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Christmas Eve with the Evangelical Family
I awoke late at night
with my four-year-old cousins' teeth in my forearm,
because, he claimed, his crying wouldn't rouse me.
When I asked what caused those whale tears he said:
The Apocalypse!
What?
The moon is falling.
He pulled back the curtains to show me his fear;
the culprit was nothing more than wind-swept clouds.
I explained this to him and he asked me what makes the wind.
I thought of all the stories older people told me as a child
and hoped I could muster something better than Uncle Dave
who convinced me that snow was angel dandruff--
Actually, I don't know.
Oh.
But do you want to know something I do know?
The stars we can see are photographs.
Really?
It takes their light thousands of years to travel here.
Baffled, he drew back the curtains even further,
and stared into a night that stared back
and offered no simple answers--
his gaze widened with this newfound knowledge,
the way a baby's eyes open
like a parachute outside the belly
moments after birth.
He held me and I held him,
and for a moment we posed at the uncertainty
as if someone thousands of miles away
was taking our picture,
to be scooped from ancient ruins
by future archaeologists.
Listening
It's weird to see my fifty-year-old neighbor
powerwalk in the mornings
listening to her new ipod.
Ipods are for my generation--
the generation that has never been through
a World War or a sexual revolution,
so we make our thing a focus on our needs
like, pink or silver? Mini or Nano?
When I was six
my parents took me
to the AIDS quilt in D.C.
Jack was Mom's best friend.
They met in college.
He died when I was five.
It was the first time I saw her cry,
slumped cheek-down
on his patch.
That evening
I sat on the floor, sifting through Mom's music box
like she always let me do before bed.
I pressed a jade necklace into my collarbone
and asked her if she had AIDS.
But before she could answer
no honey, just because I layed on that blanket doesn't mean I have it, too
I made a request--
if she died
could I have her jewelry?
It was the only time my Mother ever slapped me,
and the reason she never bought me and ipod.
My Father’s Beard
Black like mashed blueberries, full as Father
Christmas (when it’s icicle season) and
all seasons, til it was a bother-
firefighting gave his face new commands:
“Don’t want to lose that manly mane to all
stray flames-shave it off!” were the orders. Gone,
the gentle burn on my cheeks when I’d fall
into his arms like a drunkard at dawn.
Champion spider squisher,
his holy mask now memories on the bathroom floor,
he laughs at my tears but I see only
the wind pushing its ashes past the door.
My hands trace cold blue tile, the remains are grim-
much softer, not comfortingly coarse, like him.
"Friendly Fire"
A little boy bumped into a bullet once;
his body turned into dirt
as all bodies do.
He got to see the world
on the bottom of people's boots.
He fell through the cracks
of a train station floorboard in Paris
and learned French from the termites.
Once he even traveled to a factory miles away
and backstroked through red-blue dye
until his body pruned.
An old veteran hung a flag at half mast
in his front yard once, just because.
When the wind crashed into its sails
there was a sonic boom
and he had to cover his ears
to silence what he thought were rounds
and empty shells full of blood
and men falling into the mud
all over again--
but it was just the echo of a cotton seed
bursting through the ground
above an un-marked grave
across the sea.