In My Other Life My Mother Fails
to track down my gambler father in Reno, though as in our real life, she tries every club
and casino, the hospital, the jailhouse, and SROs, and too broke for train fare
back to Brooklyn, rents us a shabby room. To keep it simple, and with apologies
to my brother, in this life she’s not pregnant. It’s just us, alone in that city
as foreign to us as Madrid or Berlin. In my other life, she’s still glamorous in stilettos
and fitted peplum suits, skirts short enough to flaunt her lovely legs, but not too short —
a girl without a husband has to take care. Each night before bed I help as she twists clean rags
into her thick, dark hair, and each morning I stand behind her, watching as she unrolls
a cascade of waves like Susan Hayward’s. She paints her mouth blood red. She’s well-equipped
for waiting tables in the casinos, makes good tips pretending to be sweet. She’s lovely
and the men all want her, but they like her loyalty to the jerk who’s abandoned us
and no they’ve not seen him, but if they do … Let’s say she leaves me with the kindly old dealer
who rooms downstairs, whose own gambling man has left her, too. Her name is Maisey
or Ruthie, she chain-smokes, wears a kerchief and housecoat, teaches me to cut the cards
as she does, and how not to be stupid when I play my hand, the right way to wear perfume.
Let’s say I’m twelve in this life, pretty and not shy, that my mother starts to worry about me
growing up in that neon town with nothing but men and the desert surrounding us, and so she
writes to her parents — in this life they’re not hardscrabble immigrants from Ukraine, not a janitor
and cook — no, let’s make them wealthy and here for generations, owners of a chain of discount
jewelry stores or a scrap metal business. Of course they’re angry at their only daughter
for running off with my father, who as in our real life, is a handsome liar with little to offer
but good stories and bad luck. Let’s say they relent and wire us tickets for the train back east.
In this other life we live with them in a three-story brownstone under lush trees on Bedford Park.
My Nana wears Chanel suits and white gloves, takes me to Bergdorfs for clothes, to the Plaza for tea
and little cakes, sandwiches with the crusts cut off. My mother pretends she’s a widow, joins
the Junior League, sews bibs for the babies of the poor. At night she paints murky portraits
of my missing father among horses, dogs, and jockeys. In this life, we don’t live in the projects, and
he doesn’t ride the subway home each night, clinging to a strap shaped like a noose, angry
and bored. I’m not homely or shy. I’m one of those neighbor girls who giggled at my mismatched
clothes and my plastic bag and my cheap shoes. In my other life it’s me who’s laughing.
–after Carl Dennis
* * * * *
Dish Pigs
for CD & AJ
Yes, it’s just after dawn, stars still visible
in the slowly lightening sky,
but you’re not like stars. And you’re
not like the yellow dandelions
in the berm behind the reeking dumpster
where you lean, laughing
and smoking, on your break or shift’s end.
You’re not like the swift vee
of birds I can’t identify shrieking
up into the morning air, or the children
in their little jackets who’ll soon march
past us bearing Frozen and Pokemon
backpacks, though you’re not much older
than the slick kids in their slick cars
who’ll drive by headed to St. Pat’s.
You might be the ex-juvie offenders
and dropouts I once knew there. Wiry
and muscled in your coarse aprons
splotched with grief — I mean grease —
cross-hatched imprints of hairnets
tattooing your foreheads, real tattoos
inked on your necks and arms,
you’re the lowest of the kitchen castes.
The cooks and servers call you dish pigs.
It’s what you call yourselves. I know
your skin is slick with fry oil, that the sour-
sponge smell in your hands lingers
even after you shower, that you know
the feel of thick rubber gloves deep
in your fingers. I know you take small
sacks of leftover burgers and fries home
to basement rooms where you play
Deathloop, get high, and dream. But these
are memories, fancies. Now the red
August sun’s fully risen and you call out
a welcome to the grayhead joining
your bright circle. You’re not like the sun.
This is not the yard. It’s just a strip-mall
parking lot, and you’re not prisoners,
though you call the old man lifer.
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