22 - Undignified

I couldn’t handle it, and I felt strong

enough to admit it back then.

So on the third day of 6^th grade,

I cried not to go back to school.

I’d just come there from a 42-student,

two-room K-8 church school

on Marinette County farmland,

where the playground stretched for acres,

and the sky over cornfields was clear for miles.

But Crivitz had half-lockers, chain-link fence,

each hour was a classroom change.

The rules seemed arcane, and I wanted rules,

but no one would tell me them straight.

My lone friend was a lisper, and I needed friends,

but I couldn’t hear what she said.

I complained of an upset stomach.

The counselor sat me on a dusty sofa,

made me shoot Koosh balls

at the poster of a basset hound’s sad face,

which didn’t help out a kid getting hit

in the head by boys pitching fistfuls of paper

on the third day of 6^th grade.

So I cried not to go back to school, back then,

when I was strong enough to be undignified,

in the dim inside of a doublewide trailer,

where we sat on the sofa and it puffed out dust.

And my arms flung out like bedsheet ropes,

from the window of my anxious gut.

And they hung midair an instant too long

because you had to decide if you’d catch me.

Then you leaned in, conceding to catch me.

Well, I felt our unhitched moment.

Two train cars on the frozen north rail

which ran by both schoolyards,

two train cars just uncoupled and running

together in wobbly, failing momentum.

Then one sped ahead, as the other slowed,

and no one really got hurt.

But the distance is impossibly huge now.

I felt it, but like I would so often stash

my chore allowance in several odd jars

I spent all my strength finding

hiding spots for my hard-earned anger.

So I hated the sofa, and I hated that dog

for holding my stupid pain. And then

I thought differently about throwing things.

But you kept me at home after that,

and I kept careful about being dignified,

and I learned a whole lot in 6^th grade

in the doublewide trailer on farmland

cut through by the frozen north rail.

20 - Diffuse

I scrub my body clean with your body.

Come into my bed, get every last bit of me out.

I’ll become pure, I’ll slip backward

through pain into a million sterile holes

in the surface of the dark.

So I court your fish-moist skin’s

friction to rub me numb,

your urging weight to press me flat.

You can do as you like, these

are my evacuee procedures.

I’m laid bare for the journey as you

scuff my senses into the vagueness,

the pristine of fog. Enough, and I

mist out, through the mute scream

of a million open pores, a claustrophobic

soul sprayed particulate into the remote

nowhere of space. Molecule-safe.

I leave the place immaculate.

I scrub my body clean with your

attendant hands unknowing

I am gone into the night,

clean night.

9 - Christmas Casket

You built a box for the birth of salvation.

It was cedarwood, stained.

Nestled underneath a Yuletide spruce, the hope

chest crouched like some anthropic bud

off the conifer’s dying body,

trampling its skirt with

blockish feet.

It was ugly, misaligned, and guilting:

The lid was crowned in twisted,

viney wire, applied with spikes

driven down in woodflesh,

and opened, you could see

the tips protrude inside,

reminders, maybe, of your

hard toil.

You would always remind

us of your

hard toil.

Resin-scent would henceforth be

everpresent at my bedfoot,

cloaking me in the aromatic

afterlife of trees

and filling my throat

with presence,

an admonition that my future

was your gift.

I was meant to make my dowry in it,

Assembling the sundry lot of

coupled life:

towels, cookery, bedthings.

But I filled it with

cheap, broken junk.

7 - Pine and Porcelain

Remember my satisfaction

in knick-knack shelving: pine

riddled with phloem, xylem lines

cheerily cohering in supportive

chorus that yes,

finespun gewgaws shall be upheld in this place!

Yes!

(Lacking power,

I had twisted screws through drywall

to sturdy the board by all

the torque my own right shoulder had.

As if this deed would compensate for

fragility elsewhere.)

The artifacts were inane.

A matte black Bastet cat with

inexact gold embellishments,

bought for twelve dollars out of the

import store cat pack,

and also hollow;

a white plate, glazed

to seal in a fingerpaint print

of a child’s pawlike foot;

two identical porcelain dolls

from a forgetful giver,

both named after me.

They all stood in a vague line

saying nothing decisive.

The dust now crowds

around the absence of their bases,

chalk lines,

anxious tracings of a murder scene.

Well, they were cheap.

Convincing, I professed my loyalty to the pine—

a venerable tree, bent to an unfit purpose—

But oh, did my skin prickle with

a sympathy for that porcelain.