my mother bruises
easily
cobblestones in San Miguel
felled her
i was there
but too far
to catch her
to hold her elbow
knee knotted
hand swollen
an inflated leathery
latex glove
her glasses hid
her color erupted eye
wine dark echo
dimmed & darkened
from the original
fluorescent burst
of the original fall
the first day
yellow green rimmed
the point of contact
right hand
outer knee
wrapped & clothed
unseen
her eye alone
bruised to the bone
reveals & reminds
me to
watch my step
& hers
PS She’s fine. Really. I saw her just the other day. This fall happened twenty years ago.
It’s not perfect. The edges are folded with near precision. More rolled than folded in spots, not quite the crease you’re meant to aim for.
I know how small the hands were that folded this crane.
I know the room where it came to be.
There was a lesson connected to it. The simplicity that could become art. The care that it takes to think & create in honor of a loved one.
The teacher says it’s meant to be one of a thousand. An insurmountable task, a severe & demanding ritual, the boy thinks, though he doesn’t have those words for it yet.
But, she says, the work can be shared.
At some point, the ritual in the class becomes automatic, hands moving independent of the mind. Eyes looking across the table at loved ones, looking back across at you.
The first folds the easiest. Paper pliant & crisp. You get the feeling you could do anything with it. And then the working area gets smaller, the sharpness muddied. That’s the other lesson.
How hard it is to bring a thought into being, how much work it takes to honor a memory.
When you enter the gym, you'll recognize
a lot -- the shine of the floor, the height
of the rim, the high squeaks of feet
picking & rolling. A whistle will pierce
the air, and you'll gather, a rough
semicircle, hands on hips, game faces.
A face not unkind, a voice slightly
too loud, dressed in colors you hope
to wear. He'll tell you (probably a he)
that some of you won't make it.
And maybe for you, it's as if he's
teasing, mocking, as if he's certain that
you won't make it. So you
run and you throw
your whole body in.
Focus, push,
pass, repeat.
What you fear will not go away. Let
me take it on for you. Let me worry
and sweat, all nerves & hope seated
among the other dads, watching the next
team assemble.
Go. Play.
This is more a mantra to future-me than a message to my unafraid athlete son. Shamelessly modeled after William Stafford's "For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid".
Race in our age is admitting that we respect advantage, that progress is grievously laid aside. Society developed, yet man senses proof of a force all our fault — degenerating, criminal, rapid.
Children shown the existing body learn and work the new body.
Work and honor free entire groups. Unorganized people govern not. The body politic is taking labor, light, and care. How are profits superhuman? If all ages withdraw cooperation, a fair and free home should make all rise.
Today I’m posting my first ever blackout poem–that’s it up there. Seven sentences gleaned from eight pages. I’m not wild about it.
As a high school English teacher, I’ve been tempted to do blackout poetry projects, but I’ve wanted them to mean something, to be an exercise of true rewriting of text rather than a “fun” standalone lesson on an anodyne subject. As a high school teacher, I’ve also taught Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” a lot. But I didn’t want to blackout a feminist text. Instead, I worked with Gilman’s 1908 “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem“, an eight-page article in which Gilman imagines an enforced labor system of certain African Americans, those who can work factories & fields “without the strain of personal initiative and responsibility to which so many have proved unequal..”
Gilman’s “suggestion” goes into some detail about the alleged benefits and procedure for the state placing those Black Americans that “do not progress” into organized labor. I blacked out each page, aiming to preserve one sentence per page — but it didn’t always work. This whole thing nauseated me — not just the “suggestion” argued but the realization that in blacking out the word “Negro”, I was merely preserving a sanitized version of the racist, self-servingly modest, clinical voice.
With students, I’d lay the groundwork carefully — at the very least, defining & offering examples of scientific racism. I’d also need to prepare them for the content of the article, maybe even looking at the publication itself, maybe even searching its current place within the academic discipline. I’m not certain that many students are used to seeing racism manifest in this way. Not sure if I’ll return to this kind of thing again, but I’m glad I gave it a try, even though it didn’t work. Or maybe it did — I truly cannot tell right now.
He rolls up his pajama top,
a signal to caress him,
to sing him to sleep.
Still young enough
to need touch,
still young enough
to ask to be touched
often.
I kneel & sing.
He luxuriates in the ritual,
one of his own design.
The field. March 8, 2022, between school & supper.
The boy stands before me, palming the ball,
wiggling it at me. "Dad. Outside?"
It's hot, I'm comfortable, but I succumb.
To the field.
Between our house & the field,
we toss the ball & watch for cars.
Then we're free. Surrounded
by the trees. Birds above nearly
drown out the leaf blowers.
He calls the play, & I
imagine a slightly future him,
throwing to an emptiness
he fills, an invisible target
he sees first.
I had almost lost the need to
sweat for fun, to daydream a
heroic me. Then the boy led me
outside.
The room is cold, and your wife is crying. And smiling.
There's a speck of blood on your cheek that you notice later,
one drop, dried brown, from the fibrous cord.
She wriggles in a shallow plastic box, cleaned & approved.
A striped hat, a diaper, a warm blanket, and an ankle bracelet
with a magnet in it, connecting her to only the two of you.
She weighs almost nothing. Comically small in the new car seat.
There's a room at home decked out for her,
a place that'll make us more than a couple. Now, a family.
In this house
I've learned the power
of patience. Of performed listening.
There are tears & there's anger. You're tempted
to solve it all or raise your voice around your children.
The fog of anger & the tear-stained eyes make them other beings.
And they're already good at turning the tables on you. They accuse, they
question, they recount quarrels in precise detail, each insult, each petty
unkindness brought to life anew. It all makes a frantic emotional sense.
So you listen & you soothe. If you're really strong, you make them
feel seen & loved. It's hard to live together sometimes.
It takes a power you didn't know you'd need,
you didn't know you had,
until it's there.
Inspired by page 115 of Candice Iloh's Every Body Looking. Really like the way this looks on a computer screen--not sure the lines ebb & flow the same way on a phone.
This is a (non-exhaustive) list of things that I do that annoy my wife:
When I am nervous, I laugh
Very often when I am certain that I am right about a thing, I am quite wrong about that thing
When I am full, I give her hugs & snuggles, no matter how busy she is
Decades ago, I told her that she was holding an umbrella wrong – she still brings it up
I rearrange dishes that she has already loaded into the dishwasher
Right before I fall asleep, I tuck my socks behind my head on my pillow just in case I need them during the evening
I regularly forget things about our life together
Sometimes if I’m telling a story that she knows happened on, say, a Tuesday, but I say that the thing happened on, say, a Wednesday, she will correct me, and (but?) I will continue talking as if it could have very well happened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, all, Anyway as I was saying …
I ask for her help loading the washing machine we’ve had for 18 years
I once had a soul patch
I met her great-uncle Henry once at a wedding. After, like, ten minutes of me talking to him, Henry told her, “You’re lucky to have him” — she asked me if her uncle had also said that I was lucky to have her. Reader, he had said no such thing
[redacted ancient history thing]
I add that ’93 Snoop Dogg ‘izz to lots of what I say, to the extent that my own children say Harry Pizznotter rather than Harry Potter
Sometimes I put her used tea mug (which she leaves by the sink with other dirty dishes) in the dishwasher, when I should know by now that she is going to reuse that mug later
I follow behind her turning off lights that she’s just turned on
Just as I’m happily about to drift off to sleep, I pat her shoulder to let her know that I love her, which interrupts her drifting off
I can fall asleep on demand—like, if falling asleep were an Olympic event, I would be a gold medalist
I once broke up with her for a really dumb short-sighted reason
I exercise regularly
I sing along with songs but paraphrase the lyrics so that the song no longer rhymes
[redacted bathroom thing]
I am very happy when I wake up, like whistling happy
I whistle upbeat versions of sad songs—for example, a swingin’ peppy version of Les Miserables’ “On My Own”
My default song to whistle is “As Time Goes By”, which I have been whistling in her presence for nigh-on thirty years
Whenever she drives us home from a nice evening with adults where I’ve been drinking, I curse a whole lot on the drive, like, way more than is necessary, and I usually wind up saying “I was funny tonight” over and over
I am very particular about my coffee. I’m getting worse
Sometimes when I see her around the house and remember that I love her, I’ll just moan, “Oh mama” like she’s leaving on a long trip or something. She’ll interrupt what she’s doing to ask, ”What?”, and I’ll just moan, “Oh mama” again
I once had a beard
[redacted pretentious thing]
When she texts me, chances are greater than 75% that my response will be “Lordy Lou” or “Whatreyagonnado [insert shrug emoji]”
I am listed as a co-volunteer on loads of school stuff, but she does all the work
I yawn loudly
I claimed as my own a soft silk eye pillow that a friend gave her for a gift
middleagedmiddlechild. 