After the Kiss

by Terra Elan McVoy

  in another

  couple weeks—

  I decide,

  for my brother,

  to grab my bootstraps.

  It is time to begin

  the hard haul up.

  Sighting No. 2

  Saturday and this time I am ready.

  Although—

  what they call her hair

  is a cascade.

  No one really looks

  like a shampoo commercial

  except her.

  Too bad that front tooth is chipped—her one flaw—I

  wonder if she caught it on a button fly

  or zip?

  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Redhead (with apologies to Wallace Stevens)

  i.

  among twenty needy customers

  the only moving thing i saw

  was the eye of the redhead.

  ii.

  i was of three minds,

  like a triangle

  in which there are two couples.

  iii.

  the redhead whirled in the afternoon rush—

  it was only a small part of her deceptive pantomime.

  iv.

  a girl and a boy

  are one.

  a girl and a boy and a redhead

  are none.

  v.

  i do not know which to prefer,

  the beauty of sheer rage

  or the beauty of quiet repression—

  the fake smiling

  or the grimace behind her back just after.

  vi.

  condensation filled the long windows

  with cloudy warm haze.

  the shadow of the redhead

  crossed it, to and fro.

  the mood

  traced in my shadowed face

  an unmistakable hatred.

  vii.

  oh deceitful men of tucker,

  why do you imagine golden redhead birds?

  do you not see how the brown-haired sparrow

  would still sing so sweetly

  at your own feet?

  viii.

  i know noble friends

  and knew a lucid, inescapable love—

  but i know too,

  that the redhead has become involved

  in all i know.

  ix.

  when the redhead moved out of sight

  she was always there at the edge

  of one of many circles.

  x.

  at the sight of the redhead

  leaving in green evening light

  even the un-wronged

  should cry out sharply.

  xi.

  she rode over decatur

  in a glass coach.

  once, hatred pierced her,

  in that she mistook

  the shadow of her next customer

  for the redhead.

  xii.

  the traffic is moving

  the redhead must be scheming.

  xiii.

  it was evening all afternoon.

  it should have been snowing

  and it was never going to snow.

  the redhead sat, unknowing,

  in the leather chair.

  Camille

  different environs

  the coffeehouse is crowded today, not like last time when you had nearly the whole place to yourself and there was that thrumming cello music going on. but the crowd is a good thing, because it gives you something to watch: moms with strollers—ladies grabbing tiny hands filled with crumbs. one small boy in green corduroy overalls waves a squeezy boat over his head, squeaking, his mother reaching for it—her friend trying not to laugh. but it isn’t just them here—the minions of motherhood—there are slumped guys with laptops and spike-hair and indie t-shirts and i-didn’t-shave-today shaved faces. high school girls in their skinny jeans and high boots are here too, plus dough-faced women in outfits that want them to still be thin. everyone is talking, all talking—though the place is spacious enough so you can’t really hear much of anyone—or else they’re tapping at their keyboards like you, but the music is again good which helps you ignore everything, and the leather chairs all broad and deep, so even if there’s someone sitting right next to you, you can half hide. if luli were here you’d be sharing a doughnut. she would agree with you that the tall guy with the tiny dreads and the buddy holly glasses behind the counter—his name tag says stan—is completely hot, and she would maybe notice like you the young girl back there, the one your age, the one who doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing, whose hand was shaking when she handed you your cake.

  the hippie boys and their guitars

  and their messy hair and their too-big pants and their little squinty eyes behind maybe a pair of spectacles or maybe just shining underneath heavy eyebrows—these boys and their mildew laundry oily hair patchouli smell, their filterless cigarettes and their open knees, hunched backs. they come in and they get their coffee and sneak eyes at the laptop guys, wondering which one of them might be cool enough to buy them a beer. they nod their heads at each other and stuff butts into ashtrays and move their crooked-teeth mouths together in laughing across the land from here to california to texas and new jersey and back. all around the nation you can hear their donkey laughter, their dirty-fingernail strumming, their weak-voiced courtings and murmurs, their converse sneaker shuffling, all of it blending together in one big stinky sad song of brotherhood.

  blindsided

  you didn’t even have your laptop open—you were so far away from thinking about writing or memories or things you want to forget that it isn’t—well, it is—funny. instead you had your head in your french book, your cake plate scraped clean and your coffee cup needing you to get up and buy a refill. you were an innocent bystander—you were not watching or listening as the black cadillac of memory came hurtling toward you, racing for the curb, leaping up to strike you full on and knock you down, leaving you coughing and collapsed in a haze of exhaust, its speakers still cooing that stupid, stupid song—that “girl from ipanema” that takes you back to that one afternoon in his dusky chicago bedroom every single goddamned time.

  laney’s new dog

  when a new person comes in to look at the dogs they all know it, all their eyes going toward the door at the same time their black wet nostrils twitching long before you hear the heavy metal squeak of the hinges, before the jingle of lily’s keys. you are never sure if you are supposed to disappear or not, should continue cleaning cages or jump up and make yourself vanish into the back room where there is a pile of metal dog bowls for you to wash. but you like to stay, to listen and to watch crouched down below eye level on the floor, wiping the same already-clean spot of the empty kennel over and over, your body taut and waiting like the medium-sized dogs—the ones who are excited and hopeful but know they need to hold themselves still to be really seen. they have all had their pictures taken, are all smiling their best smiles up on the shelter website and they know to bring them out today as the lady in the pale gray pants leads a little girl in a corduroy jumper by the hand. the girl is afraid of the dogs she is afraid to be here and the mother is exasperated in the first five minutes. this is not how she pictured it, not how she thought it was going to go. come on laney we need to choose one honey. don’t you want a dog at mommy’s house too don’t you want to help her pick a new friend? but the girl has her own dog and she does not need a new one. i want dapples, she cries, why can’t I bring him? and you can see the slight curl in mommy’s lip, the way she pushes her bangs back from her forehead and says that dapples is daddy’s dog and mommy’s new house needs her own—you can see just in that motion how it all went down between them, her thinking now that the idea of anything related to daddy crawling up into bed with her would be worse than eating live slugs. you see this in an instant—the dogs see it too—and you want to go over to the girl and put your hand on her shoulder and tell her gently there will be no bringing the family dog into a house now divided, to tell her she is a gi
rl treading bridges now, suspended high over the jagged rocks where there are sharp winds—and that she can take it from you she will want a friendly puppy on either side to greet her. she will want someone who’ll be there when she gets across, wagging his tail.

  baseball reject

  let’s go back to the beginning, play it slow and stop at the essential moment—the moment he finally saw you sitting there. first, let’s start with you actually looking up his school, squinting at the screen, finding the sports page and hunting down the baseball schedule, figuring maybe he’s just been too busy and tired with practice, maybe it’d be cool of you to just show up at his game, casual and easy—you like baseball, you are interested but not too. then let’s zoom in on your googlemapping skills, how you typed in the address off the opposing school (“games listed in red boxes are AWAY”) into the search bar and traced the white lines with your finger until you figured out how not-far it really was. let’s focus on how you printed out that map, how you even smiled, picturing his face in pleased surprise—how you thought maybe after you could go grab some french fries, hang out a little more. we’ll skip over the part about you driving, forcing yourself to stop at buddy’s and get a giant coke, making yourself wait while all seventy-two oz. filled s-l-o-w-l-y so you wouldn’t get there too soon, so that they’d already be playing when you arrived. we’ll skip too over the wretched faces of his teammates (their devious delight), the snickers and the elbow shoves when you showed up. instead we’ll play over and over again—that hideous slo-mo conversation: him trotting over after the second inning, not even smiling, telling you it’s not a good idea, he can’t concentrate if you stay, then turning his back on you—not even waving—waiting for you to go. fast forward through you walking alone back to your car, slamming your head against the steering wheel, feeling the embarrassed—and embarrassing—pricks of shocked little tears. in fact, let’s not even replay that. let’s erase it instead.

  baseball players are bitches

  you never knew they were so much like women. girls, really. chattery, nasty, gossip-loving, rumor-hounding sixth-grade little girls. they might as well have pleated minis on out there, for all their gum-snapping, lip-smacking cattiness. if they’d ever been around him at the lake house you would’ve at least been warned. but they must’ve been too busy sticking their faces in each other’s faces, their noses in everyone else’s business. that he is their ringleader—that he’s the one they look to—doesn’t place him above them, it just makes him their queen.

  and what about that?

  the cackling shortstop, slapping the catcher on the butt as the team trotted from the dugout, lifting his smart-ass smile in your direction and congratulating the catcher on the grand-slam double-play?

  counter girl conversation

  she asks you how your day’s been and you have to pause, take a second, because her face has something in it, looking at your face—like it’s a real face wondering how your day really was, and not just an extra-friendly coffee girl chatting up the customers. she seems honest and hard-working and her skin is clear and her round hazel eyes are glossy and sharp, and you know you know her from here, but you’re not sure you’d recognize her if you saw her on the street. her face knows your face but you do not really know hers. you have never seen it relaxed above real clothes, for example, only in this white t-shirt khakis-or-jeans look she has for the coffeehouse. you might not know her without her apron. she is still watching you with that intent look. apparently you have been talking for a couple of minutes without your knowledge, telling her about the puppies, telling her about reading french, saying nothing about the hideous baseball game you just left, about the sting of rejection that is probably still burning on your cheeks. it strikes you though—something about her—that maybe one day you could. she takes your money, hands you your coffee, your cake. and you find yourself sneaking glances at her now and then. there is something in her face today—looking so seriously at yours—that you don’t know but want to.

  Becca

  Flirting with Disaster

  It’s like

  dangling a steak in front of a Doberman:

  she might lick your face,

  she might

  bite off your hand.

  But what are friends for, if not a little

  danger and sympathy?

  So I finally tell Freya

  about the redhead at the coffeehouse.

  Maybe I want compassion

  —maybe I just want

  to see some blood.

  The Plan

  Freya says it’s simple—

  a classic kind of plan:

  your friends close,

  your enemies closer,

  close enough to twist

  the horrible knife plunged once in your back

  immediately back

  into her heart.

  Iago’s Daughter

  The only way

  to repay a traitor

  —Freya says—

  is to betray her.

  It is

  a good way too to get back at Alec,

  a way to

  show how tough

  —how over him—

  I am.

  And though I am not sure

  two untruths undo each other,

  though this

  befriend-her-then-bushwhack-her plan is

  a plot more plausible

  in one of Freya’s magazines,

  I want someone to hurt

  and it might as well

  be the girl who hurt me.

  The Elephant at the Dinner Table

  It’s been

  a couple weeks since my future

  got snapped off like an icicle tip

  and tossed in the street.

  Mom is a lined forehead across from me,

  a knobbed hand

  against a pointed chin.

  The ghosts of Will you still do FSU now? and

  If not, where else do you think? drift around us,

  forlorn and silenced—unattended and

  ignored.

  My mouth is a hard line set against her,

  but my response hides under the dinner table,

  crawls deeper into my lap;

  it is small and shivering, and I cannot

  look at it—this fearful answer inside me:

  I don’t know.

  If We Practiced

  Looking around first period with new

  —red-rimmed—eyes I see

  how alone I still am.

  Jenna—for example—I know only

  because of roll call, how her

  eyebrows press together briefly

  before she half-whispers, here.

  Like me she is mainly

  head-down, back-hunched.

  The only two girls in a class of

  acne-scarred hopefuls, it is better if we don’t

  call too much attention to ourselves.

  After lecture when we are

  loosed outside onto the concrete and

  allowed to disappear

  through the illicit cords of our iPods

  and the callous-building on our strings

  she is

  always farthest away on the steps

  her body tall and long—a praying mantis girl,

  whisper-singing to herself

  so quiet, only she can hear.

  Neko Case sticker on her notebook—

  I imagine myself asking her about it,

  maybe

  ending up at the concert together

  maybe taking down notes

  —copying chords,

  rehearsing after school, getting so good we

  ask Mrs. Fram if we can use the recording stuff.

  Jenna would show me how to work a slide.

  We would play at Eddie’s Attic.

  I have time to rehearse now.

  We could be really good.

  If I could only get her

  to look at me.

&n
bsp; Puppetmaster

  Next time I see the redhead

  the fury hides

  behind my tongue

  twisting my mouth somehow

  into a grin.

  I’m a puppet of my own pretending,

  a ventriloquist of deceit.

  Cute jacket comes from someone else’s voice

  —my voice—

  my eyebrows in an attempt

  at being sincere.

  She shrugs one slim shoulder,

  and I feel Freya’s hands in mine,

  wanting to wring her neck.

  I never know what to wear in this weather,

  the redhead says.

  At least in Chicago it’s always cold.

  The marionette strings strain

  as I hold myself back

  from asking

  if that’s how she stays warm:

  curling herself

  up in the arms of other girls’ boys.

  At least you’ve always got coffee comes out instead

  —my own brightness blinding

  my narrowed wooden eyes.

  This tightrope between us,

  a taut beginning, at least.

  Later,

  jerked-on joints propel me

  to sneak her cup, wink,

  and fill it for free.

  When she lifts her face in thank-you

  I almost have to use my two fingers

  to prop the corners of my mouth

  in a mirroring smile,

  and not dump the coffee

  right there

  in her lap.

  Balance

  She bites her nails when she writes.

  Her skin is

  unfair,

  not to mention the rest of her.

  But I have this on her—her childish habit.

  It is hard not to ask

  what she is so nervous about

  —what unholy thing she’s done—

  that drives her to chew her hangnails,

  what dark part of her insides wants

  to make herself

  —at least a little—

  ugly on the outside, too.

  Night Shift

  Eleven on Thursday and we have

  the stereo booming

  to some fabulous old rap.

  The coffeehouse is finally closed,

  and I have forgotten all about the redhead,

  just doing our closing chores:

  Nadia wiping the wine counter down,

  Denver clearing the dishwasher,

  me bopping with the mop

  across the floor

  pretending that I