in a spot of warm sun.

  “We won’t be a bother,” the foreman had shouted from

  over the fence as I as pulled tomatoes that Wednesday,

  the last time I saw that tree.

  I’m afraid you will, is a thing I could have said.

  Tuesday Morning on the Way to Rehab

  This is the you I will press to a clean new sheet of memory,

  you asleep with your shaggy head against the dirty car

  window—do you remember when I still cared to stop

  and to wash things?—and with this newly exploding

  sunrise in the glassy space beyond you, as pale as

  you, as ignorant as you of a future I fear may not

  include either one of us. Or maybe the memory

  to keep is three years ago, when you were just

  beginning to fall apart, when I was still sure

  that there were so many chances, so many

  chances out there for you. It’s getting late

  and we should hurry, now. You are small

  and changing fast, reducing. By sunset

  you will have shrunken back from the

  framed edges of this picture, farther

  than you were yesterday, farther

  even than you were early this

  palid morning, less you than

  just an instant ago—please,

  is there no way to save it

  now?—there is all of

  this history and I

  have nothing but

  you to keep

  it in.

  Ways We May Have Been Wrong

  I am watching your sister through the window, waiting for the bus.

  The rising sun behind her has caught her in such a way that the

  space around her has been set afire. I step away, intending to pick

  up the camera to get a picture, but then stop, and decide only

  to just be present.


  You are not here and today is your birthday. I remember the day, I think

  it was in the second grade, that I sat waiting on the front stoop for your

  own school bus to arrive, and when it did you ran fast down its stairs

  and up the walkway to where I sat, and with wide, frightened eyes you

  cried: my friend died yesterday. He was seven, and had only been walking

  home, only walking home—I can still hear so clearly that only—and he

  just collapsed, and that was that. I remember feeling as we clung together,

  and I think you did, too, that this is what made life the scariest thing.


  Your birthday. When I was pregnant with you, had just begun to round out

  in the belly, my back pulled in to follow as you stretched us both out into

  unknown territory, and it was then that I felt the deep foreshadow of this

  place where we live now, and so I sat down to write a poem. It was rough,

  I was young, only twenty. But it was all you and me, all superhero duo and

  scrappy fairy tale. I still believe in that version of us. Maybe just not in quite

  the same costumes, now.


  When you have made your bed, when you have finished with today’s group

  and the nurse has watched you take your dose and sent you out into that

  unnaturally bright and crowded room, please call. I’ll sing.

  Occlusion

  I take a swipe at your tight face

  pull it back, brush the dustings off—

  you were 22 then, your bright smile

  gone fallow, your eyes anemic and

  retreating.

  I pinch the features hard, try by

  brute force to bring you back to

  your surface, to pull you forward

  and out into this very particular,

  particular light—

  this place I have shaded

  by not shading, drawn by

  drawing around you,

  more screened,

  more diffuse, I see now,

  than chiaroscuro.

  Lisa Beth Fulgham

  After They Sold the Cows, But Before They Cut Away the Pines

  Wine-fed and lying in truck beds thrown open,

  we had gathered in a field to watch meteor showers

  but first noticed the moon, halved

  and upward-facing like a bowl to hold

  every flinch, every shiver, every amen come Sunday.

  Firelight would have drowned out the celestial,

  so we grasped at each other for warmth.

  We played geography, we played guess-the-headlights,

  we played sing-the-tree-line-to-sleep.

  We awoke with the warblers at dawn, dew seeped

  into the openings of our sleeping bags.

  Together, we excavated the remnants of the night.

  Blushing and lacking pavement to guide us,

  we drove along the barbed-wire fence,

  hoping to cross it as we had the night before,

  without piercing our skin.

  The Choctaws under the Bed

  The picture was boxed in forest green and dust,

  waiting to be discovered in the space beneath

  my grandmother’s brick-hard mattress.

  Man and woman, field-worn and dark-skinned,

  they glared at me. These two stood upright,

  holding their half-filled baskets in front of them.

  Behind them grew rows of cotton.

  And I wondered, if they could see me,

  would they string beads in my straw-like hair?

  If they could see me, would they touch

  this skin that the sun bites into, chews,

  and spits out? Would they scold

  me for slouching and step forward

  to straighten my spine?

  Would they teach me dying

  words that would hang in my throat

  like phlegm in Southern spring?

  Would they say Oh my, how you’ve grown,

  we remember . . . or just return to their work,

  pulling at the bolls more forcefully?

  Justification

  It’s ok because I only count

  when I’m bored, she says, noticing

  every percussive pen click against

  legal pad from across the gap

  between her and Dr. Drivel.

  Behind her back she lifts

  and curls her fingers in multiples

  of three with each beat.

  The inspirational posters and books

  with well-worn spines don’t distract

  enough from the floor tiles, arm freckles

  and kaleidoscopes that need to be inventoried.

  Just like the asphalt and white

  lines of highways are not enough

  to keep her from turning her attention

  to the passing cars as she paces home.

  There is not enough time to number them all,

  to make sure that she’s seen the correct

  amount before she can go inside.

  So she takes the longer way, dodging

  through alleyways and neighborhoods.

  She turns the knob back and forth

  three times before heading indoors,

  announcing her arrival.

  It’s ok because at night I can rest,

  she says, turning the light off with

  the normal click, click, click.

  She turns over three times

  like an alligator in a death roll

  with a dog,

  and gives thanks for the dark,

  and gives thanks for the dark,

  and gives thanks.

  A Strange Offspring

  Junior high experimenter,

  wisp-banged boy who swabbed

  the corners of my locker

  while I stood, kicking at a patch

  of dried gum on the short, grey carpet,

/>   if then I could have seen the bacteria

  swelling in shades of white, green,

  and yellow, I wouldn’t have volunteered,

  raising my hand and wiggling my fingers

  under the fluorescent lighting.

  Later, we gazed at the Petri dish,

  a fertile culture blooming

  below us, condensation

  lapping the lid.

  A girl chortled

  two rows over, called me

  moldy Mona. You slid

  your nails underneath

  the tape, opened the container,

  and released our spores.

  Found after the Sudden Storm with Straight Line Winds

  This light switch, useless.

  That half-green, half-rust

  lawn chair lost.

  Torn bits of yesterday’s news:

  the school’s successful play,

  the congressman’s unsuccessful affair.

  Power lines snaked

  across the asphalt.

  This pup thrown

  against the shed’s aluminum side.

  This house halved by a pecan tree.

  Parking lot puddles reflecting

  our cheeks, the sun.

  This corn crop’s thirst quenched.

  These ponds teeming,

  this conversation overflowing.

  Mary Mills

  The Practical Knowledge of Women

  A pragmatist

  to all appearances, my father

  has spent his life

  with steel and fire

  but again brings out the little bird

  and trusts her to her mate,

  her life the size of a wine cork

  and fragile as apple blossom.

  “He misses her,” he explains,

  and it is I

  with my supposedly impractical education

  who can see the mistake.

  She spends a week or so

  in the larger cage,

  sleeping beside him

  on a spindly branch

  and it convinces my father,

  but not me.

  It is the practical knowledge of women:

  the man who will pluck a feather

  will pick your wings bare,

  and he who will nearly kill you

  will kill you, eventually.

  My father believes in love.

  So do I, but I also believe

  in the bone-cold January days

  I spent in an old farmhouse

  away from a sharp beak.

  I believe in many things

  that only look like love

  from odd angles, that cannot be

  proven beyond any shadows,

  but speak the lack.

  I believe

  in the bare places

  where feathers

  have never

  grown back

  Peas

  My mother could make me eat peas,

  but not chew them.

  I must have swallowed a gallon

  whole like medication,

  her motives

  vitamins dipped in gall.

  Later, she could make me tell her

  events, but not how I felt.

  I’d hold crushes or despair in my mouth

  for hours until I could excuse myself

  to the cold altar of the bathroom,

  offer up the green

  flesh of my teenage heart

  to an empty room.

  Even now, she tiptoes

  around perceived scorn,

  recoils from the black pits

  of old fires

  as if the specter of their heat

  still frightens her, as if

  they might reignite

  spontaneously

  and swallow her

  whole

  Earth from Space

  I love best alone,

  our apartment

  at the bottom of the hill a sunken glow.

  There’s our life,

  I want to say (but don’t). We watch the glass door,

  waiting to see

  ourselves walk by, inside,

  astronauts watching Earth from space.

  It reminds me of you

  last winter, on skates—

  how I expected your clumsiness,

  but you glided away. How you looked

  from the long end of the rink:

  oblivious, distant, whole in a way

  that crushed my ribs like paper.

  I’m never

  this close up close, I didn’t want to say.

  30,000

  Pushed off

  like a swimmer from a pool wall

  deep into a cold ripple

  of burned pearls.

  Our flying dollhouse.

  I pretend to read

  but how?

  the lush whirl of earth, below;

  my eyes drag back

  like dogs pulling leashes,

  resentful of my insistence

  on the banal.

  my god, I think, listening

  for the silence

  that coats the world,

  but the engines

  bored as cattle

  lumber on. My open book

  tells its story

  to the wall.

  Monika Cassel

  Waldschatten, Muttersprache

  (in memory of Erik Cassel)

  The tree is broken in the light.

  Every rose folds shut—

  Quiet, they say,

  like the face of the woman

  who looks up from her reflection in the forest pool

  to gaze at you, at me, to hear the veery’s call.

  You asked for dark and light, for here and gone.

  The veery’s notes resound unseen;

  they haven’t asked you here

  to tender me again with yellow petals.

  Marsh marigold, Dutchman’s breeches, lady’s slipper,

  chilled medicines I tucked under your tongue, your tired whisper—

  These are the hard coins of our dreams:

  fish-breath, rain-slept, heart-kept.

  Thrift, ca. 1946

  “Die Fahne Hoch,” (“Raise the Flag”) co-anthem during the Third Reich, was composed by Horst Wessel, Nazi hero/martyr, and outlawed in Germany after 1945.

  She made me a new red dress

  when the schools opened again:

  pulled the old flag out from a drawer,

  clipped the stitches

  from the circle in the center, held it up,

  shook her head

  at the black spider,

  “good fabric

  and a pity to waste it

  but there’s just nothing

  I can make out of this,”

  spread the red rectangle

  and cut the pattern;

  just enough.

  A lot of girls wear red

  these days. At recess

  boys patrol the playground,

  yank up

  our skirts. They sing

  Horst Wessel’s song

  as they run by,

  “Die Fahne hoch!”

  Hertha Tielsch to Maria Radler,

  Garßen bei Celle, Germany,

  January 1, 1947.

  I’ve enclosed

  your handkerchief

  which I am returning

  to you, unfortunately

  still with the stain.

  I just laid it in the snow

  one more time

  to bleach—

  Maybe that

  will help.

  Michael Fleming

  To a Fighter

  for Marti

  Invocations

  I. CAT Scan

        And just what does the cat see

  with his shining green eyes

        as he skulks through the dark

  warm jungle of your veins?


        Let him pad silently back

  to report that the wet, pulsing

        miracle somehow continues.

  II. Biopsy

  May the surgeon

  in her spotless apron

  emerge smiling

  from the kitchen

  saying:

  I had a little look

  you’re not ready

  the oven’s not

  even hot.

  III. PET Scan

  It sounds so gentle—just a light caress,

  nothing intrusive, nothing rude or rough,

  just a feathery touch, a lover’s kiss,

  a whisper barely there, barely enough

  but enough all the same—you can’t say no.

  Or a light knock on your door: open it.

  A nice young man, clean as a Mormon, stands

  there smiling brightly and asks: How many kittens?

  Puppies? Tropical fish? And he hands

  you a pamphlet, a rose—you can’t say no.

  Think of these things when you’re in the machine:

  the brush of a heron’s wing, the soft knock

  of knuckles that have never known work, clean

  sheets, clean slates, clean blood. And one day we’ll talk

  of this and laugh, or cry—you can’t say no.

  From Dartmouth-Hitchcock

  I want to tell you:

  they look like they know

  what they’re doing here.

  I want to tell you:

  the man we met today,

  he’ll be a sculptor in reverse—

  a poet of perfect excision.

  Just the one little pea, no more.

  And then we’ll go back

  to West West, to wood thrushes

  and red-eyed vireos and the great

  blue herons rising like pterodactyls

  from ponds shaded by maples.

  Maples—

  they know how summer heals

  those neatly bored tapholes

  from early spring.

  I want to tell you:

  we wouldn’t have a damn

  thing different.

  Chemo

  By now we know a thing or two about

  fire, how it quickens everything alive

  or dead or flickering between, and how

  to conjure it from nothing, how to give

  it what it needs, and no more—just enough

  oxygen, just enough life. We love fire,

  love to exult in our mastery, love

  to amaze ourselves with borrowed power. By

  rights we would be gods. But gods, they have their

  troubles, too—all that incense, all that dark

  insufferable mumbling, all that rain. Why

  do we put up with it? We just do. Star-