Güd wrtr

I sit on the rosy pink potty
in the bathroom my sister and I share,
automatically look to the right,
to the wall above the toilet paper
nestled in its chrome cave,
study the list in my neatest
sixth grade printing taped there,

a carefully constructed table
beginning with the twos—
because the ones are easy,
so are the threes, really.

But from the fours on up,
except for the tens with their
telltale zeros on the ends,
I need help.

So every time I sit here, I gaze
right, trying to memorize
combinations of numbers that
swim before my eyes like midges
rising from a stream, unaware
of hungry trout beneath.

And if I don’t completely absorb
the multiplication tables, others
in this spot certainly have—

my sister, two years younger,
always so much more nimble with
numbers than I,

even our father, who
occasionally emerges,
announcing, “7×8 = 56!”

I try again and again to embed
these equations in my brain—
the math teacher not willing
to accept a poem to make up
for my last disastrous test—
feeling the slithery digits slip
away from me in a way that
words do not.

The numbers escape, even as
I chase them, calling their names,
wondering what I need to do
to make them stop, smile,
chat a bit, to want to become
my friends.

Last year, out of town, I missed
the hanging lavender lanterns
morphing the driveway trellis
from a mess of bare sticks
weaving over under, under over
into the annual leafy bower.

Wisteria envy has seized me
like another seasonal allergy,
so I want to soak up the blossoms
popping out this week in earnest,
fleeting bits of loveliness—within a
couple of weeks, masses of eager
leaves will fill in as warp and weft.

Because I trimmed last season’s
woody bits late this year, I
inadvertently doomed the fragrant
crop to come, and sure enough,
less abundance sends me into
the world seeking that particular
scent, hoping to find cascades
within easy sniffing distance.

Nature’s superstars blindside us,
showy distractions from the fragrant
miracle that blooms over my driveway
each spring, before full-lipped leaves
push through, providing summer shade
before falling in fall.

But for now, and a few more days,
I open the front door and look up,
see my car temporarily tattooed with
the most delicate purple petals.
I inhale deeply to catch a whiff
of what’s left—before the beauty
lets go, dropping petal by petal
into memory, the show over
till next year.

You could’ve said no, but you didn’t
when I asked you to heft that melon,
sagging like an ancient breast
lying in the cold drawer

of the fridge, walk it to the big green
bin on the driveway where leaves
and lawn clippings mingled with
droopy daffodils so bright and

cheerful days earlier, too soon
limp and spent—all the dying things
in one dark, pungent place
filled with the smell of rot. And

because you loved me, because you
knew I’d shudder to open that lid,
you did. Over your shoulder I detected
resignation in the iron twitch

of your cheek as you palmed
the softening fruit, placing your
thumb as gently as you once did
on the laces of a baseball before

you pitched it, avoiding the melon’s
crusty bit, then walking it outside
like a wounded bird in your hands.
From the kitchen window I watched

you approach the bin, pause,
open it with an elbow and execute
an elegant slam dunk. I felt the
plummeting thud as I recalled

all the dead things you’d removed
from our lives—what the cats dragged
in, what died on the lawn, sometimes
intact blue jays fallen off their perch—

and I wondered how you’d toughened,
seemingly untouched by loss after loss,
your heart taking the beating. I recalled
stories of stampedes in your family’s

turkey barns, frantic feathered balls
trying to escape marauding skunks,
many of them failing, you and your
brothers, just boys, tasked with

shooting the intruders, burying
the corpses of young poults—
dumbest things on two feet, you’d
say—my heart hurting for all of you.

You’d been close to death all
your life, while I ran from it.
Until the day I got the call from
a coroner in another county

asking if I was your wife, if I’d come
to the house you lived in alone,
and I did, walking into your
unexpected departure, sitting

with you one last time—me cross-legged
on the floor, cradling your porcelain
foot in my lap, looking at your sagging
face, me cheek to jowl with what

I’d long feared—you, utterly gone,
two strangers outside the front door,
black zippered bag in their hands,
waiting.

I love how forgiving you are, which is good because I have some news.
—from the “Take a Compliment” card set

No, I’m not breaking up with you.
No, no one died. Well, I’m sure someone did, but not anyone we know.
At the moment.
No, I didn’t get fired or quit or crash the car.
I’m outing myself, coming out of the closet. Not that closet.
You may have suspected this: I’ve been poeting in secret for some time now.
Not writing—well, yes, writing—but writing poems.
I know, I know. There’s no money in poetry. No one reads poetry.
Why would I waste my time writing poems that don’t even rhyme?
You’re right, they don’t rhyme. Here, read one.
Yeah, I guess you could say that it’s a story cut into short lines.
But look, it’s gotta good metaphor and some nice images—that one with the bee
helicoptering around the blossoms?
You don’t like that one? That’s OK. You don’t have to.
You don’t have to like any of them. Or read them.
I just want you to accept me as I am. A working poet.
A poet’s gotta poet, and I’ve gotta show it.
Yes, I know that’s a bad rhyme. Really, I do.
Trying for some levity here.
No, that’s not a poetic word. Well, maybe it is.
No, I’m not gonna start wearing puffy-sleeved shirts and quoting Shakespeare.
Well, no more than usual.
Yeah, I understand that this is a lot to take in.
Sure, take all the time you need to think about it.
But it doesn’t change anything, honey.
For a long time you’ve been dating a poet. You just didn’t know it.
Gotta go now, poem’s a comin’.
We’ll talk later, ‘K?

Place moonlight in a bowl.
Sleep beside and
dream of white flowers.

—Sandra Cisneros

Allow that creamy liquid,
truly moonshine, to dream you
into a place you cannot go awake.

Let white flowers cushion you,
ones you can’t always name
but surprise you each spring,

ones that some call weeds,
the exuberance of the season
whispering as you rest:

Call me clover,
Call me yarrow,
Call me wild radish,

not forgetting the tiny
English daisies popping up like
mini sprinklers in the lawn,

along with the perfect puff
of dandelion, the bright faces
of chamomile designed

to lull you into sleep next
to your bowl of moonlight,
blossoming your dreams.

***

—lines from Sandra Cisneros’s poem “Remedy for Social Overexposure”
from “Woman Without Shame” © 2022, Knopf

that the big thing that’s slithering
just under the surface is not
there slithering,

that thing we don’t want to talk about,
perhaps a slimy, annoying, upsetting,
creep-you-out thing,

has disappeared, kaput, poof! so that
all that’s left is you looking at me,
me looking at you,

nothing between us but air and
a couple of smiles—yours, mine—
and that thing and all the other

things of the world that keep
stirring inside us, wishing we could
do something to make those things

go away or someone feel better,
what we can do is, just for now, is
focus on each other, you gazing

into my eyes, me looking into yours,
and take these smiles to heart, tuck
’em in tight for safekeeping,

and let your lungs inhale deeply
and let that breath ooze into the air,
and let’s just say to each other,

Wow. You. There.

And marvel in you, in me, in this
moment we share, which will,
naturally, poof away as all stunning

moments do, but will also, as your
smile embeds in me and mine
sinks deeply into you,

morph into memory, so that
all that’s left, when we think
about it later—so much later—

is the love.

Set up a shop the color of banana.
Cram it full of books and a window seat

ripe for reading, tucked into a London alley
so you have to search for it, delighted

when you find it, reveling in the sweetness
of banana, warmth of shopkeepers

who live for books, as you do, who
welcome you, offer tea and a place to sit,

a place you could die happy, surrounded
by volumes and volumes of wordwordswords

worth everything to you in this too-short
life, wishing you could have read them all.

And so it is
the day after Easter,
a similarly gorgeous day,
warm and dry at long last,
spring blasting out of ground and trees and sky
with look-at-me insistence.

And we do.
We cannot look away, nor do we want to,
finally released from what has gripped us,
at last able, many of us, to inhale fully
sweet air washed clean
by storm after storm.

We revel in it,
tempted to find an unspoiled patch
of eye-popping green to roll on like puppies,
bellies up, flashing the impossibly blue,
dreamed-of sky we found
difficult to summon

on the grayest wet days,
which we now cannot imagine,
which we tuck away with the sweaters
and the cold, and rush outside
to embrace the warm.

for Joe Chan, with thanks and admiration

They dive in or burst out of brick buildings,
cascade over a meadow, backlight a majestic
oak tree at sunset, reflect on the waters
of a river called American under a bridge
named Rainbow.

You capture elusive light, share it with others
who missed the full spectral beauty of
brilliant, stormy skies. Or those who
can’t see it as you do through your lens,

unpeeling the world, brightening it
for the rest of us.

And now,
the piercing loss
of the beloved
newly gone
eases a wee bit

as you walk past
tulips standing at
attention, as loose-
lipped blossoms
waggle a springy

hello, dazzling scarlet,
happy yellow, soft
salmon, flaming
poppies flashing
their bellies to the sky.

They stop you,
bend you closer—
life eternal right
there, the promise
of spring given

even as the beloved,
encased in mystery,
somehow feels
present, waving in
the soft breeze,

reminding you,

Here I am, right here,
always here—
I promise—
even when you think
I’m not.