there are no couples
not any that you can determine, anyway: just a lot of buzzing around (and in, and with) one another in pollen-coated, friendswap delight. you know about ellen on and off with simon then sam, and dorie with edgar except when that band guy jack hangs around, and then there’s the weird autumn/connor friends-or-more combo, and all the random hookups you’ve heard about at these famous lake house parties. it’s enough to make even you feel like a prude, and then today in enviro science jessica can’t shut up about “hanging out” with parker over the weekend, about varsity hot dogs and milkshakes and just driving around awhile, ending up in the hollywood video parking lot unable to disentangle their mouths and hands and parts long enough to go choose a movie, about pining for him since seventh grade, about closure, about feeling complete, about how perfect it is. you cannot believe the grin on her face, the delight in her eyes and the question in yours—but you and flip?—because while there will never again be any boy’s wrist to tie the balloon of your helium heart to (it has floated high far away from the heavy stone of that unnamable boy in chicago), you would never be with someone and then someone else, and you would definitely never be someone to someone else’s else. but here jessica is in all her “empowered” glory, and you are uncomfortable. when she sees your face she rushes to explain how, yeah, flip is a little mad at parker but really he has no right because this is her senior year she should be experiencing everything and if he really loves her he’ll want her to get all her fantasies out of her system, right? you think yes in some weird way that makes a little sense—it isn’t like the idea is foreign—but at the end of the day you still wish you had put your hands on her shoulders and simply told her that it’s all fine and good if nobody is really with anybody and that’s all okay with everybody, but the real point should be to be nobody—not to anybody. that’s the whole point.
wandering: atlanta
still not used to a house and not a high-rise, a porch and not a doorman, but you have to admit the wide-open fresh-air space is pretty nice sometimes. though that’s where you draw the line. at nice. walking the several long blocks through the empty (weirdly somewhat green in winter) park along ponce to school doesn’t bug you so much—the time to think or else not-think is rather welcome, just you and your earbuds and the one-two of your boots below. it’s after school when the differences between here and there become painfully clear. sure there are gorgeous, magazine-worthy homes on your street, and sure it’s fun—as always—to look at them and wonder about the people inside, wonder what kind of lives they’re living. sure too there are shops around—a couple blocks over, then up from your house—boutiques and gift stores and clever little restaurants. a homey pizza joint. a dad-worthy beer bar. even a sweet little gelato place, paolo’s—a word you like saying to yourself: POW-los—but after two days of ambling, two days of gazing into windows and yards, strolling up this street and that, you realize why you’re pacing: there’s no coffee place around here. not one you can get to lickety-quick. there is no hideout around the corner. no escape. yes, if you make it the l-o-n-g hike down past ponce, past the “help I’m an AIDS victim” tranny begging spare dollar bills, and the speeding traffic and the urban outfitters there’s a (okay, pretty cool) joint called the san francisco company, but you can’t take yourself too many times to a san francisco that isn’t san francisco, and besides you’re pretty sure dad wouldn’t relish you making that little stroll any time near dark. and anyway you should be able to just walk out your door and practically into a starbucks, or four other indie anti-starbuckses, where maybe they have good danish. this town full of parking lots is no good. though you try to be like mom, try to see each city as a new place full of potential adventure, being unable to walk out your door and be in the midst of all the happenings on the loop, being unable to find good places while staying on your parents’ short leash makes it sink in that this is an asphalt prison and you’re stuck here for four-ish more months before you can fly free.
the event planner
not even two weeks in this new crazy southern sprawl of a town and mom has a handful of invitations and tickets and parks and new things to do and see. it has surprised you in every city and at this point you’d think it wouldn’t, but once again instead of being unimpressed and exhausted by it all, she is flinging herself at the experience with wide-open kindergartner arms. this time no coit tower tours or joffrey ballet, but a so-so museum called the high. always the major attractions before she moves on to things with a little more local color. the aquarium. the coke museum. martinis at imax. shows at the fox. a thrashers game when she doesn’t even really like hockey. she’s a tourist in her own town—these moves we make are just one big long vacation for her, so why not make the most of it? she never begs you to go but always wants you to, which somehow makes it harder to refuse. harder to sit at home. harder to punish her for bringing you here at all.
mystery mail
the magazines, catalogs, and credit card offers have hardly had enough time to catch up with your new georgia address, but even still, today you have some genuine mail, which alone would be enough to give you pause and crook your eyebrow. this however is a real heart-stopper: a regular index postcard covered in duct tape and foil so that the whole thing shines silver in the sun as you stand there in the grass (not ice and snow) by the end of the driveway, stunned to stopping halfway between the house and the curb. five ragged words are scrawled on the back, along with your address. SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND, it says. there is no signature, but you know that handwriting. and the postmark’s from chicago.
unwanted memory #1
he wasn’t supposed to be there. you’d already said good-bye to him—you were leaving the next day for your new house (new school, new life) in atlanta. it was after dinner and you were full of all the things you didn’t want to be feeling, all the things that wouldn’t let go of you anyway. it was way after his shift at the museum was over, and you’d already pictured him on the el back to wicker park. the morning would be crazy with the movers packing your final few things—the ones that were really yours—so you took yourself for one last coffee, gave yourself an hour of self-pity you didn’t really even understand. then it would be time to chuck yourself under the chin, straighten your shoulders, and not look back. there was nothing left but this. it was all already over and gone—so many things you hadn’t said and wouldn’t now. it burned your throat; it stung your eyes. so when you saw him sitting in the corner there in his scarf you almost turned around, but it was too late—he looked up, smiled at you with a sadness that crushed your heart. it didn’t matter—you’d still be leaving the next day, he’d still vanish, you’d still disappear. and yet you sleepwalked over to him, eyes watering. he stood. he held you. you let him. you didn’t speak.
care package
walking up the front steps, still staring at your shiny postcard, you nearly stumble on a package too big for the mailbox; it is in recycled brown paper bag wrap, drawn with stars and ponies and girls in tutus, all aglitter with luli’s swirling metallic pens. today wasn’t a bad day nor a good day only yet another day but now it has turned into a hooray day and a sad day too. luli girl back in sf with her knee-high socks and her twenty pairs of cowboy boots. her too-short shorts even in january and the tiny black braids all a-kook and poking up stiff around her head. luli and her late-night vespa rides up over twin peaks and out to the crashing coast, her moleskine notebooks filling up with secret thoughts and complex codes. there is no girl like luli: not before or since. you slice open the packing tape and lift out the tinseled tissue, find a hodgepodge of nothing that is all completely her: two enameled chopsticks for your hair, one of those string creatures no one thinks are cool anymore, a mix cd of “songs for the south,” a bag of saltwater taffy and another of those malted milkballs (can u git them down theyah? she tries to drawl in her scrawl) that she likes but you don’t much. a mad lib she made up for you out of parts of antigone, and a pair of red socks a-moo with pur
ple and green cows. she is old-fashioned and still likes to write letters, luli, though half its contents you already know because she e-mailed newer updates before this arrived. still it is like she is there with you, more than a status update or a photo upload, more than an e-mail, more than a call. the couch is strewn with color and sparkle and she is here with you—luli. like always she has followed you to where you need her to be.
Becca
Liberation
every school day is
every unfriendly face is
every long hour is
only a public school tunnel I have to get through
to the light of him
on the other side
In the Volcano’s Wake
He places his
fired-iron hands around my rib cage—
Hephaestus’ apprentice, moving like lava:
firm and solid—formidable—
and yet flowing graceful rivulets.
Our lips—bodies—meet
as he pours over me—smothering me melting me
so I am liquid and lava too,
flowing with him spreading pushing surging seeing
nothing but orange—
orange orange orange orange orange
and those yellow dots that are
the hot center of a fire flickering.
We are burning everything in front of us.
All is
wavering molten—everything molten—thick with
heat heavy and searing.
The trees in the forest
burst into flames
as we approach,
dissolving into cinders as we surge surge surge past
burning everything with the power of us,
everything blazing and burning fueled by us
—incinerated in us—surging and flowing and plunging
until finally there is the edge—the ocean—
the abyss.
And we rush to it and drop— crash
into it then, plunging and swirling down now into
the darkness,
a geyser of steam and bubbles and the
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ascending,
filling the skies—
floating up in billows but simultaneously sinking
down,
down, down into the cold drifting down,
connecting finally to the ground again,
slowly letting ourselves be cooled,
becoming smoothed
and re-formed.
The edges of me disappear—
can’t feel anything except where his hand
is in my hand
or where our stomachs are together ribs matching,
mouths one mouth.
In the steam wash I really am breathing his breath;
my heart really is his heart, beating.
First Game
The trees are still sticks of winter,
my breath a white bird
flying from the cage of my ribs.
January isn’t done with this field
but here I am, watching
the first stretches of spring.
Cold metal seeps
from my jeans to my bones—
not even the grass will show its green face.
The dry air steals sound
before it is heard;
only the shapes of noise happen
—and one long whistleshriek.
Out here
it isn’t hard to remember
teacup cocoons,
sleeping bag saunas,
and the coze of lake fires over break.
White on gray, the figures
bend and snap with action.
The sharp crack of a bat
is like slabs of ice, unhinging.
Baseball season
has begun again.
The Catcher
The only one
looking out
instead of in—he is
hunched over the plate: handsonknees,
eyes shaded but squinting,
watching—a panther—
the moments beneath the movement.
Only I know
inside him—haiku swimming.
Those old-soul eyes
see in sevens and fives
—counting syllables on top of strikes—
looking to the day when he is free
to follow
his true heart in classrooms
which this athlete’s body will pay for—
invisible poet,
deep watchful creature of sinew and silence.
Goodnight, Sweetheart
Homework/tomorrow’s prep/bedtime routine complete
and I am
sliding into quilt-blanket-pillow-land
when the bedside phone beeps: You awake?
His own phone doesn’t even ring when I call back,
it’s just
his voice there, quiet,
cozed down in pillows too:
Sorry I had to leave so fast
after the game. The guys were hungry, so—
And I’m so quick to answer with understanding,
that I’m not sure
I sound as sure
as I wanted to try to sound.
Team camaraderie is as vital
as team competition.
I know he has a role to fill,
someone else he has to be.
And I get it, I do.
I get it every time
he thumps them all on their backs
instead of reaching a dirty hand
out to me.
We’ll make it up this weekend, he growlish-purrs,
and—like that—his voice is a wildfire
burning away everything,
scorching and searing only one thought
down to my bones.
Time to Get Started
First writers’ forum meeting of the new semester,
and now there is no more
get-to-know-you sniff-out;
now we are seniors
and we are in charge:
a literary band
—a flock of formidables.
Now is our time
to make decisions.
To make flyers.
To take submissions
to prove ourselves.
There is no room for
Sara’s kohl-rimmed eyerolling,
Rama’s heavy-bored sighs,
the freshmen’s giggling insecurity
or Charlie in his too-big jeans playing
existential devil’s advocate.
It is time for us to really get going somewhere.
It is time for us to do our thing.
It is time to make a magazine.
It is time to unleash the secret weapon.
It is time to press go.
It is time for us
to show this sorry school
what it means to be poetic
what it means
to feel with meaning.
Seventeen Reasons Why
Out of school once again and I can
finally turn on my phone
wait
the agonizing seconds
to see what beeps in.
I am
already on my way to the parking lot
—Freya in tow—
turning the ignition and
revving my way out of here:
off to errands
instead of another baseball practice,
keeping my points in mom’s favor
as late as I want.
Still I thrill
at that little digital envelope: its beep and its blink.
Still my breath
catches,
and I flush
reading his lunchtime composition,
his illicit thoughts
meant just for me:
tired and sore from
six AM practice—the ache
for you is greater.
The Empress of Gossip Magazines: To Freya (with apologies to Wallace Stevens)
Call the pourer of cheap buzzes,
The tipsy one, and bid her whip
In the bedroom scraps of scintillating secrets.
Let the bitches dawdle in designer dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring Blow-Pops wrapped in last month’s Us Weekly.
Let pure escape be the answer to “or not to be.”
The only empress is the empress of gossip magazines.
Take from the shopping cart of distraction,
Lacking the three un-wonkie wheels, that glossy stack
—from which she embellished fantasies once—
and spread it so as to cover her freckled face.
If her poorly pedicured feet protrude, they come
To show how silly she is, and dumb.
Let her lip gloss be her only gleam.
The only empress is the empress of gossip magazines.
The Accident
Ten minutes in Target with Freya turned into
an hour, so already we are late,
but this songissogood; turn it up; Christ could the
light be any shorter?
Don’t forget unsalted butter on the way home
Mom said, but
I should text her to see if there is anything else.
Ohmygod go go GO oh god now I have to get in
that other lane—shit
—Wait—
Where did that—
Why is everything too slow how did
my car my car
[What was that noise did I really hit her?]
My god my foot won’t stop shaking
and Freya is screaming for no reason.
Wait.
What?
What just —ohmygod.
Here is the lady at my window.
Do I get out now she—looks so angry.
Next to me Freya says holy shit and I say
shut up.
It wasn’t my fault.
I should get out now she
—No I’m not hurt—
Butmyfootwon’tstopshaking
How did
my car