Book Read Free

Trespass

Page 2

by Thomas Dooley


  remember when greens of spruce

  brought indoors

  made us suffer the winter less?

  II

  What hurts

  the most? The kept

  breath? Geese

  cutting the pond? I came

  to know

  in hard Texas heat you found

  him,

  back east the roads twice salted cracked

  in places, I played on loop

  carols of mystery,

  O

  magnum mysterium, then

  acute ice,

  and common rain

  III

  The sun on the avenue

  is bright, veneers

  of antique chests at the outdoor flea

  shine like chestnut skins,

  a gray sparkle lifts

  from costume jewelry.

  Knowing you are browsing

  cheap Swedish furniture

  makes me feel,

  sturdier?

  IV

  I want to solder

  the fragile things, pour

  liquid alloy into me or

  exit metaphor

  altogether,

  straw is just straw,

  not hair,

  not blond tin,

  it’s dull and dirty, grass

  is young under straw, breaks

  capsules, the shredded

  chaff becomes

  dirt. I could

  be these things.

  Dirt.

  Shredded.

  Nothing seems

  degradable. Memory is still

  of you—morning, naked, peeling

  a small orange over

  a silver bowl.

  My teeth hurt,

  the citrus and the metal.

  V

  I try to forget you every day

  but Lauren and I were discussing

  superpowers and she said

  she would like to have super strength,

  I thought I’d like teleportation

  but then thought telepathy—to read

  your mind—but Lauren said ignorance

  is bliss, I had to agree. We thought

  Spiderman had it right with scaling walls

  which made me think of Luc in Aix

  who climbed building façades for sport,

  often shirtless, Lauren thought

  that was super strength but I said no it’s more like

  super attachment and I saw the power

  I kept giving you.

  VI

  I see you as a boy

  at the community garden

  lacing tomato stems, your hands

  quick with twine. I watch

  the direct daydream

  of your stare, how

  your green eyes cycle

  light. You mind the squash curls

  before you race out the gate

  shoelaces wild on the pavement

  snap like jacks.

  VII

  You say you need

  time yet I keep

  coming back

  isn’t my heart

  the dumbest kid

  in the class

  the dirty kid who

  no one wants

  to sit next to but he

  reaches out with gum

  and granola bars and

  they scratch into his desk

  with the needle

  from a math compass

  they ink “THINK SOAP”

  on the beige enamel of his locker

  he doesn’t know

  anything better just

  days when Xander

  is absent and the room

  falls quiet he thinks

  in the moments

  when chalk scrapes

  a music of slate

  a sparkle of white

  dust it’s all radiant theater

  this escape might make

  him happy that the kids

  love him and he

  has good lunches

  and he swings for hours

  upside down from the monkey bars

  his head pendulous

  just above chipped-up

  wood as his shadow

  draws giant totems

  on the grass shrinking

  and growing shrinking

  and growing for hours

  he could do that

  as blood charges his head

  and he feels

  he might pass out

  from the wild joy

  he is a bell clanging

  as if to call everyone

  and shout this is all

  my body can do

  up this high

  you can’t touch me

  as long as I keep pumping

  my skinny arms.

  VIII

  Chestnuts harden in spiky

  green husks, my brothers and I

  would walk the driveway

  in our socks, braved it

  under the chestnut tree

  and you give me

  a husk to hold

  suffer its unkindness.

  IX

  It’s been five weeks

  since I left you and I leave

  the family brunch, pass

  the hidden plastic eggs.

  Today the tomb

  is not empty, the stone

  still wedged in. I can’t go on

  distracting myself

  from the smell

  of burial spices

  the disturbed earth, you

  have not come back.

  X

  Fridays are the hardest.

  Your body moves through

  happy hours without

  me, I can’t even

  chart you,

  I want

  to see the lines

  you make

  on the map of the city,

  if they cross the lines

  I make, do we

  create a pattern

  unknowingly,

  does my finger

  run down the glass

  at the table you just left

  at the café on Dekalb? We are

  no longer destinations,

  single blinking dots.

  XI

  If I forget, remind me

  when we drove

  past the dry roadside

  farms, remind me when I looked out

  on the neat

  wheels of hay, my breathing

  hard then stilled, what you never said

  when I wiped my face,

  remind me of your

  neglect and the long ditches

  and if I forget the annulling

  of the day, if I want a night

  with you, let that car ride

  remind me.

  XII

  Our first time back together,

  magnets, my body

  pushed into you and your eyes

  rolled back. The second time

  I stared at your feet

  while I sucked you off

  the small muscles

  in my calves squeezed

  and released.

  The heart?

  The first position of union, the second

  something polar,

  getting back to your place

  that first time

  was like flight. The second,

  traffic at the bridge—as if the city

  said wait here

  don’t cross the water.

  XIII

  here take a universe darts of light a pan flute

  chirps our ending song go now to the cedary wield of smooth

  creatures of glabrous torsos caprine legs who am I

  to clasp seedstorms barehanded mornings when the surf

  clung to its mist stubborn I will make this break soft as skiff

  on water gone in a sprint you sleek windjammer I give you

  June’s tea rose heat island’s sagebrush summer and young trees<
br />
  XIV

  On the radio, bombast

  of timpani and horn

  from the Slovak Symphony, you are

  nowhere in the glissando

  the piccolo is

  too bright

  for you

  in these passages

  of fullness

  you do not live

  nor on the bridge today

  midlake birdsong, glottal frog

  that’s when I sang

  to become hoarse.

  XV

  this morning water broke

  over my shoulders

  the shower was ice

  the longer I stayed

  today is a cold day

  longer now after

  the solstice more sunlight

  and snow I keep you

  alive even though I try

  to kill you every day

  PART THREE

  FATHER

  he’s dulled

  my blade

  sometimes I could

  throw hatchets

  look at me

  enfeebled pullet

  offer my beak

  blunt the hooked

  end

  my air empties, ink

  clots

  when I think write

  him

  PHONE CALL

  Have you

  written her?

  Many times.

  What did you

  say?

  I asked her to forgive me.

  But you don’t

  have the right

  to ask

  that.

  Why

  can’t I ask her that?

  You don’t

  have the right.

  AUNT PEGGY

  Afternoon sun on metals, hubcaps

  flash on Second Avenue, I’ve been

  seesawing my feet on the edge of the curb

  for almost an hour on the phone

  with my mother, It just doesn’t make

  sense, the subject always comes up,

  I mean she’s had years

  of therapy, she says years with such

  exhalation her breath gets

  reedy, I pick threads from my scarf,

  Why can’t Peggy forgive your father? The city is

  bright, winter is quiet, a pause

  on motion, Mom, look at all she’s been through, Pop

  then Dad, I mean, good god, her voice

  tenders, But Tom, she ticks her throat,

  don’t you think after all that therapy

  she would be able to forgive? I can feel

  a draft in my sleeve, it hits

  the sweat at the bend of my arm, Maybe this is

  her therapy. Treat Dad like he’s dead.

  There is a shallow dent in the chrome

  fender of an old car my image runs over

  and warps, my mother is quiet,

  I’ve handed her something new, she might

  stand for a while in her kitchen and wait

  for the dishwasher to end its cycle.

  PICNIC, 1988

  I don’t name his niece here

  but I know she was there

  by the potato salad. In a notebook

  I sketched my house

  and the giant pines, our front porch

  green-black like lake mud

  erased until the paper broke, shaded

  shingles with new colors, signed

  my name bottom right.

  I let Aunt Peggy look.

  I was young but I knew her life

  was sad, she took

  in her hands the brittle

  sketch, her eyes tracing lines, down

  the charcoaled driveway, her eyes

  I will name blue, her blue

  eyes, those glassy

  empty rooms.

  WARINANCO PARK

  Shadows slide over

  the fields, the sun

  vanishes I think one black vulture

  has eclipsed it, but

  no, it’s quick clouds, dead leaves

  are kites unto the heave.

  The planes lift from Newark

  crossing over the park,

  over the clover leaves

  of the 1 and 9, from above, the streets

  are pale laces and the roof

  of my father’s house,

  a chip, a tiny smudge

  over those living beneath.

  SELLING THE HOUSE: INGALLS AVENUE

  In the sun parlor after dusk

  I want to turn the heat

  on, the tall lamp is shadeless,

  the new tenant knocks

  his knuckle to find patches

  of new plaster, my father turns keys

  over, they chitchat, I might enclose

  the front porch, make it a bedroom,

  there’s light on bits of lint.

  Another big family to move in, more

  quiet pairings, I look out curtainless

  windows, in a house with rooms

  and closets that never knew to be

  unlived in, for this moment maybe

  a relief to be empty.

  AT WINDWARD AND SHORE ROADS

  When we sold her house

  the pine sent down

  its last dried arrows, the new owner

  sawed the cherry still in bloom,

  that holly that always snagged

  her white perm was pieced

  and bundled,

  her new condo

  has fresh paint, no mold in the walls, she’s far

  from the bay where she took me

  to push horseshoe crabs

  back in, now she hears waves

  of engines behind the huge oaks

  beyond the parking lot

  where the highway runs out.

  WINTER BURIAL

  When she died, early light

  turned the curtains

  to gauze. I wilted

  spinach for lunch

  the hours she spent

  zesting lemons

  whipping meringue

  to peaks. We step

  between dunes of ice,

  she never

  liked snow.

  Its weight on a roof.

  ELEGY

  FOR TYLER

  I know violin strings

  you have to

  make them

  tremble

  a quick hand against

  the steady hill

  of your shoulder

  in the shallow valley

  by your neck

  thresh the horse hairs

  of your bow over

  the ridge and drag

  back, full

  as a field released

  to a hurtling

  a long falling

  gallop

  DYING FAMILY

  I

  At the church door

  its heavy wood

  in the treeless lot

  I take my father’s

  hand we move

  over the broken rocks

  turn their broken

  sound we move

  within the shadow

  the spire makes

  on the lawn away

  from the door those

  slate steps rain-dark

  he passes his sisters

  seated in cars

  headlights on single

  file I move my hand

  over his back

  another funeral

  my father’s brothers

  are dying his sisters

  survive and want

  him dead.

  II

  Did you see

  when my brother

  reached over

  and my father

  fell into him, hair

  silver as winter,

  his head

  tucking under?

  Did you see

  the small quake

  of his back,

  my father’s
tall

  body bend,

  a peony

  burst open,

  top-heavy?

  III

  My father’s niece crosses to me

  I kneel to her newborn

  I think we’re all smiling.

  We’re moving

  to Florham Park, she says.

  Florham. That word,

  floral

  and florescence, lawns

  of snow and spring, a space

  opening

  blacktop becomes

  field, no

  manholes of City

  of Linden, I watch

  a burst seed drift

  and land

  in the bed

  of her brunette curl, I almost

  brush it away.

  NEVER

  Did it stop with me?

  Yes,

  I knew

  it was wrong.

  She adjusts the strap

  to her pocketbook.

  Never

  to your children?

  MEMORY

  My brothers and I hunted

  night crawlers in summer

  folded back the ground

  with large dinner spoons the metal

  necks bent swans we sunk

  our cupped hands below crinolines

  of white roots found

  quick rubbery coils ruby

  under light dropped each

  into an empty Sanka can

  their wet bodies sliding

  away from cold tin

  my father says he forgot about

  the other two girls.

  At dawn the rain fills in

  the pocks with mud.

  MARY AND BOBBY

  My father writes

  to his mother who died

 

‹ Prev