Like I found,

searching the internet, one shot
of the asylum’s blurry hall
empty but for an organ’s pipes.

I saw Edgar deluding hymns rousing the two of us in Rock
of Ages followed by Philippians 1:21—to die
is gain. No way to prove the claim, you die in dream, you die for 
       real.

Our family still hanged from trees.
Like if they ever fall, no one
will hear it someday for a while.

          Glinting golden through the trees,
           Apples of Hesperides!
          Through the moon-pierced warp of night
          Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,
          Swaying to the kissing breeze
          Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming,
           Apples of Hesperides!

          Far and lofty yet they glimmer,
           Apples of Hesperides!
          Blinded by their radiant shimmer,
          Pushing forward just for these;
          Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred,
          Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred,
          Always thinking soon to seize
          And possess the golden-glistening
           Apples of Hesperides!

          Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,
           Apples of Hesperides!
          Not one missing, still transcendent,
          Clustering like a swarm of bees.
          Yielding to no man's desire,
          Glowing with a saffron fire,
          Splendid, unassailed, the golden
           Apples of Hesperides!