Brick Wall
I never saw the children
who lived next door,
but I heard the hard
words their mother
hurled and the shrieks
the 88 piano keys beneath
their labor made. Over
time their mother’s tone
did not soften, but Bach
emerged, and Beethoven.
There was a door I
could hear––it
was opening.
Safe
It’s bolted to the floor
of my childhood,
in the basement
cedar closet––
a locked room
in a locked room
where my mother
keeps the shimmering
bits of herself
in velvet pouches,
in tissue and
laminated boxes
and when it’s her
turn to get a shiny
diagnosis, we go
down there. It’s
a warm summer
morning and we sit
cross-legged, like
children on the floor,
and the power’s
out, so I’m holding
a flashlight while
my mother turns
the dial, aligning
the tumblers. We’re
trying to be quiet
because my father
is in the next room
listening to patients
trying to fix themselves
via time travel. The closet
smells like a forest, and
inside the evergreens
my mother asks: This,
this, this? Because I’ve
asked for something,
some brightness she
can hand off before
the avalanche of every-
thing without her.
And suddenly my father
has pushed the door open.
He’s standing there with
a paperweight the drug
company gave him, with
his boy scout flashlight,
thinking thieves, thinking
his job is to keep us
safe––and there we are,
laps glitter-filled, breaking
into our beautiful, fugitive
lives.
Tunnel
Never an Everest
of love. Always
a tunnel. Never
a ride they sink
much money
into, but a slap-
dash fiasco,
a dimly lit fire
hazard as likely
to showcase fan-
blown ghosts as
plaster cupids. You
know the drill: they
strap you in to
the two-person
boat attached
to a rusty track
and off you go
for the six-
minute lurch
through the cross
between haunted
house and Okefenokee.
Six minutes to
neck and unzip,
six minutes to be
oblivious to the flashing
red eyes of would-
be crocodiles
in fetid water, six
minutes to kiss
and fumble and
whatever else
is allowed two
bodies in six minutes,
and believe you me,
it’s a lot, you can
sail pretty far, nearly
to Byzantium in
six minutes, until
the rinky-dink
ship sputters
into port, until
other lovers get
strapped in, until
your get your
land legs back,
and still dizzy
you beeline for
the closest roller
coaster, for the mad
teacup, for the tilt-
a-whirl, for those
bumper cars
of love we can’t
get enough of.
