Half-Hazard

by Kristen Tracy

  Despite your puffed cheeks, playful gallop,

  the lovable way you corral your young, I must keep

  my distance. No, I cannot (cannot!) give you what you want.

  Yesterday

  looking for snails,

  five students died

  when their canoes overturned.

  The soft-bodied snails

  went untouched—never breaking

  their hold on the rocks.

  How much can a reservoir

  hold in the dark? Ask

  the moon who was not out

  washing their bodies with light.

  One student survived,

  and he might grow up

  to be a scientist with tremendous drive—

  feel a need to get a move on

  and figure out his atoms,

  how they fly, how they stay

  peaceably intact. The paper said

  with all of their gear

  they sank like rocks. Except

  for the survivor who had been

  asleep on his pack. The parents

  are blaming themselves,

  but they still want answers.

  Yesterday, a mother broke

  a stone on a stone

  to see its center, and found

  an ordinary middle.

  When Fate Is Looking for You

  A girl I knew in college was eaten

  by a lion in Africa. Which could happen to you,

  right as your life is happening. Its teeth

  could have met the pink of your own spine, the one

  your mother has slapped into good posture since

  kindergarten, the spine still humming electric

  with optimism and possibilities. It’s your brain

  that the spine heads to, a brain that may remember

  the television late at night running static

  on an empty channel. Everyone is in bed, the television

  didn’t get turned off, and you, conductor of voltage

  out of the carpet fibers, touch it and are shocked.

  Feel the buzz running down your spine as you

  flip to the station showing animals eating their prey.

  Sometimes, just one wildebeest goes down while

  the entire pack thunders out of the camera’s view.

  Colleen wasn’t looking for this kind of ending.

  When it pounced, she could have been reminiscing

  about her early days in Alhambra, the weight of her

  blue school uniform gone for good. Or maybe she was

  stringing nets into a wide stream all wrong—thinking—

  I don’t have the hands for this, but I will try it again.

  And the lion might have just been looking

  to scare things, this might not have been deliberate.

  Never approach a church at a moment like this

  and expect those gathered to be ready to sing.

  Having It?

  The story likes to end with a body.

  He cuts her open, takes the knife

  to the bone, but finds her

  to be just like any other goose.

  I like to think she made the golden eggs

  to bridge their lives. Why not admit

  that we all do extraordinary things

  for money and love?

  Today the goose is made of steel.

  She isn’t that rare. And we’ve quit

  trying to dismantle her magic body; rather,

  we’re trying to predict when the next egg

  will fall. Sometimes people kill for it.

  That’s how want works. Sometimes the goose

  is disguised, sometimes a sign is posted

  letting everyone know that the driver or cashier

  is carrying a goose holding less than

  twenty dollars. Luckily, for everyone, the real goose

  is dead and imaginary, or the greedy among us

  would be invading every farm, sorting through

  even the clucking hens, turning their beds

  over, tossing them around by

  their feet. We’d be feeling inside them

  with an oily glove, wanting the eggs

  to be our miracle, certain their existence

  had nothing to do with love.

  Contemplating Light

  Tonight the moon is perfect. She beams on every West Coast city—whole—entirely the moon. Jane Austen is lining somebody’s shelf, and it is likely that a silverfish has slipped into a binding again, to thrive on the starch. And even though the silverfish is the exact shape of a crescent moon, we should not blame the moon. She may dissolve. Astronauts have tried to break the moon, have kicked her under their hard boots, have drilled tokens out of her, have plunged a flagpole in her side. I know I am not the moon. Her light bounces off of my lit TV. She is giving me something. A way to follow the bleached stones home. My canary in her cage is under a dark cloth. It is night and she cannot take the moon. It makes her stir. It makes her cry and toss seeds and husks from her cage onto the floor. Her hard beak glistens, her tongue rolls over. She craves a darker night.

  Breaking

  The cats seemed to understand

  that we didn’t love them—

  barely loved each other—

  and that we wouldn’t be lasting long.

  We caught them from behind,

  put them in our trunk. We weren’t

  cruel. They were placed

  in a cozy box. You

  found a large rock to go

  on top. Everything was safe

  as we rattled to the pound. And are

  these your cats? asked the man

  at the pound. No, they aren’t, I said,

  they were just cats, we were just a couple

  who’d found them. Really,

  they were my grandmother’s farm cats—

  thin, sick, pink-eyed. She’d grown tired

  of pouring them milk. And if no one

  claims them, let me leave my name,

  I said. (I didn’t want them but

  I’d take them.) Good of you to have brought

  them in, said the man, but these cats

  were doomed—respiratory infections.

  We drove—days numbered—to a hotel

  out of town. Upstairs, we walked in,

  the television already running. What about

  the rock? you asked. I have it,

  right? And I thought about the rock—

  a small moon resting in the trunk’s

  blue carpet nest. All you could think about

  was opening our window and dropping it

  down four floors, aiming it into

  a man-made lake. You pressed. I said no.

  But you got the rock anyway. Out it went.

  I turned the channel, hyenas laughing

  over their fresh kill. You said it would

  be fun. It landed on the pavement,

  missed the lake completely

  and split in two. You shut the window

  and kissed my neck. This is what

  I know about my body, it turns

  to be loved at every instance, it feels

  warmth and it wants and it wants.

  About Myself

  I am always sad and my garbage

  is always stinking, on a curb

  not so far away. Let me start again.

  I wear my sadness like a coat

  and the coat never comes off.

  Its wooden buttons are fastened to me.

  My mother made it. My father handed her

  the idea. My pockets are empty

  and it has always been too long.

  I used to carry a hankie and a tiny mouse.

  But my pocket grew a hole. No, the mouse

  is not responsible. I felt all of its well-mannered paws

  and they felt me. It had one tooth that kept snapping

  loose. And when I approached a man

  the mouse
would wink its left eye. And when I prayed to God

  the mouse would crawl to my pocket’s velvet edge.

  I woke up one day, the sky was blue,

  and it and my hankie were gone.

  I thought about giving my sadness a bath.

  But why remind this heavy self

  of how it is nothing like the tiny mouse

  riding a feather out of town.

  If, with my two giant feet, I could have tunneled

  alongside that mouse, it would have led me

  to a new world where mice die

  at the drop of a hat and everyone knows this

  and, therefore, exists bareheaded out of love.

  Assignment: Write a Poem about an Animal

  No, I told John. You may not write a poem about

  your will. If not my will, he said, how about my soul?

  I said no. He wrote about a male impala dominating

  his female herd. Oh, I knew I could never trust him.

  The antelope was not simply an antelope; its eyes,

  of course, were the same gray as John’s, had the same

  number of violet flecks. And unlike most impalas

  this one wasn’t leaping through Africa; rather, it was living

  on the outskirts of a park in John’s hometown.

  Twenty-five and still shooting bb’s into songbirds and

  digging through their bodies to get his bb’s back,

  bragging about the women he’s conquered and the adventurous

  ways he took them. He wrote the poems

  I didn’t want to read. In his last, he gathered images

  from LA streets, described the La Brea tar pits

  off of Wilshire Boulevard, the curve of the mastodon’s neck,

  his already-sunken hind legs and tail. John wasn’t sure

  how so many got trapped. He wondered what kind of urge

  led them into this bubbling mess. In conclusion, he used

  himself to understand. Twice, rushing to buy condoms

  and cigarettes, he ran across a parking lot and stepped

  into puddles of oil and water, ruining his tidy socks.

  They were mostly young males, he wrote, I guess

  it happens. Which, in the end, reminded me of my own soul—

  bright and impulsive with an important date to keep,

  she too could overlook the dark and liquid road.

  Happy Endings

  I like the story where the cowboy lives

  because the bullet struck the whiskey flask

  instead of his thin-walled heart. Or the one

  where the boy is thrown from the wrecked car

  and lands perfectly on a pillow of grass

  instead of the awful road. I’m to the point

  where if someone has to get killed, please

  deliver a clear lesson along with that death.

  No random, Godless acts. No mad dogs, no

  hatchets being wielded at good girls slumbering

  in the folds of their warm beds. After reading Cinderella,

  after observing the fat and happy cartoon mouse

  weekly escaping the ravenous cat, after watching

  my fellow earthlings pull together and pound

  the Martians into the rock-hard desert using sarcasm

  and sticks, I’ve come to appreciate the happy ending,

  no matter how tacky or unearned. It’s today. And death tolls

  continue to climb. You think I want the truth?

  Teton Road

  Bear on your path. Wolf at your thigh. Cougar

  leaping from a low branch onto your back. Your back?

  How can this happen? On a Wednesday? Daisies pop open.

  Good Samaritans merrily travel to donate blood.

  But here they are, beasts gaming against us,

  growing suburban in the mountain valley. So much

  like my neighbors—hungry, apathetic, bored. A child

  was bit on the wrist by a prairie rattler

  in one of the Dakotas and now she’s dead. All of her.

  Poof. Even though the cock crowed in the morning,

  stirring the farm and assuring everything within earshot

  that the same familiar circle had been started anew.

  Even the penned hogs believed this. I can barely eat.

  Gnat on my heart. Mice in the pantry. I won’t snap

  the strawberries from their happy vines. Bargain:

  How about I never destroy anything? Solution: I’ll stay

  always in this chair. Now from stage right enters

  a conversation with myself. ME: You can’t do it.

  ME: I can. ME: Cats starve. Clams are sealed

  so tightly rarely do they love another clam.

  But you—you’ve got promise. ME: And my chair.

  ME: On the other elbow of this country,

  a meadow shivers, and a fox has been outfoxed,

  its leg in a trap. ME: But if I leave the mountains,

  I can’t imagine my life. ME: I have given you

  all these chances. Take them.

  III

  Half-Hazard

  They can put a girl on the moon right now, I suppose.

  The details wouldn’t be too hard to crack.

  Dangers here. Perils there. It’ll go how it goes.

  Earth faces venoms, disease, foes and woes.

  Free of that jeopardy, she won’t rocket back.

  If you put the right girl on the moon, I suppose.

  Some might worry alone she’ll face lunar lows.

  Does a girl who lacks parties turn blue in pitch black?

  Dangers here. Perils there. It’ll go how it goes.

  Like Buzz, Neil, and other above-average joes,

  she’ll travel in space boots and wield a screw jack,

  if we put our best girl on the moon, I suppose.

  We’ll blast her above every bloom of dog rose.

  Let her farewell our bright spots along with our wrack.

  Dangers here. Perils there. Who will own how this goes?

  Prepared for the darkness and cut off from schmoes—

  whole girl, half-hazard. On a zodiac track,

  we’ll put that girl right on the moon, I suppose.

  Endangered. Imperiled. And watch how it goes.

  Gardening on Alcatraz in July

  Cutthroat plants overtaking other plants. It was new to me.

  The needs of the calla lily. The habits of the rose.

  There is one artichoke growing on the island. How it

  arrived in Officer’s Row nobody knows. The prison

  shut down and the plants grew wild, persisted for decades.

  Concerning the gardens, I know the long story

  and the short one. The veteran gardeners have arms

  marked with scars from tearing out the monstrous

  blackberry and rose bushes that overran everything.

  Volunteers pulled for months to uncover the survivors.

  Most famously, the Bardou Job rose, thought to be extinct,

  is alive again, back in the world, shocking rosarians.

  Now tourists trickle down the windy side of the island

  on the west road passing the cell house and a steep slope

  of drosanthemum lit up in pink. Tended by robbers and

  counterfeiters, fed by bathwater, restored from photos

  these flowers are back. On Sundays, I lead this garden tour

  from the dock to the summit, again and again, month

  after month—Machine Gun Kelly on their minds—I show them—

  tell them—really want them to notice—foxglove, aster, fuchsia,

  sweet pea, sage—all rupturing in their persistent blooms. Because

  we should all bear witness to what we didn’t expect to see.

  What We Did before Our Apocalypse

  We stockpiled all the bottled water we could find. We argued

  over Christmas tre
es until all the good ones were gone.

  We drove less. We starved ourselves of carbs. We buried

  Muhammad Ali in Kentucky. We ran on charisma.

  We took the batteries out of the smoke detectors so all the toys

  would work. We jiggled the toilet handle to try to fix the problem.

  We let people who were acting like assholes merge into

  the carpool lane. Orgied out, we debated canceling HBO.

  We packed our suitcases without hairspray and barely

  any liquids at all. We reversed our vasectomies.

  We fled to the mall and bought shoes. We battled the goddamn

  kitchen ants again and their relentless thirst for grease.

  We watched Carrie Fisher’s heart stop on a plane. We fretted

  like bigots over bathrooms in one of the Carolinas.

  We cherished Alec Baldwin and reported every rogue backpack

  to the authorities. Underneath the table at Buca di Beppo

  we all held hands and prayed. We watched an old man insult

  nearly everybody and then let him fondle the nukes.

  State Lines

  Geese fly and refuse to honor them.

  White-tailed deer graze unequally

  on both sides of the boundary. But I’ve

  had to decide, time after time, and declare

  a street address, a spot I am now stitched to

  by my never-ending mail. I owe so much.

  Envelope after envelope, a steady flow.

  I understand why some delinquents blow