Indiana Problem

It was the evening

of many driveways

a blurred bare bulb

in one garage

glass bicycles over

and over around

it     from one

window the girl

watching     willing

the object toward

her     in another

window the object

learning its life

one wooden

step toward itself

one light-filled

step inside the

light around

things     or in

other words

desire

Indiana Problem

The angry pug chased me for

awhile as I rode my bike. Time

turned almost to liquid, or an

almost-solid light, a heavy amber.

Suspended in it were late-summer

Indiana trees, enormous and

kindly with their old-man voices.

I steered the bike toward the edge

of the moment, dog teeth near

my heel. Instead of fear I felt

a lifting-off and knew that all

things happened in tandem: under

this space I was also damply

reading in the shag-carpeted living

room with the smells of old candles

and summer street gathering

around me like a body. The saddest

part of leaving the body is the

lack of other bodies, their sharp

flying-off somewhere from

a space that doesn’t need them.

Tornado

To make myself

a monument

I mean just

a statue

representing

this lack

how to make

the body

signify a

tornado

or stale

saltines

and nothing

else in the

cupboard

how can I

stand here and

show you

that the house

is gone

Skateaway

There was a tiny dance floor there

with flashing pink and blue lights

and a disco ball; just you and maybe

three of your friends could fit on it

and you weren’t allowed to wear your

skates. Once we were on it and “Sister

Christian” or “Another One Bites the

Dust” began with cheers, you couldn’t

do anything but pace and giggle. This

was before ugliness set in; you could

still qualify as cute, and in a business-y

high-collared blouse and miniature

Jordaches you were even allowed to

do little-girl flirting with the cuter boys.

The first pair of skates came from

The Sportsman, which disappeared with

the eighties, taking its tackle and sweaty-

smelling footballs with it. The pure white

ones were purchased at a closing sale

at Woolworth’s, and it was on these skates

that you learned what it was like to be

brushed aside, the smells of moldy carpet

and popcorn and stale nachos and the

blinking Centipede the same, but you

were different and there was no one there

to tell you how to be like everybody else.

All of the Animals

Mig the boxer: the feeling

that she would bite for us

if necessary, as we casually

rode her back under black

walnut trees or in front of

the TV. Then tiny Raisin

who grew into a large, greasy-

furred jerk; in the hours

before she went to the vet

for the last time, we held her,

crying in front of the fireplace as

she licked a bowl of ice cream.

A series of gerbils: grimly squeaking

their wheels in a dark bedroom,

soaking pounds of cedar with

their pee. Outside animals:

Pussywillow who showed up

one day in our tent and thanked

us for her wet food with eleven

dead birds over a summer;

salamanders, toads, a turtle. Two

turtles. The beta fish who might

kill each other; the ants we watched

for hours, handing them tiny

pieces of olives and meat after Taco

Night, which they blindly carried

to their tiny hills and disappeared.

All of the other dogs: the comforting

rectangles of them as they slept,

allowing us to cry or be stupid or

unpopular, licking our hands, lumps

of gentle curled waiting; and all

of the birds, so many, too many:

one I see pretty often in my head,

a dove with a badly broken wing who

followed me, asking for something.

Off-season

The man with the handlebar mustache glances

up from the sidewalk as I walk by, then

immediately drops his eyes again, absorbed back

into the kingdom of his thoughts, pacing or

lying like hogs in heat. The afternoon is a like

a tired woman walking silently around him,

touching the scrubby trees, then his arm, so

he is forced to look up again and again, brushing

us both away with the world he makes, throwing

it at each of us, then carefully laying down

the road so that he can travel away from us

as we follow him, neither of us looking at the other.

Indiana Problem

The babysitter came with a suitcase

full of crap we liked: old clothes for

dress-up, tattered naked Barbies

with hair tangled and limbs scratched

by some unknown girl, a stethoscope,

gaudy grandma jewelry. On those nights

we ate TV dinners: an important part

of my identity was loving steak, and

it was true that I even loved the spongy

metallic brown rectangle resting

in the largest square of the tray. I claimed

that my favorite steak was at The Camelot

in Odebolt, Iowa where I would proudly

eat the entire prime rib on its bed of soggy

toast before taking my mini ice cream

cone into the bar. There I would spend

a few minutes alone in the reddish light

looking at the full suit of armor, surrounded

by drunks I’m sure I’d recognize in daylight.

For some reason steak seemed a sign

to everyone that I could take care of myself:

clearly the carnivore would be ok. Sometimes

when I waited for my parents to get home

as I lay in bed, I thought about the one time

we rode to The Camelot in Milton’s camper,

the three of us in the bed above the cockpit, 

the adventure of darkness awaiting us as 

the cornfields rushed on either side.