A Dance in Three Steps (edited version of "Where Did They Go?")

Chris Whitley recorded fifteen albums before he died:

1. Living with the Law
2. Din of Ecstasy
3. Terra Incognita
4. Dirt Floor
5. Live at Martyrs
6. Perfect Day
7. Rocket House
8. Long Way Around: Anthology
9. Pigs Will Fly soundtrack
10. Hotel Vast Horizon
11. Weed
12. War Crime Blues
13. Soft Dangerous Shores
14. Reiter In
15. Dislocation Blues

The mom and the dad dance to Chris Whitley’s hit “Big Sky Country.” The door of the room is closed. Please unlock this door, a boy asks from the hallway. White paint on the door starts to chip. The old red coat of paint begins to show through. The dad grabs the mom’s wrist. The dad leads. They continue to dance. The boy doesn’t know what dance they’re dancing. He speculates:

1. Tango
2. Foxtrot
3. Waltz


He doesn’t know any more dances. The mom yells at the dad. The dad’s voice is louder. He won’t let go. Police station gets a call. Can they hear “Big Sky Country” playing at fifty-nine decibels? Chris Whitley is dead now. The boy could stab the dad’s brain and he’d be dead, too.

* * *

I could break your back with my twelve-year-old hand. Police station gets a call. I cry and the tear water spoils Mom’s nice blanket. Mucus too. Please unlock this door. This isn’t funny anymore. Covered in sirens, I hear only red and blue.

Stare at me in a white tee and pajama bottoms. Me? I could blind you with my nail-bitten fingers. Men in navy uniforms walk in the screen door. They have hairy arms. Mom’s going to be so mad that they’re tracking mud through her kitchen. One hands me a pen. Tells me to write. I impress them with my perfect Gs. Letter Js like licorice. Greatest story ever written.

Watch as I finish the police report. Do you think Chris Whitley still sings after you leave us? He doesn’t.

* * *

“Shall we dance?” the dad asks the mom. She nods her head, meaning they shall. She follows her husband into the room. Royal purple carpet and lilac walls. The ballroom.

“Let me show you how to dance,” the dad says, all smiles.
The mom says, “Give me your hand. So big.”
“Does our son say ‘Please unlock this door?’” he says.
“Please. No more Chris Whitley,” says the mom. “Let’s dance to the rhythm of the silence instead.”
“But the jukebox is ready.”
The dad puts on a pair of boxing gloves. The mom grabs brass knuckles from her first dresser drawer. They exchange punches and kicks until their faces and bodies are bloody.

The mom teases, “I dare you to call the police.”
“9-1-1,” the dad says. “Coming right up.”

The police arrive and the dad leaves the home. His son and wife wave good-bye.

“What did you write, sweetie?” the mom asks her son.
The son says, “A story. Want to hear?”

He reads the story: ‘A long brown tube comes out of the ground in my backyard, surrounded by a square wooden pit. A cap loosely placed on top of the tube closes off the opening. A baby bluebird leaves its nest for the first time. Doesn’t know how to fly so well. Hits the tube, knocks the cap off, and falls inside. My mom and I are out for dinner. Some not-so-fancy restaurant. We return home to a bathtub full of our feces and urine. I point out Mom’s turkey sandwich. Dad’s chocolate-covered pretzels. I had never truly seen the color brown before. Oh, my cheesy hot dog.’

“Precious. Simply precious,” the mom says. “But darling, that happened years ago.”

Balanced Breakfast

1. Whole grain guaranteed
2. Marshmallows
3. Vitamin B12
4. Sugar
5. Modified corn starch
6. Corn syrup
7. Dextrose
8. Gelatin
9. Selenium
10. Calcium carbonate
11. Yellow 5
12. Thiamine
13. Yellow 6
14. Blue 1
15. Artificial flavor
16. Vitamin E
17. Red 40
18. Mixed tocopherols
19. Added to preserve freshness
20. Calcium carbonate
21. Zinc
22. Iron
23. Glass bowl
24. Mineral nutrients
25. Magnesium
26. Vitamin C
27. Sodium ascorbate
28. Comments? Save entire package
29. A B Vitamin
30. Niacinamide
31. Vitamin B6
32. Pyridoxine hydrochloride
33. Vitamin B2
34. Riboflavin
35. Percent daily values based on a 2,000 calorie diet
36. Vitamin B1
37. Thiamin mononitrate
38. Vitamin A
39. Daily values higher or lower depending on your calorie needs
40. A B Vitamin
41. Folic acid
42. Vitamin D3
43. Metal spoon
44. Biotin
45. Pantothenic acid
46. Iodine
47. Potassium
48. Vitamin K
49. Distributed by General Mills Sales, Inc.

Fourth Month

Red fingers grab a napkin to dab at red lips. A man in a tight black tee walks past me. His gait is faster than mine. A clear green cup spins and spins on a metal table. I hear childish songs. My legs are warm but my arms feel cold. I walk down a sidewalk. My hands rest in the pockets of my hooded sweatshirt. The bodies of dried worms slide across the pavement as I walk. The coiled bodies leave smeared stains like rust on the white cement. The next rainfall will clean the sidewalk. Living worms will surface. I was young—three or four, probably five years old—and I cut a worm in half with a garden hoe. The two halves wriggled separately and I smiled. I felt bad when they stopped wriggling. I returned the hoe to the shed and opened the door to my house.

Break the Ice

I stand in front of my house with Mark. He wears a beige coat. Scarf with his name. Find him on page three—four?—of a Kohl’s mag. There I am to his right, a packed ball of snow firm in hand.

We can knock them down—Mark and me—the strings of ice that hang from my roof like dead limbs. We can do it. Mark could push the smoke from his lips and melt them all. I bet he could if he tried.

He looks old with a lit cig in his mouth. It burns down like a fuse. He breathes in one last time. Throws it in the snow. I step on it with my boot to make sure it’s out. He grins at me and of course I smile back at him.

I’m stripped of the wait: Mark picks up two chunks of snow. Packs them in a ball. Hurls it toward the shards of ice. A slab breaks and falls from the roof. Could have struck him in the head and he would have been dead. Would have called it death by ice. Bound for the morgue.

I say to Mark, “Move back. You scare me. You’re so close to the ice.” Ten more fall, but none close enough to strike his head and kill him. I smile at the sound of their crash, a gun shot shock in my brain. “Don’t be lame. Knock them down with me. It’s fun,” Mark says to me with that grin.

And then there’s no ice left to fall which means we are done. I hold the door for Mark and he steps in my house. We watch a show on my couch. Take off our shoes. Coats. Scarves. When Mark leaves, I hug him and he smells like smoke. His car looks bright red when he drives down the street.

Underwear

My friend asked me about the hole in men’s underwear. I told her it existed so guys could pee at a urinal.
One time I went to a urinal, unzipped my pants, and felt around for the hole. I realized there wasn’t a hole in this pair. I couldn’t turn back, so I pulled the briefs down and peed through the zipper hole of my jeans.

There was a popular joke when I was young. One person would ask, “Do you see that thing under there?” and another person would say, “Under where?” Then they would both laugh because the word “underwear” is funny.

Sniffing panties is sexy but sniffing a man’s underwear is gross.

For underwear model stardom, have your uncle go through your bag and criticize the size of your boxers. He will be drunk and bring back a variety of boxers and briefs from his room. He will ask you to try them on in the bathroom. You will because you are tired and don’t want to make him angry.
You will put on tight sports briefs, bikini briefs, briefs that barely hug your thighs and show your uncle how they look so you can go to bed. But he will be so proud that you are growing up and he will take pictures of you in just a baggy shirt and underwear. He will tell you that he has connections and will get these pictures to Calvin Klein and Abercrombie and Fitch. You will nod your head ‘okay’ and fall asleep. The next day you will feel famous.

President Bill Clinton was asked, “Boxers or briefs?” He responded, “Usually briefs.” No wonder he was one of the country’s most well-liked presidents.

Everyone knows someone who wears granny panties or tighty whities.

A man on an episode of “CSI” played with himself through the pockets of his jeans and ejaculated in his underwear. I thought his desperation to get off wasn’t worth walking around with sticky underwear all day.

Wordles

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/648975/Terminal_Four

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/648863/Our_Christian

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/648906/The_Coma_Button

Where Did They Go?

I could break your back with my twelve year old hand. Police station gets a call. Can they hear Chris Whitley’s song at 59 decibels? Chris Whitley, he’s dead now. I could stab your brain and kill you too.

Among those brown-faced change chasers. On piss-stained cobblestone. Mis pantalones. Hanging from a rusty shower rod.

Water balloons in my eyes pop and spoil Mom’s nice blanket. Mucus too. Please unlock this door. This isn’t funny anymore or at all. Covered in sirens, I only hear red and blue.

A bluebird got stuck in the drain. Came home to a bathtub full of my family. Mom’s turkey sandwich, Dad’s chocolate-covered pretzels. I had never seen the color brown before. Oh, my cheesy hot dog.

My breath must have smelled like mustard and meat after Allison’s party but you grabbed my mouth anyway. Grabbed my mouth and didn’t let go. Didn’t matter that it was mine. Willing to steal anyone’s spit at 3 A.M. We’re graduating in five hours and I’m unbuttoning my pants in your basement. You haven’t done this in so long, I know, and I pretend you want me grabbing you like I am. Later your mom takes pictures in our blue caps. We fake smiles. Your mom was nice.

Stare at me in a white tee and underpants. I could blind you with my nail-bitten fingers. The men in navy with hairy arms hand me a pen. Mom’s going to be so mad that they’re tracking mud through her kitchen. They tell me to write so I impress them with my perfect G’s. Letter J’s like licorice. Greatest story ever written.

Is the blue ink dry? Eighty feet of metal for the wayward bluebird. Pushed out the drain by a plumbing snake. Mom cries. Bleaches so I can be clean for school this morning.

Watches as I finish the police report. Does he think Chris Whitley is singing when he leaves the home? She holds me. It’s going to be okay, baby, she cries. Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.

I know it’s going to be okay. But did they like my story?

Terminal Four

I push the chair into place. She hides under the desk.

I want my glasses. I want my glasses and my robe. Coffee dripping into the pot.

We were both lost. Met at 111th. Followed you to Far Rockaway and farther. We had the same piercing. You, navy glasses that showed green when you tilted your head.

As soon as I saw you, I knew you were God. Our coincidences were spiritual. Spiritual incidents. Was that Kathleen across the tracks, or some false God?

Seven A.M. you told me you were from a Jewish school uptown. You knew I was from Michigan. You said so. Ann Arbor. No. Detroit? Detroit.

Such an ugly voice you carried and your bag like a neon robe.

It’s just the little things, you said. And you left. I find you in the little things. Coffee grounds and prescription lenses. Hiding under beds and desks.

Thinking of your copper eyes, I realize - God, I didn’t catch your name.

First House On The Left (A Personal Narrative)

What is the sound of burnt flesh cooling? With my head two feet deep in the cool water of a baby pool, I can hear it: The slow hiss of my scalded face receiving temporary relief.

It’s summer in Farmington Hills, Michigan. I’m six years old and enjoying the last sunny weeks of August. First grade starts soon. My best friend lives across the street from me, a few houses down. Her name is Lindsay. I met her before the word “school” even meant anything to me. She was there when I boarded a school bus for the first time. My parents were still married then and Lindsay’s dad was still alive. They watched and waved as we took our first big step away from home.

I’m playing with Lindsay at her house when she says, “Ryan is having a small pool party. You should ask your dad if you can go. I’m going.” Ryan is a boy we know from school who lives down our street. My house is the last one on the right; he lives in the first house on the left. Eager to swim, I run home to ask permission.

My mother is at work. My father is physically handicapped—unable to work—so he stays at home with me. I run up the crumbling steps of our gravel porch, out of breath and panting, and swing open the screen door. My father is in the kitchen. I quickly blurt out, “Ryan’s having a pool party and Lindsay and I are invited and he lives right down the street and his mom will be there” (my parents are more likely to give permission if there is parental guidance) “and I really want to swim so can I go?”

Pauses to process my words. Thinks. “I should call Mom, first,” he says. “See what she says about it.” I’m dying to go now, though. I explain that it’s not a big deal, Mom’s probably busy. Don’t call her. Please? I begin to pout. “Please can I go. Please?” I beg. Fallen victim to my begging and whimpering, he reluctantly says that I can go. A decision that he will always regret.

I quickly change into my neon green swim trunks. Lindsay’s waiting. I deliver the good news (“He said yes!”) and we run down to Ryan’s house together. Ryan is standing near the inflatable pool with his mother. She’s holding a garden hose to fill it. Ryan’s sister is also there, barefoot. She stands to the side. Ryan’s mother hands him the hose. “Don’t spray it,” she says, and walks inside the house.

It started years ago. Incorrectly installed plumbing. Years before Ryan’s family even moved into the house. Maybe the person was having a bad day. He could have been in a rush. Made a careless mistake. But when the hot water knob in the shower was turned all the way up, ice cold water would come out, and vice versa. It was like that throughout the entire house. Every faucet. Even the water running outside. The water running through the garden house. And right now, the cold water knob was turned all the way up.

She left him there with a hose of boiling hot water, and us.

He aimed the hose and sprayed. Probably because she told him not to. Lindsay was hit first. The stream of burning water grazed the top of her head. Reunited ten years later, she would show me the scar on her scalp. She’d tell me how thankful she was that she was only hit there, able to run away. It could have been worse for her. She could have been me. His main target. Standing there. Unable to move.

I don’t remember if I screamed. The pain was so unexpected, so shocking, that I probably couldn’t have. It was as if I had stuck my head in a lit fireplace. I didn’t have a chance to be angry. I ran until I got to Lindsay’s house. There was a tiny children’s pool in her front lawn. I dunked my head in before running back home and showing Dad my scorched, red face.

Years of hospital trips and lawsuits followed, most of which I can’t remember. After massive amounts of cream applied to my face three times daily, my second- and third-degree burns finally faded.

Ryan and I lived on opposite ends of the street, literally as well as figuratively. He was a bully at school. He didn’t follow his parents’ rules. Had a knack for being unnecessarily rude. But he wasn’t the one to get burned.

I followed rules. Obeyed my parents. Was a good student. My father let me go because he knew Ryan’s mom would be present. There was an assumed level of trust due simply to the label of “parent”. But she left her six-year-old son with a hose of hot water and didn’t expect him to playfully spray his friends. We were the good, trusting, optimistic family. We weren’t the ones behind the hose.

And the difference between us was like hot and cold.

The Coma Button

Him—the Bag of Bones—and two cats. Burlap sack of a man. Cries with the rain and laughs with—oh, he laughed? He presses his wrinkled nipples, hoping for sleep. He is a tired Bag of Bones.

Our Christian (A Sestina)

In the dark,
she sits alone. She smells
incense. Hears the sound of a child’s laugh.
Grabs the rosary
from her pocket. It’s a sign,
she thinks. Blood

rushes to her head. For the life of the flesh is in the blood,
the preacher says in his dark
voice. She notices a sign
on the altar: BEWARE. Her perfume smells
like musk. As she fingers her rosary,
she forces a laugh—

her Momma’s laugh.
Mother Mary, who wept blood.
Momma, who gave her that rosary
ten days before falling asleep in the dark.
She visits Momma daily, smells
her decay, and understands it’s a sign

that Momma’s getting better. But Linda held the pen. Sign
here, Linda said. Linda smiled, but did not laugh.
Our Christian Funeral Home contains many smells,
Linda explained. Embalming fluid, copper, blood,
silver, nickel, death— She thinks of Linda and lets the dark
red beads of the rosary

drop to the Church floor. Fifty-nine prayers of the rosary
scatter. The preacher, holding Christ’s wine, falls and pulls down the altar sign.
Did it say BEWARE OF DOG? She didn’t know, it was too dark.
When he falls, the People laugh.
The altar is stained with His blood,
as well as the preacher’s, and now the Church smells.

She said, One day in a field of fifty-nine daisies, with smells
of pollen and sounds of bee’s wings, I will pray my mother’s rosary.
My temples will feel the pulse of my Saviour’s blood.
The heavenly clouds will give me a sign.
Joyous, I will laugh
and chase away the Devil in the dark.

She likes the way the blood of the Holy Ghost smells.
She searches in the dark for the fallen beads of her broken rosary.
She can read the sign now: BEWARE OF GOD. Where is the child’s laugh?

A Conversation

Once the porcupine asked the serpent, "What's your name?"
The serpent replied, "What's your game?"
Porcupine: "I'm in love with you."
The serpent: "My name is Larry."

Acknowledgment

Our fingers trembled for three minutes before they linked. Our relationship trembled for three months before it broke.

Leapfrog

Sometimes a frog leaps from lily pads covered in slime. Often, though, it stays still and talks. Not out of laziness or exhaustion, no. Hasn’t the need to leap, just the need to croak.

*

I see in a pond a frog jump from one lily to another to another. A frog talks in ribbits, but not to me. Covered in slime, it need not croak while it jumps. No other frogs around.

*

My friend says he ran over a frog with the lawnmower, says it jumped beneath while he wasn’t looking. No need to have leaped or croaked. Should have stayed still, I said. Its ribbits covered the lawn.

*

At night I dream of living from pad to pad. Unaware, until another frog sits on the next pad. So I croak and it goes away. I wake up and mow the front lawn, hearing a ribbit with each step I take.

*

But when toad croaks, the frogs know it is in disguise. His voice is deep like a pond. Toad is defensive and says he was born with it. The frogs believe him until his disguise covered in slime surfaces after the accident with a blade.

To Bitterness

You are the dark chocolate of emotion
Why I cannot fall asleep at night
I feel you tug at my eyebrows
At my eyelids
Reminding me why I should not be happy
My mother says “Be grateful for what you have”
So I am grateful
(Never wasting food)
And my grandmother says “Be thankful for what you have”
So I am thankful
(Thinking of the starving children in Africa)
But what of the things that I do not have
Like power and responsibility? Although-
I see you on the news and on the faces of Presidents
You are everywhere, bitterness,
Antithesis of sweetness
Even in my morning glass of orange juice

Dentistry

A dentist stands over his patient, picking at the man’s teeth with a probe.
My body is white, says the patient.
The dentist says, Hold still- I shouldn’t puncture your cheek.
I’m finding cavities on my body, says the patient.
The dentist says, Your molars look good, kid.
The mirror reflects my body dying, says the patient.
The dentist says, Your enamel is thick and hard.
Heaven sent you, yes? says the patient.
The dentist hands the man his sickle probe and says, Your turn.

Closeted

She suffers like a woman with flatulence in a crowded store
Who clenches her cheeks together, fakes unawareness
And keeps the gas inside
Until she shuffles to an empty aisle
Where she could fart next to stainless steel dinnerware
And nobody would know