Spring Chicken

The morning light jittered on my knees as if it too were nervous about what my father would say. I expected his booming voice to carry bad news, bad news about Mom and yesterday’s doctor’s appointment. Even I knew that your lips are only supposed to turn blue when you’re cold. I expected Dad’s brisk, so-what attitude he seemed to share only with his family. I didn’t expect him to speak so softly. So… tentatively.

“Your mom’s gonna have to go on a diet,” I heard him say. We turned onto the road that would wind through the rich people’s neighborhood where I was daily deposited. “1200 calories. 1200 for the entire day,” he said as he thrust the car forward. I didn’t have more than a moment to process his dismissive, “You and I can go through that in a sitting,” remark before words, louder, more staccato, burst from his lips. “It’s because of her heart.”

I’d heard my father fling the phrase “heart for shit” during a fight they’d had about disciplining us kids, but thought it was probably a new insult Dad had conjured up for the week, right along-side “bitch-face.”

“Your Mom’s no spring chicken,” Dad said in his usual abrupt manner. “She was old when she had you.” Mom was a full decade younger when she’d had me, and yet, I knew that most kids my age didn’t cling to porcelain sinks to watch their parents apply Rogain to the roots of graying locks. But my mother wasn’t in a wheel chair. She didn’t have aging spots or deep creases in her skin. She was six or seven years older than Dad, but she wasn’t old.

Dad took my silence as his cue to drive his point home and prompted me to imagine what my life would be like if she died. The very thought made me depressed and panicky, and I, for once, considered it a blessing to have arrived at school. I can still hear the screeching of the window scraping the metal casing as it was forced down and his loud voice calling out to me after the car door snapped shut, “She’s old enough that she could kick it before you even get out of high school.”

I don’t remember what school was like, or if I hugged my mom particularly hard that night when she came through the back door in a flurry of commotion that I always associated with her. What I do remember was waking up in a fright in the middle of the night after dreaming of her death.

I softly crept down the hall, avoiding the noisy planks of wood far older than my mother would ever be, if what my father said was right. I eased open the door to my parent’s room, flooding light into the inky blackness, tensely waiting for the rise and fall of my mother’s chest. I clenched my teeth from the force of my silent plea, willing my mother to awaken so that I could confess to her my worry. The possibility that my father would wake up instead manifested itself as the aching chill that settled in just above my shoulder blades, pressure worse than any book bag crammed with school books could ever have been.

It was, of course, my father who stirred. His rumble in the darkness made me start, and the floorboards beneath my soles screeched in time to his words. Though he’d asked me what I was doing, and I knew the question would come, I only replied, “Nothing,” and scurried back into my room, praying that Dad wouldn’t lumber the few feet to the open door. I can still hear the wood bend under his weight, and see the shadow that was cast on the wall. My father’s frame filled the doorway, casting an even more intimidating shadow. He halted only a moment before coming in and settling himself at the end of the bed, repeating his question only after flicking the tip of his nose with his curled index finger.

“Why?” he asked, anger rising in his voice when I admitted I was checking on her. Even though it was too dark to see, I thought I could feel his face redden from the force of holding back his first response. He didn’t immediately speak, and that wasn’t like my father. When he got upset, he exploded. This, I knew, was something different. He jerked his hands back from his knees as if he wanted to wrap them around something, somebody. I saw my father do that in arguments when my mother made a point he couldn’t deny and baited him to disagree.

“If she dies, she dies.” He said it harshly, as if he wanted to beat the meaning into me, but knew it would do no good. “She’s old and there’s nothing you can do… there’s nothing we can do.”

I might as well have seen him sobbing for all the clarity I found there in the darkness. In that one moment, I understood his anger and frustration. My father was afraid—afraid she would die. He had tried to talk about it, tried to share with the wrong person. Suddenly, my strong, aggressive father was stripped away and, in his place, was left a man weak and flawed. When I crawled out from the covers and wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders, I could almost swear he shook.

And Jesus Said “Hey Dad”

Melba Smith failed to see the irony
In the carpenter’s house aflame.
She wept and glared,
Alternately, as you laughed
And blamed you for damage
Probably caused by an aged hand
Sending too many prayers.

You rocked on your heels,
Fingertips sheathed in denim,
And looked across the parking lot—
Past the red trucks and church buses—
Shaking your head at thoughts
Only you would share at the scene.

Your lips to God’s ears,
And everyone in-between,
“And Jesus said, ‘Hey Dad,
I can fix this.
It’s what I do.’
And as you know,
Through Christ,
All things are possible.”


Published in Creative License, 2008.

Waiting

A sea of brown uniforms swallowed her whole,
And Grace drowned in memories of Johnny.
The band seemed inches from her,
But no sound could mask the pounding in her ears.

Before she had the time to flee, a solider—
A ladies man, Giraulo—fixed his gaze on her.
He stopped her, called her his fire-haired fox
And smiled with deep brown eyes that
Didn’t remind her of Johnny’s blues,
The color of the hydrangeas in the orphanage yard.

Joe didn’t know of Johnny. He didn’t know
Her pain. He might have been a solider, Grace knew,
But he’d not be her hero.
Joe’s olive skin was too dark to be her angel’s.
Johnny, who fell from the sky
Along with the rest of his unit.

She had walked into Johnny’s arms the day she turned 18
And left the orphanage behind.
She walked into Joe’s arms the day she tried to let go.

Joe rode the bus, four hours to, four hours from, Tacoa
To see her nose freckle in the sunlight if only for an hour.
Four Sundays later, Joe came back to Ft. Bragg,
New Mrs. Grace Giraulo in tow.

On the eve of Joe’s deployment,
She lay in her marriage bed, and dreamed of fair-haired Johnny.
Joe would be in the wilds of the Philippines,
His only comfort the thought
of returning to the wife he’d left at home.
Grace tossed and turned, sick with the thought,
Sick with herself.

In the winter months, when the sweltering Filipino jungle
Was the only thought that kept her warm, Grace tread
On swollen feet, pacing at the gate of his family’s home.

Early Christmas mornings, after the orange and hard candy
That were her only presents,
My grandmother had paced before the gates of the orphanage,
Waiting for the man who’d abandoned her
And her siblings and promised to return.

Months gone from the oppression and despair of
that place, Grace stood at gates,
Waiting for Johnny to return from war.
Waiting to be wed.
Hers was a life defined by waiting. Waiting
For her father, for Johnny, for Joe.

The spring came and went, and Grace
Found something to live for.
She thought of Johnny and thought of Joe
While gazing at cotton fields she did not have to pick.

For the first time in her years, her life began,
Slowly. Though I believe to this day,
Grace, Long dead, still waits,
Disappointment and rejection did not meet her
At the gates when Joe returned.

And the husband found
Not only the wife he’d left behind,
But the child he would call his own,
Fair-hair, blue eyes and all.


2008

The Little Mermaid Dates On-Line

First off, my name is Ariel, and I
Have friends who say I’ve got a lovely voice.
I’m looking for a ‘friend’ to make me sigh.
When I find him, the kingdom will rejoice.
I don’t go shoe-shopping or eat sushi,
And, man, am I sick of the color blue.
Slow walks along the beach are not for me,
but there are lots of things I like to do—
like scavenging for old knick-knacks, swimming,
singing with my sisters when dad’s not there.
Honest, what I want more than anything
is a strong man with mussels and dark hair.
So remember, before you give a ring—
for some, having crabs is not a bad thing.



Creative Writing class assignment 2007.
I just like it.

Go Put Some Pants On

I can’t fight with you when you’re naked.
It’s hard to explain the idea
That when you’re shrouded,
My words sink in,
Deeper.
Deeper,
To where you can feel them
As I feel them.

Maybe its that your comments
Can be biting.
Likely,
It’s that I’m crazy, like you tell me,
And insecure.

When we fight, I feel
As exposed as you truly are.
I pull on pants and shirts and sweaters,
But I still feel without armor.
Vulnerable.

I don’t know why
I hate it when you aren’t
Covered,
Donned,
Protected.

When you’re bare, it’s like
I’m not getting beneath your skin.
Where I want my words,
My perspective,
To reside.



Published in Creative License, 2007.

The crazy person

Every once in a while
You go into a place
Where you cannot avoid
The crazy person.

I wonder why it shocks us,
Even momentarily,
When the crazy person
Isn’t dressed in ragged clothes
And smells like sweat and street.

Debating in grocery aisles,
Fuming in teller lines,
Teaching classrooms full
Of unsuspecting,
Cornered you’s and me’s.

Do you smile at the crazy person?
Or look up, down, away?
Do you nodd at their left/right/out there phrases
Or pretend not to hear them?

What would be worse?
Engaging them or having them repeat their
There statements?
Sometimes there is
No lesser evil.

2007

When Kids Go To Wal-Mart

They run around like banshees,
Lurching, clawing,
For that decibel
Only dogs can hear,
Arguing over Faded Glory
And begging for Sam’s Choice sweet things.

Their parents follow them,
Or leave them in their wake,
As if,
As if, I too
Had birthed beasts
And left them un-caged,
Uncouth,
And as if I had no hearing left.

When I go to Wal-Mart,
I can feel my fallopian tubes
Tie themselves in knots
Taking my body’s instruction,
Preservation of eardrum and patience alike.

It’s no wonder the linoleum
Is scuffed and dirty,
For the wildebeests have had
Their sodas and candies
And, hey—better here than at your house.

Better here,
Where you can share
The wonder that is children
With the rest of us.


2007