The Refrigerator Poems

2009-12-27T17:09:00.000-08:00

Lineage

The first mother came on a boat
without her husband.
She couldn't wait.
Her baby died, so she had another one,
but rarely held it.
That baby turned into
the second mother,
and she called the dog by her daughter's name
when she was scolding it.
Her daughter wanted to be a good mother,
but other things were more important.
She always said, "What am I? Chopped liver?"
Her son was my father.
He read the newspaper like someone was hurting him,
but there was no one there
except me.
I'll be the fifth.
I already practice breathing in a way
that makes me radiate kindness.
I already imagine my baby asleep beside me
and I coo, Poor baby.

2008-10-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Decision

Some things were always sexy.

Even before fire

and cave drawings,

men used the backs of their hands

to wipe sweat off their foreheads,

and women looked up in surprise.

And people broke out in laughter,

rocking back and forth, touching each other's wrists.

People made each other cry

and then made up and, already

leaning together

in shame and complicity,

their decision was no decision at all.

2008-02-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

Slave

In her first video, she dressed up like a private school girl.
Everyone was her for Halloween
even on progressive college campuses.
People lost their virginities that night.
She had beautiful legs and an ass that was featured in magazines.
After kissing a woman on stage,
she said it wasn't her idea.
She was sort of game for anything.
Men asked her if she liked it and she said she did.
She was beautiful. Her skin was rubbed
with some kind of glittery lotion.

After her divorce,
she said she had this feeling in her chest
that wouldn't go away.

There was an ex-boyfriend, the one we think
she really loved, who wrote her a letter.
Tears streamed down her face
in the rehab center where she read it.
Her hair was gone then. You could really see her face.

2008-01-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

Parents

When I grew up,

after sex and therapy,
I called to tell them.

2008-01-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

Leading Man

The bad guy turned out to be
good. He used to stare at you at parties.
The night you were jumped
by racists, he sprang from the shadows,
wrapped you in blankets.
You woke up nestled in cushions in your bed.

He is a man of dreams,
sometimes young with a black beard,
sometimes climbing steps
in a cement stairwell.

No surprise to find him in a book.
In reality he was a prickly, painful man,
who couldn't hear his own name
when you called it. All he every did
for you was stop on a landing once and
turn around, smiling.

2007-04-08T15:23:00.000-07:00

To the Park

I carry one baby on each hip
and push two in a double stroller.
One rides on my shoulders,
holding fistfuls of my hair.
One is strapped to my back
and another to my front.

We all eat ice cream in the grass.
Some of the babies eat grass

while I sing Lucinda Williams songs
in a sorrowful, southern drawl.
I used to be sorrowful,
but not anymore.

Now I sing to my babies
and I show them how to clap their hands
if they can manage to open their hands
and make them flat.

I hear the muffled sound
of my cell phone ringing.
It is my roommate calling to complain
about her job.
But I don’t understand unhappiness anymore.
I don’t have a job

and I don’t have a roommate.
I have babies.
I take them to the park
and sit them in the shade
and smooth the fine hair
off their sweaty, concentrating faces.

2006-09-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

Everything You Need to Know

She was a girl
who walked to school with wet hair,
who read about other girls
in a magazine at a train station.

She was a brunette
who wore her hair short
like a boy's
who used to dress up
like a nightclub singer
behind a locked bedroom door.

Have you ever seen a girl
who looks like she doesn't want it
but really she wants it?
Really she looks like she wants it?

2006-04-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

Lumberjack

My father was a lumberjack
for Halloween.
In real life he specialized in pulmonary
and wandering sleeplessly around our house,

rearranging the den.
The next Halloween he was a lumberjack again.
His costume was just his regular clothes
and a plaid woolen jacket he wore on weekends.
It was sort of a joke. We went out at five and
made out like bandits. Couples with no kids
handed out giant Snickers.

My father was a big-time pilferer, a lumberjack-bandit.
He did his work at night while we slept.
He was like anyone just trying
to beat the system, eager to get over his nostalgia.
His sudden gestures seemed to tear through
an invisible encasing,
a sheathing of death. He was always
rising from the dead.

2005-12-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

I kissed Arrogance
who wrapped his coat around me.

I slept with Vulnerability
who startled when the phone rang.

I married Hope
whose eyes lit up like living rooms.

I divorced Disappointment
who never fixed the computer.

I hired Loneliness
who helped pull my arms through the sleeves of a shirt.

I called up Irreverence
who has yet to call me back.

2005-11-29T11:42:00.000-08:00

Fearless

I am not afraid of anything,
not being mugged,
or riding on the roof of a train.
Cars swerve
to avoid hitting me
and I shout, "Don't bother!"
I bear false witness and carry on
multiple illicit affairs.

It's amazing
that I'm still alive. Yesterday
I fell asleep in a turning lane.
The day before that,
I set fire
to two bottles of alcohol
and scaled
the side of a building,
not to mention cheating on my taxes.

I am afraid of nothing. My clothes prove it.
If my navel is covered,
my breasts pop out. If my breasts are covered,
my pants are falling.

They fired the warden who tried to help me,
which is nothing
compared to what happened
to my parole officer.
I won't describe the face
of the lover in Hoboken
who still awaits my arrival.

I never said thank you to anyone.
Even house arrest
didn't make me call my mother.
I never asked to be excused from the table.
It's amazing that I'm still alive.

2005-04-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

Here’s how

Compressed
by the insuperable weight
of Jim,
I couldn’t find the breath to speak

the words girls speak
when they mean slower or softer or ohmygod!

Pinned,
I lay planning a
fleshy escape. Here’s how I did it: my body grew to fit with his; my legs swelled
and curled around him; my stomach rose
like baking dough; my ribs sprouted
bony branches.

From underneath, I saw Jim
stricken with amnesia, biting his lip and riding along. His hair again reminded me of bitter beer.

I laughed
to call him back and make him recognize me. Boys? Jim? Come inside,
back from the forest and your singular worlds.

But he looked at me with doorknob-eyes, not remembering my name. It was so
dark, I could hardly see him
either. But I could feel him giving himself to the night.

And I wanted to be with him. Here’s how I did it: I took his mass and converted it to heat; I took the heat and converted it to undulations; took the undulations, converted them to voice. For a moment,
I had nothing, not knowledge or humor or a name; I gave up all of that in a single moan. Then Jim heard my moan and made it rain all over his memory, took me and turned me into the sky.

2004-11-08T20:18:00.000-08:00

Typist

A typist's life is no adventure, no sailor's night
in port, not a place you go to sing.
You straighten papers with the tips of your fingers. You are as pale as a shark.

I used to wear my hair short
like a boy's, but then I shivered when
the fan blew on my neck. I startled easily,
dropping the stapler.

Everyone is a secretary; even God
performs clerical duties.
He lied His Way into this job
and cries when I cry.

Sometimes you straighten
papers with the tips of your
fingers and everyone says

you hold your bag
of groceries
like a child on your hip. I am a chair with a hat on
resembling a wife from the bed where you are.
All through the night, I speak
in a voice so salty and mute.
Have you heard me?
You may have heard of me; I'm the one who revamped our filing system.

2004-09-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

He sleeps in

Morning is not a vamped up whore
with sticky lips
or a dry and unraveling
leaf pile.

As a baby you lay on top of
your father's chest-- he was also sleeping-- and matched each of his deep breaths
with two shallow ones. This explains
your lapse in memory, this sprawling and forgivable
intermission.

Morning musses
the pile of dusty leaves you asked me softly
to rake yesterday, when we still thought
we were awake. But the night thickened
with dismembering force. Then the dust motes
descended and I heard a tympanic
sound all around me. I think
my father
reached down and lifted me
high up above the yard. He was frail
and wearing
this apologetic face.

2004-06-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

The Visit

I leaned on the spine of a book
that felt like a live arm. Even the clothes on your floor
were warm. With a pencil, I drew bodies on the backs of my resumes
and listened for your shaky voice.
I dislike this old house with its fancy wainscoting.
Something racist about it.

But I like
the mess you made in it
and your reaching
to tuck my hair behind my ear.
There is always a ghostliness
in beds far from home.
One gets over it.

On one of my walks,
I found junk, plastic figurines, in the pockets
of your jacket. I wrapped my fingers around them,
surprised by a rush of heat
in my chest and throat.
Lately, I am turning birdlike. My breathing has quickened
and I swallow differently
than before.

2004-05-12T21:16:00.000-07:00

Photographer

Twirling
in the shifting light of Brooklyn,
she opened her skirt like a sail.
You were all grown up, bigger
than your father
and with the same yellow specks
flaring out
from your pupils. Your camera’s impish angle
parted the buttons of her blouse.

A tap
on your shoulder made you whirl around
with your mouth open
like a skirt.

Beautiful women create a disturbance
at weddings
and at sea
when they shift
their complicated weight
from foot to foot.
You prefer them rabbit-still,
like telephones about to ring.
I’ve seen the prints
dripping from a clothesline
in your darkroom.

2004-04-20T20:37:00.000-07:00

Boyfriend

You saved his corporeal day
from frostbite
at eight in the morning, before work.
The window was cold in your sloping room
with artsy cracks. The walls were wet as moss.

He loved you like that, wrapped in sheets,
forgetful,
searching on the ground for your creaky leather pants.

2004-04-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

Marketing

I’ll tell you what I do for a living:
Tropical flowering gardens, all expenses paid.
You’ll find my work
only in the moldy dungeons of cyberspace.
(Never believe
anyone trying to sell you something.)
After work I come home to the third floor and I
dance in soft slippers, trying not to make a ruckus.

The best training for life
is the US Naval Academy. It was there I learned
the ABCs of love. They made a man of me
on the warm, sandy beaches of the Pacific Ocean
whose balmy breezes were like hot breath in my eyes.

Somewhere in your memory, did you ever hit the deck for twenty? I imagine you burly, darker than life,
carrying the world like an oxcart
on your shoulders.

This is not the first dream
I’ve had about you, my sweet muffin, my classic burrito.
We were traipsing through tropical flowering gardens
with your hand on the small of my back. Now, I don’t even buy organic anymore. I don’t even
wash my fruit.

You never believe anyone trying to tell you something, but this is not the first
poem I’ve written about you. In the coldest offices of the Atlantic Coast, you wrapped yourself around me like a stole.

2004-04-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

Strangers in the walls

It began with the dog that ate the cat
that ate the mouse
that broke into my apartment
and pooped in my pantry,
tiny bones shifting beneath a dingy coat.
I looked down at my navel, my pelvic bone.
My body is a sandbank
carved out by a river, disarranged by wind and pedestrian footsteps.
At night I tug tiredly at its clefts and dunes
as if to remold or plow it
or maybe to carry it in my hands.

I hear noises in the walls of this apartment, a scurrying or
a grunt of pleasure.
That’s my family
entering
through a hole in the plaster,
tiny muscles stretching, bones flattening.
Soon they grow larger,
barking, purring,
scuffing up the furniture.
Then they are plasma, nothing and everything.
A smell of cooking,
a blink,
the rumble of a train freefalling towards a platform.

This island is a sandbank carved out by an ocean
rearranged by glacial excretions
washed onto the shore.
There is sand in your hair, sand in the walls. You laugh
and disintegrate into the beach.

2004-04-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Synopsis

After your mother's breast,
you fell in love briefly with a tattered blue blanket.
It was nothing, just a scrap
you realized later. You fell in love
with the president,
sang him happy birthday
in an evening gown and a puffy voice
learned in the birthing canal.
The penis of a man
hangs mutant and weak as if from a brass peg.
But it makes an alto climb steps
high into the soprano range.
It makes her habitation complete.
Her soapy hands linger
over each flushed hip in the shower. She finds new corners of the kitchen floor
to scrub.