Wait wait wait

said her eyes from the bed

he heard before he swung

as he blew the candles out

over the sound of the motor revving

covering her face from the camera

his grandfather touching his shoulder

not letting go of the clip on her bra

she shouted from the platform

the door closing behind them

touching her hair while her fingers shook

he thought the earth was crying

Handyman

You live in an old house in a working-class neighborhood, there’s nothing charming about it, not from the inside. If you, a stranger, came in from outside on a dark night, and the foyer was lit only by quaint orange light casting the faux-chandelier in shadows, you might be charmed by the white-painted molding around the stained-glass window at the bottom of the stairs, the old-fashioned radiators recently covered with tasteful moss-green paint, a few minor antiques that we got from Joe after he went into the nursing home, a mahogany cabinet, a simple mirror in a matching mahogany frame, a few wooden chairs with wicker seats and backing. You wouldn’t see the black tar stains on the hardwood floors; they’re covered with a simple rug of Barbara’s classy eye for the good deal. In a better light the moldings are worn and the white paint reflects uneven bumps and knots. And in that same better light, though there might be a better word than "better," the stained-glass window, blue and yellow and clear swirls, at best is “unremarkable" and is in fact an ugly old thing.

It was a fixit house right from the start and whatever it was needing fixing, it was too little too late, always reacting to crisis, an upgrade in the electric power when the fuses refused to stop crashing, the new roof when the attic leaked, the moving of a refrigerator and a stove that provided some needed counter space for chopping vegetables, but never a room big enough to inspire gourmet cuisine or heated family conversation while dinner was prepared. It was a fixit house, all right, right from the start, and now we have a Mr. Fixit come when we can swing it, to paint the porches, and mend the old window in the attic, weed and spruce up around the front flower beds without flowers, just funny bushes whose names we don’t know, put up a railing at the top of the stairs for Barbara’s mother. It’s not easy to find a good Mr. Fixit in our small town without being ripped off; we’ve tried many strangers and have settled on Tony, who is everything you could hope for in a good fellow down a bit on his finances and his health, a handyman, affordable and trustworthy.

Strong women at a distance

P.A. was the first girl I wanted as a girlfriend; I was six, she was five. One summer day, she and her family moved into Number 8 three doors down.  I can still smell her sweat and the rain in the pores of the suede Davy Crockett jacket she didn’t take off all summer long.  She had crooked front teeth, hard puffy cheeks and long blond womanly hair, the cleanest longest stroke-able hair, and she could beat me up. T.M., who I wanted as a girlfriend in third grade, had hair with body and glow like a model’s. Taller than I, superior in every way, I loved the way her lips parted when she wasn’t speaking; I never got close enough to hear the sound of her voice. On an eighth grade school bus trip to the Cloisters, I sat four rows in front of C.E., whose hand I yearned to hold and squeeze. She was always pretending she was a party girl, laughing with a mean hysteria, her darting black eyes not quite crossing mine, a thin bossy Jewish Gina Lollobrigida, a tiny girl, crushing me with coldness. E.C. in high school social studies forgave me my moony adoration by ignoring it and making smart, ironic jokes. In college acting class, M.W. was not pretty and her voice was piercing and I wept in my dorm room pillow when she wouldn’t let my Romeo kiss her Juliet’s lips, to swallow her up with my romantic mouth. I don't know to this day what she thought of that mouth. 

In every dream you would fly

The beginning of a list for eternity

Heaven would be a place where everything you ate was good for you, and things that you thought tasted awful were lush and savory and sensuous, like seaweed, and hummus, and Brussel sprouts, and Wheatina.

Hell would be closing your eyes every day feeling you have to vomit but not being able to.

Heaven would be knowing you taught your boys well, to not merely survive, but to soar, to fly above you, to teach you contentment.

Hell would be every day swimming against the rip tide with your boy alone on the speedboat, seven years old and singing to himself, and everyone’s gone and what were you thinking, leaving him by himself in a little boat in the ocean, and you’ve turned around and are swimming as hard as you ever had and getting no closer and you’re tired and your will is sinking and his sweet high voice is talking to you and you never get close and you never drown and he never knows.

Heaven would be knowing you know better that all the distrusting voices in your head.

Hell would be knowing your memory was slipping away, just always out of reach, like a speedboat in the ocean.

Heaven would be closing your eyes every night knowing in every dream you would fly.

Alone with the sea

Island Time

Away from the house

I look at the cellphone.

8 am. No self-imposed deadline.

Plenty of time, in any event,

For a side trip, extended solitude,

To the beach.

Plenty of time, for a walk beside the ocean.

I park. I take my license

Out of my wallet. I take a business card out.

I put them in the pocket of my bathing suit for ID

Should I wash away in one place

And wash ashore in another.

I consider not taking my cellphone.

I leave my sneaks and socks on the back seat,

And walk gingerly onto the road,

Up toward the beach above the dunes

Where just a bearded man

Is sitting, playing in the sand with a small boy.

I consider turning off my cellphone.

As I walk, I think about my feet

Gripping the sand. I observe,

The water is choppy, but the whitecaps are easy,

And I like the wet sand,

Copper-colored, as it kicks up

While the waves expire on the shore.

I see a seated body ahead.

I look down at my feet.

I pretend to watch the horizon,

Take a deep breath.

I think about the possibility of a violent turn.

She waves hello.

I apologize twice for disturbing her peace.

Not at all, she says.

She’s older, maybe, than I,

With a Tuscan face. I walk on,

The sun behind me.

I wonder if I look as good from behind

As my long shadow in front of me.

I take my hands out of my pockets,

Where they have been clasping my license,

My business card, and my cellphone.

My shadow is improved.

I wonder if I should walk

Beyond anyone’s sight. I wonder

If I should sit on sand or driftwood.

I sit on driftwood, and look left,

Back at the seated woman, look right

At the copper sand and breakers.

I look down at my feet

Trying to grip the sand,

At my old toenails, feel my legs

With no more hair on their calves.

I take a deep breath, move my feet,

Look back toward the woman

And fantasize about her,

Reaching my hand up to pull her down

So she sits in the sand, between my legs.

I kiss her neck and her cheek from behind,

And tilt her chin back to me to kiss her lips.

I start thinking about work,

About the uncomfortable memo I need to write;

My hand holds her head as we kiss. I think,

I don’t mind about her age,

In fact it’s better;

She’s a passionate, experienced, kind woman.

I am surprised how exciting that is.

I wonder about what I’m thinking about,

About how old I am becoming.

She lets me, she wants me to,

Reach under her sweatshirt.

I think about The Last Tango in Paris.

I think about my career,

The big, dull picture. I think,

The rest of the day will be

Dull and bearable.

I wonder what time it is

And slide my cellphone out of my pocket.

I look back at the now-empty beach,

Then straight out at the edge of the horizon,

Where there is nothing;

Just a straight line in either direction.

The scream

It was never a dream and I don’t live where cats scream in the night. It was a scream of terror, hysteria, fury, like one would hear silently in a nightmare. Lying half-asleep in the total dark, trying to will unconsciousness into my eyes and sinuses, my tense neck and shoulders, my teeth, with my exhausted mind, I seemed in that unreal place of dread, where everything is both clear and confused, confident and at risk. And then the scream with a piercing wildness: I thought if I lifted the window shade a fire-spitting yellow-eyed black feline with its fangs splayed would be flattened against the window, its wispy white belly breathing moisture against the glass, its sharpness stabbing through to me as if by osmosis, the noise itself with a capacity for maiming and ruining, the unreal dread turning to action, the final true meaning of what it is to dream until you die.

Blues

The damp basement

Our basement only recently

started to feel moist

as if it were perspiring:

droplets like large tears

suspended on the asbestos pipes

after 25 years of perfect dryness

when it could have been wet

for all we cared

for all the time we spent

in its unfinished dark—

Have my boys grown so large

that the basement is theirs to flood?

Have we bequeathed a besotted foundation?

I’ll tell you this: There’s nothing better

than to be reminded what it feels like

to be asked to sing the blues

the bass over Ben’s shy slumped shoulders

the guitar cradled by Pat’s grown-up fingers,

my voice summoning an old rainstorm,

my smiling boys tapping time on the crumbling cement