Lost
She was hanging clothes on the line when I asked her,
next to the garden where she beat a snake to death with a hoe.
She kept her eyes on the clothespins as she nodded,
her fingers clipping the shape of my father’s right shoulder into place,
feeling down the wire,
clipping his left shoulder next.
I’d been there before-up the hill with the trampoline
and we jumped until our legs were jelly and our chests burned.
When we came out, policemen wandered up and down
lit by swirling red and blue lights.
She said you didn’t ask her, the officer leaned over.
She said she never gave you permission.
But I knew what happened.
She was not there,
next to the garden in the afternoon breeze.
She did not hear my voice say
Can I go and play?
She was getting her degree, joining
the Peace Corps, settling an argument with her smarts.
Riding the trolley up Powell St.,
dining at La Scala, carting her bags down Fifth Avenue
and I would, after that, ensure more witnesses
than the silent curves of my father’s shirts.
Twenties
Back when I thought I could smoke it away, drink it away. Fuck it away.
Dance it away. Travel it away. Pretend it away.
Ignore it away. Freeze it out away.
Lie it away. Cry it away. Eat it away.
Run it away.
A volcano is a mountain when it’s not exploding.
Muscle Memory
He curled his lower lip over his mustache to capture the whiskey he’d dipped it into.
She imagined that resistance in her throat like swallowing Nyquil or salt water, followed by the golden warmth in her bones.
These days she felt only the outside of bottles.
They said during training that eventually she would feel how long to hold them inverted to pour one shot or a double. That her body would just know.
She leaned with her back to the register and crossed her arms over her chest.
She watched him lift the glass to his lips again.
A Mother’s Wish
Don’t you listen, boy
to the voices that say
not enough or too late.
Not now
or who do you think you are.
Hear the mountains instead.
The rocky ones
topped with snow.
The peaks whispering: come see.
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