Lisa Folkmire
To HeavenI.
In Grandma’s drive you pointed up and counted: one, two, three. There’s the belt. The great Betelgeuse. Somber Rigel. II. Follow the handle down to the brightest star there is the North. But I couldn’t see the gourd. I felt for the moss on the trees instead. III. We always tried to chase the Northern lights only to imagine them between wakings. IV. O, Cassieopea, Queen of the Night. I wanted your beauty most of all. V. Star-gazers of the summer catching fireflies between palms. We never cared how our universe flurried amongst us Or how we could capture it between our fingers. A Preemptive ObituaryWhen I go to science museums with my sister
She likes to tell me how we will die. She points to the enlarged heart and says “That’s it. That’s how we’ll go.” The words tangle between names of family members And medical tests and medicine bottles For heart disease and blood pressure And anger issues and too much salt. I stare down at the too-large-heart and place my hand over my own Remembering the time Mom asked why I cared so much As I cradled mine, beating, bandaged, Passed its sides between palms as they seeped past tape. I’m back to drawing my own breath into the too-large-heart A fog now on display glass, holding the picture of my sister and me Together with eyes set on our future folly Of kindness and too high cholesterol. The two daughters who worked for hours Hand drawing greeting cards Cooking dinners on over-worked days Giving cookies to the neighbors on rained out nights She continues to compare ratios And the size of the veins Saying “three times the size” And “we could try a stent” It’s sweet, almost, how she knows that we’ll go the same way Two same-sized-hearts held between With strings in knots and veins at sight, I can read it now: Here lie two girls of too-big-hearts. One thinking of chapter seven in her sophomore year anatomy class The other counting the beats against her neck Begging her heart to stay small forever. Kaleidoscope AshSometimes I see my past self slip through my seams.
Does it catch fire and simmer into a pile of particles gray from consumption? A fruit fly, drowned from poor depth perception? I am transfixed by misconception: I see the mirror and choose to respond to the window. My younger self tried to place her hands around the mass of her imagination without realizing that the imagination roamed inside, shapeless, holdless. I hear stories of my great grandfather’s glass eye; It became a kaleidoscope to him: a view of the world he could turn and tease transformed from an object of truth to one of beauty. We place ourselves in locations that emulate love we feel within our imaginings, not our stories. Poor dry ash. HabitualI cried once in my father’s arms in the lobby of a lighthouse. Cried because there was a ghost upstairs. Because we were warned something might return uninvited. Something could perform the unexpectedly normal in its old inhabitance: a spoon shifting closer to a china bowl, a gold-rimmed glass tipping over, a milk-glass lamp clicking on. Lace curtains shifting without wind, crocheted blankets falling off the bed, shoelaces untying themselves, all of it the unscheduled ordinary, just as the lake lapped back against the shore: a return to thought. Someone’s old habit refusing to let go; I was afraid of the harmless. I was the intruder, he was the homebody attempting to reach for his daily schedule of eating dinners and warning ships. And despite my tears and shaken thoughts, his light beamed on.
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The Great Cowboy of the MidwestThe hook tied to the end
of his yellow line Pulling toward green-light leaves the summer’s sun. The Great Cowboy of the Midwest takes out his lasso twirls it through the air that floats down the river of woods twisting his shoulders As his voice hums along To a phantom clip-clop And he falls into routine Back, forth, back, forth His dance blocks the sun from exiting the trees. Rope whipping against the wind and sliding its graze across the branches. He perfects his form swaying back and forth The crowd staring past at the two dogs sniffing around his ankles. The line has been thrown to the trees time and again, the only ritual he practices. Summers were made for practice. He completes his grand finale, This rodeo’s conclusion. Branches bow to tease his line He hopes to catch nothing. Three BirdsI.
Have the flowers not returned yet? I’ve felt the sun but never the summer. Except in those short grasping moments—a petal falls, a sparrow’s cry. Or was it just a glimmer of my imagination? II. Staring out the window asking Mom what the birds with the smooth purple-green feathers were. “Blackbirds.” I never saw prettier creatures. “Will they be in Heaven?” She would not answer. III. A small island of yellow wings sunning on the beach. A treasure. Mom leaning close to them, slow, wind-bent statue. My fingers grasping my toy-red camera, the wings flutter in the flash. Smoke twists off the wick. Wind SongThe wind, I think, has knocked at our windows all day. I can see its face, clearly irritated that I have chosen to ignore the powerful source for more visible attributes: a dog cry, a phone call, garbage day. I do not know how to answer it but we continue to keep each other’s company. I listen as it whistles beneath the doorways and clangs against the chimes: its soft-beating forms a heartbeat within the walls. I am here, I am here, I am here. An uninvited lullaby, though it will do for the night.
Blues Song to the MoonIt’s always that same smirk
The one that shows how much you know And how little I’ve learned And how much you know how little I’ve learned I saw you last night in that same spot Just above the telephone lines where your smile Beamed down to my wrinkled stare But the anger I slingshot at you doesn’t change a damn thing I thought it would at least make you frown but I still hope to know How many lullabies, How many prayers, How many people Have you found staring back Round-eyed and jealous Of your glowing presence? Did you know, on the nights when you disappear I leave my questions to the stars? But they wink and fade and don’t smile back And that too-close intimacy I find with you Doesn’t seem quite there You, who have seen Me on all my last minutes My forgotten dates, missing words I heard your laughter trailing down to me As I threw all my intuitions into the well. |