Paperback(1st Edition)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780809334827 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Southern Illinois University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2016 |
| Series: | Crab Orchard Series in Poetry |
| Edition description: | 1st Edition |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
I'M USED TO FEELING LIKE I'M MOVING EVEN WHEN I'M STILL In the ferry's dim-lit belly we sit in seats our lives have recently assigned: father driver, mother passenger. Behind us, soothed by the boat's loud drone, the baby finally sleeps. Yellow fluorescents stripe the hood, the dash, our laps. We squint to get a glimpse of what's ahead; sea spray on the windshield settles into salt. A bit of home- damp waft of rumpled sheets-drifts in. Then fades. Lately my body's felt docked, as in: all aboard. When he leans toward me, the boat's black ramp starts grinding down. Mothers pull their children from the rails. STILL LIFE: YOUTH CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FOR GIRLS The windows mirror them: unyielding, hardwired for toughness. Each a different glimpse of the outside. Diagonal light snags their busted-Slinky-stretchedalong- the-ten-foot-fence background; barbed shadows loop the kid-proofed common room. Its caged clock stuck at time for Group. All in orange, they're spilled from the same basket. Some are cut, though the blade stays beyond the frame. Predictably dark green, tall, a guard's inanimate behind them. This scene teaches middle ground: share the molded plastic sofa, don't sprawl across it like cascading grapes. The handmade sign bend like a willow is a fallen, crinkled leaf. Still- this is better than what they left, too much movement just out of sight. The one sitting stiff as a pitcher feels even now his fingers squeezing tight around her arm. In the shady corner: a peach clinging to her leaves. ANGELS, ANGELS Most days they'd descend together into tunnels tucked below Chicago's loud grid-my father and his mother below streets she didn't drive but knew which stairs would lead them to her bakery, post office, or the vast Marshall Field's laid out like a Roman town: all thoroughfares at right angles, predictable, though she'd always keep him close. Today my father shops alone and drives the roads someone like him designed. He's a planner, like his mother with her lists- his mind as measured as blueprints, so this surprise MRI and its shady grays don't make any sense: why his wife can't go home yet, why he's buying food for just himself, why rooms loop the nurse's station like a labyrinth. A child's why, why, why. He traces the brain's dim tunnels, lost without her. MY BOY, MY BODY: WHEN I TYPE I ALWAYS MIX THEM UP My son looks to the ceiling when they start his IV. It's funny, he says, staring at a star nestled into a moon's crescent: why would they paint it like that for kids when that couldn't ever happen? He likes his surgeon's straight-talk as he's wheeled off down the hall. All of us waiting are cuffed with children's names. The parents who've been here before have packed snacks; they've chosen the chairs that face the double doors. On the rack, a magazine asks what would you have done differently? The surgeon finally emerges with photos: the shadowed terrain inside my son like a moonscape if the moon were smooth. He slides a pen from his pocket. I fidget like I'm starved. With the tip he traces exactly where my body, when I made Luke's, made it wrong.