Young Writers Society

incomplete words are still understood
by the dark glint in eyes
and the cobwebs in certain corners, not others.

who needs a confessional
when the darkness in the bedroom
opens train stations and tracks
to shuffle dreams back and forth
and brings tongues to looser states than beer or rice wine?

the heartbreak I am waiting for now
is no longer my own
but the day he comes home, young and raw,
believing first loves will never rise again --
and we must hold our tongues so we do not let him know
it is true that each fall chips something away,
that you end up tumbled and torn
but the consolation is a warm palm to rest in.

1. and if I die before I wake

With seven minutes left of the day --
seven minutes left of the life allotted to me --
I turn on a video that used to keep me awake
but will now have me drowsy and dreaming
before I can realize I ended up having
the strength to kill myself after all;
I just needed to do it slowly, in small steps,
with the approval of the world at my back.

2. invisible rivers

she never asked me
did I vomit for three months
did I feel excited or scared
did I change how I eat
did I think of names or dreams

she stole a picture on my way out the door
and flung a word -- preeclampsia -- after the airplane
across the sea

it is noon and we haven't spoken since
and until now I have been always on the border --
not safe but not yet shutting down, not yet poisoned or dead

but this morning the river has flown over its banks
and flows and flows and does not retreat

the rapid ahead were once distant dreams
but now the spring rush will bring me there
in a moment as short as the snap of a branch

will I be ready? will I be okay?
and when, if ever, will she ask if the baby was born

3. Bar Juan

There is a bar around the corner
that holds its own beige-washed square in its palms
and stretches out shy tendrils of plastic chairs and plastic tables
called "la terraza" and called
"less intimidating than sitting in front of the Spanish workers inside".

There is a sun dial on the wall.
There is a lamp above the black/white sign.
There is my backpack on the chair to hold my spot,
to mark my territory, to serve as an anchor as I float inside.

"I want one of those."
No vocabulary, all pointing and cash.

In the moment, the sun and my foreignness made the bar prick,
though the soft inside of the bread sat atop the egg tortilla
and the leche inside the cafe kept me from bleeding too much.

But weeks and months later,
I imagine my father pulling up moments later on his bike

[he pulled my little sisters in a trailer behind his bike
as we adventured from our house to the park,
as we adventured from our house to the bridge across the highway;
he transformed a bike
into a stationary piece of exercise equipment in the basement;
he left a bike seat for me to find in his effects after his death,
and I will never know what it means]

"How was that road, eh?"
[I can hear his voice and his heavy breathing -- like after yardwork or
after coming out of the sauna he built
over the stairs coming up from the basement at the house on Brownlow]

and I hold out his plate -- one more egg tortilla and one more crust,
because we are traveling together and I learned to say "quiero dos"
instead of just one.

Weeks and months later I imagine that his voice helps mine
fill the beige-washed square, and I am not afraid in this wide open space alone
because we have come to this strange place together
and are upon the road together.

And this is what really makes me bleed.
I hold a photo book and my certification of completion to the wound,
but it still comes out in waves
until the tables, the chairs, the sundial, the sign, and the lamp
are covered in red.

4. My Legacy, Too

Everything is easy to forgive and remember
when you are hiding behind a small white curtain.
Sunlight is hazy; sounds pass through boxes of old photographs
and come out gray.

So when they ask about you,
even the donuts you traced in the snow in the empty parking lot
across the street (although in fact they were
laced with beer and orange prescription bottles
that I never asked about because why would I)
become happy, wild memories postedited with smiles.

Only vaguely do I remember I was paralyzed
in the backseat as you took highway 94 weaving
with the smell of alcohol on your breath --
were you mad because you'd somehow seen I'd gone with a date?

Only vaguely before the breeze whisks the curtain
and the fear subsides and is replaced with your hard black briefcase
swinging by your side as we walked through the skyway to Taco John's
on a Tuesday - Taco Tuesday - to bring the bag home to sisters
and a warm orange breakfast room, and the wooden floors,
and the tumbling dryer and my room with the chandelier upstairs.

You loved milk and eggnog and meatloaf and liver
and hiding in the attic with six packs and cigarettes
and cooking our dinner and reading to all four of us before bed
and screaming at the top of your lungs until we'd hide behind desks
and playing board games after family meetings and playing
Radio Gaga in the car.

Why are even your flaws something keenly missed
when the pain and fear is too far away to remember?

And even if I make mistakes with the son in my womb,
will he sit in the middle of the small white curtain
and remember my missteps with love as he wishes
he could call me just one more time, just one more time?

5. a story

my science books told a story
about a planet ringed with rock and ice
a disc like a CD spreading wider than anything i could imagine
bigger than my whole world

but one night atop a mountain in Korea
i peered through one end of a telescope that could hold me in its trunk
and i saw a small marble surrounded
just as they told me i would

it wasn't that i hadn't believed them
but maybe it was that i hadn't believed them
and just wrote the answers on tests i knew they wanted
without really taking them to heart

is there anything else i rehearse like saturn
that is just waiting to be blown into reality
by peering into dim expanse
and seeing for myself?

6. ducklings and cats in the sun

yesterday there were feathers strewn across the path
and the pigeons up in the eaves were cooing incessantly
so i made up stories in my mind that they were
mourning the loss of whoever had once worn the feathers.

yesterday the orange cat who jumps up on laps at night
was breathing heavily on the ground in the sun
so i made up stories in my mind that he doesn't know how
to drink water -- the endless water -- in the stream in front of him
and may die soon.

yesterday a man stood close to the stream and
when i followed his gaze i saw five ducklings trailing their mother
into a safe haven and then up onto a grassy peninsula
so i made up stories in my mind that when the man declared
'animal or human, mothers are great'
it was a sign from the sky that we'd all be okay. we'll all be okay.

but i still made up stories in my mind about car crashes or
medical emergencies, and i am just hoping the stories i make up
in the hospital will taste more like magnolias and fuzzy buds on twigs.
like iced lattes with condensation on beautifully shaped glasses.
like the sound of gravel underfoot as i walked across spain.
like what it felt like when you suddenly said, 'i love you' for no reason
last night.

7.

and I was Jesus:
arms outstretched and strapped down
wires whispering from my finger, my chest, my arm, my spine
and I was open from the waist down:
I was suddenly open to everyone and everyone owned me
but it didn't matter, and I couldn't find the presence of mind to fight

I dry heaved, a pad held to my cheek
until a new shot slid cool into my veins
and the nausea subsided

cut and cut and cut and cut I couldn't feel
it wasn't until later I saw the splatter across my face
they had killed me, pulled out the good from inside me
and stitched me up a sinner -- I could not walk,
I could not hold my hands to my eyes and cry

light screamed in the corner as it was not of this world
and they held it there, demanding holiness
demanding it breathe life into their ranks
and without knowing how not to, it did

I closed my eyes and was resurrected on the first day
so I could hold the trembling being
later in dark curtained rooms when they'd all gone away,
as the nausea went out like the tide
and his face was the rising moon

8. nostalgia tastes different now

the curtains just brush the floor
and when a breeze tongues through the window
they detach and whisper in the dark

my old house was full of loud rooms and quiet rooms in the dark
like a living room with a good sofa and then
the one that everyone sat on
the dark rooms were painted on canvas
stretched across doorways
inviting me to rip through and see if
maybe someone was hiding on the other side
but I always ran up the basement stairs, afraid
and would never even dare to brush the canvas

ripples of clock ticks fill pre-dawn space
and sink into hand painted walls and new wallpaper
while the street light on the corner sneaks in the living room window
and I stand in pajamas to bear silent witness to it all

that was my parents' quiet and my parents' dark
but now we hang curtains; we are preparing
our own soft gray pre-dawn stillness
for someone to remember after passed decades
as they know they can never go back
as they know it will all blow out with the wind
carried on curtain whispers
to show the street lamp what it has become