gently furious nostalgia: two old poems

from spring 2007

phoenix IV (diagnosis)

The summer my sister came home from Sun Valley
Good Samaritan, I rooted out all the nail polish
bottles in our house and threw them away. I had heard
polish stopped sticking to fingernails after
sickness. I did not want her to see paint slip from her
fingers like fat, garish banana leaves. It was the summer of
120 degrees heat, of oven mitts worn in cars to grip
scorched steering wheels. Potted spider plants became
spindly starfish; cactus wrens haunted streets at night,
searching for glasses of chalky lemon water left on porches.
It was also the summer I learned all bodies held secrets:
my sister’s ribboned through her lymph until the
flues blocked and she was drained of her
waters like the city. After sitting in a patch of
withered dandelions, I saw the yellow streaks on
my thighs and thought I had jaundiced like her,
thought Here it comes. Yet there was no way for me
to understand. I could only twist the sprinkler and watch
the globed water net her small frame in the grass.
Outside the borders of her frayed blue bathing suit,
I watched the pale parentheses in her armpits, delineating
places where her body did itself harm. Stitches
shone like train tracks through the channels of her
groin as she crossed the dry husk of our lawn.


Upon Viewing the First Giant Squid Caught on Video

I anticipated this. Before you existed
in the world, I often envisioned your curved beak,
plump tentacles in the green sea, eyes Frisbee-big.
The largest eyes of any animal on the planet.

Glutted with books, I knew your red skin,
the secret barbs in your suckers
to catch and rip fish. I knew you well.
But old friend, to watch you die
after putting up quite a fight — to see you

caught on hooks, the thin brown
cellulose of film where you cannot
escape, where you will struggle
on the knife-grey water
causing the injuries that killed you —

I did not know this, the limp body slide
of a baby by giant squid standards,
never saw froth and pulp on pale eyes,
dead limbs animated, dancing with waves.

You should not have died. But we wanted
you here with us, not in your home
where we cannot see you, where sunlight
never reaches. I am sorry, but please understand:

We know nothing of you, except the
broken plank dreams left in your wake,
and that one day we will all swim forever
across the terrible water toward your brothers.