LOOKING FOR WHAT IS LOST

Opening drawers, searching pockets, poking through closets,
rummaging inside boxes shoved under the bed.   Is this why

the dead sometimes rustle through the leaves at night
outside my window—because they lost or forgot something

and can’t let go?  In the cabinet a cockroach blinking
back, but I don’t have time to kill, not today, not with this

need to find winding me like a toy.   I flip through dictionaries,
shake out self-help books and a stack of porno magazines,

suddenly realize I’ve forgotten what I’m looking for, but continue
digging deep into a plastic bin: part of a poem scribbled

on an envelope my mother sent from prison, “…why does my heart
look back at me, reproachful?”  Love letters pleading

for what I couldn’t give bundled with string; a gift from an ex:
lines by Rilke pressed with flowers and chips of melted

crayon between waxed paper:  “…the chill, uncertain sunlight
of those long / childhood hours when you were so afraid.”    It’s not

my wallet or favorite pen I’m looking for—no, not childhood either;
not a past love or another long conversation with an old self, not

the startled aging man I catch now in the hallway mirror hurling toward
himself—frustrated, fists clenched—not knowing where to look next.


STORM

My dog runs circles in the backyard.   The sky
suddenly the color of rotting meat.  Lightning

a quick switch, welts clouds.   A flock of birds
blasts from the weeping willow.

My house lights cut out all at once.  A garbage can bangs
down the street.   Has my father kept his angry promise

and come back?  I lock the door, sit quietly.  Listen
to the stomping on the roof.   Wet leaves like open palms slap

against the windows.  Yowling at the front door.  The tom cat
runs, frightened, as though there is somewhere to hide.


SIX

Is the world so big you can get lost?
Can you get up now and play?
I’m glad you’re my mother.
Why do we live in grandma's house?

Can you get up now and play?
Spiders eat their babies.
Why do we live in grandma's house?
I asked Santa to bring you home sober.

Spiders eat their babies.
Does God stay awake all night?
I asked Santa to bring you home sober.
They found you in a ditch.

Does God stay awake all night?
Grown-ups always say No.
They found you in a ditch.
I didn’t know snow could hurt.

Grown-ups always say No.
You almost froze like a Popsicle.
I didn’t know snow could hurt.
Bugs Bunny kisses everyone!

You almost froze like a Popsicle.
Grandma says you drink lots of whiskey.
Bugs Bunny kisses everyone!
Can I have a rabbit to love?

Grandma says you drink lots of whiskey.
I want to drink you and get drunk too.
Can I have a rabbit to love?
I hear them whisper in the kitchen.
I want to drink you and get drunk too.
Will you come back before the moon?
I hear them whisper in the kitchen.
Is the world so big you can get lost?


JOYRIDE

Every Sunday we cruised in Uncle Jack’s rusted
Cadillac, into the exhilaration of driving
by the sign that marked the edge
of town, honking at stray dogs, on our way
to nowhere, our lives as abandoned and hungry.
His head tilted back for the silver flask, drinking Black
Velvet straight down like a man who’d found
his vocation in debauchery and wanted to master
the profession.  His hands cracked, dirty,
fingernails black from ten hours a day behind
the dragline, excavating
his own heart—stripping the mines
we circled like a lost couple.  Sometimes
he’d drive me right to the edge where he could see
the future with its long claws, sitting
patiently, waiting for me in the depths as it had
for him.   They’d dug straight to Hell, he said—
our echoes rocks falling through a thousand graves.
We swerved along Cemetery Road, buried miles
of silence, twisters of dust flung from angry
wheels—he’d yawn, and I’d shake him to stay awake,
not wanting to stop, not wanting to return
to my mother’s hard voice, my father’s worn belt.
So I tilted the shiny flask to his lips, poured in
the dark happiness until he punched his fist
into the air, and me screaming, Faster! Faster!
Uncle Jack’s eyes wide, yelling the song, howling,
hammering the pedal all the way to the floor.


NOT RATS

You hear, but the dead shuffling through autumn leaves,
wandering the yard at night impatiently waiting for a body,
bored, constantly checking their watches.  You don’t see them
when you jump out of bed and put your face to the window,
but they’re right in front of you wagging a tongue
or flipping you the middle finger—souls so hideous
they don’t want to be seen, playing Deuces Wild
way past midnight on your patio, a rowdy
crowd, one wrenching another’s neck in a Full Nelson,
farting loud as they can and howling at the moon.
They drop potted plants, knock on the foundation,
keeping you awake just for the fun of it, joking
about your fat ass and beer gut, glad none of them got shoved
into your pathetic, lazy, chain-smoking body.
If we could untwist the lids of our heads and look down in,
or strip away flesh like paint we might see a soul
more grotesque than the gilled, green creature
from the Black Lagoon, or the dead who rose again and again
in all those horror flicks we watched secretly after
our parents went to bed, the ghouls who punched holes
in their coffins and crawled through the dirt, worms
and slugs dripping from their decaying skin, the brain eaten
through, a limb or eye missing, a skull full of squirming
maggots; more frightening than gangrene hands reaching
for you in sleep.   The uglier they are the more they whine
because they get no choice about the body they‘re plopped into,
so all they long for until the moment they come out
the other side purple and screaming is the chance
to be beautiful.  They tease themselves with stylish magazines,
knowing the odds: pages of young, glossy faces, pouting lips,
thick, shiny hair and smooth skin— then depression hits,
so they sulk and mope through your garden, kick over heads
of lettuce, pluck petals off roses, wish for Prozac, hang
upside-down on the kids’ rusted swing set, waiting,
the way you cling to winning the lottery.  You’ll hear them
laughing with their buddies through the night, trying to decide
who’s the ugliest, poking fun, juggling whiffle balls, rolling dice
and making bets, guessing which one might be dropped
before morning into the home of flesh and bone, a body
so damn gorgeous people will push and shove                                                                               through a crowd just to get a glimpse of it.