The Widow

Lost: The Call, Part One

First make a pact to stop-up
tight as a clog. Even the clouds
will abandon injecting their sadness
into that sort of woman.
This is a recipe.
If you must, imagine Marie Antoinette
when the stranger tells you to sit.
The desert has misplaced a soldier
with your last name. Destiny
trumping coincidence,
but how can this feel worse
than losing a head after Europe
coronates you with cake?
Armies never admit mistakes.
The stand-by is incident. M.I.A.
Another small-town hero sunk
in the action of counting
grains on an Arabian beach.
O, the catalog of sand clinging
to the myth of the unique snowflake.

Being lost becomes the longest wake.
More cake. Let them eat cake!
More beer, more toasts
until you rise to hear the beats
of a dozen golden steeds, their hooves plated
with the gilt of your wedding ring.
If this is a dream, it really stinks.
If you are awake, quit talking.
God suffers from fatigue.
That excuse to fly south
when winter hits like a stomachache.
Let them all eat cake.
Did buying Sacher torts ever relieve
the grief of one Queen? Lay down
your cards. There is no king.
War has forced your eulogy
to become a suicide note.
Whatever you do, never call this an ode.
That would be the most obscene.




Negatives

The aperture got him that time.
Again and again.
Caught him in a way he tries
lying himself out of. He knows
the picture says too much,
betrays his private grace.
It’s the masculine. Only you
can understand preferring
the back of his head
to your lover’s face when he sleeps.
Anyone who turns from you
in the dark feels safe.

Blink too fast and your husband
turns to paper. Soon he will only be ink.
Right now, examine his canvas of skin
in the photo above your bed.
This is where desire begins.
It is very near a spell, cast
when the camera comes close.
A crescendo. An overdose.
In the trash land snapshots
from the beach. See how happy
you make him. A picnic.
The rehearsal dinner.
Your favorite one of him intent
behind a telescope, how he held
out his hand to touch Saturn’s rings,
forever out of reach.

Those who chart the absurdity
of pain say this is all too soon
as you take down every frame
that contorts the missing into myth.
This creation of fable
demands a stronger potion.
Let him stir it in your dreams.
Just this once allow your
obscured husband to discourage
the error in believing
how once upon a time
comes without strings.


When I Am Old

Who will make sure I take my pills,
notice the hole in my sweater,
how it grows too large to mend?
Our end frays like conversations
between a lover and her ghost.
Look at you, becoming my holy host,
your name a sacrament on my tongue.
Your bid for bravery has widowed me.
See what you’ve done?
Even CNN will forget the score
of this war as a fracture begins
shattering the bones of the next
soon-to-be-overthrown regime.
In a year or two I will stop looking
for you in the sky, snug on the tail
of a burned out star.
You were never there. You will miss
so many ways I choose to die.
First my hair goes, a million dead
filaments where electric color once cracked.
Grey means never reaching
the end of the story. Next will come
a Dowager’s hump, a cataract,
no, make that two, while time freezes
your thirty-year grin. Norman Rockwell
should have made a portrait of you.
If someone new sees me I won’t know
how to act. What if my breasts
have fallen by then? What if my best side
was you, my better half? I have decided
that the worst thing about war
is never really knowing who wins.
Victory.
Defeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat…







An Army Wife Contemplates Motherhood

The slaying of four more soldiers
makes me weep. Was it your jeep on the news,
leaking its fuel like a mortal wound?
MIA sounds too much like hide’n’seek.
If this is a game we’re playing,
I’m next. Let’s see—
colostrum sounds like a building in Greece.
All the curved marble yards of a vanished race.
Piece by piece is how an Army builds itself up.
Swallow by swallow is how a baby becomes.
Drink by drink is how we fill our cup.
What was ordained to cleave the hidden
grace of my chest is not so different
from the walls of an ancient place.
The breast is its own refuge,
shelter from the rising squalls,
for rain always follows any new thing.
Inconvenient cloudburst. Maybe not at first,
that rough-cut diamond, the luxury of birth
a distraction from the storm. Instead my wonder
turns to a belly’s shrinking girth, its path
through fecundity, its new near-neon vacancy.
Not even the aftershocks of blood make me weak,
rocking the impatient little life, baa baa black sheep,
peek-a-boo, now I lay me down to sleep,
until I hear the urgency of thunder.
There is a tightness in my back. That infernal news,
another IED attack. The baby must become
our new belief, but I know if he had teeth
he would latch onto me in sleep,
a mouth of heavy cream while I cut
my coffee with half-n-half, awake
from another dream with an abandoned carriage,
another nightmare to chart in my tidy book,
arms outstretched to catch a barren cradle
plummeting from my heart.








The Funeral Dress

I proclaim how I love you with my red dress,
my perfect faith. Pressing against my chest,
mourning comes in the color
you always pretended to like best.
See how our religion hangs from the threads?
We never trust the dead to pick their clothes.

Many times the widow’s armor never fits.
Black is what happens between dreams
when you float back, acquitted
from your sentence of sand. In church
my skin becomes your homeland.
My face a temporary grave.

I will welcome you with my tombstone
of bone barren beneath this crimson sash.
Is it the gluttony of hymns that tilt my head,
the ruminations on your lost flesh.
Sometimes even with a red dress
nothing makes sense.

Did you see the banner they hung
for you at Burger King? The local news?
Watch how the Homecoming Queen lost
her prince. What a shame someone snapped
the pickets off her perfect little fence.
If I was a fence I would let everyone go.

Your funeral, all pillow mints and party tricks,
those redundancies called prayer ring false
as costume jewelry in my ears while my dress
plays truth or dare. I have learned to loan sorrow,
to pass the missives to the next mourner in line.
What shameless grace to seek the divine
in house after house of crumbling stone.









Trying to Get Back to You

I thought swimming would do.
It’s all about holding your breath.
This infatuation with death is common.
One of the stages of grief.
I call it more of a suspended disbelief
as I try to get back to you.
The diving board becomes my planchette.
It’s never about hearing a “no” or a “yes.”
My underwater ouija mimics a waltz
between Harry Houdini and his wife Bess.
How many years did she try for a reply
from the grave? Séance to end all parlor tricks.
If you are listening, I confess my martyrdom
comes with a price. It’s like courting
a ventriloquist. One day is paradise.
The next, a dummy steals the show.
My arms row the water. I pretend
to feel quicksand. I pretend to surface
on the world’s other side.
Here comes your bride, rising
through the impossibility of water.
Hold out your hands before the tide
takes me. And don’t call this suicide
as I hover above your vanishing.
Call it something close to love.
In ancient poems, everyone died.


















Altruism

My sign creeks like they do in cartoons
where elves fill red and green rooms
with their earnest, fudgy sweat.
I imagine Christmastime, the painted
blue-white snow, the Technicolor glow,
Free Doll Hospital. Have no regrets.
Let me volunteer to mend loose eyes.
Donate your extra cash to homeless vets
while I stitch torn hems, plump
under-stuffed heads. See the tiny beds
where my patients wait for story time
while I re-braid hair, solder broken links
on the chain of their favorite pets.
I never turn my back on the furry kind.
I think I want to be like you, a soldier
more hell bent than heaven sent
on saving the world. Afraid of death,
I set low hurdles, gifting sight
to the stuffed bear blind from hugging.
A veteran of too much love, his eyes
worn dull from a blanket scratch,
a child’s insistent arm, the same way
I clutched your pillow all those nights
I knew you couldn’t come back.
Don’t you adore the way their mouths
are too gentle to ask where you went?
Every doll is an optimist. Their pupils
betray a fixed amusement as if each moment
they are seeing color for the first time.
They understand how everyday I carry
around the ache of war the same way
they wear that one calico dress,
their eyes never seeing the elbow tear,
the peanut butter and jelly mess.
Dolls never complain of headaches
or stomach pain from too many mud
pies passed at tea parties in the guise
of something sweet. See where my widowed
hands find peace in the knotting
of frayed ends, my days occupied
trying to make something whole again
in those endless rounds of playing
make believe and let’s pretend.

After the Dolls

It took me thirty years to see how dolls
never really play back. It feels
like trying to phone the dead, expecting
sleepy bones to forgo their fate.
What animated chit-chat between exposed
elbow and breastplate. Think hard
about waiting to hear stories told
from mouths that cannot speak.
Who comes back after missing fifty weeks?
My dolls waited for me to leave.
A sort of reverse bereavement,
without blinking they let me know
they were sick of a widow’s grief.
All that sadness causes their curls to weep.
Arab skylines, blown-up jeeps
while they longed to see an infinite reel
of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
It’s because candy does nothing
to their waist. I even caught one blonde
moppet bragging how the only thing
she could taste was a child’s kiss.
She collects them in her carry case,
tucks the sweetest beneath her extra set
of panties while I strain to remember
the contours of your face. I never did feel
like playing hopscotch on the lawn
as news blared from the living room.
The soufflés made out of mud never rose,
the torts fell. The dolls don’t believe in God
so it’s inevitable how they all snicker
at the notion of heaven. They do it behind
my back during dinner grace, the one
propped in your chair at the table head
daring to say “Mama” while I pray
that you are able to resurrect from sand.
A phoenix risen from chain upon chain
of bad commands while their tiny
porcelain hands hold their tinier China cups.
A toast to my blind faith, a silent unkindness
while my world falls apart, me too busy
caring for each unbroken, little heart.



The Widow

I wear this distinction like a badge.
My only accomplishment, this pageantry
of misplaced grief. Grocery clerks,
mailmen, they all crave the relief
of knowing I survived.

Gossip says I contemplated pills,
sharpened knives, rifled
fairy tale cupboards for the missing shoe.
The morass between a king and queen
grows deep. My hands become
splintered in glass, my fingers bleed.

I am tired of cutting ribbons in your name,
dedicating plazas, spit-shining your picture
framed in the town square, becoming the mare
most single men dare to ride.
They act as if climbing inside me
will seal their fate.

The goose with the golden egg lays brass
but with the right tools, I can make a ring.
I let mourners bring casseroles, bowl
after bowl. They all memorized that crap
about chicken soup being good for the soul.
Who am I to judge how others let go?

Maybe the Buddhists know?
Nietzsche and his eternal return?
Your empty urn on the mantle?
I stopped dusting it weeks ago.












The Morning After

Maybe you weren’t so great?
Go ahead, I’ll take the bait of pretending
I hated you. At least when you poked fun
at the way I burned your bread,
forgot to pay the light bill,
our uphill battle to rule the nest.
How you always had to be the best
at checkers, cooking, reading maps.
How, when you weren’t looking,
I always chose the wrong off-ramps.
To make it seem like you were thinking.
Some days, before you died, I wished
I had signed our marriage license
with invisible ink. Now you shine
more holy than Jesus on his cross.
(It would be really stupid to add a line here
about being an albatross around my neck,
purely for the rhyme.)

I imagine you pantomiming Rodin’s Thinker,
a hybrid of philosophy and belief.
I’ll try to keep my criticisms brief: of course
there were dirty socks, the cliché of empty
beer cans, girlie magazines left open
to your favorite page, unweened
of desiring unattainable things.
I had the smallest engagement ring
in the Army housing block,
and you know how women measure
a man’s willingness to love.
It’s more a coven than a koffee klatch,
dispatched rumors between tumblers
of eternal iced tea. My levee
threatened to break before the neighborhood
even crowned you a saint.
What kind of woman divorces the favorite ghost?
Failed husband, so-so lover, new holy host.
Curse you for stealing my next move,
my penance, the burden of your bones,
the unquenchable thirst of longing
to be the perfect wife,
the stasis my life leans into
for wanting to leave you first.

Found: The Call, Part Two

Let the phone ring and ring
like the cicadas who never tire
of singing their backyard aubades.
Your husband’s voice becomes a choir
before it fades on the answering machine.

“Hold your breath, I’m back! Forget
all that nonsense about an attack
while you wait for me to float across
the ocean like soap. My miracle
becomes an unsinkable boat.

Titanic number two, desperate
to get back to you. This time
I’ll make it through any ice floe.
This is how heroes cook their stew.
Savory. Indispensable.

You know I’d love to throw in
an after dinner cake or two.
We are celebrating being born.
Again. Again. Wait, why are
you so quiet on the other end?

At the very least I expect a shout
to end my bout of being dead.
Make the bed for me, wash
the sheets. Greet me like
they used to on Father Knows Best.

A forehead kiss. A Cuban cigar,
every request met with zealous
reverence. My dear, are you in shock?
Please send a lock of your hair
to settle around my neck. Send

me care packages. Cookies
and cigarettes. Send me soft things,
private thoughts. Let me remember
how you’ll never forget. Pet,
my pet. I’ll be wafting home soon.”



A circus balloon, your husband
rises his voice over the high wire
towards home. When the call
ends you are more alone
than a page without its book.

Now you are dead. Rest
your head in the memory of sacrifice.
Tell everyone at least twice how
much you love him. Convince
yourself of your own advice.

Look at your skin in the bathroom
mirror, already antiqued from days
of pretending someone died.
When they raise his empty casket
be sure to climb inside.





























Freaks and Other Failures

She becomes her own sideshow.
The gristle waiting beneath her skin.
The spires of wiry hair at the crest
of her pubic bone. The unmet twin
asleep in its shelter of rib. This
is how mourning turns to flesh.
It’s hard to shun so many anomalies.

Her husband has begun his long
journey back. Who will greet him
at the door? The fairytale lore
from a Lady-in-Waiting, each day
her lover’s absence pinking her cheeks
even more, her hair a nestle of silk,
her hands daring to retain a certain,
specific softness, or does he meet
a monster bent from sadness?

It’s the horrific in 3-D. A widow
stripped of her title forced to find
a new niche. It’s too late to bitch
about government and politics.
Now she competes with the giant
of war, just out of reach. Remember
that thing we already said about
counting grains of sand on a beach?
The impossible cheering us on.

Everyone expected her to crack
like a nursery egg. The fallible fall.
A last curtain call to end all swan songs,
though she prefers the irreverence
of ducks. In a row, on a fence,
oily beaks bent towards winter snow,
the summer occurrence of picnics
on a lake. How he will newly insist
on canonizing these make-believe things.

Remember that other part about letting
them eat cake? A 1600’s tabloid machine
to bring down a teenage queen, now
the local paper paparazzi stalks our “widow”
in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s.
How does it feel to dig up hubby
from the seeds you thought he sowed?
She forces herself not to owe anyone,
stocking up on two-buck Chuck,
waiting for her husband’s pucker,
half-drunk, to taste like friend and foe.









































Bake Sale

I looked for sugar to cure us, measured
our love with the endearment of dessert.
Everyone knows all last bites endure.
And I don’t mean in the veins or on the thighs.
What I lasso onto your plate is that mile-high
sky of meringue, a cloud we could
take turns attempting to eat.
I greet you with a sweetness reserved
for widows, quick to liberate
your foot from the grave.
Jesus saves, but so do wives.
I guess for you I’d use up my ninth life.
Not like the other eight deserved letters home
or champagne toasts on dinner dates.
Fate. Fate. Fate. I am a relic, again,
as I cut and paste stitches of dough
into Dorothy’s dog Toto from that movie
we used to watch when we got stoned.
Elusive purebreds, my cookies
are mutts, burnt from tail to toe.
There’s no place to go but home
to hide the waste. The afterbreath
of unsaid things. We will be okay?
Silence drapes our stage, but even
Hamlet’s play reveals a murder in the end.
Villains always take the bait.
Of course your plane is late.
Your flowers die. For something to do
I lick frosting of your welcome home cake.
Look how the sugar roses start to bloom,
pretty enough to pin on a sweater.
Other soldiers would grin at my edible art.
Homemade. They’d say I’m a real go-getter.
Their wives only sent snapshots
of fake tits between letters.
But love is a debt I try to repay
by baking cakes. My mortal mistake,
for the “they” who know these things
say everything turns to shit in the end,
anyway.




Intercourses

She accuses him of switching cologne.
They smell different over there, he says.
Funny. Like incense. Strong food.
Rumor has it the women remove
their pubic hair with salt and warm honey.
But it’s not like they’d show you
a just-bare patch on the sunniest afternoon.
Remember when Grandma and Gramps swore
their folks would call black people “coons?”
That fate would be a honeymoon compared
to a G.I. caught in the proverbial,
or literal, salted honey-pot.

But, she asks, what’s that got to do with us?
Why aren’t you basking in it, new off the plane?
We should be checking your luggage.
I’m already fed-up with all this fluff.
Come on, what’s with the expurgated peck,
quick hug around the neck stuff?
Don’t you know everybody’s watching?
Buddy, I don’t care if you’ve come
back bloody. Sure, it’s rough luck,
but you better make that crowd think
you’re gonna fuck me till dawn.

He couldn’t stop talking. Asked if she
would mow her lawn. Down there.
Hawr, hawr, hair today, tomorrow gone.
Slipped up. Said he got used to seeing
them bare as the year girls
trade three wheels to straddle a bike,
unaware there was something intriguing,
neat, about all of that pink.
Remember the way you pedaled?
Any faster deserved a medal
for comprehending at your delicate age
how escape is always a two-way street.







Driving

My mistaken belief in sugar warms
to syrup on the seat. Now
my passenger is grief. I know
I’ve mentioned the word once or twice,
mouths of the well-meant flapping
useless advice like wet sheets on a line.
I grow tired of the ones who want to help.
It’s like binding a book with no title.
Sucking on sweets makes
my journey worthwhile.
I am driving away from the other
widows, the broken-hearted mothers,
the super do-gooders, the epitome
of sympathy cards, AC360 with Anderson Cooper.
His steel blue eyes always follow Larry King.
Instead of studio lights falling just-so
on his sliver pate, why didn’t someone
care enough to warm me, on our reunited
morning how, of course, you’d sleep late.
No replay of VJ Day, confetti and kisses,
you slog to bed and you sleep.
It’s not my way to make you tell me
your dreams, that irretrievable line
of dead soldiers. Your mother said
to wake you with donuts and Folger’s,
but that worn-out cliché will have to wait.
Waking up to smell the coffee always
makes my stomach sick. And show me
the addendum that proclaims
it’s a wife’s job to know the mechanics
behind every magic trick.













Fallen Hero?

It felt kind of kinky sleeping with you again,
a more muscular, bearded twin whose front
and back, for the first time since youth,
carried the same statuary hardness.
I’ll spare the details of noise and smell
and go to the part where I could tell
it was the first and last time
I would see you this bare.

Vulnerable sounds too much like weak
and your body refused even a tendon
of meekness. The study of a rescued soldier
in 3-D. A video game stud in waiting,
the ideal image I’d been masturbating
to for weeks, though something
about your flesh still made me cold.

It had a hold on me, that’s for sure,
its exasperating gullies and curves,
but something about your nerve to take
what was yours, as if I was the one
retrieved in those moors of foreign sand.
And your hands felt rough. Not like
a leading man who understands
the contract, no meaning yes and the rest.

You pawed at my body’s coordinates
with the agility of a bear. I got
the feeling you didn’t really know
I was there, a mirror you insisted
on covering before somehow,
with the right word,
I might make you disappear.

Clear, you didn’t want to hear how I
had fixed a running toilet, balanced
our accounts, threw out my night light,
set up traps for every mouse.
You just dug a hole, deep inside me,
even the miracle of your nakedness
a warning that there would never be
room for two heroes in our house.