Redemption

My father comes from a breed unkind to sons
so who can blame my brother for saying
Good riddens when I tell him the old man’s dead.
And when I trick him into a graveyard tour
and pull alongside the flat rock under which
the old man sleeps face up and barefoot in his uniform,
who can blame my brother for saying 
I’m not interested.
And when I stand at the grave, who can blame my brother
for staying in the car and when in a loud voice 
I read the words on the plaque about two wars and 
a purple heart, who can blame my brother for standing
at my side and saying, Go sit in the car, please.
And when I lift my face to the clear sky, to redemption,  
I hear a pelting, a cloudburst.
And when I turn my eyes to that flat rock, 
my brother is urinating on it 

and who can blame him?

The voices

The voices arrive one day without warning.

No troubling ideas, just constant chattering. 

But this scares my mother nonetheless.
This is her mind, her spirit, her ego. 

Her instrument for living in this world. 

I want to ask if the voices sound like her, 
if they have a German accent, 

but I don't dare. 

They have no physical being, she says.

Her mind is blank, just noisy, coming 

from another consciousness. 

She talks to the priest about the voices 

and he wisely sends her to a doctor 

and gradually the voices fall silent. 

When my mother tells me this, the voices
are long gone. 

She is calm, unconcerned. 

She says it was just an electrical problem.

She is sitting across from me at Howard Johnson's. 

I have not seen her in two years and she looks and sounds
like one who is able to bear what she must bear, 
able to adjust herself to any situation, 

and sometimes adjust the situation to her, 
as she does with that situation that is me. 

She does not seem vulnerable, nor like someone 
who will ever die.

But I dare not question her too much 
because she does not like to be questioned.

And so, because, I cannot read her mind, 
I study my mother's face politely 
as I would a stranger's on a train. 

I'm sorry

 
I was too afraid,
didn’t try for Harvard,
didn’t even try to run for mayor. 
It never registered you have
to put yourself in fantastic situations 
to do fantastic things. 
Did Hillary play it safe? 
Would she have chosen State 
over Cal just to save the BART fare? 
And it didn’t help to have a romance 
quandary in the works at all times 
(I was too terrified of being alone). 
My poor little fledgling self, 
my poor little lion, 
why didn’t you find your courage?  
You might have stolen the show.  
Isn’t that what it was all about for you? 
Love, uncommon love? 
Well, I’m sorry. For us old frady-cats
the ordinary stuff will have to do.

What I ate

There on the shore of the Bosphorus on 

that baking hot summer evening, 

hotter still when Rudy and I stood next to the bearded 

old man and his small grill, waiting for him to wrap 

two fish sandwiches.With sweat pouring 

down our faces, we searched for a place to sit 

but gave up and strolled as we ate. 

The fish was cheap and delicious. 

We went back for more almost every day, sometimes twice. 

Our hotel room was unbearably hot.  

The window opened to an alley so narrow 

no breeze could ever find us. Many times 

during the night, we stood up in the dark 

and soaked our bedsheets in water 

and then laid our naked bodies on them, 

feeling cooled only for minutes. 

But we were happy. We were still in love. 

I didn’t know if we would stay together forever 

but I felt sure that whatever happened

would be fine with me. Being very young, 

I expected my future to keep changing. 

No matter how delightful the present, 

I wanted the future to be even better 

and knew it would. When I returned to 

Istanbul a few years later with a different 

young man, one who was afraid to eat fish 

from the Bosphorus, who could afford a room 

with air conditioning, those wet sheets 

were much on my mind and for the first time, 

the past seemed a little sweeter than the present 

and I was no longer certain my future 

would be the one I desired.

Istanbul August 1970 

The back yard

On the west side of our house, my father planted 
a row of sunflowers, their heads towered
over the fence, and made a cheery sight-
their dark, round faces tucked inside 
those yellow bonnets nodding at passersby. 
In the wind, they swayed 
every which way, a line of excited 
teenagers at a rock concert. 
Under their shade I moved on hands and knees, 
poking around for grasshoppers, pulling 
off their wings, dropping them into pickle 
jars with leaves and bottle caps of water. A
city of glass jars built on my dresser
noisy with crawlers I thought were better off with me
than in the yard fending off predators like my brothers 
who crushed their bodies with riotous joy and
observed the horror of death for amusement. 
But with me, the millipedes, chameleons, beetles 
became my children, not my prisoners. 
Sprawled under the tall flowers, half awake, 
half asleep, I let them scamper over my face--
how sweet the tickle of hairy legs and soft wings, 
the feel of damp, cool skins. At night awaiting sleep, 
the lightening bugs turned their tiny bulbs 
on and off, my lizards moved the pebbles and I
wondered if any of my crickets lay upside down 
again, their little legs wiggling in the dark, 
and if I wasn't too tired, I turned on my flashlight
and checked. 

It's all a blur

Like so many San Francisco nights, Fisherman’s Wharf disappeared into the fog that appears even denser now as I recall how boozed up Jim and I were when we left the restaurant and the rough force he used on me and the horrific thing that might have happened were it not for an encounter I took then and, even now, to be preternatural. I had been drinking vodka martini’s while listening to Jim's long list of sorrows and regrets. He had spread them out for me as he poured down whiskey sours and chain smoked. It was very late when we walked to my car. He wanted me to spend the night. I wanted to drive home. Come on, come home with me, he slurred insistently, too drunk for sex and so was I. For weeks my desire for him had been waning anyway. I could go a whole day or two without remembering how nonchalantly he made love, with that same careless air of pouring himself a drink. It used to excite me, loosened me up. But in those waning days, only the steam from his mouth came to mind, the way it drugged my air with liquor and smoke.  Key in hand, I leaned forward to kiss his cheek. But he grabbed the neckline of my dress, yanked on it violently, split the front seam in two, exposing my bare breasts. Oh my God! I cried. Oh my God! and I stepped back, walked quickly to the car, jumped in and sped away, hurtling myself down the Embarcadero onto the 101 south freeway. It's all a blur, those cars speeding past me in the murkiness, the smear of lights encircling me like a carrousel, my eyes frozen in a stare, my lids so heavy I was afraid to blink, worried once closed they might not open again, afraid to move any part of me, not even the pressure of my foot on the gas, every second feeling like an hour. Up ahead, I saw the exit sign, Army Street. That was not my exit, mine was miles ahead, but something took hold of me, turned my wheel to the right onto that exit and down the ramp. My hands held lightly on the wheel, obeyed its will, the car now in command of itself. I did not hand myself over to it, no choice was offered me. This is where the car would go, I could do nothing, the way a mountain stream flows where gravity pulls it. Once on Army street, my car slowed, rolled to the side, aligned with the sidewalk, and came to a stop. I heard the key turn off the ignition, the motor fall silent, and then the space before my eyes vanished, the world went instantly black, silent, and bottomless.

In the hospital

I did something in that hospital 
that I never told anyone. 

It happened when I was alone 
with my mother in the last weeks, 
when she is not conscious, 
and I did it only for seconds at a time, 
when I didn't think my mother lived 
in that little body any more,
(Are we in our bodies or are we our bodies?), 
while I sat by her bed trying to remember 
her without white hair and parched lips, 
without ashen arms, noticing how thin her fingers 
had grown, the strange long nails that seemed 
not to know it was time to stop--no one had 
trimmed them since she fell 
(Only now I wonder, why didn't I trim them?), 
watching her mind-essence slumber, 
this barely breathing body, 
trying to remember her right leg, 
cut off just the other day with my permission, 
but not hers--how my sister and I agonized 
about letting it go, right below the knee, 
under the patella--the doctor said her bones 
were too thin, fissured like glaciers. 
Even in this near death sleep my mother 
sensed her leg's absence. Her fingers woke up, 
moved down her thigh like a spider, tapped 
just above the knee, no doubt sensing something 
was not right, deceived by a phantom, 
and that's when I lifted the sheet from her thigh 
and looked at that stump, thinking, this isn't human 
but an animal, not the limb she was born 
with and had used every day around the mall, 
and then I made myself touch it--I had to force myself--
I placed my hand gently on her thigh, stroked the 
bandaged joint now connected to nothing, to empty space, to air, 
because I wanted to see, because I didn't want to see, 
but thought I must to show her I'm not afraid, 
that this is nothing to be upset about, that life is still worth living, 
and then tears welled up, flooding my vision, 
my throat, for my mother, the amputee.