Three Poems
Zombies Walk in the Garden
If we are lucky, we get old
and sit a while in God’s waiting room,
dance at cafes, admire
Baroque architecture, embody
the environment. Sure, zombies walk
in gardens, dualities exist
outside in hay bales, the ocean, helicopters above
deconstructed sound sculptures
follow a river of wires. Later, a man
steps into the frame, now inside
the work, the art alive, pushing
past the dullness of looking
at it hang from a wall. There are too many
conversations we’ll never end.
My Mother Visits Me
Every year from across the country.
She’d never been this far away
from mountains before I moved
here after college. I take her
to all my favorite places
which soon become her favorite
places: the old school diners
with walls slightly yellow-tinged
back from the days when
you could smoke cigarettes inside.
She swears she’d give anything
to relive the sacred ritual of eating
and smoking together again,
just one more time, though she quit
smoking a decade ago.
We visit the punk rock
venues and the dive bars,
the permanent scent
of stale beer emanating
from their graffitied walls.
The speakeasies and jazz clubs
she gets giddy for.
We laugh and stay up
into the depth of night,
eating skittles and Fritos
watching black and white Westerns
in bed. She offers me black licorice,
and I give her the same smirk
I’ve been giving her
my whole life. She pries
into my sex life, and when not
given the amount of detail
desires, she proceeds to share
the too many details of her own tales.
The next day, we ride bikes across
the Brooklyn Bridge and along
the Hudson River. She says
it’ll do if you can’t be
on the back of a motorcycle.
We walk down the canyon
of 5th Avenue, arm in arm, window
shopping for things we’d never
wear, even if we could afford them.
The only store
I convince her to enter
holds a piece of haunting
history: as promised, I tell her
the story of Elma Sands as we stand
in front of the 200-year-old brick well
in the men’s department, imagining
her white muff discovered
drawing water in the morning light.
On our walk back, she catches me
up on the gossip from home—the new
neighbors, the old tattoo shop, how
fast it all keeps changing. She
tells me over and over,
as if I could forget
how proud she is, how
she misses me before
she’s even left.
When my mother
visits, she is no longer
buried in the ground.
The clovers have not yet
grown over her gravestone. I can
almost feel her tousle my hair.
Loons
You cannot believe it, but the sky marigold sorbet
reflected through the looking glass, a lake where families
of Loons preen their feathers for flight while floating by
your own family out each evening on your father’s boat
raising cocktails to the setting sun, a ritual you already miss
watching goslings grow up, fuzzy-headed and bobbing
on water, wingspan tucked beneath them. It happens before
your eyes: cats get fat, hairs grow gray, the bodega on your block
with your favorite bacon, egg, and cheese closes, becomes shuttered
for a few months, then renovated, and now you’re crossing your fingers
it’s not going to be another Chase Bank, or CVS, though you wouldn’t mind
a closer grocery store. As long as there are more summer nights
like this—pooled liquid, silver with gratitude that some things did not
work out, taking instead friendships blossoming over wine, watching bad
reality tv, and a love for falling in love, all of it, even those stormy days
when boats remains docked and a stillness settles over the lake, gazing
out from cabin windows wondering where Loons go when it rains.
This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.
