you’re the favored song
buried and lost on my list
singing my sunrise
Song
you’re the favored song
buried and lost on my list
singing my sunrise
music
(Parenthetical)
i don’t want a poem with pushed out words,
one that couldn’t capture the heated moment
of tears she keeps at the corners of her eyes,
a poem that pushes out unbelonging rhymes,
one that couldn’t draw a picture
of her head in my lap,
her sorrow seeping into my knees,
one that will tell me
(teacher’s note signed)
that my daughter has moved
from above average to average
i don’t want a poem
with pushed out thoughts
to taper my emotions back behind me
like my on-fire muscles during workouts,
riding up my back like a hot rope
that i will never pull tight enough
i want a poem like the songs i sing
(out of tune)
my own tears falling willingly
in the dark hours of morning
as i belt out lyrics
with the best of them,
my shaky voice
everything that is
inside and outside of me
i want a poem with well-formed words,
one that will sing to my soul,
make me remember this day
because it is like any other day
(it is unlike any other day)
i will only have it once,
and i want to grab that poem,
squeeze it in my palm,
and suck the bloody juice
until i can taste the truth
of the world found in imperfect poetry
December (2011) Daughters
Riona
you tiptoe across carpet
in froggy footed pajamas
the small smile on your cheeks
as you wait for your turn
under the tree.
your sisters pick out gifts
easily identifiable
and we ask you what Santa
brought for little Riona.
you keep your small sweet smile
your eyes focused on a small box
of green marshmallow Peeps.
your little hands pick it up
and without a word you nod.
i hold back tears.
in five years i have instilled nothing
in the pure and grateful heart
you came into this world with
overlooking the bicycle next to the tree
for a candy you don’t even like
and i remember just why we are here.
Mythili
you won’t sleep on long drives
as your sisters snooze away
you play games with your dolls
tell stories about adventures with Mama
and make song requests.
you have lyrics memorized
to songs i didn’t even realize
the words to myself
your favorite this month?
“If I Had a Million Dollars”
to which every last non-singing note
spills from your lips
in a harmony of artistry
from the back seat of the van.
Isabella
she only loves you.
her almost-two hands push me away
with her classic dirty look.
she can’t say your name yet
but grins when you help her dress
take her to the potty
put food on her plate.
your almost-nine hands
are the perfect match
for your young cousin
and you proudly announce to the world
what an amazing child you are.
Sticky
bathed in yellow light
their words fill the amphitheater
red rocks bearing down
surrounded by shadows of clouds, moon
my eyes will be sticky with tears
my heart sticky with hollow
long after every seat lies empty.
One of Seventy Thousand
Dear U2,
I am one of seventy thousand. And seventy thousand more in each of a hundred cities across the globe. Your circular stage, famous by now, lights up like a firecracker as you belt out the tunes. No one has given a second thought to sitting since you entered. We are drawn up like marionettes, arms in the air, tears in our eyes, screams caught like chilling drinks of overpriced beer in our throats. You ask us to clap along and we all have the same hands. You ask up to hold up our phones and the blackened stadium reflects your every desire, the rectangular present-day lighters swaying back and forth in a melody of communion. And the wind that forced us all to pull our hoods and caps tighter, that haunted us on our long trek here, that beat back the sounds of The Fray? You took away every last wisp of a cloud and made it disappear the moment you stepped out of the tunnel, like Moses parting the Red Sea. What is your message for us, your devoted followers, harrowed from years of longing absence, as you guide us here tonight?
I am one of seventy thousand. We are a family, and your voices our parents’ so-many-times-heard songs that we have every word memorized. You don’t need to tell us the titles, we can sing them with our eyes closed. You don’t even need the 360 screen that changes from your faces to images of Burmese imprisonment to listings of events happening right now in the world. We would still stand, clap, scream, our love as intense and committed as the thirty-four years of charity you have offered the world.
I am one of seventy thousand. I stand next to my husband who surprised me with these impossible tickets. I jump up and down every time you make your rounds, my voice tight and hoarse within an hour. When you play “Elevation” and “Beautiful Day” I grin from ear to ear, those happy days later in your bandlife, those happy days later in my life when I first heard them. When you play “One” we all sing, but I sing with tears streaming down my face, reliving my freshman year of college and circling my dorm room with that song on repeat till the floor, my feet, and my tears were worn down to desert-like hollows of pain. And “When the Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You”? You carry me back to high school, lying on the floor of the living room, one ear to the hardwood, the rhythmic soul-searching beat and the words that tear away the pieces of my broken heart, the words that take them and fling them up into the air, sew them back together, and time after time after time, Joshua Tree one two and three, the words that save me from myself, from what I might have done. My husband? All he sees are the tears, the emotion, the me he never knew.
I am one of seventy thousand. But you are singing just for me. For the soul you saved with your music, for the movement it made in my heart, for the person I am today, with or without you.
Innocent, Aging Eyes
as age moves into my veins
and brings wrinkles to my face,
emotions tug at places within
and brighten my eyes with tears.
at twenty i never would have cried
or understood my mother’s tears
on my wedding day, my own innocent eyes
full to the brim with smiles.
now i sit beside my growing girl
watching the autistic boy step up,
his voice singing out his solo
all the way to our back-row ears.
words elude me as the tear slips out,
rolls down the aging bones of my face,
the beauty of the moment lost
in the innocent young eyes of my daughter.
Music
the leaves left from fall
dance across our patio,
their crisp skeletal skins skidding
to the howling background hymn.
this same howling harmony
danced across the road today,
beating me down to my bones
as i pushed toward a quieter tune.
trapped inside a fluorescent prison,
i couldn’t quite find the melody
that with a few angry notes
the wind whipped out of me.
perhaps you stand somewhere
on the other side of the sky,
unable to hear the song i sing
amidst the howling, haunting music.
November Daughters
Mythili
Freshly six, your latest
obsessions are your new Zhu Zhu
and the Tangled doll
with hair so long
I had to braid it on day one.
Just like when you were two,
you guard your possessions
as fiercely as a new mother,
holding them close to your chest
on all adventures, theirs and yours.
A year from now, what will you love most?
Will you have abandoned these items
for the latest movie character,
or have given in to your love of books,
your soon-to-be expert knowledge of words?
As I say whenever you ask me a question
that I’m not so sure of an answer to
(my response, in your eyes, a yes),
we’ll see.
Riona
With a long line,
a tiny half circle attached,
a diagonal drawn like a
ray of light across the page,
you have written the first
letter of your name. You ask
for more, and I feed them to you.
You swallow them up and
regurgitate the connected-dot i,
the perfect o, the upside-down n,
and the little a, a circle and tail.
And just as you are not quite sure
how to make the letters just right,
I am not quite sure how I am
going to stand here and watch you grow.
Isabella
Fifty-four pounds, almost half my weight,
you still ask me to carry you.
I reach around your skinny waist
and hoist you up, your arms
flailing wildly (impossible
for you to be still, even now)
as we move into your bedroom.
A kiss good night, a button on the iPod,
and you will listen to the same song tonight,
on repeat, that has played for six months.
I imagine your wedding day,
your groom picking you up in a dance.
Will you play this song, remember its waltz?
Or will I be the only one singing,
“Cantaremos alto, cantaremos bajo,”
until my heart can go neither high nor low,
but stay as neutral as your weight in my arms allows.
Tweets
the mother of all songbirds
chatters away above
their cacophony,
her shrill tweets
outpacing even
the most diligent mouths
as they call out,
beaks wide open,
begging for food,
begging for love.
she flaps her wings
and darts around them,
her song more urgent,
its notes bolting into the sky
like flashes of lightning,
blinding everyone
with her circle of absorption,
feeding no one,
loving no one.
perhaps she’ll hear
(before it’s too late)
the beauty of their song,
perhaps she’ll see
(before they’re totally blind)
the urgency of their needs.
but until she learns
to think instead of tweet,
they will wait,
their mouths open,
ready for the quiet wings
of the song she keeps inside.
Borrowing
my new favorite band
sings just to me
when you have pain or debt
who do you borrow from?
i think of Dunbar again
(just one riotous day)
and the root, of course,
in my love affair with words.
debt: Latin (debere), to owe
how ironic, rhymes with borrow
and i wonder if the Avetts, whose
name sounds like the Latin avis (bird)
are asking me (they sing to me)
if i borrow pain (can we borrow suffering?)
or if debt is a form of pain
or if it is life we borrow.
i will never know.
i am just a listener of songs
like all the other listeners,
borrowing their music to bury my pain.
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