When Asked if I Write Poetry

Yes! I feel things deeply
and own a black beret.
When shown a half-eaten apple,
I picture original sin.

I tried this new persona on
like a feather boa
and oversized heels—
my first poems
were marshmallow fluff,
but I admired myself
reading them to the mirror.

Like the girl
who starts a punk-rock band so
she can call it The Milkman’s Tramp
and meet boys
with names like Ronaldo,
I fell in love with an idea
long before I knew what it meant.

Unmarried Apologia

If we were like most in our small town,
our wedding photo would’ve run
years ago, alongside a teen couple’s
baby announcement. My forever
was the happily-ever-after of fairy tales,
the few minutes of music
swelling over the film credits’ scroll.
I was so desperate to join hands
with my engaged girlfriends, fan out like
paper dolls, identical in our white bustles,
you could have been anyone.

I didn’t think of forever as years of
checkbook balancing, arguing
about whether to circumcise our son,
grocery trips, hospital waiting rooms.
If we’d married years ago, I wouldn’t
have understood the weight of it.
Unmarried, I know exactly how lucky I am.

For the Woman Alone in a Booth

If she’d wanted to eat dinner alone,
she would've baked a lovely quiche.

She doesn’t believe in cell phones,
but whatever happened to ringing up the place
and leaving a message for a patron?

This is more humiliating than the time
Penny met her for Easter services
in an above-knee skirt and no hat.
Her husband had better be having a heart attack.

She makes a show of eye-rolling
and sighing. Now and again
she beckons the waitress for the time,
though she's facing the wall clock.

She splits the head off a sugar packet,
contemplates walking out.

Across the diner, a man in a blue work shirt
thinks she looks like his dead wife,
except for the eyes. He orders
a refill and a second slice of peach cobbler.

Vulnerability

The girl in the story let the boy
unspool the green ribbon from her neck,
knowing this act would undo her.

I have let you kiss my pimpled chin
crusted with toothpaste, my homemade cure.
I’ve stopped dressing in your closet.

You know how many lovers
have changed their minds about me.
Perhaps we’ll be listening to the car radio,
waiting out a heavy rain.
You’ll turn to ask me a question
and discover my head has gone missing.

Student's Visitation

The whole town goes when it’s a kid.
I’d only known him a month. As his teacher,
I was expected. The funeral home,
used to Alzheimer's patients from nursing homes,
was unprepared for us. For two hours we waited
in a bursting hallway. I collapsed against the wall,
imagining myself as a partial ironing board
that can be tucked inside a closet.
With every breath, I felt guilty
for taking air from our diminishing supply. For a moment,
getting out of the hallway was a relief.

But the coffin was in the visitation room, closed
because of the accident. His school picture
had been blown up to poster size.
I locked eyes with it, him, the whole walk down the aisle,
wondering for the first time
if he’d ever been kissed. I hadn’t, at his age.
When I reached his parents, I thought
of how many hands I’d shake at teacher conferences
the next week, and that thought broke me.

Outside the funeral home, the night
was clean and wet. I choked on fresh air.

New Jersey, 1989

I lined up Uncle Bob and Aunt Donna
for a picture in the driveway of the house
Bob now lives in alone. The day before,

at the magic shop with my cousin Bret,
I’d bought a camera that spurted water,
though we passed a kiosk of real ones.

Bob tensed his bicep, the way girls suck in
their stomachs. Donna beamed and tossed
her blonde hippie hair. They laughed

when the water came, but now he’d want
that picture, that bright moment before
the magician reveals a disheartening truth.

Encounter

You run by in street clothes,
panic on your face,
turn the corner and are gone.

I haven't heard from you
in years, not since you returned
my Christmas card in the mail.

In a nearby coffee shop, someone
notices through a window
that suddenly I've stopped walking.