~This poem was previously published in Cutthroat (2010).
Summer, 1983
On that last
afternoon in June,
when the road
still cracked
a dusty gravel
whip beneath our feet
and no one could
afford the luxury
of electric air,
we crossed
over into our
neighbor’s yard,
small bits of
stone poking each
bare heel,
already rubbed thick
and coarse as
sandpaper.
By the time we
breathed
the perfumed
thickets of dogwood
edging Bessie’s
mailbox,
my mother’s toes
glinted with mica,
ten shimmering
minnows
wiggling in
blades of sun-stroked grass.
Back then she was
proud of her legs,
and wore nothing
but tee-shirts and cutoffs,
denim sheared by
a dull kitchen knife,
the threads
floating like spider silk
around her
thighs. My brother and I trailed
behind, arms
spiraling, embroiled in a battle
of plastic sacks,
heavy with squash
and zucchini
plucked from our father’s garden,
too busy being
boys to notice
anything wrong
until the hiss
of coiled
newspapers, a week’s worth,
skidded towards
opposite corners
of the front
porch. When mother vanished,
a blurred shape
behind the rattle of a screen door,
we knew better
than to move,
our shadows like
drawn umbrellas, rigid
as we stood in
currents of clover ankle-deep.
I was too young
to understand
death then, but
learned the ways it fooled
the world into
living, how
it carried us
back to where the day
began, hands
gloved in soil, the sun
thirsty against
our backs as we loosened
vines of
tomatoes, bright bulbs dangling
like tangles of
strung lights. That night,
no one
slept. Thermometers simmered
above eighty
while stars gathered
in clusters of
condensation,
windows gaping
like the hooded eyes
of insomniacs. In the kitchen,
mother busied
herself until dawn,
slicing and
canning. With every glass jar
she cradled onto
a pantry shelf,
her dress flared,
each leg
clinging to the dark
fabric
then swinging in
a slow arc,
like the dome of
a bell tolling the hour.