Juice Read online

  stick ice picks

  through their eardrums. Some

  never open up their throats.

  It’s been this way

  for ages. Here,

  feel these in your palm,

  tears the storks shed.

  Familiar?

  Behind Glass

  I am something here

  behind glass,

  my name in English and

  italicized Latin.

  No one goes by without tapping.

  After I’d been captured,

  I was lowered

  to this rock,

  too small to hide behind,

  too sharp to crawl under.

  I have bowls,

  white shiny bowls,

  shallow one for pellets,

  deep one to drink from

  but not drown in.

  Nights when the lights dim,

  I inch up the glass.

  By sunup, collapse

  in my dent

  in the gravel.

  No one hears me breathe,

  no one hears me scuttle.

  No one

  hears me

  tap back.

  Crib Note

  This is your last chance

  to pick me up

  or I am crawling up

  on my trike

  crossing the interstate when

  a let-up in traffic

  getting work

  wherever I can get it

  sleeping

  in unlocked cars

  finding

  food

  giving up on love

  after a series of nannies

  taking my own

  hand

  walk-

  ing.

  Special Delivery

  That little kid’s been playing

  in the snow all morning and when I

  venture out, I see his face is identical

  to mine when I was seven.

  I call to him, hey kid, come here a minute

  and he yells back, I don’t wanna come in yet, Ma.

  Milkman just happened to be coming up the walk

  and reminded me, you know kids these days,

  they don’t care who their parents are,

  they’re just glad they can call one or two theirs.

  It’s then the little kid calls in his direction,

  hey Pop, you got chocolate?

  The Two Armstrongs

  Boy deep down inside the man

  has Keds on. Springy as a pogo stick.

  Divides his day-to-day among his pockets:

  maps, collapsible telescope,

  Mars bars, compass.

  On his belt, canteen full of life force:

  Kool-Aid or Tang.

  Boy’s been rattling the man’s

  thorax. Man just calls it gas,

  something he ate. Words come,

  sound like module, lunar.

  Doctor comes,

  pulls a beanie, bent propeller

  from the man’s esophagus.

  Boy launches

  like a Saturn 5 rocket. Lands

  in a silver-on-the-inside cape.

  When he lifts his arms,

  a thousand parakeets fall out.

  Doctor falls down.

  Man puts down

  his instruments.

  Throws his keys

  into nearby weeds and woods.

  Donates explorer/discoverer biographies.

  Stops the mail.

  Boy shows him

  how to walk all over again,

  leave prints

  that make good pictures. How

  not to kick up dust, jar rocks.

  Eventfully they plant a flag.

  Place hands upon hearts.

  Never before, stripes

  wide as these. Never again,

  stars this close.

  Peninsulaville

  Outside Ken’s bedroom window

  is a whale. Not a whale of a something

  but a humpback, according to his Book

  of Whales. His mom is screaming

  because her garden of the month

  is under it and its ajar mouth

  and louvered shutter of baleen

  are pressed against the kitchen

  window. Ken’s dad is on the horn

  to whalers his fingers stopped on

  in the Yellow Pages. As a backup he’s calling

  the chainsaw rental place over on Broad.

  Ken’s dad’s the practical one,

  his mom, the hysterical one just like all

  the families on the block with an only child.

  Whereabouts

  One Monday when they both have off,

  Joe and the Mrs. go walking

  in the cobblestone streets of the Middle East

  and come across Son, full-grown,

  selling fish pitas through a window.

  Ordering two and refillable lemonades,

  they lean for awhile against a wall,

  then ask why he isn’t making tables

  and something for them to sit on.

  Son shrugs his shoulders

  and Joe and the Mrs. shrug theirs

  and take another bite and gulp. They nod

  they are happy to see Son in one place

  but Son tells them he wants to open

  franchises all over the known world

  and ever the aspirer, beyond. After a clearing

  of throats, lip wiping and teeth picking,

  Joe and the Mrs. empty their pockets

  on the sill and tell Son of a place called Miami

  and he definitely needs to ease up on the salt.

  Next day Son books a passage on a trade ship

  and ends up cooking for the captain and crew

  to pay his way and on the way among islands

  and ports and the vast sand stretches,

  the cruise ship industry is born.

  Months later,

  loaded and living in a condo overlooking

  Biscayne Bay, Son sends for his parents,

  now retired and living on a fixed income.

  One week before their arrival,

  they’re reported lost in the Bermuda Triangle

  so Son sets out in the middle of the night

  and finds himself in the eye of a Category 5.

  No one’s seen hide nor hair.

  No one’s heard a word.

  Son Time

  I know you from Cairo,

  my five year old says

  to a total stranger.

  I apologize for my son

  but the stranger says,

  it was at the Al Fishawi’s,

  I remember. A dog got loose.

  Yup, my son says, I’m the one

  who caught it and took it

  to the cook. The stranger

  shakes my son’s hand,

  says, I always wondered what

  happened to you. I see

  you escaped the soldiers.

  I did, my son says,

  and it wasn’t all that easy

  if you get my drift.

  I do I do, admits the stranger

  whose name is Bob. Bob says,

  I’m going to Barcelona

  in the spring. Me too,

  my son says, I want to see

  some Gaudi and learn

  Spain Spanish.

  I tell my son we need to be

  going, it’s time for supper.

  Time for what? he
asks.

  What, A Day

  Each day is not a new day for Terry.

  Take last Thursday.

  He repeated it on Friday

  and again on Sunday. Yes,

  it was that good.

  Even when bad,

  a day gets repeated,

  sometimes once a week for months.

  People other than Terry

  have told me on occasion they miss a day,

  particularly from work

  and usually find it at home

  or at the beach, the casino.

  I tell Terry

  on both our days off

  I’d like a day

  when the planet is spinning so fast it turns it

  into the next without so much as a night

  and you see yourself coming and going at the same time,

  there is that much light.

  Terry turns to me, yup, that

  will be a day.

  Night to Remember

  What if Venus and Saturn, and Mars along for blush,

  did meet up that night outside delivery?

  What if all that the parents had in the world

  was the donkey? Be assured, a Cadillac of donkeys.

  And what if the parents themselves were drop-dead

  gorgeous with perfect SATs and Harvard behind them?

  What if the inimitable Three Tenors showed up

  with the sounds of glass breaking behind them

  and smelling like the canals of Venice?

  Indeed it would be a night to remember,

  everyone standing around wondering

  if this new little comet would ever shut up,

  if Earth could stand still long enough for a picture,

  if up is verily where we go from here.

  Reward

  Samuel finds an angel wing, a left one,

  hanging in the pear tree in his side yard.

  Local paper does a feature

  and its picture is broadcast full-span

  on the six o’clock news.

  Samuel decides to make it

  the rest of his life’s work if need be

  to return the wing to the angel who too must feel lost.

  Hey, you got wings and one’s missing,

  who wouldn’t feel lost?

  And the wing, the wing

  has got to feel lost without its angel.

  Anyway, by the look on his face,

  Samuel has no clue where to start

  but starts by putting the wing back in the pear tree,

  way up high on a tippy-top branch where

  punks and strays cannot get at it

  and just after a few hours up there in broad daylight,

  gone.

  Then this pear

  seemingly from out of nowhere

  falls on Samuel’s head

  and bounces into his already-cupped hands.

  It is the most perfect pear he’s ever held or beheld.

  He carries it to his kitchen and puts it in a bowl

  where in less than a week

  it stinks to high heaven.

  Very Last Body of Water

  We thought

  down at the government

  we’d shape it

  like an hourglass,

  tribute

  to its life-giving force. Of course

  you can only see

  its shape

  if you’re up above it.

  We know

  you want to touch it

  so we’re passing around

  a bowl.

  Dip a finger, taste it,

  flick some

  in the dirt.

  Stir it into mud,

  beautiful beautiful mud.

  Smear some

  on a cheek.

  Dab some

  on a brow.

  Close your eyes keep them closed.

  Try to picture

  cloud.

  New Ark

  Noah didn’t know it but his couples cruise

  could have led a mission to the moon

  or some new planet captured in his scrolls.

  Leonardo left no doodles dangling in his margins

  of even one contraption big enough to get

  an animal kingdom cargo across his universe.

  Hubble’s pixels don’t reveal a hint of prints,

  no teeth nor bones of beings as we know them,

  even out among nearby pulsars and quasars.

  So let’s put out a call to any UFO hovering

  just above the trees or snorkeling on the reef.

  Say things are mighty shaky here. Please overnight

  these sole surviving, genetically unmodifieds

  to greener pastures, whiter waters,

  skies beyond our wildest blue yonders.

  Last Wishes

  I want to walk above the East River

  before I die. On the Brooklyn Bridge

  of course. I know I’ll die

  before I see Architeuthis alive.

  Heard tell its razor beak

  could take my head off like a lollipop.

  Meanwhile I promise not to get too close

  to rims of any ruins. I’ll try to take

  just one stair at a time. Will you

  take my hand for all

  of my last wishes? I won’t beg

  although my time is just around a corner

  like the bistro famous for last suppers.

  When you see me on the other side,

  my hair will be slicked back

  but I won’t have on my snake boots.

  Look for me among submersibles.

  Look for me among the birds and planes.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the editors of the publications in which the following poems have appeared, occasionally in slightly different versions or with different titles:

  Avatar Review: “Last Wishes”

  Bird’s Thumb: “Appalachia”

  Café Review: “Dementia” (reprinted in April 2009

  Editors’ Edition)

  Chelsea Station: “Laughing”

  Cincinnati Review, University of Cincinnati:

  “Less is Milk”

  Coe Review, Coe College: “Breaking the News”

  Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian State University:

  “Moves”

  Edison Literary Review: “The Resonance in Magnetic”

  Faultline, University of California, Irvine:

  “Building a Better Mouse”

  Forge: “Night to Remember” and “Peninsulaville”

  Helen: A Literary Magazine: “Dreamboat”

  Heliotrope: “Postcard from Vermont”

  Imitation Fruit: “Crib Note”

  Licking River Review, Northern Kentucky University:

  “Juice” (originally titled “Cost to Get Back

  into Summer”)

  Lumberyard: “Birder”

  LUNGFULL! Magazine: “Son Time”

  Oak Bend Review: “Dementia”

  Oxford Magazine, Miami University, Ohio:

  “Bruised Patella”

  Packingtown Review, University of Illinois, Chicago:

  “Accounting Major” and “Chicken Little”

  Passager: “Suburban Pastoral” and

  “The Two Armstrongs”

  Pemmican: “Atlas”

  RFD Magazine: “That You, Dawn”

  Red Booth Review: “Win Win” and “Different Directions”

  righthandpointing: “Make Do”

  Spank th
e Carp: “Hookey”

  Stickman Review: “Out of Water”

  Syzygy: “Meteorology of Me” and “Flying Objects”

  Triggerfish Critical Review: “For Ages”

  Williamsport Guardian: “Pyrogyro”

  Windsor Review, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada:

  “Day the Moon Was Out All Day”

  I would like to thank the editors, especially Jaynie Royal, and everyone at Regal House Publishing for their generosity and unfailing support. I would like to thank my fellow writers in the Market Street Writers’ Co-op in Williamsport, Pennsylvania for listening to and critiquing many of these poems. Thank you to the late Penelope (Penny) Austin for her friendship and encouragement. Thank you to my inspiring teachers in poetry at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Extra special thanks to Rebecca Kinzie-Bastian and Matthew Lippman for tirelessly tending to the manuscript during it preparation. Last but not least, I want to thank my family and friends for everything else.