Birches

Today the birches fully yellow.
The creek is flying those wild flags.
It has tasted the honey
of the dark hives of lightning
burning in the mountains.
The chickens drink bravely
from the shallows, and their eyes
sharpen with secret knowledge.
We do not hear their small hearts beating wildly
out in the early darkness.

You'd Tell Me

If it were important, you'd tell me.

The way you shake your head while you brush your teeth,

Looking into your own green eyes like you don't know them.

Two weeks ago you told me a secret.

I remember your arms raised high, touching the ceiling, 

Holding yourself together.

I am here, when your heart is beating faster than it should.

I sing to that tune, an ever changing tempo,

Playing piano across your chest.

We bake a cake every Sunday,

Flour on your nose, my nails painted red,

Nostalgia of a time we do not belong to.

When you come home you stare at the blank TV screen,

Silent, almost gone.

If it were important, you'd tell me.

October

I

The rain, miles of it between us--
out in the dark, it is lighting
the madrones like oil lamps.

It is pooling in the sloped backs
of old horses left in the fields--
reflecting broken stars there.

It is filling the river in crushes
of yellow, the cutbanks turning rapids
silver as the tongues of deathbells.

It is falling on your roof as you
dream of sadness, or lie awake,
or get a glass of water in the dark kitchen.


II

I love to think of you like this,
in rooms full of private blue light--
living the secret life

that everyone lives. It is love
at its loneliest and most prayerful
to know, for a moment,

that you are in so many ways
as anonymous as a star,
as a wood I will never walk in.

Honeymoon Phase

I used to think of you in a different way.
Too much vanilla in runny pancake batter,
On laundry day we walked around the house
In bath robes and crisp white socks,
And falling asleep on our porch-swing in the late summer breeze.

My wooden clock is still there over the bed.
The cupboards in the bathroom are still painted turquoise.
But the spot where you burned the carpet with the vacuum
Is covered by a new couch.
It looks uncomfortable.

Ella has no taste in home decor.
She can't cook.
And, as far as I can see, she has no inclination to clean.
But that's the type of stuff you don't notice in a woman
Who can only come over when your wife and three children aren't home.

The lawyer wanted to split things up 50/50.
Simple and civil.
I just wanted the kids, the Honda,
And to roast the both of you
Over the fire of your Audi's exploded engine.

I know where you keep the extra key,
You aren't smart enough to have moved it.
And the neighbours always liked me best.
So, when I sneek into the house I made a home for five years,
I'm sure "no one" will notice.

I open the refrigerator and the freezer doors.
I turn on all the lights.
I pour a gallon of milk over your bed.
Vinegar goes on the new couch.
Ground pepper in your fancy ground European coffee.

Enjoy your two week honeymoon in Hawaii.

Gold

I

The western song ends, wings
of the green river open in grainfields.
Even now, there is only the long
reflection of stars on the valley floor
where we walked in high summer
through all that gold.


II

Love didn’t drown there
with the wild irises and the black
day moths. It just stepped out of the corridor
into a darker room. Your hours
come down to so much prayer,
blues riffs, afternoons at the kitchen table
I will never know of.


III

I still think, at times,
of the last light standing
long in poplars, and that wrenching
awe at your being there

and being there
in my arms
that made the water in wells
dream of darkness.

Deployed

It tells a story,

Your old forest-green sweatshirt.

It tells a story about the birth mark on your fingertip,

About your scarred elbows,

And about the summer after our graduation.

Something in its' smell of musty cupboards, 

Masked with Springtime Fresh Downy dryer sheets,

Reminds me of your red-tinged hair

On the bathroom floor when I trimmed it for boot camp.

I pull the sweatshirt over my my head,

The frayed sleeve ends covering my hands completely.

This sweatshirt does not fit me like it did you,

The only story it tells of me 

Is when I left it in the dryer and the logo faded.

But it tells of your freckled smile,

And it reminds me of your big, strong hands 

And the small bits of gold in your eyes.

No, this sweater does not belong to me,

So come home.

The Girl in the Burning Skirt

It begins with the perfume. Sylvie’s mother keeps her bottle of Chanel No. 5 in a black silk sock in the top drawer of her dresser. She hasn’t worn it since before Sylvie was born, and so she will never miss the perfume that Sylvie and the neighbor girl Gwen Bailey spill on the grass beneath the crabapple tree in the backyard. They spill it trying to work their fingers through the mouth of the bottle because they agree that when they spray each other and sniff each other’s wrists and necks, they just smell like soap.
In fact, when Sylvie’s mother finds the perfume while rummaging for socks two summers in the future, she will see that half the bottle is gone and think quietly of how she was once the sort of woman who used a whole half bottle of perfume in one summer--the one summer she spent in Massachusetts. She will think of how good her legs looked back then, reflected in the shop windows as they pumped the pedals of her bicycle when she rode through the morning streets and felt the eyes of the fishermen at her back like sneaker waves. But she had never used half the bottle. She had, in fact, only used about a teaspoon that summer.
The makeup comes next. Gwen locks the door of her big sister Joni’s bedroom and then she and Sylvie fumble through her trove of drugstore cosmetics. Little pots of blush, trays of Cadillac-colored eye shadows, cream lipsticks that taste like bubblegum powder. They sit at the window. Gwen does Sylvie’s face while Sylvie looks out the window, keeping watch in case Joni comes back from the skating rink early. Then they swap places and Sylvie does Gwen’s face. Gwen looks at herself in the mirror afterwards and clenches her teeth. She has watched her mother and Joni putting on makeup her whole life, and reckons she knows a thing or two about the routine. Sylvie knows nothing. Her mother wears long floral dresses from the secondhand store, often with rain boots. In the spring, she cleans out her hairbrush and winds the hair into a ball with lint and some loose threads. Then she strings it from branch of the crabapple for the birds to use for their nests. The Chanel No. 5 was from another life.
Gwen’s mother is from Las Vegas. She wears high heels to the beach. She knocks birds’ nests down with a broom when she finds them in her yard, because the ghostly calligraphies of their droppings appall her more than any downtown wall spangled with graffiti ever could. Gwen has watched her mother knocking down the nests. Gwen knows that she is prettier than Sylvie. She studies the lipstick smeared at the corner of her mouth and the eyeliner wandering off towards her left ear like a centipede. Now she wishes she hadn’t done such a nice job of Sylvie’s face. Sylvie is smiling, blushing through her blush.
Smoke and feathers she thinks, looking at her own eyes in the mirror.
Gwen corrects this as best she can by putting on her mini skirt made of peach-colored chiffon and a summer top with shoulder straps no bigger than noodles. She lets Sylvie wear an old pair of her cut-off shorts and a t-shirt that says “Cutie.” The awkward points of Sylvie’s early breasts pull the letters sideways. She walks like a politician with her shoulders hunched forward to pull her breasts down against herself, with her arms folded across them. She keeps waiting for her mother to take her shopping in the lingerie section at K-mart. But she never does. Gwen is flat as a pancake and has a drawer full of tiny pale bras which she fills with cotton balls on special occasions. Sylvie opens the drawer and looks at the bras every time Gwen goes to the bathroom. She could never bring herself to ask for one, even just to borrow. And Gwen is glad she doesn’t ask, because they’re hers.
Now that they are dressed, they steal down the stairs and into the kitchen. They sneak fistfuls of rainbow sprinkles from where they are hidden in a rat poison can. They hurry out the back door, through a cloud of hydrangeas, and out onto Junco Street. They eat the sprinkles out of their palms. The sprinkles don’t taste like anything. At the dead end of Junco Street is a wall of sugar maples. Gwen and Sylvie find the deer path that leads down a dark hillside to the Gold Coast Rock Quarry.
They step slowly down the deer path, the last of the sprinkles unsticking from their palms to fall in the dead leaves like sparks. The woods darken. After about twenty minutes of walking, they emerge into the yellow field at the foot of the quarry. The tall grass whips their bare legs pink as they run the rest of the way. The quarry is their new haunt. Until a few days ago, they had only been as far as the woods.
“Lars and I are going to be married.” Gwen says.
“Really?” says Sylvie. “That’s wonderful. Where will the wedding be, and when?”
Gwen is so glad she asked.
“I was thinking... Las Vegas... with that cowboy made of lights. It’ll be in the summer. There will be lots of people there, and a white limo, and a cake with blue icing roses.”
“Andy and I are getting married, too.” says Sylvie.
Unlike Lars, Andy is not imaginary. He is the tall boy with the freckled arms and dark blonde hair who helps Sylvie’s father in the corner grocery. Sylvie hopes Gwen never sees him.
“Lars bought me a party dress.” says Gwen pointedly. “With a thousand diamonds on it... and we’re going to have a boathouse.”
“You mean a houseboat?” Sylvie says, not unkindly.
“No, I mean a boathouse.” says Gwen, blushing. “To keep our houseboat in, of course.”
“Andy proposed to me in a rowboat.” says Sylvie, imagining this. A long, green lake in summer. She would be older, with her own drawer full of bras. She would look like Brigitte Bardot. She would wear daisies in her hair. Andy would look the same as he did now. Gwen would be far away, in Las Vegas, alone with the cowboy made of lights.
“Lars proposed in Paris, on a balcony, under fireworks.” says Gwen.
“Andy says we’re going to go to Paris someday.”
“Lars travels to Paris all the time. He’s a spy, you know. I mean, don’t tell anyone.”
“Okay.”
“He might teach me to be a spy, too.” Gwen hasn’t thought of this before, and it pleases her. Immediately, she sees herself in shiny leather boots in a secret compartment of some foreign locomotive.
They are at the floor of the quarry now. Rock cracks like popcorn under their sneakers. Then they hear the voices and a sort of fizzing sound. Sylvie takes a step back, but Gwen grabs her wrist, putting a thumbnail on a vein, and tugs her toward the noise. A group of boys appears when the round the corner. There are four of them. They look to be about Joni’s age, some older. They look up and see the two girls in strange summer clothes. They draw back a moment in silence. Then Sylvie recognizes him. Andy, the bag boy from the corner grocery, is wearing long blue jeans and an old army jacket that looks like it would smell coldly of engine oil. Sylvie drops her head onto her chest and her yellow hair falls into her face.
“Hey-- girls!” says one to another and they laugh. They are standing in a half moon around a melted soda bottle and the tails of several burned-out firecrackers. The fizzing sound came from a roman candle dying in the gravel.
“What are you doing here?” says a boy with dark hair swept sideways over his forehead. “This is our place.” he says and laughs a strange, wild laugh.
“We were just walking.” says Gwen coolly. The chiffon shirt moves in the wind and she yanks the hem down. The boys laugh.
“How come you’re all dolled up? You going somewhere?” says another, a tall boy with red hair and glasses.
“Dolled up?” says the boy with the cowlick with disgust, and elbows the boy with glasses. “You’ve been hanging out with your grandma too much, man.” They laugh. Gwen and Sylvie both look at their shoes and wonder if they’re still expected to answer the question.
“You girls like fireworks?” Andy asks this, cutting through the laughter of the others.
“Yeah.” said Gwen, smiling a little.
“How about you? You talk... cutie?” says the cowlick boy to Sylvie. He laughs his strange laugh again. “See, look at her shirt, man. That’s what it says.”
Sylvie nods. There is a lump of fear in her throat she can’t swallow down.
Like a stone she thinks.
“Hey, Tommy, don’t be an asshole, man.” says Andy. Then glancing at Sylvie, he adds “Oh, sorry, jerk. Don’t be a jerk.”
“I didn’t say anything.” says Tommy, shrugging. Then he lifts his head and howls like a wolf into the big blue October sky. Sylvie lifts her head in bewilderment to look at him. It is then that she sees the bottle in his hand. It is made of glass the color of a riverbottom.
“Hey, do I know you?” says Andy suddenly, looking at Sylvie with narrowed eyes and a half smile. “Yeah, you’re Mr. Stetson’s daughter. I bought you some saltwater taffy one time, remember? I work in your dad’s store.”
“Yeah.” murmurs Sylvie. She nods. “Yeah.” she says louder.
“Aw,” says a boy with a big moonish face. “Saltwater taffy? That sounds serious. I didn’t know you liked ‘em so young, man.” The others laugh.
“Shut up, Ben. Don’t be an idiot.” says Andy. “You girls want to see some fireworks?” he says kindly. Gwen and Sylvie nod and step a little closer. Andy takes a book of matches from a pocket of his jacket and a pinwheel from a canvas backpack on the ground. He lights the pinwheel and they draw back. The pinwheel sparkles and spins in the gravel like a dying bumblebee. It bangs and smokes and the boys cheer and open more bottles of beer. Tommy, the boy with the cowlick, howls like a wolf again, right beside Gwen. The sound makes her heart leap like a rabbit. She smiles.
“You got a boyfriend?” he asks, touching her bare shoulder with the lip of his beer bottle.
“Hey,” says Andy sharply. “Cut it out, man. They’re way too young for that stuff. You’re drunk, man.”
“I do have a boyfriend.” says Gwen suddenly. “His name is Lars.”
“Oh, really?” says Tommy, smiling crazily. “How old is Lars?”
“Older than you.”
“Oh-ho! Really? And what about cutie?” he asks, elbowing Sylvie. “You got a boyfriend?”
“Her boyfriend’s name is Andy.” says Gwen.
A silence big as a boxcar passes through the quarry. Then Tommy claps a hand to his mouth in amazement. Then he laughs and howls like a wolf again. The others are laughing by now, too. He slaps Andy on the back.
“Oh, yeah, man. She definitely remembers you. Hell!” he says, slapping his thigh.
“You guys are idiots.” he says softly. He shakes his head and gives Sylvie an apologetic smile, but she’s looking at her shoes again.
“You got any sparklers?” asks Gwen, anxious to get past the joke she doesn’t understand.
“Yeah, we’ve got sparklers.” says the boy with glasses. “Andy, get out the sparklers, man.”
Andy is standing with his hands in his pockets, wondering if he should try to talk to the shy Stetson girl whose name he can’t remember, tell her its all right or something like that. He decides its better to just pretend it never happened. He takes a bundle of sparklers from the backpack. Tommy is so drunk now that he’s stumbling, the toes of his sneakers seeming to catch on every pebble underfoot. He keeps waving his hands vaguely in Gwen’s direction like he’s trying to cast a spell on her.
Abracadabra thinks Sylvie.
Andy lights the sparklers and hands them out to everyone. Sylvie forgets about her shame for a moment and stares at the sparkler’s thousand forked tongues of light. She is facing Gwen, who is also staring at her own sparkler. Tommy and the moonfaced boy are sitting on a rock behind her.
“These things are for chicks.” says the moonfaced boy, and throws his sparkler away into the rocks.
“No, man. Watch.” whispers Tommy. Sylvie looks up to see Tommy carefully holding his sparkler to the hem of Gwen’s skirt. Sylvie watches in dread for several seconds, unable to move or cry out, before the skirt catches fire and Gwen begins to scream. The boys stagger back and for a second everyone watches the girl in the burning skirt dancing with death. Then Andy runs to Gwen and yanks the skirt from her waist. The little piece of chiffon falls to the shale and burns until it is gone. Gwen stands watching the flames beside Andy. She is crying. Her underwear have blue stars on them. Then Andy is walking towards Tommy.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” he screams. He picks up Tommy by the collar with both fists and throws him against a wall of rock. Tommy is still holding a bottle of beer. This shatters against the rock.
“What the hell!?” screams Andy and throws him against the rock again. Then Tommy makes a sound deep in his chest and Sylvie watches the neck of the beer bottle with its jagged edges the color of a riverbottom sink into Andy’s stomach. Once. Twice. Three times. Andy staggers back and falls in the shale. His legs kick slowly like he is swimming in deep water. He makes a soft yawning sound. Then Sylvie sees Gwen plunge past her and towards the woods. Tommy staggers toward her. Sylvie gets up and runs, following Gwen in her starry underwear into the woods. The hillside is black as a storm cloud. Sylvie can hear Gwen sobbing ahead.
Then they are back on Junco street, the sodium lamps haloed by moths. Only then does Gwen turn back and look at Sylvie. They look at each other a long time. Then Gwen slips back into the cloud of hydrangeas beside her house and disappears. Sylvie walks to her own house. She sits a moment on the stoop. She takes her sneakers off. Then she goes inside and closes the door behind her.
Within the hour, Andy’s body will be at the bottom of a slow, nameless river dark as bottle glass. And Sylvie and Gwen will never speak to each other again.

If It's All You Have

It took me a while to partially forget you.

Forty two days and twenty three hours. 

That twenty-third hour wasn't what I expected,

It didn't end how I planned.

The doctor said I would have 

Issues.

Tiny black holes in my brain.

But I did my homework.

Don't take them all at once, it said.

Five minute increments within a single hour,

Ten pills each time the little, off-white egg timer dings.

"You'll lose more as time goes on."

Tiny black holes in my brain,

Munch, munch, munch.

I watch movies I can't stand.

I eat strawberry yogurt, which makes me gag.

Hate is the second strongest emotional memory,

Love is the first, so I’m not sure where you stood.

Gray area in the gray matter.

If it's all you have left,

Hold on tight.

Wild Roses

Alone in the baseball field back of the farrier’s barn,

I think of the wives in cotton dresses the color

of oil soap, their husbands kneading

the counter down the hill at the Rusty Sprocket.

In one yellow yard, a pool of rainwater

has gathered at the center of an abandoned mattress

where someone's weight lulled the springs.

The grocery store begins to glow like a fish tank

after dark. The sawmill workers buy strawberry pop

to sweeten their whiskey, sometimes stand awhile

in the parking lot and watch the lumber trucks pull

through the slow air on their way

to Roseburg.

Downtown, there is a junkyard

fragrant with wild roses. A boy and a girl

have fallen asleep in a dry bathtub,

and are both dreaming of the white moon.

The Epileptic Teenager’s Lament

First off, I want to tell you that having light sensitive epilepsy is possibly the lamest thing since un-sliced bread. Okay, like, aside from cancer…And AIDS. But epilepsy? It’s like medically being the least fun person in the room. You can’t joke around switching the lights on and off, can’t go to a party with strobe lights… In fact, maybe you ought to just avoid parties all together. Actually, no social functions at night, or more specifically after dark. Yeah, that’s the safest. Oh, and don’t have any pictures taken of you with the flash on, that’s a bad portrait just waiting to happen. Just think of that glossy photo: your eyes half closed, your mouth slack-jawed, and your shoulders rising towards your ears (all these sure to create the appearance of a double -or possibly triple- chin). Expect that to be the only picture of you in the senior yearbook; it will probably be used more than once.

Do you have friends? I didn’t think so. I mean, watching someone writhe around is a little bit frightening and that’s way too much work for just one more friendship. Betty, Jake, Jennie? All infinitely better friends than you will ever be without all that pesky convulsing crap.

There’s just so many kryptonite’s for you to avoid: ceiling fans, Pac-Man, muffins (because they’re gross), turn signals… On and on the list goes.

And that’s your teenage life. Just sit at home, in a normally lit room and hope your light-bulb never starts to die.

*Disclaimer* This is more of a monologue than a story, but I was just messing around with a couple of words my friend said and I don't have much else prepared for posting... So, yeah. *End disclaimer*

Cherry Creek

Above us, the myrtle trees darken

the air. A paint grazes in the gold grass

on the other side of the road, his mane

blown white, a cloud of sulfur butterflies

at his knees. We look for mountain lion

tracks by the water— the slow creek floored

with deep yellow leaves, periwinkle shells.

We agree to come back before the summer

ends, but never do.