COMPLEX
During my formative years,
my mother had this annoying habit
of taking me into shoe stores
and forgetting all about me.
She’d try on heels and pumps,
sandals and beige leather boots,
winking at herself in the mirror,
like she was Cinderella.
I’d crawl into the stockroom
behind the stacks of boxes,
until the last employee clicked
off the lights and headed home.
Then I’d emerge, place a shoe horn
in the palm of my favorite mannequin,
and sleep at her feet gleefully
because she was my flesh and blood.
BROKEN TOY CLUB
The years begin to show more of his forehead,
where the creases deepen into wrinkles,
and with his three packs a day, a cough
like a goat being skinned alive, it won’t be long
before I have to pick up the phone and make
arrangements. There’s so much to say,
but as he rattles the ice in his Bombay
and tonic, the only words that fit in my throat
are designed to hurt. With each sip, his eyes
brighten until they shine like flashlights
onto our past. As a child, he held me on his lap,
planted words in my ears that later bloomed
in my mouth. Then the seeds stopped,
and I blamed myself, and when that failed,
I blamed him, performed a nightly Sun dance
with my tongue. Daaad became a bell I rang
to remind him to be ashamed for the skyscraper
of dishes in the sink, the banana stains
on the ceiling, the weeks of dog turd in the yard,
while his wife perfected her script of white
wine and downers. Now, half-cocked,
in the same bar she used to wobble out of
like a loose hood ornament, he wants to lay
twenty-five years of dirty socks on the counter.
I could apologize for the seasons of carving
words into weapons and lining him up
for target practice, say that’s kerosene
under the bridge. You did your best.
But the mercenaries I hired to obliterate
my feelings return, with venom
on their breath, and I launch a fuck you,
for old time’s sake, at the bull’s-eye on his chest.
UNCLE EGGPLANT
When I was a teenager,
my parents would go away
and stick me with the job
of watching blind Uncle Harry.
I’d buckle him in the front
seat of my Chevy Nova
and take him with me
on drug runs into the city.
Okay, Har, you wait here —
I’m gonna dash into this flower
shop and pick up the azaleas.
One day, I returned to the car,
and Harry was gone. I sped
home, placed an eggplant
on his pillow, and told my
parents I found him this way.
THE DOLL HOUSE
When my uncle died,
it was decided
to build a doll house
out of his bones.
After some hot water
and lots of scrubbing,
we were ready.
With my sister and I
perched at either shoulder
and an army of screws,
Dad began to build.
A sense of calm came
over the family and
hovered there, smugly.
It was like Christmas
all over again,
only this time
no one got spanked.
THE OBVIOUS
We didn’t deny the obvious,
but we didn’t entirely accept it either.
I mean, we said hello to it each morning
in the foyer. We patted its little head
as it made a mess in the backyard,
but we never nurtured it.
