At Cousin Doug's house, nine years old

Cigarette smoke-he smokes them unfiltered-hangs
in the air like my brother's toy airplanes, clings
to clothes that will later have to be washed.
I can tell Dad is getting antsy, coughing and looking out
the window. Doug is pacing, fingering a long
string of Mardi Gras beads.

Before we went into his house, a quick warning in the car
in his driveway-remember that he isn't allowed to be alone
with any of you. Cousin Doug is sick, and sometimes
he can't help telling lies. Like his dog, named Jake,
but Mom says it's really a girl.

Pieces of colored glass-teal, cranberry, apple green-litter
his basement, waiting for him to fuse them together
into more of his art. Old wine bottles sit heavy
with dust on his shelves, pieces of string, dried up pens,
his slow sarcastic voice spinning stories that even
my little sister doesn't believe. He hands me a can of beer
and a book of Russian poems, whispers in my ear,
you'll thank me later.


Our Secret

My mother cried when we found out
that Anna was hiding her period, when I realized
she had been stealing my tampons.

Two months her cycle followed ours,
the center of her body moving heavily
down, the edges of things blurring
with the dull thrumming bass note
of our familiar ache, and we had no idea.
Because we expect to sense these things.
Because how can you bleed for five days,
curl into yourself with that dark pain,
and still be the same?

My mother never knew I saved codeine
from my last ear infection
for when I really needed it.
She never knew that Anna
wrapped her breasts tightly
in Ace bandages.

But she knew that we understood.
How sometimes we put away the painkillers,
let the warm ache blossom
in our bodies. How we still keep it
down deep, like a secret,
how we bleed, and bleed,
but do not die.



Birdwatching

She always wakes up cold, curled
into a corner of the mattress.
Outside her window the crickets sing
their shrill song and intrude
on her dreams. They are louder
this fall, perhaps desperate
as the twenty sparrows who fight
over her offered sunflower seeds.

But today, a clear metallic chirp,
a stroke of red at the feeder
driving away the cluster of squabbling
brown bodies. The cardinal is molting,
his red feathers dulling to the color
of brown clay for winter, but he reaches
for the seed and feeds it
to his modest, homely mate.

The early morning sun
lays the same patterns quietly down
on her carpet, the sky drifts
toward the horizon,
the crows provoke smaller birds.
The dappled leaf shadows waver
on the surface of her coffee.


Burying Mary Alice

I wasn't there. Instead, my brother
wore a suit and crunched over
the dry needles of the monkey tree out back,
shouldered the casket past slim cedars.

The last time I was there was a Georgia January,
mild as butter, the camellias starting to open.
We played gin rummy in the living room.
Her hands never shook.

I never saw her pecan trees with leaves.
They were bare gray, their limbs meandering
slowly up toward the still clouds.
We drank tea from the family crystal.
Her eyes were full of cataracts.

Nobody plants trees there now.
Her cat paces the front porch,
never stepping on the cracks
in the floorboards.


Lazarus

It was so fast.
My sisters' weeping faces
hovering, then--
stretching.

Four days spent counting the winds.
Documenting the friction
of nothing over my skin
which was no longer mine,
no longer skin.
Four days--
It was not a tunnel.
It was not a white light.
It was not a nothing.

It was--a body made
of marsh lights, gypsum.
Sand dunes and sycamore.
Swimming without breathing.
Heady uncertainty.
Dust.

It was--
But then his tall voice
piercing, the rolling away
and the coalescing,
the healing and the slow
push of blood again,
the smell of myrrh.
No lingering green,
no embracing basalt.
And I am already forgetting.