It’s six years since I was last home. It’s funny how quickly you can forget yourself. London is a long way from the village in Limerick where I spent one August as a teenager. We used to go a lot when I was a small boy, but I couldn’t remember it very well. But it wasn’t until I was fifteen that it became a part of me. Until then, I never wanted to visit family. It was summer after all, I should have been with friends, but my mother made me go.
“Love Letters,” “Purple Flowers,” and “Chicago Stars and Hospital Beds”
No comfort
in this world
No warmth
rising from the cracks
in this cement ground
Ice breaks
on the surface of the lake
implying your ability to drown
Out of the Blue
They say that the characters in a movie are affected by the developments the screenwriter creates between each of them, and that these characters are influenced by the paths taken within the plot. I envied characters that said or did things on the screen that they would never do in real life. In some ways, my life, or existence, was like a movie script—adventures sprouting up unexpectedly over many episodes.
“Cycling,” “Utter,” and “Glass”
On the ride to work I try to remember; did I make my bed?
—Wonder if I love myself, wonder if I care about my children’s children
Wonder where every plastic bottle went—each one I have sucked from and sent
on its journey, perhaps to landfill, and What does that pile look like
The Law of Forgetting
Sister has never sought recognition for her sacred work, but those afflicted with childlessness find her. They send heartrending letters. They send aged Manchego and Jamón. They send exquisite rosaries of rare wood and bone.
The couple from Salamanca is typical. It’s May 1973. They make a personal pilgrimage to the clinic, as if Sister were herself a saint.
“Sleeping,” “Elfie and My Mug,” and “The Land II”
I think I’m sleeping, night long, more than I think,
And days blur like leaves in a pitch-long fall,
while clocks run on with numbers that always blink,
then flicker backwards. I close my eyes and sink
to dreams…
“Good Old Dad,” “Nuns Fret Not,” and “That’s All Folks”
Had enough of it,
pushing along with
his job and family
and gave up.
Game over.
Good old dad,
always liked trains
and that’s where he went.
“Tree Rings,” “The White Cat,” and “Goodbyes”
My skin told me first, when I saw his picture. The cold memory of touch
a frantic messenger, almost swifter
than the optic nerve. My body remembers.
So I got into the shower, ran it scalding, breathed
the vapor like medicine, the mist a place to lose myself,
“Barefoot,” “Reconstructions,” and “Vulcan’s Flames”
He says his favorite clouds
all wear size seven shoes.
He knows she believes
she once saw a paisley rainbow
and will never forget it.
She wears size seven shoes
and her tears can be torrential,
yet they can still nurture
“Pull,” “The Fall,” and “Moth”
Unsure how many lives I’ve taken.
Hornets, spiders, the boy hardened – unbelonging
in the furling roots.
But this isn’t about the bodies,
it’s their shadows, seeping through the openings,
weighing the bones with dark.
“Black Tambourines,” “Brother Red Gold,” and “Flesh”
And I heard black tambourines, stolen
steel guitars, small-room tubas, forsaken
trumpets, green castanets, kettledrums
of gold, stained-glass window pianos
— the orchestra of the alley,
pavement joyously undefended.
“Contagion,” “Melancholia Covida,” and “Intermission”
Who among us has not been infected with COVID
fear? Waking, wanting to vomit but the vomit hangs
burning in our esophagus and we are not certain of the day
of the week or when our toilet paper will run out and if
there will be more in the stores. Who among us does
not fear dying alone, COVID keeping loved ones distant—
“Lake Ontario,” “This Town With One Bridge,” and “A Proctor at the Final Exam”
You are launching us in the boat
that you made seaworthy. It scrapes against the
pebbles which shift so reassuringly when the lake
is calm. It is your boat, your day, and we are your
children. We have brought along our families,
all that we have added to your empire.
Medicine
“Crazy weather we’ve been having,” an old woman said as she creaked her way forward to a row of chairs in the pharmacy, something in her knees snapping softly as she sighed and sat into the chair next to a man in early middle age, looking reflectively at his cell phone.
The man called “Cuch,” which was short for Cuchullin (his Irish mother had a thing for ancient epics), had saggy, red eyes like he’d been crying. Was this why she was making small talk? Normally the man would have dismissed trivial attempts to occupy time while waiting for a prescription with a clipped yep, but today something compelled him to reach out.
A Barber in Abingdon
A chill in the air woke Ali. It was just a slight draft but enough to brush the hairs on the back of his neck upright, if he’d had any. He’d shaved them clean off though, like the sparse hair on his head. Back in the day when hair loss was his only concern, Madiha, his wife, had caught him researching transplants online. She’d laughed, slipped off her headscarf and shaken out her hair, ‘Want some of mine?’ If he concentrated, he could still feel its soft weight and silky texture.
Fear in America
My students are working their way through The Rime of the Ancient Mariner when the superintendent’s voice crackles over the loudspeaker. “Excuse me teachers and students. We will now conduct a hard lockdown drill. Hard lockdown.” My class responds immediately, leaving their desks and joining me in the corner furthest from the room’s single entrance. Cody flicks the light switch off, and all sink to the floor.
Old Boyfriend
Chase Richard Pitt–my first love–came back into my life at 3:57 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in October. Well, technically he walked into Paris Café, my modest thrift-store-decorated establishment, asking if he could get a bottle of water and a slice of quiche to go. I know the exact time because I close my café every day at four, and I was just heading toward the door.
A Kitten Before the Fire
This was not how Senator William Sharon had intended to spend his retirement. Having amassed his fortune, failed to obtain re-election, and outlived his wife, Sharon had dreamed of living off the interest, tossing aside the newspapers once he tired of politics, and paying for discreet liaisons who could be trusted to dispose of themselves once they were no longer needed. It had come as an unpleasant surprise that the tides of business were ever-changing and unpredictable…
A Workplace
“A workplace is like a family, a home,” Megan says aloud as she faces her computer. She is thinking about the eight hours that people spend together at work, which is more than the time they spend awake at home.
It makes sense. Some even say it’s like an arranged marriage. Like it or not, you have to work with people, unrelated to you, hour after hour, day after day, and year after year.
Megan has worked in the Rehab Department for almost thirty-eight years. That is a long time.
“Cancer: A Paean,” “Legacy,” and “The Three Nuns: A Contrapuntal for Voice and Canvas”
Abditive—that’s you,
sneaky sniper, taking us out
more than a hundred types of ways.
A name change per each organ,
tissue, cell you invade…bronchus,
lung, prostate, colon, uterus…
From the shade you surface
“Old Bookstores,” “World,” and “Spoor”
are sad places, where the dead wait to be loved.
A teenager in the poetry section
sits on a red milk carton,
her black lipstick like an opera,
pulling one book down after another
in a frenzy of polite quiet.
“To the Dead Man Living Inside My Knee” and “What I Thought Was Pollution Was Really God”
A careless dictator, most days
I do not think of you
unless you protest, beating your fists
against the walls of my flesh
when I’ve danced you too hard
or damp February
clenches your teeth
into a knot of hot fury. Please
“If These Walls Could Talk,” “Images of Night,” and “Overheard on a Train”
If only these walls could talk
we wonder
What might goad their reluctant tongues?
Wondered more often
by those who would be betrayed or wounded by the
small talk or gloating of these walls
“Immortality in a Song,” “Meditation,” and “Repose”
The song begins—
the first beat calls forth
an aroma of strawberry syrup
from your vape as its smoke
dances with the music, past my nose,
and out through the windows
of your 2012 red Toyota Camry.