crestline, ca

mom wakes me up. let's go, she shakes,

to the cabin. the pebbly strawberries are ripe down the hill.

sledding's good. the dry pine needles three feet thick.

i swear we send up smoke.

halfway down, the neighbor kids have dug

a cavern into ground, twenty feet wide and six feet deep,

tall bottles pressed as trophies into the soft dirt at the side

i tumble in and stare up & out at half sky

if i needed to

it would be good to live like this.

summer; my dad catches the june bug

with bare hands, tries on

fifties fatherhood,

then his short-shorts from the seventies.

july and  me on the long swing reading little women, with

jo amy beth meg coated in dust

from the scuffling of my feet making peace.

last year, a brown bear nudged the door open,

stood up to my grandma in her apron

"bonnie, stay in the bathroom," grandma called to my aunt,

and with all of the self-possession gained

from growing up on a great depression kansas

farm, shooed the bear out like it was one of six sisters.

winter: the time there was no food in the cabin and we

were too tired to go out. we ate like survivors of a thorough disaster. 

these places we retreat to.

at night, in the room at the top of the stairs, the raccoons

make their noises, beamed lamp eyes in.

we watch them watch us, two families perched

for safety in the place

that belongs to coyotes. 

after the last thing i remember

in utero again

this hospital bed.

so: eight left in me

 i assume.

dream-me rips out the iv,

and the blood spills forth

the way they open barrels of wine with a hammer

at sunset

and the vomit the orange of dying light.

two white blurs

hold my naked legs

catheter in, life

pumped in and out of me for awhile.

i rock side to side,

stare at the clock,

the night nurse comes in

tells me sweet nothings like

            you can leave at dawn

            your underwear are right there

            (you have a little vomit in your hair)

Alfred Steiglitz Composes A Letter to Georgia O'Keefe

this time you pose, for me

this time your throat finds light

you around the house,

musing, obscure

shallow bowl, you hold

what you find in the morning lakeside--

new stones/pieces of sepia/dark teeth,

the low wind.

i know you'll write me soon

 from those blooms you love

(your happiness there.) your absence

is a flat building, and mine

a tire iron. you muse, you,

known, your curled fingers

no apertures, new countries

new shapes, thick paint

Homeostasis, Boeing 737

Stranger-girl's head skis onto my shoulder, where it/she
rests heavily. That deep sleep where you
wake up scared to end.
I tilt my head to her fine hair,
brain turning heat to sound. (A low thermal hum--
I catalogue it as Unexpected, Nice.)

This girl could be my daughter, despite
us not having talked all flight.
The seat belt signs in the cabin dark-blur
to hands, reaching. Lesson: How the pieces fit,
or would, if bodies were not made to stay
warm on their own.

Window seat across the aisle is set precisely half down.
Sunlight hasn't stretched itself out in my lap yet.
(Another passenger, added weight.)
The flight attendant catches me staring at Girl
Stranger, less strange, short curly hair, and
I had a child once.

Didn't stay warm.

Quiet Things

1.
The cars rise towards us in the blue morning in pieces: first the headlights, then a shape, a speed, a color, maybe a glimpse of driver: white sedan with brights on, tall woman frowning into the horizon. Technically there are speed limits but in a big empty floodplain you can see a cop car for miles. You can also see us: me and Ben waiting for the bus, but no one slows down for us either. No one picks up hitchhikers out here. I think something about the way the land spreads out makes people nervous for their insides. And anyway we're not perched on the side with thumbs out or anything; there's a bench and usually I'm sitting normally and Ben is sprawled all over me. I watch the side of the road where the bus comes; he watches everything else. Birds. Joshua trees that look like people we know. The sky, which he gives me detailed updates on every five minutes.

2.
The thing about watching cars come (hoping for the bus) is you can't hope for every single one. You have to hope rarely, so that half the time your hope is right. I try to explain this to ben, but he just says he hopes I will one day make sense.
I say I hope he will one day appreciate me pulling our bus towards us through sheer power of thought. He hopes I find true love and happiness with Nutella. I hope he learns to like someone for more than two minutes.
And so on.

3.
Right now the sky is this pulsating deep water blue, and it's fragile, it's on these crazy baby giraffe legs. And...there's this lightness at the horizon like swimming up, almost too late, when your vision is just whiteness until you break the surface and breathe. The whole sky knows it is about to be held up by the sun, can feel it but it's just been dark for so long.....

4.
On the bus, we will go to the way back of the bus. I will take window seat. He will curl up into me, me holding onto folds of his sweatshirt. It's freakishly cold because Marnie doesn't like to drive with the windows up. Says it's too quiet. Marnie is partially deaf.
I will hold Ben's bony edges and things will be dark and quiet. I will hum, a little. He will drool on my sweater, continuously. I will feel a strange sorriness, as though we are both orphans, or eloping on my wishes.

Interruptions

A DREAM

In the night city the sirens come and take me to the Rodney King riots. I was conceived during one of them, so this makes dream sense. At the time my mom said "The riots are on TV again" and my dad said "Make love to me now, before the fire storm" (being dramatic and also being the author of several papers on Dresden) and he said it so passionately his glasses fogged up (this I know from my mother who has an eye for details, more specifically making them up.)
So there I stand, watching figures twist about each other almost like climbing. One leaps on another, limbs flailing and then sinking. And then I am flying into the middle of it, I have angel wings and my penis is a fire hose putting out the rage and exhaustion and neat tongues of flame. I smile. All of the people are frowning at me. They weren't done, that dream voice explains. You interrupted.

NOT A DREAM

I wake up inexplicably aroused.
At school I keep staring at this girl in English who I'm trying to decide if I've seen in a porno. It's unlikely, yes, but I need to see her body to be sure. I'll settle on waiting until spring, maybe fall. Maybe it will take the Santa Ana winds, red fire warning.

Attendance. Here. Next name.

I've switched to thinking about an article in the paper this morning. There's a girl who lives in Death Valley, on tribal lands, and the nearest school is two hours away. So every day this bus comes just for her-- because guaranteed free public education, dammit, and there's no other way for her to get to school--and she gets on and rides for two hours and gets off and goes to school and gets back on for two hours and goes home. There were pictures. I think: How lonely and how purposeful, to be the reason for a bus. I wonder if she pays attention, if the four hours in transit translates to pure motivation in life. I wonder if she feels cheated by shitty teachers. I wonder if when her mom asks about her day she only has things to say about the bus ride through desert, about the hawk she saw dive, the rocks radiating heat like a screen.
Maybe she just sleeps. Maybe she has existential angst on the potholes that resolves by the next speed limit sign.
I think I would start carving into the seats. It's hers, after all; it comes for her.
Passing period.
Earth History.
Volcanoes! someone says, because it's on the board.
I actually look up.
Mr. Gerard starts with Pompeii. His facial hair is thrown into movement with excitement. He has pictures: ash in the shape of absent people. But where did they go? the girl with thick eyebrows asks. To dust! Mr. Gerard exclaims. It was a city meticulously preserved. (Destroyed.) I hear, faintly, the song Dad always sings to Mom on his banjo:

You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn't hurt at all.

Okay, God, just please don't love me, my mom always says, holding her hands up, laughing, her glasses sliding.

Mr. Gerard starts morphing into The Man Upstairs. He's still talking about Pompeii, the magnificence of the mosaics, the magma turned lava turned solid, but all of a sudden I realize he is responsible, Earth History teachers everywhere are secretly God, and secretly responsible for all natural disasters. They read the aftermath. They make the stories. His beard is long and white, full of love and John Deere bulldozers.

Earth to Isaac, he booms at me.
I am not startled. It has always been mine. I interrupted it, the gory trauma of it.

Bell. Exit all. Sun streams in. Now only Gerard/God and I remain in the classroom.

A QUESTION

Why is magma under the surface, and lava above?

ANOTHER QUESTION

Why two words?

to franny from zooey

i know you are out there
you read once that forty cups of coffee could kill a man and drank
until you had to stay on the toilet to keep drinking
your bladder stretched out,
kidneys i'm sure freaking out
jesus christ, your body just a test

i can feel you eyeing ropes
learning knots, saving pills
sharp razors next to hospital bills
i am imagining you imbibing
everything drinkable in the house
drano febreze nyquil
tide will carry you away
you screaming
where else was it supposed to go
what makes me so fragile to the world

and where do i say thank you