Two Poems

Mother, Father

As a teenager you stand blankly at the door to your own house.
The house is asleep. There is a faint rain, enough
to wet the face. As in a dream, you want to enter.
The cabbie is waiting for you to enter,
to show it is really your house. Why would you
come all this way to a place unprepared for you?
You wave him off with a limp wrist. After
a few dry seconds, the sound of traveling onward.
You haul yourself through an open window
after your luggage. Welcome home, you think, naturally,
as the mind inspects the need for refuge.
You move through the house, luggage in hand,
taking care not to hit the furniture or make a sound on the stairs.
At the door to your parents’ bedroom, you set it all down.
Your mother and father
flat on a bed face up over the covers,
lips open, eyes shut tight. The impersonal concentration of sleep.
The one who wakes, wakes
as if called. The thin windy voice. He’s home. Turning.
Come lie down. When you lie down,
rigid as a boat, your mother rests her skull on your shoulder,
puffing sharp sour breath into your face.
Her body keeping near, like the pitcher of tea at mealtime,
goes slack again, one knee sliding from atop the other.
On another pier, your father farts
the fart of love. You are awake but you close your eyes.
Close those eyes. You lie awake
thinking of the man whose bed
is crowded with details from his life.
You put the thought aside. Nothing is like this—
forceful, obvious, true
as wood in the wood pile. When it is time to wake
your father will pour you a glass of juice
and as you drink he will speak
of what has happened in your time apart.










Ganymede

When the eagle took me,
I thought I was going to die.
Then I survived.

I regained consciousness
at the edge of a cliff.
The bird was gone.

Then a beautiful old man picked me up by the arm.
He told me he was a god.

Now I bring him wine,
him along with the others who sit around
eating marshmallows and having fits.

You’re immortal, too,
he tells me,
making me sip from the cup first
before I bring it around.
I made you that way.

Whatever happened to my sheep?
I can barely see my valley from this height.

Most days I wake up and put on my short robe,
I prepare the table,
I wash the mirror in which they see their faces.

If I am immortal,
I think he did it so I wouldn’t grow
any hair where he doesn’t want it.

At night, in the time I am alone
before climbing into bed with him,
I push the skin around to see
if there have been any changes.
So far, I’m the same.