Half the Hour
(bike)
a girl on a red bike crashes into a tree, her leg twists between chain and wheel. friends cry out, neighbor carries her licketysplit to her mother on the second floor down the street. damn that tree root breaking through the sidewalk bricks. damn speed and the breeze, call it wind, streaming her long hair. what a princely afterschool day it had been, perfect for plaid corduroy distraction
(moat)
in the corner of the small backyard she shovels dirt into the yellow plastic bulldozer. her corner her fortress
sticks stones glass houses, retorts rejoinders comebacks. this is what happened. she practiced silence, no voice, and spoke in silence that meant no voice. retorts rejoinders disintegrated into dust, snappy comebacks left no bruise, and unshaken in her favorite corduroy dungarees with plaid flannel lining, cuffs folded three inches, she drizzles cool water from the hose into her raked-out moat
(yard)
on the clothesline count them two clothes-pinned girdles five dangling bras five this-and-that short-sleeve blouses blue insignia pockets six pairs Hanes or Fruit of the Loom two cotton skirts, the uniformity says uniform. Saturday. the sun in one hour dries the languid third-floor monotony, breeze ripples the intimate surrender-white flags. a girl plays with her plastic bulldozer in the pebble and clump-grass backyard, happily builds a hill, the cats on the fence watch. her father says the cat-owning woman on the third floor next door stuffs anonymous handwritten threats in their mailbox. in winter boys bombard the cats with snowballs, in summer dirtballs collapse before hitting the skittish targets. ammunition failed. she knows to hate the cats but her sister pets them, makes nice, and they nuzzle her corduroy calves when none of the boys are around. words in the letters are flat on the bottom as if the pen needed a rule for guidance, the unlined paper roughly torn from a pad
(flight)
behind her in the small backyard a wingless bird on a pole, wood with painted ducklike bill and feathers. nailed too high to land, too low for flight, anyway no wings
she says bird she means duck. she tries to fix the flightless with propeller possibilities. but to her the face matters, the curl of duck lip, renegade feather cowlick, chinless chin, sapphire dot eyes that oversee their own blindness. the torso matters, the downy brush-stroked bellyful of secret minnows, the cartoon feet tucked in an abstract get-away, the pole in the hole’s tight acceptance
(wind)
a girl on a bike knows the wind in her hair is the wind that lifts the handlebar streamers is the wind of her pedaling that clicks the cardboard triangles clothespinned to the spokes, clicks as if winding a clock, winding up time
the sidewalk cracks cracken, treeroots and upturned bricks
the wind. the girl is in this princely hour a velocity she’s never known. the back of her city block is her street too and the side streets shaded and scraggle-hedged. she is the map in her favorite atlas, greens of distinction and dotted borders, she the map is the atlas, the World Book volume after W–Z
and she pedals home, the girl in the atlas pedals out the latitude lines, wind in her hair, at her face, too intent to notice mysteries. pebbles in the tire treads
(pajamas)
a girl’s dreams held her by the back of her pajamas when the gate to morning opened. held her, begged take me with
and she’d carry the attached twin to the kitchen, eat oatmeal for two, undress, place the weakening hand of the dream under the pajamas in a drawer, stand, late-for-school, undressed, and skin to air ask a whomever, a no one in particular, is this true or is this the dream
now, tired hands of dreams idle in a distant girl’s drawer in a hazy wallpapered room. how did they breach the canyon between sleep and awake. but they did, and tonight a woman goes to bed naked so no dream can grab her by the back of her pajamas
* * * * *
Measure
This all-hemispheres longing wider than tufted wing spans
To touch skin and yours soft still new unweathered
I watch the grackle slide down the birdfeeder pole over and over
practicing its trapeze finale then bowing to cardinal kin
I hear one neighbor’s Sinatra, another’s three generations’
dishes cleared from the table, a 4th-floor porch door squeak,
I hear my friend next door plucking weeds —
So acute is the ache for touch, all senses on fire alert
—
Across the fence is far as Mars, yet Kampala lights up in my hand,
its evening sky I’ll never taste again — hot, spicy, thirsty constellations
Over the equator line, I stood, north south, feet equidistant
Once, up the hill from the Thames, I straddled east west,
touching my toes as if to sew Earth’s seam
—
For a poem “Close Is Far and Figured” I plotted stanzas and rhythm
simply to fulfill the title
“Close is far” back then was a sad young man on the crowded F train,
his thumb slowly swiping texted photos of his mother
I pour imaginary dirt into your hand through the Facetime screen
to fill your bulldozer shovel
Your floor on my kitchen table, your toy the brightest yellow