In the last hour

In that last hour before our ship docks in New York, 
I wait for that boy to say goodbye.
Surely he will search every deck for me.
Will draw me out of this reverie about last night
in the ballroom where his famous mother 
sang in her gleaming gown
and the boy held my hand and stared at me as if 
I'd just risen from the dead, and not only then 
but the day before too, he gazed open mouthed. 
Wasn't that the sign of love so clear, so true as a fog horn?
What a muffin of a thought, larded with hope,
grand with illusions, with what zest
but all of it in danger here in the last hour 
when he should be pressing his address into my hand.
Yet there's not a sign of him.
Only 16 and already exhausted by love.

They meant well

In my bedroom, we face each other, 

me slumped on my twin, my father  

upright on my sister’s bed. 

He has closed the door behind him. 

We are alone. For once he is not glaring.

He is staring--how queer to be so eyeballed 

by him, to be so carefully surveyed,

to be waiting for me to speak, to be all ears. 

I am sobbing, my scalp throbs where my mother 

tore away hair; she, discomposed, fulminating, fears 

I might have copulated. 

My father, in uniform, in the soft voice of a man 
handing me flowers, says:

Give me the soldier’s name.

He is leaning toward me, he is clasping his hands, 

he is staring, his eyes narrow, he takes me in.

I only know his first name, I say.

My father tips one ear up as if he has just heard 

an odd bird call, and then he clears his throat 

and he goes. 

My father was such an amateur.

Cleaning up

I step into the house my mother was carried out of 

but expected to return to in a day or so

(after all, it was only a fall in this hallway 

that made mosaic of her leg).

I can't explain how I sense what I know can't be true

that there are others here moving around me 

gently as jelly fish,

but not confined to any space, 

being supernal.

Though it's already noon, all the rooms 

have the feel of first morning light, 

when dawn lines the edges of the visible, 

stepping hushed out of the invisible, 

a parallel world ready to appear, 

the realm I once knew at St Joseph's, 

the realm of blood miracles and incorruptible bodies.

Walking through her house, I feel her eyes 

on my back. She is curious: what of hers 

will I take home, which belongings will be let go,

her motive being to understand what I love about her. 

I command my eyes to take their sweet time, 

to dwell on her dolls and her florentine hat 

with equal ardor 

so as not to insult my mother any further 

by rejecting her possessions. 

If all goes well….

They will not be wearing corsages, nor waving

with excitement when I arrive, 

nor will they lift me high above their heads.

They will have no hands, no throats, 

there will be no talking, 

no need for any of that--

they know everything, want nothing, 

not even music, not even sonnets--there will be nothing

to forget, to sublimate, nothing to forgive.

They will not think about the past or what's to come.

There will only be Now,

and crowns of light rejoicing--for what, I've no idea.

But if all goes well, there will be rapture 

and if not that, there will at least be peace,

there will be no cessation. 

The street

You say street, and right away East St. Louis rises up--

my period started there, my serial falling in love.

My dog was run over on that street

but the eminent milestones of my life--

did not happen here, they turned up on other streets. 

This is the street where I first encountered perverts, 

where my mother beat me when a boy 

walked me home, 

where my father was always glaring,

no matter what he was up to--shaving, 

planting sunflowers, breathing--he glared. 

I think he hated me. 

Otherwise it was an ordinary street.

Yet I remember it more easily than the venerable 

streets that followed.  

The scent of soft tar. 

Racing Tommy to the Notre Dame locker room. 

The football team's moist, slabs of muscle. 

A joyful Saturday in Theresa's grandmother's attic. 

She found a suitcase packed with holy cards 

and shared them 50-50. 

I laughed a lot on that street. Almost every day. 

My little dog was run over there. 

I know I said that but it keeps coming back. 

After school, I had to walk past the ice cream store

but never had the money to buy a cone.

It wasn’t a street where I had all I wanted 

but when I walked it, I expected to have it all someday.

I fully believed I would become the Elvis 

of my generation.

Mamatschi

She sings that song to me again, in German

( I’d rather be alone but I listen)

about a boy who begs his mamma for a horse

(Mamatschi, shenk mir ein Pferdchen)

Mamatschi, a pony would be my paradise.

Her voice scales the ceiling, trilling:

One day there stood four jeweled mares 

before the house

--and here she comes apart, 

her voice on the floor in pieces: 

Oh Mamatschi, funeral horses I did not want!

My mother, that ungifted singer, 

that unbashful lover of sappy songs.

I'm listening

Come, she rolls her eyes toward her bedroom

and shuts the door.
We sit side by side on the bed and I sink 
into her force and fold my hands in my lap. 
My mother wants to talk about the war again
away from my father’s ears.
Today it’s Bucharest where a gypsy unfolds
my mother’s palms on the table and reads 
each line as if it were a highway with a clear 
white line straight into the future.
You will marry a foreigner, you will never be happy. 
My mother falls silent in the story, I see no 
movement in her eyes, she has left me on the bed 
and she is standing at that little table in Romania 
staring at her young pink palms, 
her feminine fingers, those manicured nails 
trained to pluck a violin, 
wondering how could these hands forsake her?
For years, the war hovers around my mother. 
For years she sits in dark rooms with eyes closed. 
I want to ask about the foreigner in the next room
but she holds one index finger to my face. 
Please, no questions.