four jaded seniors all scuffed
and scarred
from last year’s magazine disaster and blow into them
a little more disbelief,
a little more despair.
Let them scowl. Do not fear. They will
soon exhaust themselves with
their own soured sighs.
Grant them mercy.
Allow a new poster suggestion
from two timid sophomores
to slide across the table and sit
in the seniors’ laps.
Let them remember
being unlistened to last year—let them
recognize
gold when it’s struck.
Combine
their expertise and
a little cunning—let them
listen, question, improve.
Notice
even the teacher is smiling, see
what pure collaboration can do.
At the end of the hour find
eight children skipping
down the hallways together—
believe
that a common passion
can make anything possible.
Inspired
I shouldn’t be texting
in my (only recently repaired) car, but
it is mostly at a stop sign and
there are never any cops on this stretch.
You are the flint. I am the fire, I type,
Fanning it only makes it burn stronger.
Without much thought I press—vigorously—send.
He is probably in practice, but
I am today full of oxygen,
am stoked high on kindling,
and he helps me breathe.
Bad Timing
Break time at work
and at the end of this awful week,
I want to keep things light with us
—only tenderly repaired—
just tell him
what Nadia said
about two forks and a rusty knife.
Now two rings,
three,
and his voice is late-night distracted
flung out the passenger window
of a speeding car.
My lungs are constricting. I am going numb.
Just tell me how much you love me
bubbles weakly from my mouth.
I’m a nuisance.
An inconvenience.
A bother,
getting in the way.
I do. He insists. But I’ve got to go.
It’s not such a big deal. It’s all okay.
And then it’s just me,
on the patio,
a muted phone in my hand
two hours left of work and
the helium balloon of my heart,
deflating
rapidly.
Disappearing Pennies
Nickels, dimes, quarters where
do these whole dollars go,
betraying me at the end of my shift—
time to count the drawer?
Two-sixteen under.
Five twenty-nine over.
Sixty-three cents short.
Night after night,
bleary-eyed, swollen-ankled and I am
sweeping change into my hand and back again
counting over and over
praying to the calculator gods,
Please make this add up right.
The spool of paper rolls out,
the purple numbers spinning and I am
four ninety-one over
one seventy-six short.
Margot notes it down in her yellow pad
—it will come out of my check
even the overage—
her eyebrow arcing high with disapproval
and impatience,
my hands open with apologies she won’t hear.
I am not sure where the mistakes come from,
how my fingers manage
to slip and miss—
even worse, how they swim together each day,
adding me up to one fat zero.
If I Go
Everyone is already at the Lake House,
including him.
Midnight, and I am
sweaty, stained, and in slow motion.
I could
go home and shower, dress, make-up
and get myself ready
—make it to the party by two—
maybe enough time
for a sloppy kiss,
a covert make-out,
or another misunderstanding—
another slammed door.
I could also
go home and shower, pajamas, DVD
curl up in bed and maybe
swap a foot massage with mom.
Would he love me more
if I went?
Or if I knew better
and stayed?
Pulled in so many directions
I am too tired
—too ground and gritted—
to care
either way.
Camille
girl’s best friend
when it’s wet and cold and raining all day like this and the ground is soppy-gross with dead leaves and runny clay you can’t take the dogs outside all together to run around in their big playground pen out back. instead they get small group rotations for a bit in the back room—the one full of dog toys and an observation window, the one that smells too much like pee. it is not supposed to feel like a jail in there but it does at least to you, so when you and the puppies are there playing you do your best to clap your hands and chase and tug on things that they clamp in their mouths—roll around with them and wrestle and keep your voice high and cheery. because while you do have your own bathroom and come and go as you please, you know what it is like to be somewhere you don’t want to be. you know all about being pent up and stuck. you know how nice it is to have even a stranger come in and let you run around with them, pretend you aren’t trapped inside even if they can’t take you home. it’s still nice to have someone who will let you lick their face.
casing the joint
still cold nasty san fran winter-style raining outside: not a downpour or a gusty gale or hail or sleet—just a slow steady curtain of wet that makes everything bone-achy and shivery, even though it’s not that cold. you drive yourself around in a couple of circles between the shelter and downtown decatur, going the wrong way at the courthouse, finding a dead end where you didn’t expect one, squinting through the windshield. but finally you find the goat-monkey place again and even more miraculously manage to wrangle a parallel parking spot right out front. to you it seems like perfect coffeehouse weather but maybe everyone is cozed up at home with their gas fireplaces and their nubbly sweaters, because when you walk in—moving quickly, keeping in a straight line, acting like you’ve been here plenty of times before, this takes no thought—there’s only a snuggly couple together on one of the couches and three individuals all ghost-lit by whatever’s beaming through their laptop screens. you order what you always order, because there’s never any kind of stupid coffee code for it, no sizes to guess or syrups to memorize: decaf and cake—the first cake that catches your eye, the chocolate raspberry mousse one that says it’s vegan though you could care less. when you sit you can finally really look around: cool black-and-white photos (or paintings made to look like black-and-white photos) on the wall—on closer inspection, by a local artist—warm wood floors with assorted worn rugs underneath. small tables with things painted on the tops surrounded by chairs straight from a parisian café. deep leather armchairs and small, well-placed halogen lights on thin wires from the exposed-beam ceiling. you feel yourself let out your breath, settle in. you take a sip of the rich creamy coffee, a bite of chocolate soft explosion. this will do. it will do indeed.
afterimages
days later and you still feel like you had double vision all of saturday night, watching that big baseball facade with the sad sof
t inner core shining out through those brown eyes. usually people are all they are, wearing themselves on their sleeves (even if they’re hiding something) but this was a double-exposed photograph in the flesh, flashing back and forth. for all that muscle he didn’t try anything—didn’t even allude to it—and that was at least noticeable if not refreshing. you were just two people—a boy and a girl—standing by a fire, swapping small talk, laughing at the goofs around you, just standing there watching the flames in silence. and for a girl who’s got to stay in motion it surprised you how it was nice for a while, just being able to stand still. which is maybe why you gave him your e-mail, there at the end. maybe you thought he wouldn’t write. sure, maybe that’s it. but you can still feel the heat of that fire now, the peace and quiet of him next to you, reading this new inbox message: peacock girl who hides / treasure maps of mystery: / a camouflage smile. you have the impression he’s trying to make an impression, but you’ve lost count of whether it’s first, second, or third. you’re too preoccupied counting out syllables over and over. counting the syllables—finding them exactly right.
luli’s laugh
you call and tell her about the catcher. and at first she laughs and you think she (like you) is just amused by it all—a baseball player writing poetry, how ludicrous—but then her voice turns serious and she says you’re not really serious, are you? and you say, what? and you don’t mean for it to be so defensive, don’t mean to sound as though you’re protecting anything, but then she laughs again and says i get it; never mind. and you insist, no really, what? and she says you’re a funny girl. and asks have you gotten any good mail lately. and you don’t know what kind of mail she means (mailbox or inbox), and you don’t think she’ll be able to listen to either kind, with that judging laugh, even though she’s a fan of chicago and might want to know, so you keep it all to yourself and change the subject. you tell her a joke about the girls at school. you give her something to really laugh about.
speaking from experience
you can still hear luli laughing over it but the truth is you just can’t stop thinking about that catcher with the haiku. you’re not really sure why and half the time you think even thinking about him might in some way be swimming against the wrong current. when it comes down to brass tacks all you really have is yourself. why pretend there’s ever anything other than that? why can’t that be okay? what are you going to do with that boy in chicago—go through the whole darcy thing again, go back to writing and writing—trading photos every day so she could see your new town, so you could still see your old one—until marissa kept showing up in her photos and then those photos became fewer and fewer while yours kept coming, trying to prove how cool life was in charlotte—even though it wasn’t. are you going to do that with every new connection you make, in every new town? yes those chicago postcards and the memories attached to them are lovely (and wouldn’t it be so nice if you could have him every day—if we could—), but people don’t get to keep anything forever so who are you kidding? sure luli would say, well how do you know? she says spending your life trying not to get hurt is not really living, that she wants to live like a trapeze artist: if her body tells her to jump she does it because otherwise she’d just be cowering there on the platform when she could be flying and leaping with someone, maybe even for a long time. that’s what luli thinks. but everyone loves luli. luli’s never had letters unanswered. she’s never sent photos no one wants to see.
not getting ready for a date
it’s not like it’s a date. how could it be a date since you don’t date anyone, because dating’s a trap, because dating is totally dated? because you are the girl who stays unconnected to everyone. still, you do know he will be at the lake house tonight. and he knows you will be there. and you both know that right now you are probably getting ready to be there, knowing the other one will be there. it’s why you’re sitting here staring at your closet with a disaster of discarded outfits on your floor. it’s why you can’t decide between jeans or the deconstructed tuxedo pants. it’s why you wish you’d bought those killer turquoise cowboy boots you saw with mom last weekend, and why you can’t decide if your hair goes down or up. he’ll be there. you’ll be there. and eventually you’ll be there together. and you’re not sure what’s going to happen—what’s already happened is confusing enough—but you do know you’re sure something will happen. maybe like last time you’ll just talk. but that was still something. something for sure. he thought it was something too because what about those e-mails? so this isn’t just going to another weekly party. it’s more like kind of a date. even though you don’t date. which is why you’re not sure why you’re sitting here getting ready as though it is a date. but why you’re not able to act like it isn’t one, either.
the kiss
he just comes at you. you barely drop much of a hey, how are you? there on the back deck where people can see—and he just comes at you, surprising as a tornado on a sunny day, blowing the roof off, pulling up the fence. you see him and you smile and then it’s just one step, two steps and he’s over you and under you and all over you and it’s not some you’re cute i might like you kiss, nor a confused and disgusting sloppy-slather fueled by all that vodka kool-aid he’s obviously had. no, this is a mouth with momentum, a train on one track paying no heed to any warning clangs, a chemistry set just waiting for someone to put the wrong powder in the right tube and make something explode. this kiss says he needs you more than all those puppies put together, that he’ll aim over and over at the tender haiku buried deep in your own trenches until he hits the right syllable. this kiss will wipe your mind of all things, will make you forget your name your face what town you’re living in and who’s driving you home. it is a kiss that, when it ends—after he’s summoned laughing into the dark by shouting boys in the driveway—will leave you gasping and glossy-eyed for hours later, will follow you home as you stare in the bathroom mirror at the chewed-looking spots his stubble left on your chin. it is a kiss so loud and long that your whole mind will scream, that can’t happen again, while your body will still twitch a little, wondering if it could just once more.
memory reset
monday lunch and ellen is all eyes and ears wanting to know about you and the catcher, the boy you forced yourself to forget all day yesterday, doing french extra credit you don’t need, making sure your mind didn’t wander—helping mom with dinner, organizing your socks. now ellen is nudging and winking so loud that dorie and willow and autumn and connor and even some of the boys are curious, looking at you, listening in. when you try to brush her off with rolling eyes and a flick of the wrist ellen says oh no and grabs your shoulders and presses her forehead against yours and says in this silly deep voice you were having an illicit mind-meld and we want to know all about it. and you laugh a little and think was that it? some kind of meeting-of-the-minds that’s resulted in yours now being a little half-melted when you think about him? maybe you need to remind yourself that a clash of personality traits you didn’t first anticipate does not—does not—mean the world’s reversed its poles, that you don’t still know exactly how this is all going to wind up in a few short months anyway, no matter how many haiku he writes or how he kisses. even these friends now—look at them, look at their faces closely—will be gone and leave you, and you will leave them, and you know that. wrap your arms around their shoulders now, drive in their cars to parties, pinky swear you’ve never met anyone like them before, have your slumber parties and hold them close, but remember the thing you know and they don’t is that this time right now is even more fleeting than you think. remember all you are doing—with anyone—is killing time. (though killing time with a catcher who can kiss like that seems a lot nicer than killing time alone.)
Becca
New Morning
Force myself
to get up at five AM—master
the half-blind hair wash,
the sticky-eyed climb
into clothes I don’t care about.
Suffer silent
along the empty-blue-black drive
past houses with their hats
still over their eyes,
the trees waiting in dark quiet
for the golden tickle
that means the sun.
Straighten my spine
on the crisp-cold walk
to the back bakery door
with its warm yellow light.
Inside inhale
deep enough to make my toes uncurl:
coffee-cinnamon-pastry-welcome
—a new morning
no one else has smelled.
Work quickly,
filling glass cases with
warm pumpkin-buttery bundles,
croissant toasty crispness
and deep doughnut delish.
Laugh with Nadia
—her smile
always on anyone,
but this morning, just me.
Clasp
the steaming mug
offered in my direction.
Realize
how much I like it—
starting the day this way.
Telephone Evolution
In the old days (Mom says)
it would just ring and ring and ring,
callers counting
twenty, twenty-one, (he could be
just now running in from outside)
before giving up.
Next came answering machines
(we still have an ancient one for the telemarketers)
that allowed for screening—
deciding whether or not
to pretend to be out.
Now there is the cell phone:
more immediate, less discreet—
I can tell, for example, after two rings and a click
that for the first time
he has seen my number, hit IGNORE.
The Coffee (Heart) Break
After the superspeedway
of Sunday morning doughnut drive,
coffee chaos,
and tablewipe tumbling
there is a small lull
—a pause.
I can sip
my own coffee—break
my own doughnut into small pieces to savor.
This is the time
—Freya knows—
someone can come by
and I can do more
than wave at her like a drowned girl.
She can come
After the Kiss Page 6
