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Déjà Vu
by Vivian Wagner I walked into a room I’d seen before, with black and white diamond-shaped floor tiles. When had I walked into that room before? I don’t know. It seemed I’d seen it as a child, or as an infant. Perhaps before birth. None of it made sense at the time. I couldn’t even fathom the meaning of a building, of tiles, of windows. I had no frame of reference. I barely knew what it meant to see at all. What it meant for anything to exist. The second time I saw that room, I was in Berkeley, during college, visiting the apartment of a friend’s sister. And that time I thought, oh, that’s what everything is. That’s an apartment building. That’s what it means to have tiles on the floor. That’s a floor. That’s what it means to be alive on a fall afternoon in a place called Berkeley, the leaves turning, the ocean breeze catching in willows. That’s what willows are. I walked into a room I’d seen before, and I finally understood what it meant for there to be tiles and ceilings, sun and birds, being and life. Where He Went by Vivian Wagner He grew up with a fisherman father who thought him lazy for not wanting to clean out the boat. He wanted, instead, to clean out the ballpark, the stats, the game in all of its non-fishy glory. He did, and now he’s gone, drifting over oceanic crowds belting out songs in the universe’s seventh-inning stretch. When he died, he said he’d finally see the woman whose grave he’d covered with deep red roses for twenty years. There’s a constellation shaped like her breasts, and he’s there, nestled between them, dreaming of all the surprising turns a life takes, of abundance and home, runs and mackerel. Ode To Koekje by Vivian Wagner Cookies are always good, the baseline of decency, humble with their peanut butter and raisins, their flour and butter, their touch of vanilla. They don’t rise too high, and nor do they sink too low. They’re the steady bedrock of childhoods and holidays, gifts and apologies. They’re not cake, with its various illusions. Nor are they, for instance, spinach, with its insistence on health, despite all odds. Cookies don’t require explanation or defense. They’re steady and ever-present, the definition of abundance, of daily, predictable wealth. Here, have a few. As many as you want. You’ll feel better. Everything will be fine. |
Vivian Wagner is an associate professor of English at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. She’s the author of a memoir, Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), and a poetry collection, The Village (Kelsay Books). Visit her website here.
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