by Sarah Dooley
I’M GLAD IT’S SUMMER
Who could sit at a desk on a day like this?
Who could focus on pages through this beam of sun?
Full of anger, hope, and fear,
I am faced with a choice: hold fast or run?
ELSEWHERE
This road in front of Hubert’s house,
empty in the evening light,
leads to a two-lane that leads to a highway,
goes places I’ve never seen, but might.
CAUGHT
Lights flash,
sirens bleat,
I get caught
on Main Street.
CLOSE SUPERVISION
Hubert and Shirley
come out of their haze.
They watch me closer
for all of three days.
Sasha.
She’s lost.
She walks along,
looking up at clouds,
quiet.
Anger,
pointless, nauseous,
waits in shadow
like an evil spirit.
Always.
WHAT FAMILY DOES
Leave.
They do.
They all do.
That’s what I know
now.
MIKEY
Kid,
lost, alone,
went somewhere else.
Hope we find him
soon.
Dear Judy,
I walked to the Burger Bargain today.
The whole place smelled like onions.
The ladies there can cut onions without crying,
knives slashing down, whacking on the
chopped-up cutting board.
Bam! Like a baby falling from her chair.
Wham! Like a car door slamming.
I sort of wonder if
the day you figured out you were able
to slice into onions without crying
was the day you decided
it was okay
to leave.
Dear Ben,
I remember the little things
about you, like your dirty fingernails,
your card games on the coffee table,
the way you spread your dinner to the
edges of your plate to make it look
like you took more when you really
left the most for us.
I’ve forgotten other things about you,
like the words you choose, and if you like poems,
and the meter and rhyme and rhythm
of your voice.
Dear Mikey,
I guess I sort of understand why
you haven’t come back yet.
If I had me for a cousin,
I might not think about
coming back, either.
Still.
Maybe you’ll change your mind someday?
Maybe you’ll change your mind today?
Dear City Planners,
I don’t get
why you picked
this exact rock
in this exact valley.
Had a squirrel already claimed
all the other rocks
in all the other valleys?
Dear Dr. Shaw,
Mr. Powell swears
you know your stuff,
even though you give names
to things that should have
other names.
You call it “depression.”
You call it “anxiety.”
I call it “Look what happened.”
I call it “Everybody leaves.”
You send me home
with orange bottles
that rattle in the console
of Hubert’s old truck
on the quiet, quiet, quiet
ride back.
This medicine
is not going to help
unless it can bring back
the missing
and what Pastor Ramey calls
the “gone home.”
Dear Michael,
Dear Shirley,
I wish you would lay off
the stupid apples already.
Also, why must you
stomp through the living room
at six thirty a.m. on a Saturday?
Can’t you tell I’m sleeping?
Dear Michael,
Dear Anthony,
It was nice the way
you started to walk over to me
on the final day of school
like you wanted to say something.
It was nice, too, that you stopped
and turned away.
I might have cried.
I might have spoken.
See you in August.
Dear Michael.
ONLINE
Shirley sits on her blue chair,
but she doesn’t notice who’s around her,
nor does she care.
FRAGILE
There is peace in this dwelling
as long as we don’t discuss Mikey.
If we do, there is yelling.
HOW JULY FELT
Bug-loud days
loomed wide open, filled me with panic.
I’m not okay.
IF I DON’T WRITE
The line between calm and not gets blurry.
I shake and get lost in my head.
I breathe quick and I worry.
MAKING HUBERT MAD
I stayed at the grocery store too long.
Hubert thought I was someplace else,
but he was wrong.
THIS PLACE
Michael wanted to leave so bad
that staying never felt possible.
I wonder how I’d feel if it had.
GRACE DANIELS,
wife of miner Barry Daniels,
waits with other family members
outside a southern West Virginia
elementary school.
NOT
intended as a substitute
for medical care. Consult
a physician if symptoms
persist.
FOUNDED
by Hat Casswell
in 1843, the town
of Caboose predates
the state of West
Virginia.
MISSING
since May.
Last seen in
Alley Rush
wearing
blue T-shirt
and stonewashed
(nuh-uh, just faded)
jeans
(and an innocent face).
START OF AUGUST
with
record highs
(and new lows)
PHYLLIS
Says she’ll still love me
even when the other kid
comes to stay next month.
I have no rights to Phyllis,
so I don’t know why I’m sad.
UNSAID
There are many rules
to writing good poetry.
I don’t always know
how to fit inside those rules.
Sometimes things get left unsaid.
MICHAEL
Why do all the things
I write come back to Michael?
Why do all the things
I write come back to Michael?
There is no one named Michael.
HARLESS HOUSEHOLD
Nobody is sleeping.
Most of us are weeping.
There are secrets not worth keeping.
NIGHT FIGHTS
Hubert and Shirley scream a
nd howl,
yell some words that are very foul,
then one or the other throws in the towel.
FALLING APART
Hubert finally goes back to work.
The girls are bouncing off the walls, berserk.
Even Shirley’s lost her smirk.
AUGUST
Summer waves the edges
of Phyllis’s trimmed hedges.
We’re all balanced on ledges.
MIKEY
I miss baking muffins and playing with the dog.
I can’t think clearly with him gone.
I am lost in a fog.
MICHAEL
When I think of my older brother
dying of smoke inhalation,
I can’t breathe and I can’t rhyme.
BACK TO SCHOOL
For the first two days, everyone is thrilled
to see each other as the doors are sealed.
Even in the warm air, I feel chilled.
WHAT I DID
on my summer vacation
by sasha harless
i forgot how to use
the following things
punctuation
capitalization
and the sound
of my voice
i forgot how to
cook muffins
i forgot how to babysit
and how to clean out sheds
and how to save money for guitars
and i forgot again and again
which house i live in
THERE IS A NEW KID
next door, and she is
Mikey’s age, and she is
beautiful, with
calm, combed hair
and sweet, dimpled cheeks
and, as far as I can tell,
normal eating habits.
Phyllis shines with love.
The two of them invite me over,
but I shake my head and stay on Hubert’s front porch,
alone except for his work boots.
ASSIGNMENT
Now that school’s in
and I still won’t talk,
Mr. Powell asks me to
write something down,
and my new English teacher
asks me to write something down.
Mr. Powell wants my goals for the year.
Mr. Hart wants my goals for English class,
and what I think a fair grading system would be,
and what I hope to learn and accomplish.
It seems like a lot of faith to put
in a silent eighth grader.
Isn’t he the one
who went to college
for this?
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
This is the assignment
for the second week of school:
we are required to write our history,
the story of our lives. I watch
my classmates folded over their notebooks.
I watch pencils scratch. I watch heads get scratched.
This boy in black, he is looking at the ceiling
and smiling
as if there is a great secret written there.
I think his life has been interesting.
I think I would like to read his story.
The girls in the corner
look lost. You can’t understand
what makes a good story
if you’ve never starred in one,
or at least been a particularly memorable
(sometimes tragic)
supporting character.
INTERVENTION
At least that’s what it feels like
the day Jaina and Anthony corner me
by the lockers in the English wing.
“We’re worried about you, Sasha.”
“You still haven’t given me a poem for the contest.
We all lost the one in May. We’ve got to
kick butt in the August round!”
“Right . . .” Jaina looks at him
like he’s grown another head.
“And also, you don’t talk anymore.”
They maybe should have planned
their intervention a little better.
I don’t say anything,
and Jaina shrugs, and walks slowly away.
“I’m here if you need me,”
she says as she goes,
but she gets farther away as she says it.
When she’s gone, Anthony waits
and does this half smile, like he already knows
what I’m about to hand him.
He gives my notebook back after class the next day,
with a note written on the first blank page:
Unless you stop me, I’m sending three of these to the contest.
Please don’t stop me.
I’m glad it’s still you in there.
10. FREE VERSE AND MIXED FORMS
Now that summer’s over,
there’s no newsletter to help.
I have to figure out for myself
how to say what needs to be said.
—STARTED AUGUST 26
ON WEEKENDS
We look for two Michael Harlesses
on the streets of Beckley
(the kids throwing Frisbees,
and popping balloons,
and chasing each other,
splashing through the fountain).
We look for Mikey and we look—
I look
for my Michael,
who can’t possibly have left me
this alone
for this long.
POINTLESS?
Search
without end.
Kicking through stones,
peering into every face.
Failing.
THERE IS A COLLEGE CAMPUS HERE
And I dream of graduating
and I dream of seeing Mikey graduate
and I dream of both of us living life happy,
free of our sad past.
Today is not that day.
Today I hang flier after flier after flier
on power poles.
AUTHORITIES
They say they have not given up on him,
but every week the spotlight continues to dim,
and hope spreads thin.
WHAT I HEARD SOMEONE SAY
“Poor folks,
thinking that kid
will ever come back.
That kid is dead, man.”
SECRET
I am secretly a bad person.
I am secretly a bad cousin.
I am secretly awful.
Let me tell you why.
I have come
to expect, to rely on,
to enjoy,
our trips up
Beckley way.
STEPS OF THE BECKLEY COURTHOUSE
I sit and wait to be picked up.
Hubert is checking on some things
he doesn’t want me to hear.
There are fluffy springtime clouds
in the late summer sky,
and kids shuffle by
like they have all the
time in the world.
A kid about fifteen or sixteen
walks from the Go-Mart with a
Snickers bar and a Coke.
One bite gone. Then, later,
a sip. Like the treat
and the perfect afternoon
will last forever.
11. HAIKU ONCE MORE
I have been too wild.
I will rein in my poems.
I will write haiku.
—SEPTEMBER 2
NOT ME
We got grades today.
It is the moment of truth
for people who care.
C-MINUS
I was supposed to
write about my own life, not
other people’s lives.
NOTES
Jaina passes one
to Lisa and Lisa laughs
and writes her one back.
TODAY
Windowpanes rattled
with anger and thunder when
the sun went away.
JAINA’S QUESTION
“Sasha, why don’t you
talk no more?” she asks again.
Wish I could tell her.
12. CINQUAIN ONCE MORE
—SEPTEMBER 9
This
is the
worst day I’ve
had in a long
time.
Darkness
is everywhere.
In the sky.
Here in my head.
Midnight.
Home
was Mikey.
Home was Phyllis;
was Ben, Judy, and
Michael.
Teacher
in math
thinks I’m stupid.
She tells me she
cares.
Rules
of poetry
insist I shouldn’t
break the cinquain pattern.
Who the hell says?
Panic
is sneaky.
Creeps up slowly
like a hunting cat.
Pounces.
13. TANKAS ONCE MORE
—SEPTEMBER 16
VISITORS
A knock at the door!
Sometimes the police visit
to keep us informed.
Sometimes it’s Pastor Ramey,
who brings toys for my cousins.