Burritos in Wisconsin

After my brother divorced, he came every summer

to my house in Wisconsin with his kids, making

the long journey from San Francisco to Madison

as if he were coming home, the week with us respite 

in his fractured world. I’d meet them at the foot 

of the escalator for Arrivals—tall blond man 

and his two little kids, Gabe with his tight curls 

and green eyes, Fiona in ringlets and a pink polka 

dot dress, a stuffed toy called “Picture Pig” clutched 

beneath her arm, the family photo encased in plastic 

on its plush flank a perfect quartet of loss. 

The kids ran into my arms before I hugged 

my brother, his blue Oxford-cloth shirt perfectly 

pressed, as if he’d bought it just for the trip. I’d looked 

for signs his kidney disease was worse—his face 

drawn, hairline receding, the skin on his hands 

and arms onion paper-thin after decades on steroids. 

When we hugged, a little shy at first, I felt Peter 

relax, his gruff guard coming down. All week 

we did summer things—swimming for hours, 

catching fireflies at dusk, visiting caves and steam

trains and farms where the kids fed baby goats bottle 

after bottle of milk as if there were no end to plenty. 

All week, my brother, who’d caught Epstein-Barr 

from a patient and couldn’t recover, slept until noon. 

And all week, I cooked, especially my burritos, 

with their creamy spinach filling, yellow rice, 

and a crisp salad his favorite. “This is so good,” 

he’d say. “This is the best food I’ve ever had.” 

I thought of his words after he died, as I searched 

his house, looking for papers I needed to manage 

his affairs. A stray page from his disability claim 

application documented fears he’d be unable to care 

for his children—true at the end, though they 

were older by then—he barely able to rise 

from the living room bed, the house stinking 

of garbage and piss, loneliness thick as dust, 

despair I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try 

to shake it off. I want to remember us the way 

we were those summers, late sunlight warming

our faces, the picnic table covered with the red 

and white checked cloth, vases of coneflowers 

and Queen Anne’s lace picked by the kids, first 

stars just coming out, the yard filled with fireflies. 

And my brother, eating one burrito after another, 

filled for a moment with everything he needed.

Alison Townsend, Rattle #73 Fall 2021

Hotel Nights with My Mother

The hometown flophouse

was what she could afford

the nights he came after us 

with a knife. I'd grab my books,

already dreading the next day's

explanations of homework undone

-- I ran out of paper -- the lies

I'd invent standing in front of

the nuns in the clothes I'd lain in

full-bladdered all night, a flimsy

chair-braced door between us

and the hallway's impersonal riot.

Years later, then, in the next

city, standing before my first class,

I scanned the rows of faces,

their cumulative skill in the

brilliant adolescent dances

of self-preservation, of hiding.

New teacher, looking young, seeming

gullible, I know, I let them

give me any excuse and took it.

I was watching them all

for the dark-circled eyes,

yesterday's crumpled costume, the marks

-- the sorrowful coloring of marks --

the cuticles flaming and torn.

I made of myself each day a chink

a few might pass through unscathed.

Linda McCarriston, Eva-Mary (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 1991)

A Poem about Pain

I can feel myself slipping away, fading away, withdrawing
from this life, just as my father did. When the pain you’re in

is so great you can’t think about or pay attention to anything
but your own pain, the rest of the world and all other life

don’t matter.

I think about my friends with dementia, cancer, arthritis, and
how much more pain they are in than I am, but it does no good,

their pain is not mine, and therefore, no matter how magnanimous I might want to be, their pain is not as important to me as my own.

David Budbill, betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com June 27, 2021 

Jesus

Sixteen and running

From my father’s fists

I once tried to jump on a moving train

 

It happened on the outskirts

Of evening

Outside Houston

 

And a guy

Who said his name 

Was Jesus 

 

Came out of the cane fields 

And started walking beside me 

Which scared me

 

A little because he looked hungry

Not mean just

Hungry but I’d read my Steinbeck

 

And knew the code of the rails

No man can deny another man

The right to move

 

Which would’ve been fine

If I’d been a man instead

Of a scared boy

 

Who didn’t know

He didn’t know and here was

A real hobo

 

Named Jesus who asked me

Where I was going which was

Nowhere so I said

 

North sounding like I meant it

And asked where he

Was going

 

No perticlar place he said

And shrugged 

and asked

 

Where I was from which was

Somewhere so I pointed

My chin South

 

And said Bout seven mile that way

Because that’s how real hobos

Talk and he looked South

 

And said sadly If I lived that close

I’d go home and I knew

I’d never felt sadness

 

The way a real hobo feels sadness

And then we heard 

A train coming

 

Behind us and we moved over

And waited and started running

And when the freight cars

 

Came by Jesus

Grabbed the ladder on the back

Of a car and swung

 

Himself up and I missed 

And fell

In the gravel and 

 

Lay there

Watching the caboose grow smaller

And smaller in the twilight

 

Michael Simms, Nightjar (Ragged Sky, 2021) 

Freedom I

Freedom will not come

Today, this year

            Nor ever

Through compromise and fear.

 

I have as much right

As the other fellow has

            To stand

On my two feet

And own the land.

 

I tire so of hearing people say,

Let things take their course.

Tomorrow is another day.

I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.

I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

            Freedom

            Is a strong seed

            Planted

            In a great need.

            I live here, too.

            I want my freedom

            Just as you.   

Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Harold Ober Associates, Inc. 2002) 

The Hill We Climb

 

Amanda Gorman made history in January when she became the youngest inaugural poet, reading at Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony a poem which she had written.

The 22-year-old Los Angelos resident, youth poet laureate of California, the first national youth poet laureate, and Harvard graduate, was invited to speak by First Lady Jill Biden.

 

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

 

 

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

 

 

So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce, and free.

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.

Our blunders become their burdens.

But one thing is certain.

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

Coniferous Fathers

Let’s fashion gentle fathers, expressive—holding us

how we wanted to be held before we could ask.

Singing off-key lullabies, written for us—songs

every evening, like possibilities. Fathers who say,

this is how you hold a baby, but never mention

a football. Say nothing in that moment, just bring

us to their chests naturally, without shyness.

Let’s grow fathers from pine, not oak, coniferous

fathers raising us in their shade, fathers soft enough

to bend—fathers who love us like their fathers

couldn’t. Fathers who can talk about menstruation

while playing a game of pepper in the front yard.

No, take baseball out. Let’s discover a new sort—

fathers as varied and vast as the Superior Forest.

Let’s kill off sternness and play down wisdom;

give us fathers of laughter and fathers who cry,

fathers who say Check this out, or I’m scared, or I’m sorry,

or I don’t know. Give us fathers strong enough

to admit they want to be near us; they’ve always

wanted to be near us. Give us fathers desperate

for something different, not Johnny Appleseed,

not even Atticus Finch. No more rolling stones.

No more La-Z-Boy dads reading newspapers in

some other room. Let’s create folklore side-by-side

in a garden singing psalms about abiding—just that,

abiding: being steadfast, present, evergreen, and

ethereal—let’s make the old needles soft enough

for us to rest on, dream on, next to them.

Michael Kleber-Diggs, janicefalls.wordpress.com December 8, 2021

The Fifties

We spent those stifling endless summer afternoons

on hot front porches, cutting paper dolls from Sears

catalogs, making up our own ideal families

complete with large appliances

and an all-occasion wardrobe with fold-down

paper tabs.

Sometimes we left crayons on the cement

landing, just to watch them melt.

We followed the shade around the house.

Time was a jarful of pennies, too hot

to spend, stretching long and sticky,

a brick of Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy.

Tomorrow’d be more of the same,

ending with softball or kickball,

then hide and seek in the mosquitoey dark.

Fireflies, like connect-the-dots or find-the-hidden-

words, rose and glowed, winked on and off,

their cool fires coded signals

of longing and love

that we would one day

learn to speak.

Barbara Crooker, Radiance (Word Press, 2005)

Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School

The others bent their heads and started in.
Confused, I asked my neighbor
to explain—a sturdy, bright-cheeked girl
who brought raw milk to school from her family's
herd of Holsteins. Ann had a blue bookmark,
and on it Christ revealed his beating heart,
holding the flesh back with His wounded hand.
Ann understood division.

Miss Moran sprang from her monumental desk
and led me roughly through the class
without a word. My shame was radical
as she propelled me past the cloakroom
to the furnace closet, where only the boys
were put, only the older ones at that.
The door swung briskly shut.

The warmth, the gloom, the smell
of sweeping compound clinging to the broom
soothed me. I found a bucket, turned it
upside down, and sat, hugging my knees.
I hummed a theme from Haydn that I knew
from my piano lessons.
and hardened my heart against authority.
And then I heard her steps, her fingers
on the latch. She led me, blinking
and changed, back to the class.

Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2005)

Learning to Dive

The boy who is learning to dive
has a lot on his mind:

how to place
his unfamiliar, disobeying feet
on the slippery rungs;

how to straighten himself and walk
the length of the board
without glancing down;

how to stand, to extend 
his arms straight ahead, as the other boys do,
without wavering;

how to cancel the height,
the shake in his legs,
once more how to breathe.

But while he stands there and the water stills,
from out of nowhere a kid half his size
goes charging past

to pedal pedal pedal in empty air,
before dropping through into the target
of his own reflection. Resounding cheers,

upon which the older boy gives up,
surrenders to something somewhere
beyond his control,

and at last steps clear
of the board to fall
away into the rapturous applause

of water, each glistening drop
a medal struck to honor his courage,
the triumph of his simply letting go.

Pat Boran, The Next Life (Dedalus, 2012)

Bedside Manners

How little the dying seem to need --
A drink perhaps, a little food,
A smile, a hand to hold, medication,
A change of clothes, an unspoken
understanding about what's happening.
You think it would be more, much more,
Something more difficult for us
To help with in this great disruption,
But perhaps it's because as the huge shape
Rears up higher and darker each hour
They are anxious that we should see it too
And try to show us with a hand-squeeze.

We panic to do more for them,
And especially when it's your father,
And his eyes are far away, and your tears
Are all down your face and clothes,
And he doesn't see them now, but smiles
Perhaps, just perhaps because you're there.
How little he needs. Just love. More love.

Christopher Wiseman, In John Updike's Room (The Porcupine's Room, 2005)

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk 

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs 

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” 

when someone sneezes, a leftover 

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. 

And sometimes, when you spill lemons 

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you 

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, 

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile 

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress 

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, 

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far 

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. 

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these 

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Lameris, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019)

In Any Event

If we are fractured
we are fractured
like stars
bred to shine
in every direction,
through any dimension,
billions of years
since and hence.

I shall not lament
the human, not yet.
There is something
more to come, our hearts
a gold mine
not yet plumbed,
an uncharted sea.

Nothing is gone forever.
If we came from dust
and will return to dust
then we can find our way
into anything.

What we are capable of
is not yet known,
and I praise us now,
in advance.

Dorianne Laux, Salt (The Field Agency Office)

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching–
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after–if she beat you or left you or
you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

Ellen Bass, The Human Line (Copper Canyon  Press, 2007)