Origins

Leon Mitchell folded a newspaper
into the crook of his arm, snapped shut
his briefcase, kissed his wife Alice,
and died at his desk an hour later.

After Leon’s heart attack
his fifteen-year-old daughter Marylou
became mistress of the house.
While Alice sat at the kitchen table,
forgetting to flick ashes from a cigarette,
Marylou severed the crusts
from her sisters’ peanut butter sandwiches.

When an older girl shoved Willa
on the playground, Marylou washed
bits of gravel from her sister’s palms.
Alice lay on her side
in the adjoining master bedroom,
not blinking, trying to push away
the nearest wall with her eyes.
She barely heard her youngest cry out
as Marylou sprayed Bactine
and blew to take away the sting.

Reading a Five-Year-Old Issue of Vanity Fair

The cover actress wearing
a striped bikini and floppy hat
tells her interviewer
over iced teas and salads
how grateful she is
for her father’s remission.
She will lose him in two years.

The actor photographed on page 80
chasing his model wife
and three kids around the gazebo
he built in their backyard
will sleep with the nanny.

No one will remember
that year’s it girl
after a series of box-office flops,
or even the 1963 Oscar winner
memorialized in this issue.

Each page features a new face
looking up at me with such hope.
I cannot cut new lines
into their palms, or
even warn them what's coming.

My Grandmother's Garden

for Nelly van Dam

Before visiting her the summer I turned ten,
I liked dandelions best. Though they weren’t
flowers you’d buy at the store,
you could wish on them
without it having to be your birthday.

But in her garden one morning,
my mind changed when
she showed me her favorite—
the hibiscus, the flower-of-an-hour.
As she touched the petal, gently
as she would an infant, I watched her
hands that I knew were leathered,
now hidden in yellow gloves.
Her voice left her for a whisper, and she
wore the expression I imagine she had
the day my grandfather knew he loved her.

Ruth Attends Her Best Friend’s Funeral

When it was time
to say good-bye to Tom,
who did not look asleep, I noticed
his ex-husband Phillip
slip something into Tom’s hand.
Their divorce had been bitter—
Phillip once drove
their ten-year-old son
to the motel room Tom was sharing
with his lover that night. But now
Phillip squeezed his hand
closed and I felt a pang. My sad,
stupid friend, who fell asleep
one night after taking
a bottle of sleeping pills,
at least got to be loved once.

Summer Wedding Sonnet

Midwestern Bride advised drying
my bridal bouquet—tying the stems
to a hanger and letting
the sunflower heads dangle.

But I couldn’t watch
vibrant colors drain like blood
from the face of a dying man.
How could I intentionally harden

each petal into crumble
at the slightest touch? Instead,
I parked my car across the street from
my father’s grave and sidestepped

the 5:00 traffic. I said nothing and left
my flowers to dry under the Kansas sun.

Poem for My Youth Group Leader, Who Was Later Fired for Inappropriate Conduct

My Buddhist friend was going to hell.
Star Wars was Satanic.
So you said.

I misheard your question at the rally in tenth grade—
I thought you asked
Who here does know the Lord?
Having been raised
in the Church of the Golden Rule
and Taking My Hat Off Indoors,
I made my way to the front.
I knew the Lord. Good people
went to heaven. I preferred not to think
about hell. I knew to pray,
if not before meals
than certainly during tornadoes
and other moments I feared I might die.

You pressed your hand to my forehead
as if checking my temperature:
Saved! Later, you said
God made me
hear the question wrong, because
I wasn’t a good enough Christian.

What you never knew
is that before meeting you,
before you suggested I burn books
and tell off my mother,

I’d never once doubted God.

Ode to a Mason Jar

Ma-Ma didn’t own any Tupperware.
She lined our trunk with rows of Mason jars
from her pantry shelves—quarts of
canned apricots and applesauce, carrots and beans.
I loved the care she took in preparing her jars—
quilting scraps tucked under the lids
so they’d swoosh over the lip of each jar
like a bed skirt. Even now when I buy
farmer’s market jam, absentmindedly trace
the raised lettering of a cursive B-a-l-l,
the gesture takes me to my grandmother’s pantry.

At home we drank not from iced tea glasses,
fancy with their frosted horizontal stripes,
but from simple Mason jars—pints of
orange juice before school, tap water at dinner.
Fridays were special. We ordered pizza, rented a movie,
were allowed one glass of pop. Now
when I visit Mom and could drink anything, even
the moonshine that belongs most in a Mason jar,
I always choose pop. I savor that Friday privilege
in both hands, swaying slightly to hear
the faint music of ice cubes clinking against glass.

When Marc and I married, we didn’t want
fussy roses in elegant crystal vases. On each table were
the Mason jars of my childhood—most colorless,
but a few the light blue of a Tiffany jewelry box.
Certainly they felt just as special,
filled not with Ma-Ma’s blackbean salsa
or forbidden dark cola but with explosions of color—
sunflowers, red berries, purple statis, white daisies.
Scattered around our simple centerpieces
were jelly jars of candlelight that echoed
against glass and under the faces of our loved ones.

Dear Jeremy

Ruth Mitchell’s attempts at a letter to her married soon-to-be ex-lover.

I.

When Marylou calls, I wonder
at our relationship.  I ask about her—
Beth, Bible Study, house projects, Greg, typically
that’s order of importance—
and she treats our talks like confession. 
I advise, I tsk tsk,
I wrap her up in the security blanket
of my voice.  We used to whisper 
secrets in our shared bedroom
as kids, only then I confided in her, too:
the boys I liked, the girls I hated.  I wonder
at how Marylou has forgotten
I used to have my own talking points, sex life,
secrets. 

                                                I still do,

but now they’re kept even from her. 

II.

The dog’s even, deep breathing,
along with a plane somewhere in the distance,
so loud I can hear it past
all the closed windows of my house,
is my soundtrack this morning. 
I am drinking coffee.  I am working
the crossword and wishing I were on call today. 

III.

Your oldest graduates high school next month. 
Time is so precious.  What were you doing,
hiking and writing songs for me,
drinking glass after glass
of wine on my back porch before bed? 

I understand our year together meant

something very different to you than it did to me—

The love of my life.  Your midlife crisis. 

IV.

In particularly lonely moments I wonder
if I should’ve married Peter Dean
in college.  My inability to love
that nice man who brought me cookies
his mom baked when I was
in the hospital with a broken leg
convinced me deep down
I didn’t want to be happy. 

I never wanted Peter, who wore

wire spectacles over kind eyes that
watched me carefully during study groups. 
I wanted Brad, whose mother
was in rehab, who smoked and leaned
against brick walls, sighing heaving burdens
I wished he’d confess to me—Brad,
who touched my cheek
as I lay broken in the street
after the woman hit me with her car,
Brad, who never called after that.

V.

You were never really mine.  I know that. 
You’re choosing your kids, not her—
I know that, too. 

                                                When I was young

I dreamed of a man who looked like you,
the shape his body would make
bent over a swing, propelling our little girl into
a sky of infinite possibilities.   Only
I imagined us meeting at twenty-two,
arguing over prior claim
of our apartment building’s washing machine
or volunteering for the same political campaign. 
 
I never dreamed of meeting him
at forty-one in line at the bank. 
I never dreamed of a cliché of a man
who slipped his wedding ring
into his pocket before approaching me.  
 

VI.

Last night I visited my parents’ graves
and today I can’t blink
their death dates from my mind. 
For thirteen years Leon Mitchell waited
for his wife Alice to fall
into his open arms. 

And she did. 

Alexander Johns a few graves down
is still waiting for his Elizabeth, born 1929. 
I wish Elizabeth alive and bowling somewhere,
a Red Hat Society member
who takes in community theater productions
and whistles when the twentysomething leading man
removes his shirt on stage. 

I wish her not

Elizabeth Schultze or Berry now,
her bones nestled next to the coffin
of a new husband in a new life,
leaving Alexander’s arms
outstretched in suspension for eternity.

VII.

I try to let Willa and Jack inspire me.
Willa was 34 (not 42 like me, but not 20 either)
when she met him,
and Jack’s perfect—
he convinces Willa to call me
instead of Marylou when
Marylou sends one of her “helpful” books
about the link between prayer and getting pregnant. 

I’ve always been more understanding

about Marylou’s religion,
but I get books like You’re Never Alone
When God Is Your Husband,
so I’m pretty understanding with Willa, too. 

VIII.   

BoBo misses you, the way

your mouth made a trumpet noise
when he walked into a room, as though
he were a knight instead of a ten-year-old beagle. 

Or maybe

I’m the one who misses that. 

I do think BoBo misses

our group hugs—you’d scoop
not only me into your arms, but both of us,
and for the first time in my life
I shrugged off that near-constant ache
of loneliness and felt loved. 

Of course,

I miss that, too.