Deuteronomy
These are the words their excited father spoke, no shame: “Here, oh, it’s real...your dad’s got...your dad’s won.” They loved him despite his sometimes ambiguous speech. His point: the trifling court cases were over, both of them involving accidental damage done by his mean rowboat
to the rotted-wood dock of his neighbor, A. Michael Light, preening brother- in-law to the sheriff. Their father had been fishing and only just possibly drinking, had come back and tied his boat to the dock at one end, not the other, had been in a hurry, had gone home earlier than usual with some irritation because their mother’s newish job at the hospital gift shop had scheduled her early that day. The kids needed watching. The boat drifted and spun a bit, knocking against the dock in the next slip over. Crackity! Mr. Light had complained, so their father, a just man, had gone back to the lake a few days later with lumber and tools, had built the man a brand-new dock of good wood. An anus, A. Michael Light, talked to his kinsman the sheriff and others. The Man charged their father with mischief. Mr. Light sued their dad in small-claims court for damages. Both of these niggling cases took multiple months to see through, as justice wrestled law, as mercy hid under the sink. But! Justice won, as always, thanks to the mighty, terrible hands of the judges. So here we are now, cheering and chanting words of victory.
The Lifespan of a Stuffed Tiger
The Orange County Fair is awesome, a testament to dry chicken kebabs and fried Oreos wrapped in bacon, a world of easy children, laughter, and beer-drenched humidity, including the world of the 1950s’ tomorrow, complete with silver-caped space goats dropping space turds at the space petting zoo. There are many games of supposed skill, skill at being an alleged winner with a presumably big penis, of cups and bottles and rings and piss-yellow ping-pong balls. His ancestors forged their prowess with iron blades on the battlefield, seizing fertile land and fruitful women as though raking in tall mounds of chips at the high-rollers’ table. He pays some limp bills for three laser-blip shots at the wooden duckies crossing the painted landscape eight feet away. Three pings, three electronic quacks mean one powder-blue tiger, which he gives to her, pleased, his lady on this first date, who thinks nothing at all about casinos and conquest.
It used to be all about love. After the deepening, after they move in together, the tiger perches on the headboard in their bedroom: their firstborn, they joke. They will never know about his actual low sperm count, the improbability that they will ever have children not stuffed with plastic fluff by slave labor in Guangdong Province. The tiger watches them make love. The tiger watches them not make love. The tiger watches them embrace both possessively and tentatively, increasingly awkwardly, then sleeping turned away from each other. She names it Tigey — not a family name — around the time he stops rushing home for dinner, because he has a stressful, demanding job and he has to take care of business and what does she have to do all day but take naps and write and maybe do a couple of dishes? Tigey does not cry when Mommy and Daddy fight.
When he really thinks about rocking her head back with one good punch with some body behind it, when she looks at the broken glass on the floor and wonders how much sharp dust she could really slip into his plate of beef and broccoli, the whimsy of Tigey seems superfluous, even during each one’s guilty cooling-off period. When the crack becomes a rupture, when the separation does occur, he ends up with the stuffed tiger by default, because he has a new apartment and she only has a new room in a house. She has no space or patience for unnecessary crap. Tigey does not cry. He cries. He buys a dog, a Labrador retriever that licks the tears from his face. Up goes Tigey! The dog brings it back. There goes Tigey! The dog brings it back. Over and over, artificial primogeniture gives way to fetch. The soft fruits of Guangdong Province begin to spill across the living-room carpet, like fuzzy plastic seeds in a land fertile with possibility, new seasons. Good dog, good dog.
These are the words their excited father spoke, no shame: “Here, oh, it’s real...your dad’s got...your dad’s won.” They loved him despite his sometimes ambiguous speech. His point: the trifling court cases were over, both of them involving accidental damage done by his mean rowboat
to the rotted-wood dock of his neighbor, A. Michael Light, preening brother- in-law to the sheriff. Their father had been fishing and only just possibly drinking, had come back and tied his boat to the dock at one end, not the other, had been in a hurry, had gone home earlier than usual with some irritation because their mother’s newish job at the hospital gift shop had scheduled her early that day. The kids needed watching. The boat drifted and spun a bit, knocking against the dock in the next slip over. Crackity! Mr. Light had complained, so their father, a just man, had gone back to the lake a few days later with lumber and tools, had built the man a brand-new dock of good wood. An anus, A. Michael Light, talked to his kinsman the sheriff and others. The Man charged their father with mischief. Mr. Light sued their dad in small-claims court for damages. Both of these niggling cases took multiple months to see through, as justice wrestled law, as mercy hid under the sink. But! Justice won, as always, thanks to the mighty, terrible hands of the judges. So here we are now, cheering and chanting words of victory.
The Lifespan of a Stuffed Tiger
The Orange County Fair is awesome, a testament to dry chicken kebabs and fried Oreos wrapped in bacon, a world of easy children, laughter, and beer-drenched humidity, including the world of the 1950s’ tomorrow, complete with silver-caped space goats dropping space turds at the space petting zoo. There are many games of supposed skill, skill at being an alleged winner with a presumably big penis, of cups and bottles and rings and piss-yellow ping-pong balls. His ancestors forged their prowess with iron blades on the battlefield, seizing fertile land and fruitful women as though raking in tall mounds of chips at the high-rollers’ table. He pays some limp bills for three laser-blip shots at the wooden duckies crossing the painted landscape eight feet away. Three pings, three electronic quacks mean one powder-blue tiger, which he gives to her, pleased, his lady on this first date, who thinks nothing at all about casinos and conquest.
It used to be all about love. After the deepening, after they move in together, the tiger perches on the headboard in their bedroom: their firstborn, they joke. They will never know about his actual low sperm count, the improbability that they will ever have children not stuffed with plastic fluff by slave labor in Guangdong Province. The tiger watches them make love. The tiger watches them not make love. The tiger watches them embrace both possessively and tentatively, increasingly awkwardly, then sleeping turned away from each other. She names it Tigey — not a family name — around the time he stops rushing home for dinner, because he has a stressful, demanding job and he has to take care of business and what does she have to do all day but take naps and write and maybe do a couple of dishes? Tigey does not cry when Mommy and Daddy fight.
When he really thinks about rocking her head back with one good punch with some body behind it, when she looks at the broken glass on the floor and wonders how much sharp dust she could really slip into his plate of beef and broccoli, the whimsy of Tigey seems superfluous, even during each one’s guilty cooling-off period. When the crack becomes a rupture, when the separation does occur, he ends up with the stuffed tiger by default, because he has a new apartment and she only has a new room in a house. She has no space or patience for unnecessary crap. Tigey does not cry. He cries. He buys a dog, a Labrador retriever that licks the tears from his face. Up goes Tigey! The dog brings it back. There goes Tigey! The dog brings it back. Over and over, artificial primogeniture gives way to fetch. The soft fruits of Guangdong Province begin to spill across the living-room carpet, like fuzzy plastic seeds in a land fertile with possibility, new seasons. Good dog, good dog.
King of the Road
On or about, I ambled as best I could, aware
they watched through the windows,
past the trees I had carved from spite,
up the long, straight path, one foot
at a time on the asphalt, one foot
at a time in the air, testing the breeze.
Where all the signposts bear my name
is a hideous form of neighborhood.
Over my shoulder hung a bindle
of silk and mahogany, soft and opulent.
The leaves fell like playing cards, wormholes
like pips, lay clustered on the green ground
like gin rummy hands at a hobo camp.
I scanned the stray cat and the boxcar,
the robin and the iron yoke of tracks,
each with a separate destination
hidden within the folds of the hills.
The robin spoke with my voice,
called out for a day’s work and caviar:
chopping wood, mending fences,
green-black oil from plump Beluga roe.
The wind carried the bird away.
My resume ceased to develop
until my coup d’etat could resume.
Family Circus
While my mother underwent chemotherapy,
my sister, who was learning to be an artist,
clipped all the hair off her old Barbie,
stripped it naked, and painted “SURVIVOR”
in bright green letters down its nippleless front.
While my sister undertook this art project,
I, who was learning to be a critic,
clipped my sister off at the knees, pointing out
that her piece was trite and maudlin,
that it offered nothing new to the field
of mixed-media carcinoma-inspired artwork.
While my hair continued to grow into a lustrous golden mane,
my brother, who was learning to suffer from male-pattern baldness,
clipped the rest of his hair off his head and sent it to Locks for Love.
While my brother was flunking out of university,
my mother, who was learning to die,
called him next to her on the sofa,
listened to him cry that he was sorry,
and rested her naked scalp against his shorn head.
My stepfather fretted.
My father remained a mystery.
My grandmother wept and knitted another seventeen afghans.
My aunt wept but muttered, “Sic semper to the golden girl.”
Around we spun, around and about,
all of us circling the drain in our own fashions.
Pilots
Let’s give it a whirl
the father standing near me clutched
the remote control to the helicopter
and spoke as his son
who seemed slightly slow
from his inattentive stare and
deep interest in reaping his nostrils’ natural harvest,
which I noticed from the corner of my eyes
because I wanted to see whether he would eat it
without making him self-conscious,
without embarrassing myself
by gawking at a possibly
mentally stunted, booger-pickin’ child.
And while the father spoke to his son,
I listened for messages for me
because my mother’s first husband,
Jesus Christ, communicates in mysterious ways,
but there appeared to be none,
there was only Let’s give it a whirl
in a way that pointed out the toy
without making an intentional pun,
the helicopter on the wet grass in the field,
rotors still in the early morning sun,
boy seeming to ignore his father,
instead plucking dandelions and blowing
the fuzz on the breeze.
And nothing in the man’s words mentioned
the helicopter, mentioned his son or me
or the eminent patience of gravity,
as I lay on my back and watched
the white seeds float up into the light,
and nothing he said spoke of distraction,
disappointment, developmental disability,
the weight of dewdrops, despair.
He said only Let’s give it a whirl, this father
with hope in his face holding out the controls,
perhaps to his son, smiling in April,
perhaps offering me a chance
to make something fly for a while.
On or about, I ambled as best I could, aware
they watched through the windows,
past the trees I had carved from spite,
up the long, straight path, one foot
at a time on the asphalt, one foot
at a time in the air, testing the breeze.
Where all the signposts bear my name
is a hideous form of neighborhood.
Over my shoulder hung a bindle
of silk and mahogany, soft and opulent.
The leaves fell like playing cards, wormholes
like pips, lay clustered on the green ground
like gin rummy hands at a hobo camp.
I scanned the stray cat and the boxcar,
the robin and the iron yoke of tracks,
each with a separate destination
hidden within the folds of the hills.
The robin spoke with my voice,
called out for a day’s work and caviar:
chopping wood, mending fences,
green-black oil from plump Beluga roe.
The wind carried the bird away.
My resume ceased to develop
until my coup d’etat could resume.
Family Circus
While my mother underwent chemotherapy,
my sister, who was learning to be an artist,
clipped all the hair off her old Barbie,
stripped it naked, and painted “SURVIVOR”
in bright green letters down its nippleless front.
While my sister undertook this art project,
I, who was learning to be a critic,
clipped my sister off at the knees, pointing out
that her piece was trite and maudlin,
that it offered nothing new to the field
of mixed-media carcinoma-inspired artwork.
While my hair continued to grow into a lustrous golden mane,
my brother, who was learning to suffer from male-pattern baldness,
clipped the rest of his hair off his head and sent it to Locks for Love.
While my brother was flunking out of university,
my mother, who was learning to die,
called him next to her on the sofa,
listened to him cry that he was sorry,
and rested her naked scalp against his shorn head.
My stepfather fretted.
My father remained a mystery.
My grandmother wept and knitted another seventeen afghans.
My aunt wept but muttered, “Sic semper to the golden girl.”
Around we spun, around and about,
all of us circling the drain in our own fashions.
Pilots
Let’s give it a whirl
the father standing near me clutched
the remote control to the helicopter
and spoke as his son
who seemed slightly slow
from his inattentive stare and
deep interest in reaping his nostrils’ natural harvest,
which I noticed from the corner of my eyes
because I wanted to see whether he would eat it
without making him self-conscious,
without embarrassing myself
by gawking at a possibly
mentally stunted, booger-pickin’ child.
And while the father spoke to his son,
I listened for messages for me
because my mother’s first husband,
Jesus Christ, communicates in mysterious ways,
but there appeared to be none,
there was only Let’s give it a whirl
in a way that pointed out the toy
without making an intentional pun,
the helicopter on the wet grass in the field,
rotors still in the early morning sun,
boy seeming to ignore his father,
instead plucking dandelions and blowing
the fuzz on the breeze.
And nothing in the man’s words mentioned
the helicopter, mentioned his son or me
or the eminent patience of gravity,
as I lay on my back and watched
the white seeds float up into the light,
and nothing he said spoke of distraction,
disappointment, developmental disability,
the weight of dewdrops, despair.
He said only Let’s give it a whirl, this father
with hope in his face holding out the controls,
perhaps to his son, smiling in April,
perhaps offering me a chance
to make something fly for a while.
