Published in 2019 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
feministpress.org
First Feminist Press edition 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Ali Liebegott
All rights reserved.
This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
This book is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing March 2019
Cover art by Ali Liebegott
Cover and text design by Suki Boynton
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.
For A. J. S.
in memory of M. B. and Rorschach
Summer was like your house: you know where
each thing stood. Now you must go into your heart as onto
a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Pilgrimage, II, 1
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PART I: Winter
PART II: Crying Season
PART III: The Summer of Dead Birds
PART IV: The Official Center of the World
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS
ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS
Part One
Winter
I.
the birdbath is always half-empty
where we live, it can be dry in three days
this morning while I filled it
a bird the size of a dust ball tried to fly
never getting higher than an inch off the lawn
a dove sat on a nearby branch
flapping its wings slowly and sadly
the way you numbly open and close a cabinet door
when there’s nothing inside to eat
finally, the dust ball gave up
fluttered inside a cinder block to hide
II.
I feel guilty leaving the birds thirsty
still, I didn’t fill the birdbath
before I went out the gate to work
by the trash cans, next to my motorcycle
the dust ball faced the wall
Are you okay? I said
bending down to touch its head
immediately I thought,
I shouldn’t be doing this—it’s diseased
could I carry it on my motorcycle to school
and call animal rescue while I taught my class
the whole ride to work I thought,
How could I leave it?
it wouldn’t survive all day huddled by the trash cans
in this neighborhood of feral cats and birds of prey
instead of teaching, I babbled to my students about the bird
You can’t save everyone, the woman who raised canaries said
then later at my university job the most naive student said,
Maybe it’s fine and will be gone when you get home
Do you know how sick a bird has to be to let you touch it?
I snapped
But maybe, she said
III.
after work, I rode my motorcycle up the driveway
afraid to even turn my head to where the bird had been
it had moved a few inches closer to the trash cans
I knew it had died, no bird lies down on its side
inside I postponed the inevitable, opening junk mail
then returned with a plastic bag over my hand
I picked up the tiny tea-sized sandwich
its speckled chest gray with dots, blood on its beak
the blood was actually a berry
and I knew exactly the tree it came from
every summer on my birthday you made
me angel food cake, with cream and berries
IV.
your mother was dying, it was Christmas
she sat on the flowered couch opening presents
afterward, she wrapped her bathrobe carefully around her
and stepped over wrapping paper on the way to the bedroom
she could still walk then
if you want to see time move fast
watch a fifty-five-year-old woman
go from gardening to dead in two months
your mother’s death started with an aching back
after bending over, pulling weeds all day
the sore back turned out to be cancer
spread like stars across her body, into her spine
she told me she had cancer before she told you
she wanted me next to you when she called
when she did, you paced around the back deck listening
I tried to stay close to you as you paced
holding our pet bird in my hands
pressing my nose into its feathery neck
V.
our bird turned into my bird when we broke up
I never wanted that bird, you said
an impulse pet-shop buy after a hard family visit
I wanted to name the bird Nabokov
but you didn’t want to commemorate a pedophile
the only name we could agree on was Angel
I’d been afraid of Angel dying since day one
but that means nothing since I’m afraid
of everything dying all the time
the first thing I do when I come in the door
is check that the pets are alive
after we broke up, Angel suddenly died
just a few weeks before, I told myself
I was going to stop mourning things that weren’t dead yet
then I walked in the house and there was no peep
cup full of husk, her tiny body on the bottom of the cage
I put her body in a tea box and carried her to the sea
that was after I froze her, cried hysterically,
and asked my therapist if I should have an autopsy done
at the beach, I stood on the rocks
and tossed her body into the breaking waves
she looked especially tiny in the ocean
I had expected her to sink or get swept away
but she became stuck in a tide pool
swirling between the rocks
the sun had set, it was almost dark
I left her spinning there
VI.
it was winter break and overcast
you listened to your mother tell you she had cancer
I followed at a respectful distance, Angel cupped in my hand
I don’t know how she escaped to fly onto the neighbor’s roof
we didn’t have a ladder so I piled rickety chairs
on top of each other until they were high enough
I could reach over the fence
Angel sat huddled, a stunned pile of blue feathers
I climbed the tower of chairs, broom in hand
trying to nudge her toward me, inch at a time
terrified I’d scare her into flight
when she hopped within arm’s reach
I gra
bbed her, relieved
I came down with my hands cupped around her
an imaginary bubble to keep her safe if I fell
your mother’s surgery was scheduled
as soon as you hung up the phone
you went inside to pack
VII.
after your mom’s surgery I drove up to join you
my tire blew two hours from Fresno
I stood on the side of the highway
while the sun went down and called AAA
behind me a train track forged its way through a field of weeds
I don’t know where the thought came from:
This is the kind of place where people are abducted by aliens
I grabbed a metal pipe from the bushes and clenched it
waiting to protect myself from errant light beams
we didn’t know your mom would be dead
less than two months from this night
her own body abducted cell at a time
VIII.
I waited two hours for the AAA guy
he couldn’t find the dyke on the side of the road
warding off aliens with a metal pipe
when he finally arrived, it took another hour
to pry the rusted spare off the bottom of my truck
at your mother’s house you sat next to her bed watching
the Food Network
you hated that she only wanted to watch cooking shows
while she was dying and could barely eat
I kissed her forehead when I walked in
that was when she could still talk and drink without a straw
each day she could do so much less
it’s so much less each day for a person to die in two months
she wanted to talk about the awfulness of the flat tire
the injustice of waiting so long for AAA
I was embarrassed she would waste any part
of her evaporating life discussing the flat tire
so I pulled up a chair to watch the cooking show, too
IX.
your mom’s friends called her BB
it stood for blackbird
does a bird say goodbye before flying off
a tiny peck at shared seed, a feather pluck
nothing?
you’d been estranged from your mother for years
still at the end you came running
fluffing her pillows, straightening the bedsheets
X.
your mother’s mantel was crowded
with your artwork and photographs of you
looking at it, you didn’t seem estranged
but I’d known all the birthdays and graduations when
she didn’t come
XI.
as she grew worse, I entered the dark bedroom
in the back of the house less and less
I busied myself with laundry, dishes, groceries,
and caring for the dogs and cats
I carried a bucket around the backyard
scooping up moldy dog shit
sometimes you’d come outside to smoke
when you did, I’d set the bucket down and hug you
these moments we were alone together were rare
XII.
it’s terrifying to go into a room where someone’s dying
even if you’ve been in those rooms before
to push open the bedroom door
and find the right thing to say to the vanishing body
only the dying person knows the right thing to say
I’m thirsty, or when the pain’s so deep, pure gibberish
the drugs do the talking after the hallucinations start
you slept on a cot next to your mother’s hospital bed
so you could get up every two hours and dole
out her pills until she could no longer swallow
then you carefully lined up syringes to feed into her IV
a tray full of syringes, all different doses
I sat on the couch with friends who’d already lost parents
and knew how to go through taxes and receipts
and sort out your mother’s life
on one of the last days she could speak
when no one was pretending she wouldn’t die
she said she wished she was well enough
to take one last drive and see the cherry trees blossoming
her bedroom was the chamber where the two of you healed
and I guarded the gate, shooing the dogs away
so they didn’t do what they desperately wanted
to jump on your mother’s bed and lick her delicate face
XIII.
the laundry was made up solely of your mother’s pajamas
the drawstrings became tangled around the agitator
I struggled to free them but they wouldn’t budge
this was the first time I cried, it didn’t matter if I freed them
your mother wasn’t going to live long enough to wear
them again
XIV.
the dying need groceries, too
and you bought your mother the best of everything
the most expensive juice and pudding
the softest pajamas and highest thread count sheets
the last thing you fixed her was a milkshake
she woke up thirsty in the middle of the night
and whispered, You’re going to kill me
because she knew you were exhausted
you were giddy at her hunger
after days of eating nothing
she drank the whole thing down,
burped, and asked for another
your tired hands made another milkshake
she drank that one, too
and then you crawled onto the cot and slept next to her
your tired hands next to your mother’s tired hands
XV.
the refrigerator had become a coffin
of things your mother could no longer eat
a spectrum of solids to liquids
I asked if I should throw out the pudding
since it had been so long since she’d eaten it
you weren’t ready
the milkshake had given you hope
you wanted the pudding to be there
in case she woke in the night and asked for it by name
XVI.
a hospice worker was sent to the house
in the final days to examine your mother’s feet
she said they were mottled
the word rolled around my mouth like a marble
mottled, when the bottoms of the feet
get spotted because the blood isn’t circulating
we asked the nurse many questions
but really we were only asking one
Do you know when she’ll die?
the nurse said, It’s important to not cling to the dying
often they hang on if they feel the living holding on
but who could not hold on to their mother
XVII.
it was late morning, the day she died
I know exactly how the sun beat into the back of the house
you came into the hallway and called me
Will you come sit with me and my mom?
she couldn’t talk anymore but she could listen
you told her we were there and loved her
and she should go if she was ready
we saw her hear you
Just keep walking, don’t be afraid
I’ll go with you as far as I can, Mom
I couldn’t imagine being brave enough
to shove my mother’s raft on its way
but she started to go, we felt it
Don’t look back, we’ll be taken care of
just keep going, Mom
and she did
XVIII.
The Summer of Dead Birds Page 1
