Three Poems

 

On "Perhaps The World Ends Here"

The world begins at a kitchen table. —Joy Harjo

But we hadn't a table in our kitchen,
only green and black linoleum, white

gas stove, tall fridge. A wall phone,
also green, long stretched-out cord

coiled beside the window framing
our neighbors' weeping cherry. A

deep porcelain sink over which I
was weekly bent, clutching a towel,

squinting shampoo suds out of my
eyes. My mother burnt the air in

there: bacon smoke, pot roasts. No
table. Ours was in the dining room,

where we moped over supper: unlit
candles, a view of nothing. Briefly,

a pet canary. Whoever's in the place
now must have knocked down walls,

opened it up, chosen happiness, as
if you really could. As if happy just

happened the way the canary sang
if you took the yellow cloth off his

cage. It was the early sixties. People
like us were fixated on The Bomb.

I was ten. I knew if the world began
to end, there'd be sirens, and maybe

I'd be at school. My parents would
be mad—at each other, or me: that

was always. So I would stop what I
was doing and run away. Mom said

that was silly: I wouldn't know what
hit me: why even worry? But if the

world began to end, I'd have had to
try something. Even running home.

 

Cast of Characters

In the article about good parenting, one father tells
how his unmotivated son first become a sniper in
the US military and is now a general contractor—
all without college! When I chop garlic for tonight's

pork roast, I will try not to think about people in
Gaza making bread from grass clippings. Today, I
think God is my old drama teacher posting the cast
for the spring show, and most of us are the girl who

never even gets into the street scenes. We all start
being our misfit selves early on; like anything else,
it requires endurance. And practice. Most parents,
I read, only want their kids to be happy and ethical.

(The article does not mention state championships
and full rides to Cornell.) But we all watch movies and
believe ourselves the stars. We'd know what to do if
we were President! Me? I'd wish I didn't have to make

life and death choices a million times a day. This
early April sun, hot through the leafless trees, is so
intense I want to lay down in it and let it cover every
inch of me, a whole red world behind my closed eyes.

 

Alexei Navalny Saying Goodbye

The wind blowing hard today is Alexei Navalny
saying goodbye, saying don't forget me. In New York
and in Kiev and in Russia, through trees that could

be upside down because their branches are bare like
roots trying to grab the clouds. Because nothing grows
with the whole world upside-down. Because we need

beets, cucumbers smelling sweet on the cutting board,
and tiny silver fish to put into the borsch last with
the dill weed. We need sweet butter for our black bread—

not fascists believing they can harvest the sky. Listen
here: the clouds will escape their miserable fingers,
no one will be fooled. Every tall building feels the wind,

and airplanes flying to important cities, and couples
doing the week's shopping, carrying bags to their cars.
All of us hear Alexei Navalny's voice as he leaves us:

Laugh when you are in prison, and don't be afraid to be
counted. Alexei, we know why you came home. You
might have fled and lived. Everyone can hear that wind.