Theme

Francine comes to visit my classroom,

says it smells like you.

I wonder aloud if that’s a bad thing—she says

no, it just smells like your essence.

The summer break has made her a little older,

smarter, more skeptical of the world.

Her coal black hair is stick straight and much

longer than it was last June—her tapered

black jeans are adorned with silver hoops

large enough to fit my wrists.

Last year she was is in a class that when

assigned a group writing project to create a story,

I got back narratives of walking avocados and cows that speak.

There was little meaning in their stories other than

playful semantics created to cause a stir when read aloud.

This year I’ll start with Little Red Riding Hood.

We’ll discuss Perrault’s intended message in the cannibalistic

ending and dissect the changes made by the Grimm

brothers, sweet and censored, suitable for bedside

rituals as rosy cheeked little girls fall asleep.

They will understand that a story constructed with

meaning carries more weight than that of a dog

who can regenerate his own limbs.

The Universe in a Baseball

It was during the temperate month

of July – when the sun loses the inhibitions

of gray winter and undresses to the long

and lazy melody of summer.

A sixteen year-old is at a Dodger game

with his date. They sit just behind third base,

in the second tier, in the red seats priced

just high enough to impress, but cheap enough

that a job at the local surf job can cover the cost.

They eat popcorn and hotdogs loaded down

with mustard, stand with arms in the air,

screaming when the wave passes through them

like the current that pulls at the ocean’s edge.

 

It’s not often that a moment so absolute comes along:

                           a foul is hit towards the red seats,

                           arms out, hands open – the ball falls

                           into his palms, knot of leather, yarn

                           and cork collide with flesh and fingers.

He will give this treasure to his girl, a sweet

teenage token of affection – those that don’t come

easily and are irreplaceable when found.

And that same evening, long after the seventh innning

stretch, the lingering kiss on the doorstep

under an inked sky – she will give it back to him.

She will climb through his window, push aside the

curtains that rock softly with midnight breeze,

float quietly to his bed.  She will watch before

she wakes him, taking note of the rise and fall of his

breath, searching for something behind his eyes

that will let her know he should be the one.

 

It isn’t until after she has left, after they have fumbled

with their inexperience, unsure of how their bodies

should fit and fold into each other - sees

the baseball on his nightstand.

 

It will remain there for years to come,

a fixture defined by what was gained and lost,

finding its way into brown boxes, moved from

home to home, until it is one day, again rediscovered:

                         this man will press the stitches into his

                        palm and unwrap a footnote in his life

                        when a girl appeared at his window,

                        and the universe was as simple as baseball.

My Blue Cuba

I am the mule strapped to this yoke

dragging a cart crowded with stories,

loaded down by a mother,

a dead grandmother, an island.

I pull with shoulders and hind

heels digging into the soil through

this gauntlet of history and culture.

 

The burden burns on my haunches,

a flame so fierce it glows blue

with lashings of English and Spanish.

This yoke at my throat yanks with

phone calls of send medicine for Juani’s

stomach, send lace for Janet’s wedding,

send shoes for Elmer,

send dollares.

 

I am the last of this stock treading

between traditions. I try to keep my lashes

feathered as the coconut palms above

the lip of these deep waters-

these blue-veined lines of blood

between that island and this country.

I inhale this ocean of burden, fill

my lungs with its salty fragrance,

and become weightless.

I become this narrative.

Education

She will have an abortion today while the rest

of the class works on poetry. Alliteration becomes

inconsequential at the the thought of this sweet

student, asleep and dreaming on a sterile slab

in a frigid room. Her peers gab about who

was drunk this weekend, the next party

date for prom-and I wonder:

will she ever be the same?

Days later she is smiling, asking for missed

work.  I watch her fold that waiffish frame

into a desk, barely able to stop myself from

holding her after class to ask if she feels

different, if her body has revealed some

sacred secret, told only by the deepest

recesses of the womb. But I don’t.

I’m not even supposed to know

about the matter-no one knows.

So when the bell rings, she slips away

a translucent moth, out the door.

 

In a few months she’ll dress for prom

in a shimmering sequenced turquoise gown,

her chocolate brown hair swept up in a

sophisticated twist and extra mascara,

a veneer to her education-

what she learned when she made

her choice.

Discovering Winter

I.

At Mark Twain elementary school, Mrs. Sikonia introduced my class

to snowflakes.  She gave us each a clean white sheet of paper, safety

scissors. She taught us to fold our paper into tiny packages

and cut away at the corners so that when we opened them, lattice

and filigree revealed itself like a gift. We spread thick globs

of Elmer’s glue with giant wood sticks and dumped heaping

mounds of silver glitter ontoour delicate creations. She hung

our snowflakes from the drop ceiling in our tiny classroom

with paperclips and yarn. They remained there,

suspended and twinkling in the incandescent flourescence

through the winter season-the only reasonable semblance of true

weather we would see as children of California.

 

II.

These are fickle and disappear when they touch the black

asphalt, a car windshield, a frozen blade of grass.

They are too small to investigate, to delicate

to determine whether or not the gilded versions of the first grade

were accurate. Because when the snow finally drops, it appears

as a silenet furry-incensed whirling white flakes outside

windows turned into life-size glass globes.

This is winter where the sky is the color of paintbrush

water, that sullied silver that collects in a glass after many rinses

from a child’s rainbow palate. The chill comes on quietly like an old

marmalade tabby loping along until her yowl for a scratching

demanads attention. This is how winter arrives in my newest life, first

unobstrusive, then demanding layers of wool from its patrons.