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 |