their algebra class
toddlers sleeping on towels on the floor,
the stench of diapers choking the dogs.
Poor kids get snatched by the real world
at seven, eight, nine years old, dragged
onto the front porch of adulthood, forced
to figure it out on their own
rarely making old bones,
a few will live to see their grandchildren chewed
up by the same machinery
then buried in cardboard boxes
I wanted a coffin made of wood
from trees not yet planted
my appetite for time was growing.
peanut butter chews
the peanut butter chews at my high school,
legendary food of the gods, were simple:
corn syrup, cornflakes, peanut butter, and sugar
mixed, plopped, and baked by badass
cafeteria ladies who understood everything
by eleventh grade, I’d shape-shifted
from a lost stoner dirtbag
to a jock who hung out with exchange students
wrote poetry for the literary magazine
and had a small group of nerdy, funny,
sweet friends to sit with at lunch
my I’m fine! mask fit snugly
I only took it off at home,
but when I shared peanut butter chews
with those friends
sometimes I forgot I was wearing it
I studied hard to keep up with them, we listened
to each other and to the same music
we ate a lot of peanut butter chews
the slant of light in the cafeteria
illuminated possibilities
I was smart enough not to tempt fate
by dating any of the guys in that group
I went out with a dude from a different school
who knew me before IT happened, a boy
who loved arguing politics and religion
as much as I did, one of the good guys.
Home was still hellish, afire
with the painful realization
that no matter how much I loved my parents
my love could not fix them
in the mythological universe of high school
cafeteria ladies are the Norns
taking our measure with a glance
seeing whom Fate would cut down early
and who needed an extra peanut butter chew
for free
I could only fix myself
high diving
Once upon a time, this fractured girl
wanted to fly
but was sore-afraid.
I watched teammates leap
off the high dive, flip
themselves into hawks
they called my name
but I chained myself in the far lane
pacing back and forth in the water
churning a wake of frustration,
still
every second stroke as I lifted my mouth
out of the water
to breathe
I opened my eyes to watch the hawks
spear the air
At meets, the diving took place in
the middle of the competition
swimmers turtled in towels on the deck
idle-watching, licking magic sugar powders
with cat tongues, as the divers flew
landing with a splash or a ripple
Once, a friend clipped her wings
on the way down, smashed
her head on the board
before she fell onto the surface
of the water,
they pulled her out, dazed and confused
scrubbed her blood off the board
my friend limped, but flew
a few weeks later, throwing herself
into the air, spinning
spearing
bruising the water
and getting up to try again
every second stroke as I lifted my mouth
out of the water
to breathe
I opened my eyes to watch
until one day my fins
began to grow feathers
germination
idea cracked the seed’s shell
skull’s cell
burrowed through the muck
surrounding my self-measured casket
clawed blindly toward light
slowly
I can’t stand this
bled
into I can’t stay here
trickled
through I should leave
swelled into
I want to leave
rose into a tidal wave
of I’m going
riding the undertow
My parents let me apply to be a foreign
exchange student
confident that I’d be rejected
but wanting me to dream
because dreaming was a tradition
at my house, we dreamed
about vacations and adventures, we dreamed
about being other people in different worlds
dreaming was our lifeboat in rough waters
the letter from the exchange program arrived
at the end of my junior year
they accepted me!
I would spend a year and a bit
(thirteen months: delicious, bewitching number)
living on a pig farm in Denmark
fluttering my untested wings
I teetered on the edge of the nest
my mother spelled out the bad news slowly
each word a hammer
because, you see, there was no money
they never thought I would make it so far
but they didn’t want to discourage my dream
dreaming never hurt, right?
Two days of tearful negotiation, isolation
rage rattled my mind’s cage in search of a solution
forty-eight hours of me standing my ground
relentless, unswayed, I planted my flag
firmly in a hand-forged reality,
if I took all of the money I’d earned
and saved for college
and my grandmother chipped in the difference
of a few hundred dollars
it would work
they talked to each other through the night
my parents did, no longer a question of cash
they weighed the cost of sending
sixteen-year-old
me
overseas to a family they’d never met
they weighed that against the dark tide
always trying to pull us under
we didn’t have many books in my house
we had maps of the Adirondack Mountains
and the state of Vermont
because that was the size of our world
in the morning, my mother took the battered
metal globe off my shelf and handed it to me.
“Where the hell is Denmark?” she asked.
“Show me where you’re going to live.”
the things I carried to Denmark
one suitcase of clothes
a small journal, undersea colors
enough birth control pills
for thirteen months
(thanks, Mom)
I packed my heart beating
rabbit-fast, my eyes
closed and waiting
the small stuffed fish as
blue
as the friend who gave it to me
frozen chip on my shoulder
as big as Lake Ontario
backbone a flagpole
nerves thrumming like a scrum
of hummingbirds aloft
the cost of saying goodbye hidden
next to my scars deep in the forest
at the bottom of my gut
I packed my freckled skin, rolled
and tucked between my shinbones
I’d take it out the first night
I arrived, stretch it carefully,
that map of me,
let it rest in the moonlight
on the floor of my bedroom
a baker’s dozen of months
so I could roam skinless in the hidden
liminal sliver of fortune granted
by the gambling gods who rolled
their dice in my name.
Around my neck I wore
the Saint Christopher’s medal
given by the boy I loved
to keep me safe
it worked.
hvordan det begyndt / how it started
I left my family behind at the Syracuse airport
flew to NYC, then Hamburg, in Germany
ate a weird pizza with corn on it,
boarded a train for Denmark, didn’t sleep
for nearly two nights and two days, didn’t want
to miss anything
we were thirty-nine half-growns
from all over the world
gathered in a village near the childhood home
of the writer Hans Christian Andersen
Danish is a tricky language, so we had a month
of instruction to learn how to swallow
Danish vowels
and muffle its marshmallowed consonants
how to say “thank you” / tak
“I don’t understand” / jeg forstår ikke
“my name is Laurie” / jeg hedder Laurie
“the bread tastes delicious—may I have another
piece?” / brødet smager læggert—må jeg bede
om et styk til?
friendships were formed fast and hard
like at summer camp, but with better food
and lots more freedom
we walked to the village to buy stamps
and chocolate
sang through the late sunshine
on the endless summer nights
one day we rowed a Viking ship onto the sea
till the land dropped out of sight
we rested our oars, hoisted the sail
compared blisters and dozed
as the breeze rocked us
back and forth, back and forth in our cradle
I unscrewed the top of my head
and rinsed out my brainpan
with salt water from the North Sea
and so began my next life
longitude meets latitude
Mor/Mom, Far/Dad, and Nanna, my Danish sister
picked me up at the language school, we greeted
each other with formal hellos,
like an epic blind date
rode the ferry from one island to another and
drove to the farm
where I had a small room tucked under the eaves
with a window that faced the sunset
the farm’s rhythm wound our clocks and flipped
the pages of the calendar
I arrived late summer as the new barn
was being finished
we held a topping-off party to thank
the godspirits in the wood
and celebrate with the carpenters,
Mor made a kransekage
a tower of marzipan cake adorned
with Danish flags and icing
you could hear the wheat growing that afternoon
from where we sat in the garden,
lazy bees buzzing the strawberry bowl,
smells of fresh coffee, cold beer, salt sweat
of the workingmen
and all the while, the fuglekonge/goldcrests
chasing the lowering clouds
reminding us that autumn drew near
We ate our meals together
at the kitchen table, my place
was on the bench across from Mor
and next to my sister
to my left, the door to the vegetable garden
and the fruit trees
our younger brothers taught me the words for food
ymer, smør, hårdkogte æg, ost
and that it was OK to mess up as long as I tried
Far sat at the desk every night after dinner
to record the day’s weather and his tasks in a
journal
One Saturday morning, our aunt and uncle
joined us after breakfast
for an important family meeting. I listened deep,
scrambling through my dictionary
when confused, the problem was dire:
rats in the barn were eating everything in sight.
I was so excited because I had learned
enough to be in on the action,
to contribute!
I looked up a few words, cleared my throat
and explained that in America,
when rats got into the grain,
we poisoned them,
but you had to be careful to get rid of the bodies
so they didn’t rot
Dead silence
followed by everyone politely pretending
that I had ceased to exist
Months later,
when I could actually understand and speak
I brought up that awkward moment
and asked where I had gone wrong.
Turns out there were no rats in the barn,
they’d been planning
our grandmother’s birthday party
and were shocked to hear that in America
we used poison
on such occasions,
we laughed so hard we near peed our pants
Our house stood at the end of the lane
near a bog brimming with eels
Mor opened the windows every day for fresh air
our house expanded magical
so everyone could fit
the cupboards stacked with second chances
sugar bowl filled with encouragement
our house recentered my universe, I rode my bike
to the bakery, library, soccer field, school
and back, always back to our house
at the end of the lane
longitude, eleventh meridian east, built of brick
latitude, fifty-fifth parallel north, family-lit
om efteråret / in the autumn
Monday through Friday, I pedaled to school
a bit more than two miles away,
it felt like ten for the first couple weeks
but got easier and faster quick enough
imagine a mash-up of high school’s senior year
and the first year of college, but without a prom,
alcohol poisoning, or sports teams,
and not nearly as much drama.
That’s where I went to school: at a studenterkursus
where we called our teachers
by their first names and
could knit in class if we wanted, the theory
being that if we could pay attention
as we knit, we might as well be productive
I studied Danish literature,
English literature, geography,
calculus, history, psychology,
and the hardest of all: French
I’d already studied French for four years,
it was easy
back home, but
at oversætte fra dansk til fransk /
shifting into French from Danish
overheated my brain and melted my circuits
we had a mid-morning break each day
when the school provided coffee,
tea, and pastries
(in Denmark Danish pastry is called Viennese
bread / weinerbrød
because the world is lovely-strange)
it was a relief to just study and grow friendships
without the distractions
and social hierarchies I was used to in the States
once I got used to the routine and the language
and once they got used to me
the shiny-bright of being the new kid,
the American sideshow
faded; that’s when I felt homesick.
One night I stood outside with my sister
talking to her about the bone-ache
for my American family
she pointed to the moon and said
it was shining on them, too
and that helped; she is made of compassion,
my sister
when the harvest was done,
the older of our two brothers
was confirmed in the Lutheran church,
an important rite of passage
Danes take their celebrations seriously;
an enormous tent
was erected outside our house, the Norwegian
relatives arrived plus half the town,
course after course of food was served,
then: the speeches. When you celebrate
a confirmation, wedding, birthday,
or anniversary in Denmark,
there are lots of speeches given, equal
parts teasing, mocking, complimenting,
and appreciating. It’s a big deal.
I gave a speech for my brother—
apparently I didn’t threaten to poison him
like a barn rat, so that was good.
The final course was served at three a.m.
and the party lasted until dawn.
om vinteren / in the winter
as fields slept under winter’s snow
deep in the earth a slow rumble
of strong, unseen hands pushed stones
to the surface
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