Read an Excerpt
Family of Origin Content Warning
Detailed descriptions of a father’s brutality.
Graphic images of a boy, dreaming
about food at night, his stolen
transistor radio spilling James Brown’s
good, good lovin’ over his pillow. This poem
may unfold, in detail, a husband’s violence
toward a wife. May run time in a circle.
May reveal the husband’s plush
red hands abbreviating his wife’s neck
on a crisp November afternoon, their child
watching from the porch. The husband
is my father. Is the dreaming boy. The wife
is my mother. Sometimes, she forgets.
Sometimes she thinks she’s ten again,
watching her bedroom door, afraid
her father will turn the brass knob.
That was decades ago. He must’ve stopped.
This poem may mention sexual abuse
in the abstract. This poem doesn’t know
why it must tell you. It wants you
to resist brightsiding its tragedies.
It’s tired of hearing that everything
worked out, didn’t it? Tired of hearing
the mother loved the child. So much.
Everyone says so. Everyone who knows
that, on an April weekend, the mother
left me, the child, in her very first bedroom
whose door opened—while the child slept—
to a grandfather’s outline. Don’t think
this poem wants to stay in that bedroom.
It wants to swaddle the impossible
contours of joy. It’s tired of hearing
joy is possible. It wants joy.
Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Living Body
Open with the two-lane highway. The ice
truck and the ice. Your elbow resting on the
driver side window. Zoom in on the toned
forearm. The goldenrod rushing by. Missy,
our audience can see you now. Show them
the gas station delivery where a drunk lady
screams about your good looks because
there's no original way to say a man is beau-
tiful, and the lady really did scream. Our au-
dience will believe us and they won't. They'll
say people this lovely are only in films. No
one with lips this pillowy needs to deliver
ice. And here you are, lifting bags and saving
up for a weekend in Memphis at the Motel
6. There's no time for dialogue about class
or gender. No room to signal that your time
with goldenrod is limited. Your time awake
is limited. Look how awake you are. How the
facial bones move with perfect alignment un-
der the dermis. Cut to the motel, leaving its
light on for your red Bronco. Now the motel's
dark interior. Now the bed nearest the win-
dow where you and a just-out-of-high-school
date can finally make contact after years of
parentally-imposed silence. I'm sorry. This
film can't access your interior. Your date is
the only one directing her memory. Your
date is me. My memory is the shower scene,
already zoomed in on your face. Open your
eyes again. Look directly at me. Hold the
camera's gaze through the falling water as if
this were our last frame. Missy, this is our
last frame. Body is the only good word for
body. I'm afraid of home's hunger for yours,
but off camera the interstate is waiting and
my lines are let's go.
Who Is This Grief For?
1.
My acupuncturist says
why so hungry these days
knowing I’m alone
too much.
I say my tongue wants
forkfuls of warm, white
cake, then, more forkfuls.
She says what it needs
is another tongue.
Her needle tries to release
a decade-old phone call
stuck in the tight meat
between my index finger
and thumb.
I pretend my body’s
ready. Picture the old phone
receiver’s words Missy
and suicide pressuring
into steam. I pretend
the needle doesn’t hurt.
She says how does that anger
work for you. I say it works
because it’s mine.
2.
I keep thinking how my grief
makes you small. How
you didn’t want to be a god
I’ve asked everyone to love.
Didn’t want me holding
strangers, so many strangers,
responsible. You had 9,566
days before your last. You
held many more objects
than a chair and a rope. Faces
have softened in your hands.
Steering wheels have lived
there a long time. But I can’t
celebrate that. Not yet.
I can’t praise the smooth
contours of your nose
without wishing it were still
a nose. Without asking
Mississippi where it was
that night. My grief is precious.
My grief thinks it’s you.
If I wake tomorrow, content
with the sheets and square
bedroom, where are you.
Where am I.
3.
My acupuncturist warms
my feet with an infrared lamp.
Turns off the fluorescent
overhead. Before she leaves
the room she says I know
you won’t stop thinking but
try to think happy thoughts.
In ten minutes I’m asleep.
Some of my muscles relax.
Some twitch on the loud
crinkled paper.
4.
Because my grief is asleep,
then, the news. Years ago
I quit a job reporting
government affairs.
I no longer have to visit
the desks of suits who say
I don’t exist.
But headlines now wait
from our phones. Last week
upon waking—SUPREME
COURT ALLOWS TRANS
MILITARY BAN TO GO
INTO EFFECT—you died
again. I walked, again,
through forests and streets
and the stale air of my
bedroom. Again, the brain-
bound ritual of holding photos
of you—a sergeant, backdropped
by an Iraqi desert, my neurons
careful to keep each muscle’s
geometry in place. When you
were alive and your photos
lit up Myspace, I mourned
such need for soldiering.
Later, I mourned how quickly
the internet lost them all.
5.
My acupuncturist says
you enjoy this, don’t you.
She’s talking about my grief.
I say who else will. I tried
returning to Mississippi
where everyone remembers
only what they want.
There, I said your name as if
to no one. Visited your buried
bones, alone. They would not
be blessed by this. I should not
want to hold one the way
we hold relics. There are
so many gods wanting
my soreness. I can bruise
my forehead bowing
before so many statues.
I don’t drink
anymore. Don’t binge
on fresh-baked softness
if it’s out of sight.
Still my grief habit says
what’s wrong with a little
pain? Who else does it pain?
I think again of your face
that’s no longer
a face. I don’t argue back.
Because You Can’t
I stand in front of paintings a long time
and think about the bones once belonging
to you and how Egon Schiele could line
a body into movement. Because you no longer
have a shape, I’ve made a practice of nearness.
A hawk lets me stroke her mid-flight,
I let comets land in my mouth,
when they’re small enough. My lover
pushes all their weight on me because I asked.
They flatten me into astonishment.
Because nothing can astonish you, I tempt
what’s alive by doubting I could love it more.
It’s a neat trick. When I use it, raccoons
visit often, their fingers closed around mud
older than you. Missy, this is me moving on.
There’s a noon rain to get caught in and many
clavicles to behold. I wish you could see this one,
tilting across a century.
