Poetry |

“What do you need to know?” and “Wallpaper”

What do you need to know?

 

1.

Martin was found

after his parents died.

He was crawling, diapered,

with hair grown past

his knees. His curved

fingernails clicked on the floor.

 

One side of Elaine’s body

moved, the other side didn’t.

 

Daniel had Down syndrome

and wanted a job like his father’s

but there was no work.

 

The village had a glut of people

darning their own sweaters

and smoothing plaster into cracking sheetrock.

 

I ran a sheltered workshop

in a basement far into the country

Artie put his cigar down

and talked about the junkyard

dealer: jobs there for all.

 

You don’t need to know

Artie worked for me, or

my travels on the backroads

to find jobs for my attendees

at farms with empty barns.

 

2.

The junkyard littered its way across

acres of oily sand and scrub, an engine coupled to a birch,

a hammer tied by grass.

 

The dealer and I walked around cars

spread like armored dancers,

stabiles of chrome fins

and mounds of diced glass.

 

The dealer’s young hound was dying

in the path to the backlot.

He bent over him, frowning;

from the time the sun appeared

to the time the sun set,

the dog’s sides quivered

and his tongue lapped gravel.

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

Wallpaper

 

I move a fishbone, a spoiled piece of tomato

to the side of my plate.

 

In my chair by the window –

aluminum frame, cold air –

I contemplate the apple tree

becoming gray then green, formidable in transformation –

my husband remains at the table, consuming

the sourness of the wrong plenty.

 

The tic beginning in my jaw

erases the routine I covet

as proof of my dominance

for the track worn in the rug,

the repetition of limit.

 

I look for the news and it can’t find me,

a queen of waiting

in a kingdom ringed with beds.

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