Fuel Read online

  in the painter’s life

  to give her this line.

  I don’t wonder about the person

  who painted HIV under the STOPS

  on the stop signs in the same way.

  NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

  Did some miracle startle

  the painter into action

  or is she waiting and hoping?

  Does she ride the bus with her face

  pressed to the window looking

  for her own message?

  Daily the long wind brushes YES

  through the trees.

  LIVING AT THE AIRPORT

  Because they lived near a major airport,

  their children were always flying over their heads.

  Assimilating into cloud till specks of ground life

  became smaller even than lives together remembered:

  the floor furnace they leapt over for whole winters,

  its gaping hot breath. How far they had come from

  the clumsy navy stroller in the hall with its bum wheel and brakes.

  The mother used to cry, pushing that thing.

  Sometimes now the father went to the airport just to see

  people saying good-bye and hello. Especially the good-bye gave him relief.

  Before boarding, families looked so awkward together.

  Repeating, Now you be good, hear? Give a call if you can.

  They seemed almost desperate

  to get away.

  Since so many suitcases had their own wheels now,

  he wondered, had the old rooted suitcases gone to live in attics

  stuffed with unseasonable clothes, or junkyards with disappeared cars,

  and what staple of their lives might have wheels next, not to mention

  wings?

  STRING

  At certain hours we may rest assured that nearly everyone inside

  our own time zone or every adjacent time zone lies asleep and then

  we may begin to speak to them through the waves and folds of their dreaming

  then we may urge them on beg them not to forget

  though so many days have driven in between us and original hopes

  as a boy stands back from his earlier self mocking it

  and the light of fireflies blinking against an old fence has become

  as sad as it is lovely because so many hands are gone by now

  it is not that we wanted the light to be caught but reached for

  that was it

  Tonight it is possible to pull the long string and feel someone moving far away

  to touch the fingers of one hand to the fingers of the other hand

  to tug the bride and widow by the same thread to be linked to every mother

  every father’s father even the man in the necktie in Washington

  who kept repeating You went the wrong way, you went the wrong way

  with such animation he might have been talking about his own life

  My friend took my son for his first ride on a bicycle’s back fender

  He said Are you sure it is okay to do this?—We have been doing it forever

  I loped behind thinking how much has been denied him for living in a city

  in the 1990s but this was a town the dreamy grass slow spoke

  clipped hedges

  Just then a light clicked on inside tall windows draped tablecloth

  pitcher of flowers lace of evening spinning its intricate spell

  inside our blood and what we smelled was earth and rain sunken into it

  run-on sentence of the pavement punctuation of night and day

  giving us something to go by a knot in the thread

  although we did not live in that house

  FUEL

  Even at this late date, sometimes I have to look up

  the word “receive.” I received his deep

  and interested gaze.

  A bean plant flourishes under the rain of sweet words.

  Tell what you think—I’m listening.

  The story ruffled its twenty leaves.

  *

  Once my teacher set me on a high stool

  for laughing. She thought the eyes

  of my classmates would whittle me to size.

  But they said otherwise.

  We’d laugh too if we knew how.

  I pinned my gaze out the window

  on a ripe line of sky.

  That’s where I was going.

  COMING SOON

  Today reminded me of Christmas—bright and utterly lonely.

  Coleman Barks

  I placed one toe

  in the river of gloom.

  On the streets of the cold city

  a man with two raw gashes at his temple

  fingered them gently.

  Middle-aged sisters selling old plates and postcards

  Three Floors of Bargains *** Step Right In !

  stared glumly at a large clock.

  December was just beginning.

  One touched up her lipstick.

  She could see herself between the 6 and 7.

  Sunday-school children ate cookies

  shaped like trees.

  A waiter draped garlands of crumpled greenery

  above the door of his restaurant,

  adjusting the velvet bow.

  A toothless woman wearing plastic bags

  asked for the hour, which I gave her

  too enthusiastically.

  Here they came again.

  Rolls of wrapping paper.

  Red letters of ads.

  I wasn’t hungry

  for the countdown.

  Cluttered days

  so sharp they cut.

  What about our people

  on the giant list of loves?

  What would we give them

  this time around?

  The days say we will

  look and look and look.

  I plunged my foot

  into the river of gloom,

  it said it did not need me.

  PANCAKES WITH SANTA

  Santa has a bad memory.

  Santa forgets your name

  the minute he talks

  to the next person.

  Santa calls you by a baby’s name

  and doesn’t even know.

  Ho! Ho! Ho!

  Should you tell Santa?

  Already he thought you were a girl

  though you just had a haircut

  last week.

  How can he remember

  all those wishes?

  How will Santa ever find

  our house?

  The world has turned to

  red sweaters, jingles,

  freezing rain.

  Santa says he’s on a diet,

  that’s why he’s not eating pancakes

  with the rest of us.

  Mrs. Claus told him to

  lose some weight.

  Santa keeps drifting back

  for more chatting.

  He sits down at our table.

  What else can we say to Santa?

  Santa says ain’t.

  ALASKA

  The phone rang in the middle of the Fairbanks night and was always a wrong number for the Klondike Lounge. Not here, I’d say sleepily. Different place. We’re a bunch of people rolled up in quilts. Then I’d lie awake wondering, But how is it over there at the Klondike? The stocky building nestled between parking lots a few blocks from our apartment like some Yukon explorer’s good dream of smoky windows and chow. Surely the comforting click of pool balls, the scent of old grease, flannel, and steam. Back home in Texas we got wrong numbers for the local cable TV company. People were convinced I was a secretary who didn’t want to talk to them. They’d call four times in a row. Sir, I eventually told a determined gentleman, We’ve been monitoring your viewing and are sorry to report you watch entirely too much television. You are currently ineligible for cable services. Try reading a book or something. He didn’t call
back. For the Klondike Lounge I finally mumbled, Come on over, the beer is on us.

  SO THERE

  Because I would not let one four-year-old son

  eat frosted mini-wheat cereal

  fifteen minutes before dinner

  he wrote a giant note

  and held it up

  while I talked on the phone

  LOVE HAS FAILED

  then he wrote the word LOVE

  on a paper

  stapled it twenty times

  and said

  I STAPLE YOU OUT

  *

  memory stitching

  its gauze shroud

  to fit any face

  he will say to his friends

  she was mean

  he will have little interest

  in diagramming sentences

  the boy / has good taste

  enormous capacities

  for high-tech language

  but will struggle

  to bring his lunchbox home

  I remember / you

  you’re / the one

  I stared at in the / cloud

  when I wasn’t paying / attention

  to people / on the ground

  *

  the three-year-old wore twenty dresses

  to her preschool interview

  her mother could not make her

  change

  take some off her mother pleaded

  and the girl put on a second pair of tights

  please I’m begging you

  what will they think of us

  the girl put all eight of her pastel barrettes

  into her hair at once

  she put on

  her fuzzy green gloves

  she would have worn four shoes but could not

  get the second pair on top of the first pair

  her mother cried you look like a mountain

  who has come to live with me

  she had trouble walking

  from the car up to the school

  trouble sitting

  in the small chair that was offered

  the headmistress said

  my my we are a stubborn personality

  ACROSS THE BAY

  If we throw our eyes way out to sea,

  they thank us. All those corners

  we’ve made them sit down in lately,

  those objects with dust along

  their seams.

  Out here eyes find the edge

  that isn’t one.

  Gray water, streak of pink,

  little tap of sun,

  and that storm off to the right

  that seems to like us now.

  How far can the wind carry

  whatever lets go? Light

  shining from dead stars

  cradles our sleep. Secret light

  no one reads by—

  who owns that beam?

  Who follows it far enough?

  The month our son turned five

  we drove between cotton fields

  down to the bay. Thick layers

  of cloud pouring into one another

  as tractors furrowed the earth,

  streams of gulls dipping down

  behind. We talked about

  the worms in their beaks.

  How each thing on earth

  searches out what it needs,

  if it’s lucky. And always

  another question—what if?

  what if?

  Some day you’ll go so far away

  I’ll die for missing you,

  like millions of mothers

  before me—how many friends

  I suddenly have! Across the bay

  a ship will be passing, tiny dot

  between two ports meaning nothing

  to me, carrying cargo useless to my life,

  but I’ll place my eyes on it

  as if it held me up. Or you rode

  that boat.

  MY UNCLE’S FAVORITE COFFEE SHOP

  Serum of steam rising from the cup,

  what comfort to be known personally by Barbara,

  her perfect pouring hand and starched ascot,

  known as the two easy eggs and the single pancake,

  without saying.

  What pleasure for an immigrant—

  anything without saying.

  My uncle slid into his booth.

  I cannot tell you—how I love this place.

  He drained the water glass, noisily clinking his ice.

  My uncle hailed from an iceless region.

  He had definite ideas about water drinking.

  I cannot tell you—all the time. But then he’d try.

  My uncle wore a white shirt every day of his life.

  He raised his hand against the roaring ocean

  and the television full of lies.

  He shook his head back and forth

  from one country to the other

  and his ticket grew longer.

  Immigrants had double and nothing all at once.

  Immigrants drove the taxis, sold the beer and Cokes.

  When he found one note that rang true,

  he sang it over and over inside.

  Coffee, honey.

  His eyes roamed the couples at other booths,

  their loose banter and casual clothes.

  But he never became them.

  Uncle who finally left in a bravado moment

  after 23 years, to live in the old country forever,

  to stay and never come back,

  maybe it would be peaceful now,

  maybe for one minute,

  I cannot tell you—how my heart has settled at last.

  But he followed us to the sidewalk

  saying, Take care, Take care,

  as if he could not stand to leave us.

  I cannot tell—

  how we felt

  to learn that the week he arrived,

  he died. Or how it is now,

  driving his parched streets,

  feeling the booth beneath us as we order,

  oh, anything, because if we don’t,

  nothing will come.

  ENTHUSIASM IN TWO PARTS

  Maybe a wasp will sting my throat again

  so the high bouillon surge of joy

  sweetens the day.

  Shall I blink or wave?

  Simply stand below the vine?

  Since the stinger first pierced my throat

  and a long-held note of gloom suddenly lifted,

  I’ve considered poisons with surprise applications.

  Happy venom.

  Staring differently at bees, spiders,

  centipedes, snakes.

  *

  We’re more elastic than we thought.

  Morning’s pouf of goodwill

  shrinks to afternoon’s tight nod.

  We deliver cake to aged ladies

  who live alone,

  just to keep some hope afloat.

  Those who are known,

  rightly or wrongly,

  as optimists, have a heavier boat

  than most. If we pause,

  or simply look away,

  they say, What’s wrong?

  They don’t let us throw

  anything overboard

  even for a minute.

  But that’s the only way

  we get it back.

  OUR SON SWEARS HE HAS 102 GALLONS OF WATER IN HIS BODY

  Somewhere a mistaken word distorts the sum:

  divide becomes multiply so he’d wrestle his parents

  who defy what he insists. I did the problem

  and my teacher said I was right!

  Light strokes the dashboard.

  We are years away from its source.

  Remember that jug of milk?

  No way you’re carrying one hundred of those!

  But he knows. He always knows. We’re idiots

  without worksheets to back us up. His mother never remembers

 
; what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once

  and smashed his head on the drinks cart. We’re nice but we’re

  not always smart. It’s the fact you live with, having parents.

  Later in a calmer moment his dad recalculates

  the sum and it comes out true.

  Instead of carrying giant waterfalls inside,

  we’re streams, sweet pools, something to dip into

  with an old metal cup, like the one we took camping,

  that nobody could break.

  MORNING GLORY

  The faces of the teachers

  know we have failed and failed

  yet they focus beyond, on the windowsill

  the names of distant galaxies

  and trees.

  We have come in dragging.

  If someone would give us

  a needle and thread, or send us

  on a mission to collect something

  at a store, we could walk for twenty years

  sorting it out. How do we open,

  when we are so full?

  The teachers have more faith than we do.

  They have organized into units.

  We would appreciate units

  if we gave them a chance.

  Nothing will ever again be so clear.

  The teachers look at our papers

  when they would rather be looking at

  a fine scallop of bark