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.

Dorm, 1993

Speech bubbled up

like little planets

but stayed inside.

Even when I was

twenty I wrote notes

to strangers to slide

under doors and then

ran away. A girl I liked

would sit in the hallway

and play her guitar,

other girls not really

seeing the parentheses

she inhabited. Once a

boy in boxers stumbled

near the girls room,

making eye contact

with me before

disappearing inside,

so I had to pretend to

be headed somewhere

else at three o’clock in

the morning. Sometimes

I would spend a whole

evening standing by

the door with my heart

pounding, listening to

the voices go by in

their little cars.

Indiana Problem (List, 1983)

Our neighbor said the glass bottle

would make sparks if you threw

it on the cement hard enough. It

didn’t but Will cut his hand

on the glass. The cat loved popcorn

so much she would eat a piece

of Styrofoam if offered. Teddy,

the hamster, was willing to walk

on the green carpet of the basement

if he was wearing a leash we made him

out of yarn. My Bodyguard was a movie

you could watch on the one free week

of HBO. I was scared of one of the boys

in it but I can’t remember why. HBO

stands for Human Body Odor. After

watching the Brady Bunch that opens

with the girls jumping rope, I took

my jump rope to the driveway to jump

until one of two cars pulled into

the driveway. We found a can of Kroger

pop and drank it warm in the garage. Lee

Ott peed in a bucket behind the shed.

The secret club was called Vikings.

The dirt bike club was called Nanu

Nanu. Birds don’t like jelly beans but

will occasionally eat French fries. On

the morning the turtle went missing, my

stolen roller skates appeared in the yard.

Indiana Problem

Whitesnake blasting, the three

girls high on eight cans of Jolt

each fell into the mini gym,

shrieking in voices that said

I am shrieking. Please. I am

shrieking. Aquanet, the lights

off, me heading for the small

yellow girls’ room to feel

bad in a stall. I didn’t shriek

but I imagined myself as

someone who would, as some-

one who could make people

stop and look with my voice

alone. When it was time

for the fireworks no one came

to look for me, so with heart

pounding I stood by the glass

door under the fluorescent

lights, frozen in the fear that

someone would turn and see

me, and in my box watched

the silent wild explosions

that were like thousands of fists.

Indiana Fragment I

The sly, internal galaxy

Grandma’s ’78 Mustang

the theme: despondency

one day I got up

walked to the town

the drink of breathing

the will to die a movement

something I believed in

I rode my bike to the creek

got in

as night opened up

its fort before me

Indiana Problem

The day after my toad circus, the toads

were all dead, crunchy and silent

in their window well. I wanted to draw

a doorway to walk through to get to

the world of lilacs: purple, contagious

green leaves, no movement but the

steady invisible breathing of flowers. I

knew I had to tell someone what I had

done so I first walked quickly to the park

and stayed there until dusk, sitting on

the glider or middle of the rusty and

dangerous merry-go-round, I can’t

remember which. When it was nearly

dark I walked home, certain that they

were worried and maybe even out looking

for me. When I got home I saw them busy

in the kitchen through the window, so I

hid in the backyard until it was good

and dark and waited, holding a stick

on the swingset in the darkness,

the attic in my head creaking open

for the first time and I went in.

The body is a network of rivers connected by slow-moving barges, which are the pellets we feel at unexpected love: the neighborhood drunk who yesterday I saw dragging a house-size blue tarp down the middle of the street, a Bud Ice in his free hand. He is always smiling, though I have been instructed to feel sorry for him. The birds who always know exactly when it’s time to leave and their explosion off the ground or from trees, rising toward the surface of the lungs. The story of Bluebeard, just the memory of the story. Here right now with the church across the street and the impossibly beautiful teenagers walking by it. Elsewhere, mountains. 

Indiana Problem (after John Yau)

In the photo of me outside the airport I am wearing pink: glasses, skirt, woven belt, shoes. The tree I touch is not wearing leaves, only the pale green light of future leaves. Together we are a statue that represents the end of “childhood” as we know it. See how the braces glint in the sun, the eyes move cementward. Behind the camera there is no love, only a desire to end each moment before it arrives. All of us together—me, tree, camera, eyes—are in this box together. Even you, the hands that put it away and forgot it, are inside this body we make: the body that remembers while the other one keeps moving toward the disappearing planes.

Indiana Problem

Maybe I need to literally be

in a boat to write this,

but there are internal waves,

right? I grew up landlocked

and firmly middle class

when middle class meant

grass but not too much,

a house that identically

matched five others on

the street, girl scouts,

Wigwam homes and their

paper symbols in windows,

escape routes from perverts

(there were indeed perverts

in suburbia according to the

guy in a gold sport coat and

aviator glasses who talked

to our third grade class after

smushing out his cigarette in

the lobby). There was this feeling

that there were answers in water,

especially floating in the city pool,

the shrieks and top 40 radio

muffled by the turquoise box

it made, and now all these years

later this water that hides things

rather than exposes, the claustrophobic

pool or reservoir, is easier to

listen to than the ocean as seen

from boats I will never board,

the small invisible hands of it rising

up to stop me if I get too close. When

I get close enough I start my walking

away, a latchkey kid looking for

any house that will take me.

Indiana Problem

The river was shallow

and muddy and its smell

of dead stuff was over-

powered by the smell

of the corn syrup plant,

which belched out

yellow smoke that smelled

like burnt carpet, a steady

fist that punched our

faces with no at every

inhale. Winter was one

steel trap after another,

each day within it

a frozen angry run

past the courthouse into

a waiting Chrysler wagon,

girl scout Christmas hymns

inside the lights, and

every single window a

space into the thousands

of separate hearts of the city,

which were also closed

to us, hands shielding

a secret getaway, floating

toward ceilings over

and over before vanishing.

Indiana Problem

The river was shallow

and muddy and its smell

of dead stuff was over-

powered by the smell

of the corn syrup plant,

which belched out

yellow smoke that smelled

like burnt carpet, a steady

fist that punched our

faces with no at every

inhale. Winter was one

steel trap after another,

each day within it

a frozen angry run

past the courthouse into

a waiting Chrysler wagon,

girl scout Christmas hymns

inside the lights, and

every single window a

space into the thousands

of separate hearts of the city,

which were also closed

to us, hands shielding

a secret getaway, floating

toward ceilings over

and over before vanishing.

Watertown

The firefighter was dead

and the city was sad. Two

firefighters were dead. I

watched some of the mass

on the TV at Jiffy Lube.

Then someone asking

about the missing plane:

how can we give up hope

if we haven’t seen anything

yet? Hail and tornadoes

hit the heartland. The guy

with tattooed inner arms

comes to show me my

trashed filter and smiles

so gently. I was also at

a Jiffy Lube on 9-11

where there was

no TV but a baffled

hoarse newscaster on

the radio and blonde

college girls fumbling

with their phones.

In the diner two Russian

girls in black drank mimosas

on a Wednesday morning.

My dad thought maybe

they were prostitutes or

maybe I thought that.

Neither of us said it out

loud, and if I did think

it, it wasn’t until I saw

them leaving and walking

down the sidewalk arm

in arm, weaving a little

in the sunshine, past

the Masonic temple.

Indiana Problem

We’re thinking of painting

the bedroom a color called

November Rain, which I

can’t discuss without

picturing Slash standing

at the top of a cliff after

the accident, still rocking

even though he’s dead

and has no electricity. I

don’t want to model

thinking or what memory

does. Mostly I just want

people to listen to me and

then maybe understand me

but I don’t even care that

much about being understood.

Underground the trees help

each other: even separate

species send messages to

roots smaller or stranger

than their own and in a way

they hold each other before

they plunge from their

underground cliffs, and all

we see are the clacking branches,

leaves trying again to grow, the music

inside all kinds of stuff that we’ll

get to one of these days.

Indiana Problem

Wrapped in an afghan and playing

Mousetrap, I worried that I wasn’t

giving enough attention to the stupider

toys: Lite Brite with most of the pieces

missing; life-size Barbie head smeared

with red and blue, forever bruised

and smiling; shoebox of rubber animals

I got as prizes at the church cake

walk. Boredom was always a dim

garden in the background, a place

where twilight was described by adults,

ears stretching toward the opening

notes of The Facts of Life, eyes stretching

toward the windows and the sketchy

trees, dark Hoosier sadness, the houses

so close we could hear their forks

and knives if we left the door open. I

didn’t plan this second kingdom:

not exactly in the mind or in the heart

but in the waiting between them,

a waiting so long it made another body

in case this one got too lonely.

Getting There

The only things that moved toward me

were the white hands of sleep: twisting

or stitching, moving separately, floating

on a lake at dusk or in the startled heat

you feel when there are limbs or dead

things in the path before you. Vistas, deer,

waiting or dead in the woods in the somewhere

we never get to, moving so constantly until

we live in the background of a beautiful postcard.

A raft takes us to each different island with long

gaps of silence between each one, a password

shifting somewhere in the heads of the still

people there.  In my head I’m walking underneath

or inside their green pastures. To make the rafts,

spend your life gathering every piece of spare

wood that you see. Inside the green is the raftmaker.