
Poems
The Local World
Now that I’m forgetting names
I’m remembering places sounds standing
on a chalked hop-scotch board with my mother
winning a cupcake when they holler Seven
it happens again and a third time three cupcakes
I am three At four my sister shows me a rock
behind our house I call it my horse and ride
it out of town whenever I hate the world
There was one on a hill at school white quartz
too sharp to ride but good for jumping from
Miss Schiller my first grade teacher
will leave before the end of the year
to have a baby I march up to her desk
when she hasn’t returned from recess yet
Now class I say in my firmest voice as if I know
You can sit down now Teacher she laughs
how my cheeks warm and this is called blushing
When you can’t pronounce a word cover it
with your hand and say one syllable at a time
her voice an opening nnnnight boar I begin
thinking wild hogs the dark nay she says neigh
like a horse’s nicker then I can say it entire
neigh bor hood --oh-- neighborhood
like this room you more breath inside me moving
neighborhood neighborhood neighborhood.
The Letter O
O: Your birth month, the full October moon, orange, rising
behind oaks. O: the fifteenth letter, shown by Phoenicians
with a dot in the middle, as if eyes. O: the mind waking. O
slashed: the mind oscillating, just before sleep. O: on Oahu,
hula dancers contain the sun. O: the primordial sound Om
as it begins in the back of the mouth. O: reading, in high school,
The Story of O, a woman who loses, reduces, subtracts herself
to zero. O: my fear of such oblivion. O with circumflex:
my father’s face when I didn’t say, Sorry. O: abbreviations;
old, ocean, Ohio, order, or. O: Ouroboros snake ends where she
begins. O: a love cry, a grief cry, a word meaning these two are
one. O with umlaut: your saxophone, hitting high E. O: the shape
of your matted head pushing out of me. O: my os mirroring. O:
your lips just before you took your first breath. O: what I called
out when I rocked you and our eyes were Phoenecian—O’s looking
into O’s: O daughter, O snow goose, oh-no-gnome, my only O.
Bogotá, 1964
At the entrance to National University
a light turns red My father stops the car
I’m in the back seat of a Chevy squeezed
between two brothers I haven’t yet heard
of the Vietnam War Our black license plate
identifies us as Americans A crowd circles
Grown men yell pick up stones rock
the wild car Someone lies down in front
of the wheels My mother rolls down the window
pleads But I’m a student here A young man
jumps up on the hood His voice stays
the storm my flooding tears The road clears
and a man thrusts his head inside our window
says Be glad your children were with you.
Patawomeck
Goodbye yellow galoshes from the Sears Catalog
and brown rubbers I wore on rainy days
to protect my penny loafers and Mary Janes
Goodbye golden victrola I pressed my ear to
as my mother played her 78s and 33 LPs
Gershwin & the Heywards’ Porgy and Bess
Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown, and Beige
Goodbye to my father’s carved ebony chess set
Goodbye uncles home from the war smoking
Lucky Strikes and Pall Malls Goodbye Grandpa Bill
who smoothed the crease of his gray felt Fedora
with nails buffed and trimmed Goodbye to
Grandpa Roy who dove off a high platforms when
the circus came to town helped his mom in the bakery
after his father abandoned them Goodbye to
my Great Aunt Bertha who passed down quilts
dating back to the Civil War Goodbye to Delaplaine boys
who joined the Union Army and never returned
though we have brass buttons from a uniform
Goodbye to Indian arrowheads we found along
the river bank Goodbye to the Algonquian tribes
that named the river above Great Falls Cohongarooton
“honking geese” and south of them Patawomeck
“river of swans” Goodbye to words they traded in
now forgotten forbidden no one wrote them down
Goodbye glaciers that smoothed the rocks
leaving tiny white shells in the crevices and folds.
Sentenced
When I think of your arms, I do not think
home, but house on fire, Knight of Wands,
and when we burned too brightly, I’d say
ice on limestone, Nine of Swords...
we were a small country once, Belgium,
fine chocolate, a train station in every town,
but now you’re dead, we’re Russia, vast,
pierogis and borscht, with the Caspian Sea to cross,
you’re Moscow and I am banished to Minsk,
you’re the crime I’m doing penance for,
you’re my sentence without end.