Author: Becca

What really got me
wasn’t my own dark days
but the rainy-morning call from a friend:
her ex came over to say goodbye to her and the girls,
the two girls he’d helped raise for years,
who were now old enough to see and say to their mom
he was the closest thing to a father they’d ever had,
who wrote him letters for what was too hard to say,
letters they didn’t show their mom,
letters he promised her he would read but not just yet
because it might break him.

He came for lunch and stayed for dinner.
He looked so happy, like he wanted to stay forever,
but it was already 100° in Arizona
and he wanted to get ahead of the heat
so he was leaving town in ten days.

He used to come over to make dinner every day.
He used to always take a nap at 3 p.m.
and everything was like clockwork for him
except the wildness of love and family
and then the fight and failure to save his department,
his job: Foreign Languages eliminated.

It’s raining hard outside as she tells me
he seemed different, less in control, more—
“weary?” I offer, and yes that’s it.

She told him she’d been in custody court for a year
and he said he was sorry, that was always her worst fear.
She said the amazing part was she wasn’t afraid anymore.
She simply looked herself in the eye every morning
while brushing her teeth and vowed:
I will fight that motherfucker till the day I die.

Maybe they could have made it work
now that they’d both changed.
Maybe she should have tried harder.
But the new job was great—
so much better, even—
and so he had to go.

“Academia will break your heart,”
my friend says, and tells me for the first time
that after I left Tennessee eight years ago
(we’d both arrived a year earlier, freshly divorced,
witnesses to each other’s new lives and loves)
she’d drive from one end of town to the other,
the rich part, the poor part, campus, downtown,
the commercial strip, the road to the waterfall,
back and forth, up and down, and tell herself:

This is where you live now:
on a plateau on the edge of the mountains.
This is it; this is your life.

Every few minutes
the drizzle swells
into a hard rain.
I wipe my eyes.
I am all of them,
and we come from
the same stock,
my friend and I.
It has taken us
a long time
to find a family.

scraping the bottom     of a bunch of barrels

     I ask the sky     to paint me a poem

orange sherbet     cloud stripes     against blue 

     where there was no texture     or edge

bat floundering low     then gone     

                    “Broken wing?”

Venus visible so soon after     sun gone     

     diamond glint     on pastel pink     

“I wish the bat would come back” 

               (squeaking) 

“Did you hear that?” 

               (laughing) “Yes”

(trying again) “I wish the bat would come back”

               (silence)

“It’s not working” 
               
               (beat) 

                         “That’s a vulture”

          contrail headed straight     for diamond

     plane hits Venus     tears run down     

Septimus’s cheeks     for all this beauty     

     comes merely     from looking     

cables taut or saggy

     against gradient     west to east

     pink     orange     blue

“it’s changing so fast” 

     “I just saw your friend fly

                         over the rooftops”

kimchi 
      on frozen pizza

fresh pack 
      of cigarettes

suspend 
      judgment
 
of the other’s
      coping follies

      (try again)

mind
your
own 
b

he 
      who’s only 
            a hall 

      of mirrors
            of you

kid pressing face to the door’s window
waving at me frantically
puppy on a leash
barking and lunging at me frantically
peach and blue striped sunset
gravel alleys like country roads
teal house, pink house, tan house, yellow house
trash bucket on its side
heroically not rolling down the driveway
garter snake with white stripe
among the hyacinths
more girls from the high school gone missing
robin’s twilight squawk echoes off linoleum siding
she said things weren’t good at home
air feels so fresh, phone says it’s moderate
what in the world! and other catchphrases
from friends drifting from lamplit houses
grave-digging all the canceled festivals
cluster of new white flowers
in the wooded slope near Gaslight Village
stop to identify: Poet’s narcissus
hand to face as if slapped
in one version he needs to love himself
before he can learn to love others
in the mirrored pool
it’s hard not to write a lyric selfie
even gazing outward
the darkest thoughts show up and sting
ones you should keep like secrets
ones you might test on the night air

I watch you walk by in your pink rhinestone sunglasses, white earbuds, sky-blue coat.
You never get too close. You never leave me flowers. The others do. But roses rot,
it’s true. I can smell that you, too, once hungered to hold the grief pose forever:
arms outstretched, head down, wings flaring, darkness enduring, forgetting
you were ever bronze. I can tell by the way you rush by: you once tried
to make a monument, but it melted. You little earthworm, helium
balloon. Demeter’s daughter stuffing her ears with new songs
while weaving among the crypts and tulips. It’s up to me
to keep your torch blazing, steadfast. I refuse to look
up, to lower my arms, to flap my wings. I have no
death date. Like mothers who eagerly await
the nap of anesthesia, this long stillness
after a life of washing and mending,
lifting and bending, makes me
feel as free as any hollow,
winged thing.

Get a move on, maiden.
You are no longer young.
Follow the path unfurled
by my wing, my arm.
Don’t be alarmed
by my missing fingers.
Those goons with their
chisels in the moonlight
belong here with me.
We don’t want your kind.
Take the last bright route.
Tarantella your way
to the gate. Swing your
arms, spin your skirts,
balloon your silk threads
till you catch a current to
a valley blue and strange.
Start all over again.

.

.

channeling The Black Angel and others in response to prompt #3

I confess
I’ve always been a bit of a
moon truther.
Say you’re kidding,
he’d say to me,
but I was never sure
and could promise nothing.
To clarify:
I knew I wasn’t kidding.
Nor was I serious.
I was laughing all the way through.
I reserved the right
to review the footage.
Somehow saying maybe not
was a way of saying yes.
I was holding space for doubt
which flushed my chest
warm as wonder.
A little room for wonder
I’m still unpacking.
With one window facing west,
one east, a telescope, a mural
of the constellations,
a sensory deprivation tank,
and a logbook of clues
about Hollywood’s collusion
with the military.
There are years I cry all the time
and years I don’t cry at all.
I can’t explain it.

Head astronaut
exhausts
the extra
of the extra
asks Houston
to send twenty
new superlatives
in tomorrow’s
mission summary

I go outside
just after dusk
right away
smell the word
petrichor
then curse
ever learning it
try to claw
my way back:

dirt parade
swamp sheen
loam spritz
stone soup
moss licker
fossil dig
fern sweat
god’s mouthwash
culvert tryst
matcha latte
moon-boot dust
fairy door
leaf sneeze
nymph bidet
adult baptism
deep south
virgin mojito
lusty aubade
treehouse envy
say ahhhh

We all have our limits

To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force—the imagination.

—William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT

—Diane di Prima, “Rant”

Steal a moon on the water with a bucket.
Keep stealing until no moon is seen on
the water.

—Yoko Ono, “Water Piece”

I don’t need a mad president
to threaten to blow up an entire civilization
for the eternal moment to reveal itself
in every particular shining from the inside.

I don’t need to teeter on the Eve of Destruction
to bow to the stunt of the trees all flowering at once,
day-old spaghetti, discount chocolate bunnies,
you puzzling in a dark room with a headlamp on.

I won’t fear Tuesday at eight o’clock on a week
already bursting with mysteries: anniversaries
of births, deaths, resurrections, ends to the suffering
of beloved creatures who are sometimes the self.

Like Lauren waking up from an induced coma
two years ago tomorrow during a total solar eclipse,
her whole family around her, and saying first thing
like a gracious hostess, Thank you all for coming.

Like finding out Earl was born on Contessa’s death
anniversary, two days from now, and how he still runs
from window to window as I open the curtains,
thanking the sparrows and chipmunks for coming.

What some see as whimsy, a waste of a bucket or
a moonlit night, a way of happening, a mouth,
I call a counterforce to annihilation. I swear
the only way to survive this world is to be a poet in it.

When you’re a woman without children
people like to suggest you’re missing
an entire fabric of experience
perhaps an entire hope chest of exotic fabrics
in many colors of experience
all the while never considering that they
might be missing the lavender microfiber fitted sheet
of being tucked in every night by your boyfriend
who lives with you like a groundsman or governess
who remembers the lines and ditties
the nonsense and jokes that go too far
you mumble as you drift off to sleep
who turns out the light and emails you
so it’s waiting for you in the morning:

i took a hundred photos
in the alley
back and forth
the sun setting and unsetting
over the hill

(who even hears the lines break
as you drift off. . . .)

I started taking selfies in the alley just behind our house,
a low point, the sun dipping just past the horizon,
then walked to Gilbert, a high point, where it rose again
(“unsetting” might be better—was that my word
or his? oh but it was Easter! “rose again” is good, too)
and then I left the alley and cut over to Brown Street:
at the top of the hill, the sun hung right over Hancher
and as I sharply descended it sank behind
that big ship of an auditorium across the river
and I decided to chase it, crossing Dubuque,
no one expecting me home, standing on the bridge
in the glow left by a sun done unsetting,
smiling and smiling until I got the shot

You were late. I was
irked. I’d saved you
a seat in a packed room.
I was sad you’d missed
the poem about preparing
to one day wipe the butt
of the one you love.
During the Q&A
an older man was asking
more of a comment
and I turned around
and there you were
standing closest to him,
and your face was so
funny: Don’t do it, man;
don’t embarrass us all.
The debut of your face—
a nervous, warning petal
on a wet, black bough—
was a love poem, too.
We shared a slice of
cheddar-broccoli quiche
in the café, then went out
into the cold wind.
Steely rolls of clouds
with flat bottoms,
pale orange light below.
We walked the path
the tornado took
twenty years ago,
Iowa Avenue,
ripping off roofs
and hurling cars
into trees. No trace
of it now, and barely
a hint of spring—
only the first few
forsythia petals
which you made sure
I noticed (I might have
walked on by) and the
Nanking cherry blossoms
neither of us could have
named had I not
stopped to feed them
into my app before jogging
to catch up with you.
You don’t care about
the names of things,
but you care more
than anyone about
the direct encounter,
raw and holy as the wind
piercing our skin
as we headed west,
blowing my pink
pashmina into my face.
Suddenly warmer,
I didn’t swat it away,
I just followed you
blindly down
the boulevard.

Storms again.
A hanging
cable writhes
too snakelike.
Bare black
walnut branches
wobble.
The word
of the week,
the season,
the presidency.
It has something
to do with the sky,
by all accounts.
As above, so
below. We live
on just one arm
of the fractal,
they say.
But there are
glimpses,
like Dad waking
you and your
sisters up
in the middle
of the night
and marching you
out to a dirt road
in the northern
latitudes with
orders to look up.
You saw a soft
white scarf
slung over the dark
shoulders
of the night.
And that’s our
galaxy.
Shearling Way,
Silken Way,
Cotton Way.
No use crying
over the wonders
of the cosmos.
What to feel,
then? Not quite
awe, not a dream
within a dream,
not only cranky
from being
yanked from
sleep, but
something like
alignment.
The compass
snapping north.
You saw a piece
of the path
you were on.
That you’d run
from this dirt
road and travel
to distant
stations.
The seasons
would spill,
the years
stack up
like bangles
then spiral
back around
when the light
slants at a
certain angle,
when gardenia
conjures your
play perfume,
when an old
song crackles
through
the radio
and swears
it saw the sky
break.

when the moon is void of course
the moon is void, of course

     avoid first dates, interviews, surgeries

the moon is a horse is void of course
and no one can talk to a horse of course

     avoid dentists and closing deals

that is of course unless the horse
is the famous, the one and only moon

     you can reminisce, meditate, daydream

go right to the source and ask the moon
she’ll give you an answer that you’ll endorse

     absolutely do not get married

of course everything is always inside in one
of course we are going to have bad days, many bad days

     sometimes we’re running in the emptiness

but she’s always on a steady course
though some hours void of course, of course

.

.

.

(with apologies to Mister Ed and Gertrude Stein)

They say it’s a coincidence
that the first mission sending humans to the dark side of the moon in 54 years
launched just before the pink moon rose.

They say there’s no good explanation
for why space rocks the size of cantaloupes are crashing through the roofs of homes
all over North America and Europe.
.
There’s causation, correlation, synchronicity, divine intervention, take your pick.

I push-pin it all to a corkboard and wind red thread between exhibits:

—plume of fire reflected in the waters around the space center
—meteorite bouncing around a bedroom in Houston, site of mission control
—full moon hiding behind Iowa clouds, but I have faith it’s pink
—view of Strait of Hormuz from space

I add a crayon drawing of last night’s dream about my mother on a plane wobbling in the air.

I’m not solving the crime of coincidence.

I’m not achieving translunar injection burn.

I’m singing fireball in the sky until I blast apart from the pull of the Earth.

I gave too many nos. I offended.
What I wanted was to see the old streets on foot.

On a Monday so many places are closed
there’s only the past to explore.

He couldn’t relate;
he didn’t have a lot of hard yeses or nos.

I said I’d already met my desires—
the lake, the show, the café—

but didn’t say

that’s how I’ve felt about my whole life
since I was twenty-eight.

Now what?

Now the snowglobe shakes.
Now the dice roll.
Now the moon rocket launches.

*

Still, the lake hoodwinks you
with its turquoise smear
and you forget your ghosts

your youth
devoured by vape shops,
your parents rotting

in their house up the shore.
Where you grew up
if you can call it that.

Stone lions keep watch.
Lighthouses flash.
A turret on every corner

and the moon, still changing,
waxing gibbous over Fachwerk
and oxidized lampposts.

You ignore the signs,
fall upon a folded footbridge,
scramble up the ravine instead.