Homecomings

Home. House. Kitchen. Room. Growing up. Home?

I come home, but can't find the kitchen. The kitchen is missing: the white metal cabinets that don't quite close; the tupperware drawer filled with containers that have no lids; the cereal cabinet full of entirely too many different types of cereal, most of which will become stale before they are eaten; the square oak table, heavy—it too is missing; the stainless steal cabinets—“Hey, did you know that the family that lived in this house before the family before us owned a restaurant??” “No, but when I was 12, we let the sink water fill up and flood the stainless steal cabinet. That’s why the cabinets have a high ledge anyway, right?”

I used to sit on top of the cabinet, by the stove. I used to eat junk food out of that same corner; splatter chocolate chip pancake batter all over the floor beneath it; watch Perry Mason on the tiny, fuzzy TV, commanded by a cheap fork, from across the room. I used to cry while baking brownies with my mother; laugh while I scooped out avocados with my grandmother; hit my brother in the chest while I tried (always unsuccessfully) to steal the last cookie; drive my father absolutely nuts by not putting the lid back onto the margarine container.

I come home. Where’s the kitchen? Where are the stains, the spots, the crooked cabinets? Where’d that goddamn fuzzy TV go? And the cereal? What am I supposed to eat for breakfast? I can’t find the forks, the knifes, the plates, the canned foods.

Granite, hickory and hard wood floors replace childhood.

And what the hell happened to my room?

My childhood room had exposed brick, painted a shiny lavender until I grew up, turned 13 and toned it down. The now cream-colored windowsills are stained forever with crayon daisies. There are prescription label warnings forever littering the full-length mirror: take with food; take as directed by physician; do not stray from the path. Bumper stickers scraps remain steadily glued to the windows; portraits of the Beatles stuck above the doorway; a million tiny thumbtack holes littering the walls: leftovers.

Now a cross hangs from sateen off-white bricks. Yes, a cross (as in Jesus). And, what’s worse? Computers, calculators, calendars, clock radios; file cabinets, fax machines, phone lines; sterile desk lamps. All immediately crush the ghost of adolencsent attempts of self-realization.

I can still see a candle wax stain on the bookshelf. I remember hours of angsty survival. And now? I see my old typewriter, relegated to the corner, and want to cry.

Home. There's nothing quite like it.

Battlefields

We tug at ourselves more now
than when we were just babies
on a playground, gathered
‘round a rope, knees
almost as dirty as the sand.

I saw the tornado coming, the tightness,
compact in the air. I could smell it
sneaking up the hill. Yet it startled me
when it crossed the line

of boys versus girls. I
dropped the rope. I let go
to watch its smallness fight
against its hunger. I always let go.

“Ayudáme, Señor”

Her desperate faith
reached out from beneath
the sobbing. Unevenly,

the taxi slammed the breaks,
jammed her words
to avoid a collision
with Flor de Caña—the rum
that tries so hard to hold
Managua’s streets together;
to keep the night still
and distracted. Only this,

and the cross, dangling
in the rearview mirror,
could possibly keep voices smooth

and even, like the absolute
silence of the child
strewn across her lap,
eyes frozen open.

Bañar

I bathed with a boy today
scraped clean my white skin
(too soft for the sun),
while he threw rocks at minnows,
bending the current from streaks
into circles.

His dark skin (stretched tight
around bones) shivered patiently,
waiting for me to finish.

Waiting for quiet

There is an audible difference
between quiet and silence.

Quiet is the moment when
the land is damp and satisfied,

the moment after the corn stalks
break through the dirt

to call the sun. But a women alone
with her baby, breast feeding

and rocking her to sleep,
is only quiet if she is not

waiting, if they are not waiting,
for a storm.

Salt water

I float buoyantly on my back;
allow the heavy, salty breeze to dissolve
the boundary between body and water.

I surrender to your peaks and crests:
rising, falling,
rising, falling, rising;
falling towards shore we crash.

We crash as waves
into the surf: tossing, turning;
erupting, spraying; sliding
slowly, as fingers into sand.

We have sipped the entire ocean.
We leave only salt.

Endings: A walk

Snow crackles under my feet
dry, like autumn.

An icicle falls from a tree
without changing color first:

an echo falling
through a canyon, crashing

like broken glass
without a wedding. The air is sharp

like my breath. The only color
left is the blue-white

of my fingertips.

Genesis

We awake and wash our hands
in preparation; we trim our beards
or pull back our hair;
we lace up our boots for work.

Like Sundays, we line up
next to each other, row after row.
But on Mondays, it is not our voices
that join to answer a call, but our hands.

Our worn hands are hard, cracked and ugly,
but we hold them open, palms
turned upward, and with them,
we weld raw hardness into life.

A use for blogs

Since I graduated from college, I've had no one to read the poetry I've written; no one to look upon it with new eyes and challenge my use of language. While I write primarily for the process, there is something very compelling about the poem itself. I find it to be a very fulfilling challenge to create a well-organized, accurately descriptive, accessible pile of words. And it is not only me that struggles towards (never realizable) perfection, as the poem takes on a life of its own, it, too, seeks to express itself to its fullest.

I think distance is important to this process, and while time can grant me some distance, it's not the same as someone else's eyes and experiences.

So, if any reader is so inclined, I'd love criticism. Any posted poems are new, raw and need help.

Beginnings

I believe in introductions, caveats and disclaimers:

I'm not sure how I feel about viewing blogs or writing them. Yet, I'm no less of a voyeur than the next person. I stick my neck out of the car window to look at accidents, monitor the daily behavioral patterns of my neighbors through my third story windows, actively listen in on conversations in public spaces.

Nor am I any less desiring of human connection-- of me knowing others, but especially of others knowing me. But despite my ever so ordinary tendencies, I still flinch at the anonymous openness involved in blogs, blogging or being blogged (I haven't even learned the correct verbiage yet.. mouses, mice, moose, meese?).

That said, perhaps a blog will open an accessible space for self expression, something I used to be good at, but since having chosen the chaotic life of a union organizer, haven't had time for. A space that sits on my computer screen, where I often eat breakfast, lunch and/or diner. A space that doesn't involve having to dig up my journal from my bedroom and search for a pen.

But, a blog cannot be a substitute for a journal, and maybe that's why I am weary of them. My journal is a protected, closed pocket. It belongs to no one, but myself. It is not false or performative. It is not constructed so as to create a digestible version of myself. My hands are warm inside of my pockets.

But maybe it's worth attempting to open a single pocket to see what falls out.