Three Poems

Twenty Questions for the Twin Boys who Spat in my Hair in Seventh Grade

Why on a school bus returning
from a field trip? Why the back
of my head as I sat in the row ahead
of you? Did you both spit or only one?
Who followed whose cruel idea?
Did my puffy blonde hair waterfall
to my shoulders or was it in a ponytail
my mother had meticulously slicked up,
securing loose strands with mists
of water? When I felt something
heavy in my hair, a beetle perhaps,
and groped around until my palm
swiped a loogie, why didn’t I lose
my shit on you two? Why was
my tucked, hot face my only
fire? Since I remember your names
is it unethical to out you in this poem?
Did you know I was a grade under you?
Do you have a younger sister? Do you
still spit? Still spit in anyone’s hair?
Why don’t more girls and women spit?
Why, when my teenage son tried to teach
me to spit, was the hardest part not
hocking the necessary phlegm but
picking a target—any walking path,
squirrel-studded lawn or fishy lake
on which my saliva wouldn’t intrude,
infect, insult? All these years, have I
misunderstood you two? Was something
in your throat you needed to forcefully
expectorate? Can either of you whistle?
Roll your tongue into a clover leaf?
In other words, did you consider all
the good mouths can do on a bus ride?
Is it too late for you to learn a duet?

***

Following Orders

Most children need blankies to fall asleep.
For my child that’s a start. Puffy quilts hide
all but her pillowed head, like she’s neck-deep
in ocean frothing her footboard and bedsides.
Over her eyes is a chartreuse sleep mask;
thick, furry, a cat face shimmers on the front.
Enclosing her are gauze curtains she asks
remain untied—sheer wall, ironic stunt.
I nudge curtains apart and reach a hand
to her soft mouth and chin; she drifts off best
when I caress her skin, that narrow band.
What’s next, my other hand smoothing her nest
of hair? Tonight I’m a compliant mother.
But what if she looks back and says I smothered?

***

My Dad Hopes to Stroke Out Mid-lecture

Instead he retires from his university,
strums songs at his goodbye party in the campus courtyard.
Instead he picks up a pipe, puffs to fill new silence.
He and my stepmom announce, if they grow feeble, together they’ll drink end-of-life cocktails.
Instead he divorces her after 16 years and countless doors she shuts on my siblings and me.
Instead he moves to Missouri—
I can drive there in the length of a kids’ movie.
For the first time my daughter paws his accordion,
jumps on his bed, un-scolded for mussying quilts.
Instead there’s no instead about breakfast—
scrambled eggs I had as a child, tortillas charred on a stove.
At his stovetop he points to loosening skin
inside the crease of his elbow, wrinkly as crepe paper, sign of old age.
Instead of marathons he used to run, he walks.
Instead of two pill bottles in his bathroom, twelve.
He liked tailoring tests to class discussions;
instead he tailors espressos he makes me, less sugar.
Instead he tweaks the spot for his dog’s crate until it stops night-panting.
Instead he turns his attention to his soft heartbeat,
accelerated when he sits on his sunny back deck, neck slick with sweat,
so he climbs a ladder and installs a canvas shade from deck to fence.
There are days he talks with no one,
days we text about a baseball game,
weekends I visit and I can’t tell if his sighs mean calm or exhaustion.
Instead I trust his words:
My life is family, this dog, the lake around me.
Instead of him cruising in a little sailboat he moved with
the boat squats in a marina parking lot for weeks, guzzling rain.
Instead of hiring someone with a truck to tow and lower his boat into a dock
he feels overwhelmed, landlocked.
One day a sailor stops him in the marina lot and offers a tow rig—
my dad could blush, toe gravel, shake his head.
Instead he fights for his boat’s life:
the sailor’s truck backs up into a lake,
the truck gives birth to his boat—unknot the cords, finally float—
my dad, inside the boat, gently steers it to a dock.
Instead he’s at the marina daily varnishing the wooden mast and rail.
Instead he texts videos of himself jumping off the transom.
Instead he swims beside the boat, laughing mouth an inviting cove.
My sister worries he’ll drown;
instead his legs curl freely, like a sturdy child’s, mid-leap.