the box up. Dead flames send me letters
and their clumsy sentences stick to my
thumbs. How many times can you leave
the same woman? That question doesn’t
shame me. Even in heartbreak, it’s not
uncommon to crave abundance. Luckily,
I think I’ve found my next speck of hope.
New state after new state. My heart a fist
of twine. I can’t surrender. The clock ticks.
Empty suitcase, where have I stuffed you?
Forget grace. The rabbit darts over
the open road. Rain clouds gather. A man sits
in his kitchen overlooking a sea cliff, eating
a piece of toast. Who wouldn’t go?
What woman wouldn’t drop her whole life
into a basket, plow into the dark, and run?
Rain at the Zoo
A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it
sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.
I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops of rain
pounded us both. Lightning cracked open the sky.
Zebras zipped across the field. It was springtime
in Michigan. I watched the giraffe shuffle itself backward,
toward the herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur
beading with water. The entire mix of animals stood
away from the trees. A lone emu shook
its round body hard and squawked. It ran
along the fence line, jerking open its wings.
Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burden
of water or indulging an urge to fly. I can’t know.
I have no idea what about their lives these animals
love or abhor. They are captured or born here for us,
and we come. It’s true. This is my favorite field.
Field Lesson
A tractor tills the soil using heavy blades,
while nine mice turn in their autumnal nest.
Nine blind mice. I counted them, then covered them
with a layer of hay. What can I help
that I am a simple child? The world
has shown me its lessons: here, here, and here.
Lambs in the field. Chops on the plate.
Knives dismantling the hills deer by deer
after the gun goes bang. And there is so much more
to learn. The John Deere tumbles down the field.
Behind it, a dust cloud rises. Nine blind mice
meet their nine blind ghosts. Tossed
from this world like salt over shoulder. The things
we kiss good-bye make room for all we kiss hello.
Fable Revisited
Annie is saving Michigan’s state reptile,
the painted turtle—not to be confused
with the white-tailed deer, or the mastodon,
Michigan’s state game mammal and fossil.
Of which the former thrives, while the latter
dwindled to bone and dust. So, more
than just a turtle, just a slow-moving invertebrate,
what Annie is rescuing is a cold-blooded symbol.
It’s a tense moment as cars go around
our stopped car, barely noticing Annie schlepping
the symbol across the road to open grass.
If they are wise, the motorists will see
how the grass, too, has a second meaning.
Annie is the mediator who,
turtle in hand, becomes a symbol herself—
for women who insist on confronting machines.
Annie is unlucky, a woman who is barely intact.
She prays for love and babies, and by this
I mean she’s having unprotected sex. She jumps
a small retaining wall to give the turtle a better
chance. It snaps at her in the field’s center, wags its
head and tail like a mechanical toy operated by coins.
Annie’s face looks into its shell before she drops it
and races over a fence. She wants it to know she is
trying to help. Annie has been gone only two minutes.
To a turtle, it must feel like a lifetime. Picture the body
as a machine. Unlike the turtle, who will crawl slowly
through a meadow and subsist on vegetation and luck.
Taming the Dog
Your dog arrives at my open window
filled with advice. He sees how I trim the beans
and complains. He believes the way I tenderize
my lamb is an abomination. The neck may be tough,
but in my house we use everything. We hang
our laundry. We beat our rugs and there is joy.
Last night, he caught me pruning the magnolia tree,
appeared beneath my ladder, fur holding the light
of a whole moon, and he mocked me
with his little dog paws. Why would a dog want
to insult a woman underneath the moon like that?
Wednesday. Thursday. What about me
makes your dog want to arrive? He appears all the time.
Practically walking through walls. And when he sniffs
the air in front of me, it’s as if he’s taking me apart.
His snout an instrument. His wet nose combs me. And yes,
he brings his own blanket of smell. Off, boy. Off.
A dog needs rules. There’s no shame in that.
When a woman says stay, she craves obedience.
At the sound of her voice, she wants to watch
that animal fall like a stone into the grass.
Tell
—an alcoholic father, a sad-faced mother,
an uncle who died while cleaning his gun.
My students have problems. They put them
down on paper, hand them to me and say here,
here is a poem. Sometimes they don’t get
anything right. Chad’s sister bleeds to death
in a villanelle. We find her in the bathroom
by following a trail of rhymes. Nobody
in the workshop wants to say what’s wrong.
This poem makes us sad. We want it
to be perfect. But the world isn’t perfect.
We suffer even when we do everything right.
I should tell Chad that he has written a great poem.
That he is going to grow up to be a great man
who will have children who he will never forget
to kiss. His little heart ticks like a bomb.
We can hear it. He wants to have a better ending.
But this is what he’s got.
The Unavoidable Pigeon
I see it on Cabrillo, midway through the crosswalk.
Some people spot an injured pigeon
tumbling down the street and think
good riddance. But how can I think that?
I know this bird. I’ve seen it before.
Balboa. Anza. Clement. Its wounded
foot lifted high into its feathered body.
No, I will never take this bird home.
I root for it in other ways. What a survivor!
I pass it on the way to the post office,
parading like a governor in a bright
patch of sun. Don’t worry. This bird
will never break my heart. Not right now.
Not tomorrow. Not next week when I find it
hammered to the road. Poor bird.
A ruptured viola. All of its red strings
pulled out of it. Even with big dreams,
a pigeon can only survive so long
on these streets. Had you asked me, had you
been a reasonable being, I would
have warned you to stick to the sky.
Hanging Up
Today he wants me to go back to Balsa Avenue
and open up our old front door. In my mind
that house burned down and flames took the doors.
He forgets that in the middle of making love
God cracked the ceiling above us
and warned watch out. It was as if a meteor
sped toward us both. But he rolled out of bed
onto all fours, hurried alone into the next room.
I was struck by plaster and dust. For a day
my body resembled a slightly bruised
Bartlett pear. He planted little kisses on every mark.
As an apology he carried me up and down our stairs.
Now he wants me to go back and forgive—him
and his mother and the half-naked woman
he danced with just once. And because we are all
stupid and wrong and have traveled with dog shit
on the bottoms of our shoes, and forgotten to give
borrowed pens back, and slept with prostitutes
in parked cars, and robbed banks with loaded pistols,
and loved the wrong people, I don’t hang up.
I talk and wander north, listening to him under
a spoon of stars. Love hears me coming and waits
on every stair. It’s hoping I arrive feeling lucky,
with my whole heart ready again.
Hepatoscopy
Opening the sacrificed sheep with a blade
revealed its liver which revealed
everything. During the Bronze Age,
the liver was a prophet. And so
it was hated and so it was loved.
I’ve held a young sheep in my arms
and felt the bones under its skin
and wool and sensed that the universe
was unfolding nicely. I think
I’m a believer, that if a talented
puppeteer were to stuff his hand
in any puppet and say just the right things,
that my bones could trust.
I talk like bones are solid,
but they’re not. When strained
they break. We’ve learned how
to save people from their bones—
a greenstick fracture, a punctured lung.
Last night somebody didn’t do it right
and a teenage boy was killed
by his own rib. Snapped from its cage
it looked for its other end—broke
into the lungs, pierced close
to the heart. I now know exactly
where a person’s lungs are,
even when they wear a coat. I took
a class and inflated plastic lungs
inside a plastic torso, two long breaths
at a time. We can’t predict whether or not
someone may need our air. But I carry
mine with me—ready. Long ago,
people consulted such erasures.
But this is Michigan, and nobody pretends
they’re in the Indus Valley. We don’t
go around plucking bones or digging
sharp-knifed for the good and the bad news.
Autobiography
When I was a child
the Teton Dam broke.
Everyone lost their carpet.
The mildew wouldn’t stop blossoming.
Over time, everything got better.
People bought more dogs.
I loved the yippy ones most.
Tiny and fierce and shitting everywhere.
My closet was so small.
I had almost no clothes.
We were rich in other ways.
My grandparents owned a speedboat.
And here I am today, timid
around water, but enduring.
Responsibly burying everyone I love
into that dry earth.
Waiting for Crocuses
I took the train, the bus, the clack-clack trolley.
Men traveling alongside me, beef-like with no grandeur.
Long ties. Big shoes. Elbows in my side.
Each day another long ouch. And the lucky couples
always rubbed their luckiness against my window.
Hand-holding their way down the slushy steps.
Breath blooming between their kissing, hat-topped heads.
Winter. The flakes. How long does a blizzard last?
What about spring? The crocuses? The hardy tulips
I glimpse in other yards? Stuck in the chill.
My whole world white. I didn’t love a single thing.
This is it, I thought. I was born to be this cold. Frostbite
around the corner. I worried about the tips of myself.
And those like me. Our fingers. Our noses.
Our small, small toes. Then came the thaw.
Clomp. Clomp. Everything turned on its ear.
His big shoes falling off, and I loved them. Their bigness
suddenly admirable. The tie a way to pull him to me.
His hair became my favorite thing to touch.
I didn’t want my hands back. When the day
finally came, we ate it. After waiting, waiting,
we didn’t waste a single crumb of joy.
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time coming, close to twenty years, so I am filled with thanks for the people and organizations that helped make this happen. I would like to begin by thanking the Poetry Foundation for choosing Half-Hazard for this incredible honor and making the publication of this book possible. I want to thank everyone there who has been so kind and supportive, including Stephen Young, Don Share, Amy Christenson, Elizabeth Burke-Dain, Mike Levine, and Henry Bienen. My notification phone call from Stephen is a thrilling splash of happiness that’s lodged in my soul forever. Thank you! Many teachers and friends along the way have helped shape and inspire this collection. Special thanks to Tobias Wolff, Ayelet Waldman, Garrett Hongo, D.A. Powell, Gail Wronsky, Lance Larsen, Darrell Spencer, Richard Katrovas, Al Young, Bob Hicok, Mary Ruefle, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Tom Sleigh, David Rivard, Mark Cox, Nancy Eimers, Bill Olsen, Leslie Ullman, Sharon Olds, and Forrest Gander. Extra special thanks to Joy Harjo and Billy Collins whose writing has always lit my imagination and pushed me forward, and whose presence near the end of this journey has been simply magical. Super special thanks goes to Sara Michas-Martin who edited and reordered this manuscript nearly a decade ago and told me I should keep at it. Also this book would not exist if it weren’t for the help of three people who are no longer here, thank you, Leslie Norris, Jack Gilbert, and Seamus Heaney wherever you are (I’ve kept all your kind postcards and notes and edits). I’m especially thankful to readers, supporters, and friends who’ve been there almost the entire way. Kathryn Davis, Stuart Dybek, Stephen Dunn, and Claudia Rankine, I couldn’t have done this without you! I’m grateful for the fellowships and time and productive writing environment offered to me by the Vermont Studio Center, Napa Valley Writers Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, Writers@Work, and the Key West Literary Conference. Special thanks to Ulla Frederiksen and Fred Bueltmann, who never fail at making me feel lucky and loved. I’m deeply thankful to my agent and friend Sara Crowe at Pippin Properties, Inc., whose smarts and tenacity have allowed me to have a career doing what I love, writing children’s books. The team at Graywolf has been phenomenally helpful and I adore every single person that makes that place run. Thank you, Katie Dublinski for my fabulous cover. And special-special thanks to Jeff Shotts and Susannah Sharpless for editing this book into its best self. Susannah, I feel endlessly grateful to you for discovering and supporting this book. Thank you! I owe much thanks to the Alcatraz gardeners who became lifelong friends, especially Shelagh Fritz, Tracy Roberts, and Kristin Scheel, for their splendid camaraderie on and off the island. And thanks to long-suffering gardener friends who led weekly tours with me and also taught me about composting and territorial seagulls. Giant thanks to Marnie, Dick, Corny, Monica, and Barbara. And I’m also deeply thankful to all the park rangers and former convicts and wardens who shared their stories and time with m
e, and especially John Cantwell whose deep knowledge of the island helped grow mine. I feel like I should thank the state of Idaho for being such a complicated state in which to undergo a childhood. And Vermont, Michigan, and California for leading me toward happiness. And thanks to my dad who often helped me transport my boxes. I need to thank my furry companion, Bunny the cat, who stayed in the world for eighteen years, and sparked so many ideas inside of me. Of course, without my husband, Brian Evenson, none of this would be nearly as meaningful or fun or rewarding. Babe, you make everything worth it. Same goes for our son Max. I am filled with gratitude that this book now exists. Everyone who helped make this happen, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Much gratitude goes to the following journals that have supported my work over the years by including my poems in their pages:
AGNI, Cimarron Review, The Greensboro Review, Hunger Mountain, Lo-Ball, The New York Quarterly, North American Review, Northwest Review, Poet Lore, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Puerto Del Sol, Quarterly West, Saranac Review, The Seattle Review, Sixth Finch, Sonora Review, The Southern Review, The Sun, Tar River Poetry, The Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, West Branch, XConnect, and ZYZZYVA.
KRISTEN TRACY is a poet and acclaimed author of more than a dozen novels for young readers. Her poems have been published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and the Threepenny Review, among other magazines. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.
The text of Half-Hazard is set in Kepler Std.
Book design by Rachel Holscher.
Composition by Bookmobile Design and Digital
Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Half-Hazard Page 4