Madi’s Birthday

The last time I stayed in a cabin
there was no cabin.

There was though: a trailer
wrapped in fake Lincoln
Logs and set on cinder blocks, a hundred yards
of parking lot behind an amusement park.

And even though the 97 degrees had me
sleeping instead of standing in line. Sleeping
instead of hearing the tornado sirens
crying out slow across the flattened counties,
my family did hear them. They hurried back to take me
to the painted concrete walls of the wash house.

So we could follow the lightning and laugh
at the people streaming from the shuttle to their RV.

Screaming like it was ride.

And after we had smelled enough fresh water
from the thick-slatted whiteplastic chairs
that we carried way out past where the tide had come in
to the sand bar we climbed up to discuss the limits of photography,

and how the stars worked
that we spied through gaps
in sporadically blushing cloud cover,

after we were tired with collaging
our sandy footprints on the polished-sticker wooden floors,

me and my sister, Madison Rose, lay at a tiny window

in the trailer’s attic, just below the hammering metal
roof, and discussed the flirting techniques
of the 100 year old men she served food
at her first job, while we watched
the tallest rollercoaster in the world
get struck by lightning and go dark.

The wail of a fire engine just a tiny thing to the west.

Self Portrait

1.
The people I have
met, we were all told.

Once you find what lets you forget,
the thing able to take you,
blooming to make all else gray,

do that thing
for the rest of your life.

You can be,
our parents repeated,
whatever you want to be.


2.
Spring, beaten
within an inch of its life,
is rescued.

The people
are out again.

Some dedicating their time,
their lives,
to the control
of a ball. To the study
of that most true
of symmetries,
born of man
and gravity:
as ravishing,
impartial.

Many more dedicate their time,
their lives,
to the act of watching
those remarkable few
(whose abilities must plateau
for loathing and mercy)
so they may imagine
what it must do to a man
to make such love,
to have such final say
in the way of things
man can never have say.

Still, the control
has become so great.


3.
Summertime.
My father blindfolds my mother,
tells her not yet… not yet…

finally the tired fabric falls,
three stories of red brick
climbing up from where it rests.

The sky, blue and fresh
as her last name
blinds her for no more
than a moment

and he’s unlocking
the door.


4.
Despite what they may say,
I can’t be far
from what my parents prayed for
those early screaming nights

The mornings they spent
breaking ice
from the toilets
while the rats slept late,

tucked beneath
the blankets of my crib.

I have no memory of them
chewing the nipples
off my bottle.

No,
I am close.
I dedicate my time,
my life,
to the study of the feeling instead.