Curating My Grandfather

Are those his eyes
     blinking over her oatmeal,

     his hand, a confluence of blue
          tributaries, pushing the white bangs

off her face?  
     How do you curate 

     a man who vanished
          into thin air?  

Even the whale found floating 
     in Boston Harbor last month 

     eventually wound up on a beach 
          in Rockport.

When I ask my mother what she remembers 
     she says there is nothing 

     to forget.  And I see that she’s navigated
          these waters without him 

for eighty-six years.  This doesn’t stop me 
     from believing that to study her face, 

     which is my face, is to study
          his.  Our histories

at cross-purposes--
     trying to be better this time around, to 

     never leave. I ask myself, 
          if it was his hand that guided my brother

toward the bottle, falling in love with its slim
     cool neck? He drowned

     and came back until he could not.
          And now we are two 

women alone—the same twin cheekbones 
     and almond eyes.  I’ve been practicing my French 

     I tell her. Look, she says pointing--
          an ibis. All legs and elegance at the edge--

But whose eyes? Blinking
     ​behind snow white bangs.


First published in Crab Creek Review

---

How It Resists

 And sometimes it’s too much— 

          these aisles of crowded looms, 

their stanchions of white thread

          spooling like udders,

my needy shuttles

          of flowering dogwood--

for its hardness, for how it resists 

          splintering, for the way it loves

to be polished smooth--

          some days 

the floor slants, 

          the room seems cockeyed,

light muddles,

          too slim for eyes

to see the eye--

          and the whole mill howls

as if cotton were milk--

          ​the way two mirrors held just right 

create an infinity of I--


First published in Michigan Quarterly Review

---

Earthlings

          Things that are beautiful, and die.
                                                       — Laura Kasischke

On a plane we say souls--
          one hundred souls aboard

not the same with cars
          as if proximity to earth negates 

the idea that we are more 
          ​beautiful than matter. 

Is that why down here the trooper covers 
          the body with a sheet--

and two deer, side by side 
          on the shoulder of the highway

legs splayed like clothespins
          that lost their grip

are emptied carcasses filling 
          with pyramids of new snow

feather weight?
          The plow blade sparks blue

when it finds pavement 
          flickers.

These balding, out-of-balance tires
          carry us--

each rotation
          stitched to the next



if luck holds
          random and catch as catch can

but viable viable
          here on earth

and nowhere else
          ​and nowhere next.
​

First published in Zone 3

Sewing Lessons

How many evenings, dishes done, they sit in the parlor
stitching. How many times the needle kisses her finger,

red beading the muslin fabric. How she mimics
the angle of Mémé’s needle, tautness of her thread.

How’s she’s getting used to the thimble. The way it’s clumsy--
stops feeling. How she has plans for each remnant,

ribbon, embroidery floss in the basket. How to make
a knot that won’t pull through the sheerest cloth.


First published in Valparaiso Poetry Review