fly.
It clings with tiny feet to her finger.
The groom,
in accented English,
repeats himself
as the bride’s family speaks
to him as though he’s deaf.
He graciously responds when the silent J
in the middle of his name
is pronounced,
like a brand of mustard.
The restaurant charges corkage fees
on the Martinelli’s.
Children of Adventists missionaries pretend,
make toasts with pretend,
nonalcoholic cider.
It’s all pretend.
The butterfly slows the opening and closing
of belabored wings.
The bride’s cousin rakes up pink rose petals
from the sand.
Skype to Eastern Europe
is disconnected.
The horizon turns orange and red.
The six-year-old places the dead butterfly
under a bush.
Its broken wing glistens
with her tears.
The bride gathers up her bustle,
kneels down beside her daughter
and says,
“At the end it had
the best friend of its life.
It was the luckiest butterfly
in the whole world!”
The child wipes her face,
and with small moist hands
reaches up
for one of her mother’s,
and the one offered
by her new step-dad.
Stepping from the chrysalis of waiting for visas
and navigating relatives,
they walk up the sandy stairs
to the reception
and into a life they create
together.
Off
“He wasn’t trying to kill himself,” she said. “It was to try to feel better. The cutting part anyway.” She giggled and shifted her weight on the black leather couch. Heavy mascara eyelashes asked for my confirmation. Months ago I’d given her the brown sack of knives back. “The cap sleeves didn’t hide it.” She plucked something from between her teeth. “But I went anyway.”
“Oh,” I said.
My stepson called earlier. A text-based video game to demonstrate depression. For those who aren’t depressed and can’t imagine. The game creator was harassed because she’s a girl. Her ex-boyfriend posted naked pictures. Blogged what her vagina smelled like. Threatened rape. Depression expert.
My stepson said playing the game gave him the courage to tell. To tell through his fog of 10 hour night shifts as a dispatcher for tankers. To tell that’s the reason he drinks too much, gambles his vacation pay. To tell why he never takes time off. Isolation is portrayed in the game. The Depression Quest game. He used to play Ever Crack for days straight living on Pepsi. Now he wanted a cat. A kitten really. The Humane Society spayed and gave vaccinations.
The patient just before Mascara Eyes had said, “If Robin had only had enough faith in Jesus.” Everyone wants to save the sad clown. No one’s better at saving than a two thousand year old saving pro. The Jesus kid had beagle eyes and picked at his nails. Maybe Ork was waitlisted for a crucifixion.
Mascara Eyes swore by stigmata and white scars with hash tags.
At seven, humans understand death is permanent. Seven in human years not cat years.
I’ve lost some of those I’ve treated to a Co2 hose, a robe belt, starvation and overdose. There’s no making sense of it. Ending the pain. Sacrificing. Avoiding a threatening future.
Mascara Eyes got stitched up at a doc-in-the-box after she called me and said she could see bone.
The Jesus kid found a fake family after rehabbing off meth.
My stepson calculated the cost of kitty litter and Cat Chow.
I clicked the mouse and started the next game level.
SanGria Whine
foil blister pack of Sam-e slices open
my index finger
crying unpronounceable Jamaica
One crimson teaspoon spreads asymmetric on
the bleached table cloth
Honey inherited curly hair grows out with flat sides
climbing on bougainvillea vines towards the equator
Hoodia soaked contact lenses
tears of jasmine night heir
When friends stay hospice lottery beats death to death
Sun magnifying an ant into flames
Ajax-rough scrubbing vacuum cleaners and dialysis
OCD chasing dust mites and wrinkled elephant memories
The owl in Pooh’s corner hooted me, “you gotta play the team that gets off the bus.”
Saline waves crash on the shore
menses wash back out to sea
Drumming a woman’s heart circle Calling in the powers of the east
a Japanese PFLAG waving at women dancing
backwards
in heels
P.O.L.S.T. garlic for poltergeist?
Donate my corneas but put my uterus on the auction block
Have answers. will work for questions.
¿Por que? Por que Special K It’s okay
But the next letter, L, started an IV in ICU
abandoned b_ood sucked upwards in a thin glass tube at the end of my finger
Menarche butterflies migrate in horizontal tornadoes
crushed on windshields of Mac trucks transporting Marlboros
Deep-fried snowflakes served to homeless children using slide rules for Xbox 360 controls
YYUR--- too wise you are
Yogi takes the fork to eat Pooh’s honey on easy street with Boo
While Sisyphus rolls silly putty over Sunday comics
My sanguine sangria whine
Hysterical Mimosa
I brought the OJ
from my own trees
in the same half gallon mason jar
that Conversion Disorder pregnancy girl
brought her OJ in
the night my son invited
her to our New Year’s Eve
fondue party.
“You don’t have to sit with her
I’m not such a good mom.
I brought champagne
to go with the OJ
to the first women’s team meeting
of the season.
I knew the co-captain was in recovery.
I didn’t know her wife wanted a teatotaling
outrigger team.
I toast my Al-anon membership
with my mimosa,
“Here’s to the things I cannot change,”
and then hide the champagne bottle
behind some cookie boxes
on a potluck table.
The attorney who strokes,
and brought mimosas
to the paddler’s open house,
raises her orange bubbly plexiglass
from across the room.
Girls’ teams have always mystified me
hysterical blindness
hysterical moods
hysterical ostracizing
the hysterical hysterics
and now
grandmother to hysterical pregnancy
and spiked orange juice.
Mirror Neurons
I have professionally trained
mirror neurons.
Put me behind
a great paddler
and voilá.
Sit me behind
a
paddler who can’t reach
and who tears through the water
and well,
neurons that fire together
wire together.
My performance pathways
have detours
hardwired
when shame
comes on board.
Scold me
berate me
even give me multiple directives
and detours fire
lighting up my
neuro highways.
No amount of reassuring
myself
that I’m not six
and a wooden coat hanger
isn’t about
to break over my skin
will help.
Silver
Rough ocean
77°
49 canoes
on the starting line.
Another novice skipper
on his chase boat
with no ladder
for swimmers.
I hope he remembers
to turn off the propeller
when I’m in the water.
Change coach
sweet as a kindergarten teacher
with Oreos and fresh coconut.
Steersman hard-catching
for a first place.
Comedian in seat 3
joking about mermaids smoking seaweed.
Racing in the young adults division
rubbing Icy Hot
on my arthritis
to keep up.
The radio says
we’re cleared for first changes.
The skipper revs
throwing up wakes
shuts off the engine.
I jump overboard
slap the water with my hand.
Steersman lines up
on my geyser.
No one mentioned
the circling fin
until we were putting life vests
back on to the trailer
wearing
our silver medals.
But a Dream
I don’t row.
I paddle.
7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
I don’t paddle my canoe.
Well, I don’t paddle my own canoe.
7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
I’m one of six.
The canoe is the seventh member of our team.
7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
I explain this to my mother.
She’s feeling better.
That green sparkle is back.
Still, she’s forgotten my story
about last weekend’s race,
28.3 miles of open sea.
The tea leaves stayed
duct-taped to the Menehune notch
on the back of outrigger number 19.
7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
Piemonte was the steersman.
I sat seat 5.
As we approached Avalon,
Tamara, seat 4,
kept taking her paddle out of the water
to look for a hole in the blade.
7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
“And 666 means love,” my mother says,
“not the devil, like on tattoos.”
“Oh,” I say, “Hmm.”
Her Amazon parrots screech over me.
“And there’s a palm tree,
like they have all over the world,
at one gate,” my mother says,
“and a lion,
like I draw, at the other.”
I stare.
She pats her Bible.
“I’m going to make Ezekiel’s secret clear,
so that anyone can understand.”
“Uh huh,” I say.
We’d been pulling hard for an hour and a half,
Now paddling down the last two miles.
Tamara stared out at the horizon,
dipping only the tip of her out-of-time paddle in the water.
Piemonte yelled.
7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
I shouted for her to follow
the wide orange jersey in seat 3
7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
But she’d faded back into her own world.
6, 7, 8, hut, hike, ho.
“Two boats,” I said, under my breath,
“passed us as we approached the finish line.”
My mother pulled her caricatures from a manila envelope,
lions, wombats, and palm trees.
“I’m the only one,” she says, “who knows this.”
“Alright,” I said.
I count the sets of sixes,
in rows,
on each page.
My life is but a dream.
It Might not Matter
There’s no room
under the seat
of a 6-man canoe.
I unzipped my splash skirt
with the green army man
crouched with his rifle
tied to the white pull,
and crawl under it.
I can’t find the button
to turn on the pump.
It might be necessary
during the rough ten-mile
ocean race.
Position is everything.
My mom’s position
on estate planning
is that she’ll just go to sleep
and wake up when Jesus returns.
That he was named Joshua
the first time around
is an irrelevant detail,
and it still won’t get her
a trust
or even a will
for that matter.
My son and I
tried to find
the right words
at the correct decibels
to make her understand.
Maybe it will matter
maybe it won’t.
The steerswoman pokes
her steering blade
under the stern,
keeps us lined up
on the starting line.
I push anything
that might be an on button
above and around
the white cylinder
bungeed to the hull
of our boat.
This is no position
to start a race.
I’m a stowaway
not a seat five
engine room
paddler.
The air horn blares
I bang my head on the gunnel
the pump
hums
seat four swings me my paddle
over her shoulder
we’re off with a chaotic
start.
I zip up the canvass skirt
with the little army-man pull.
At least
he’s prepared to die.
Stand-Ins
Somewhere hiking
up in the mountains
beyond cell reception
are campers
oblivious to what they’ve left us
to face.
Our women’s coach
left her second in command
and her wife,
in charge.
Our rec coach
passed his steering blade to
Attorney Asperger.
There’s no way
they could have predicted
and couldn’t have avoided it.
The
steroid women
lost their tempers
tantrumed at each other
gave relentless directives
without a single compliment,
or maybe one
that sounded
just like a scolding.
Red Bulls in hand
they stomped off
the team.
No great loss
except for the theater.
We had to send out
rescue boats
for the trusting paddler
who inquired of Asperger
for a lesson in steering.
He sent her off alone
into the high winds
a swift current
in a 400 pound heavy.
“Sink or swim”
or be carried backwards
paddling and poking
with all her might
into the wildlife preserve
and out of sight.
When Moses descends Sinai
to the vista
of missed-placed veal
someone will drink
gold-speckled water
upon the coach’s return.
Eight
At eight, the 8th grade girls
on the yellow school bus
tricked me into believing
I could become invisible.
“Hold your breath and close your eyes,”
they’d say.
I’d scoot my penny loafers
on the black walkway
bouncing between the Naugahyde benches.
The familiar diesel fumes filled my nose.
The air brakes pitched me forward.
I explored the air with my hands
and smiled with my almost-grown-in buck teeth.
“Where’s Lois?” they’d say. “Where’d she go?”
That’s the year I understood,
my mother could be tricked by men
with “Elder” in front of their names.
She stopped seeing reality at eight,
when she lost her own mother to cancer,
and became invisible at eight.
Home Scent
Dinner smells sucked up into
a clattering exhaust fan
covering angry stomps.
“So, what’s for dinner?”
Bruises and welts
and tattletales
to Daddy,
who threw up
his own soft hands
to deflect airborne bicycles,
airborne shoes,
airborne blasts from the hose,
airborne fists,
airborne distain
on squealing tires
dragging Dad airborne