Sharp

by Amy K. Genova

Thirteen hawks fly
with their hawk hearts
over the crepuscular river
where dormouse is all
breast & shivers like
Mahler’s woodwinds

Their hawk eyes say much
while ragweed rags
& maples hum—
the dormouse should
be feldspar
should be wings

should be civility

But dormouse is dormouse
and hawks are hawks
all eye & muscle,
with hearts in their beaks

Even if there were pencils
and thirteen hawks idled
over musical arguments
or notes of clouds,
dormice are syllables

& hawks have so much to sing

Past Past

Past the clinks of the metal bat, the high school boys running bases—fielding something, past the flirty girl in pink, still. Past the fat mother and her baby on her lap, swinging together, stretching the strip of rubber suspended by chains. Past the river that’s lost it’s sway, bent straight by men and edged with concrete, broken concrete. Past the curiosity of the concrete, past the young man smiling at his woman, her lids half lowered. Past her face, smooth as a nickel. Past sheets and skin and the jelly roll. Past the usual line of five o’clock cars snagging the walking-bridge joy. Past the White River. Past loneliness and lolling on a log by the river, past eyeing a knob. Smooth, beneath the fallen tree. A shell or a snail. Past leaning forward for it’s touch, the bump’s touch, the unexpected polish. Past not caring. Past dying—not past here. In thoughts and ant hills. Feeling spring in the nose, the weariness of bones. Half in dreams. Half in memory. Wondering what it means. How to get it back.

Shadows

Hillary outlined a plan. Mentioned standing up to China, not holding hands with the Saudis. Mourned magnets we manufactured in Muncie for guided missile systems, out-sourced along with the factory to another country. Her blazer was smart. Gold. My new haircut slopes to the right. Trendy. I peer through the small hoops of my Walgreens glasses. The left side of my body hurts. And my heels. On the way home from the hairdresser, yellow sprigs of forsythia bouqueted the sides of chipped houses. Magnolia trees dropped wax-like leaves here and there and deep red branches of roadside bushes opened up with pink or white blossom. Winter so tight with gray, made me forget. Indiana can be beautiful. The potholes hurt my self-esteem. Maybe forever. Now, the sun streams in from the kitchen window. Over my kitchen sink. Over my left shoulder. Winks back at me from my computer screen along with my wavering shadow. Strange things shadows, like mute mountains. Witnesses without tongues. I almost believe they are spirit, like I did at eleven. My daughter is eighteen. Same age as my husband, when I met him. How odd. I may never get to Europe. Hillary may beat me to it. One way or another.

Before the gods were invented

Before golden rains or swans sullied maidenheads—
earlier than Mary’s Mother-of-God-swansong
or Woden’s bartering an eyeball for wisdom,
Before the golden calf, Loki, or Abraham’s covenant
with God—prior to Jesus, Joseph Smith
or Durga’s ride on a white tiger
Before Siddhartha’s footprints dimpled the earth
from India to China under the trunk
of an elephant-headed god, whose broken tusk
still waxes over a thousand Hindu thresholds
from the Malay Archipelago to Brooklyn,

Before the Renaissance’s Amida Buddha’s bronzed
hands poised in a mudra of contemplation,
or his eyes bent on a dogma of devotees
chanting: Amida, Amida, Amida—open
the pure land’s gates,
Before Dante’s hell yowled for the wailing whirlpool
of weeping sinners, before the invention of gods,

Maybe, they fished. Caught spotted catfish or silver trout.
Watched the birds. Sure, there were divisions—
but nobody divvied up heaven’s devotion of the earthy world.
Before the gods were invented, maybe they listened
to the wet, soily days of spring
and accepted death—dying like animals do.

Girl in Tub.

All right. True story. I am leaving out half of it. But, when I was nineteen, I came into the means of being able to have a big party. You know the kind with a keg and all. My first keg. I remember we had a fancy spread of hors d’oeuvres just like at my mother’s outlandish parties. I might have hired a band, but I cannot for the life of me recall that part. At any rate someone came and got me and said there was a problem in the bathroom. I went upstairs and there was a group of boys crowding into it. I edged a path through the middle and looked down in horror at a naked girl passed out in the bathtub. Her own vomit floated in about the two inches of water that surrounded her. It didn’t seem like enough to drown her, but if she had rolled over without the audience…. A large bruise eddied up on her forehead. It was an image, I never forgot.

“All right,” I cried, “Everybody out, except Steven.”

Someone said, “We’re just trying to sober her up.”

“Yeah right,” I thought, “by taking off her clothes?” But I didn’t have time to deal with them. Everybody obeyed in part because I had honored Steven by asking him to stay, which he did. Now, I shudder when I think of him, but then he garnered some respect with us neighborhood kids. Let me paint you a picture. Steven was a skinny, straight haired goon that hung around the clubhouse and played pool all day, after he decided not to go to school anymore. A Camel cigarette forever hung out of his mouth and we all knew he carried around a Zippo lighter in his front pocket along with a small pipe for marijuana. If Steven had been a cartoon, he would have resembled a big beaked bird with a turkey gullet sprouting from a Levi shirt. His loose blue jeans would be cinched above his skinny butt with a wide leather belt. And even though he was neat as a pin, except for his oily hair, I sometimes imagine him with a red rag in the back pocket of his pants because the only job I could ever imagine him getting is in a garage, if he didn’t end up in something shadier. We, kids, attributed too much intelligence and power to him simply because he smoked marijuana and didn’t say much.

At any rate, at that moment in the bathroom, I was in charge. I told Steven to get a sheet from one of the beds. I drained the water and cleaned the girl up; it seems like I turned the shower on at one point to rinse the vomit from her. She didn’t wake up, but I could see she was breathing. I probably checked her eyes to see if they were dilated. I am sure I checked her eyes. In those days, there was no 911, but one could call the operator, although I am not sure what she would have done for us, called an ambulance, given us the number of a hospital? I made the decision that the girl would be all right. Steven and I wrapped her in a dry sheet and carried her to a bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I have some memory of having checked on her off and on until I felt satisfied. In fact, I was rather pleased with myself, I felt like a mother.

As a backward looking adult, I know that the girl should have had immediate medical attention. She might have had a concussion or worse. Half a dozen boys should have been charged with sexual assault. At the very least, I should have been charged with under-aged drinking. My boyfriend’s sister, the owner of the house, could have been held responsible for all of the above and more. But none of these things happened. The next day, the girl woke up. She didn’t ask about the bruise on her forehead or waking up naked in a sheet, and she seemed surprisingly cheery. I’m sure she wondered though. Or maybe she didn’t and this incident was just the beginning of a long slide. I’ve always wondered what she thought. I know I feel lucky. This, as I said, was only half of the story.

New Science

Last Friday, I went the basement planetarium’s free show. Beats Bingo at the VFW or the Charity Knitting Circle, the natural lineups in The Star Press’s community calendar. The program boasted about the birth of the planets: Jupiter, Mars, and of course Uranus, which roots out a ruckus no matter how it’s pronounced. A small thrill flapped in the crowd too when it came to Pluto, having fallen from grace and all, not being a planet. Reminds me about all those sinners who ate meat on Fridays. What happened to’em? The pope just taps that ring on his finger, pretty as you please, and the schools dish up fish sticks on Thursdays or Tuesdays or any other blessed day. No disrespect intended. Anyway as the dome lights dimmed, this machine sittin’ in the middle, big as Paul Bunyan’s barbell—or maybe Orion’s, just to keep in the spirit of things—started rotating. Pin-pricks cast a close up of stars on the ceiling, near as the face of God as Ronald Reagan used to say. I don’t mean to be rude, but then they showed this pink, gaseous cloud slidin’ along in front of the constellations. It looked just like an upside down uterus! Sorta like a cornucopia with the skinny end at the top. The bottom end big enough to swallow oranges and apples of planets, like we used to use in science class. As I was sayin’, this whoppin’ pink scoop was mindin’ its own business, when it picked something up. I can’t remember what it gulped down, but it made sense—this gassy nebula hovering out so large and wide like some love-thirsty, old lady--then bang! Our sun came into bein’, ugly as a swaddling, but turnin’ out just fine. Sounds like some man’s dream alright, a giant floating vagina, but I like how they didn’t apologize to the Bible or anything. They just came right out and said it, In the beginning…

Birthday Party-o-rama!

Let it flood. January, I turned fifty, but I’ve been celebrating for six months. Why not? Fifty, after all, means that one, in all probability, has less life to live than life already lived. Last July when my family visited relatives in Seattle, our troop met up at a Mexican restaurant for dinner. "It has to be one of your birthdays," our waitress urged. I stepped up to the platter. I raised my chicken taco. “It’s my birthday,” I said. If there is Christmas in July, why shouldn’t my birthday middle into Julius Caesar’s month? My mother-in-law insisted it could not be my birthday. Maybe it could be her son’s or her granddaughter’s but not mine. True, their birthdays were closer, but no deal. In determined five year old fashion, I got my birthday-way. The waitress delivered a goblet of deep-fried ice cream smothered in hot fudge, and whipped cream. I devoured a spoonful, including the cherry, and sent my free sundae to make the rounds of the rest of the table. The staff and my family sang “Happy Birthday”. I not sure if my defeated mother-in-law joined in the singing, but she did acquiesce. Then, Amy Winehouse crooned over the noisy clatter of enchilada and chalupa-ensconced dishes and too-noisy patrons getting drunk on margaritas. My husband and I jumped up and danced to “Rehab” to the admiring smiles of the Chico Villa’s patrons. There would be three more celebrations.

My daughters made me a gourmet vegan dinner which included, among other culinary delights, glazed tempeh cutlets, fennel and hazel nut salad, and some sort of doubly fudgy cake, and on the real occasion, my husband took me to the best restaurant in town. The gala party would be a month afterward. I reasoned, from years of experience that nobody wants to celebrate right after Christmas and New Years. If I could squeeze in before St. Valentine’s Day, I could be guaranteed a good crowd. My first notion was to have a big bash, fifty people for my fiftieth. Then, I considered a smaller intimate group of ten. Perhaps, the attendees could bring some sage advice like they do for graduates on the threshold of adult life. For me, at this liminal moment, the advice might be how to engage thoughtfully with the rest of my life. But, no. Finally, I decided on a compromise: twenty-five guests at 7:35 PM, wearing red. Why 7:35? Fifty, unlike eighteen which is a time for breaking rules, is a time to make up one’s own rules. Why red? Because green is my favorite color, but they have a holiday for that in March. Having decided on the number of guests, I wrote the invitations, except for the last few. I thought someone besides me should be asking people to celebrate me. My husband was the logical candidate. However, he penned the wrong date on the invitations. He wrote February 7th instead of February 9th, probably due to the fact that my real birthday was January 7th. I had chosen February 9th because it was on a Saturday. Who could blame the poor guy for being mixed up? On the Thursday before my big celebration, the doorbell rang. I ended up having an impromptu pre-party to the post-party. There was beer and popcorn and presents, a nice preview to the pseudo-real thing. All in all, there were five parties to be had.

Some may think me self indulgent and excessive. Perhaps. Yet after fifty years celebrating the miracle of being alive for five days, out of three hundred and sixty-five, doesn’t seem like so very much. It was fun, reminded me of being eighteen, but not my eighteenth birthday party. My birthdays were forgettable or non-existent. Maybe, I'm making up for a lifetime of lost childhood birthdays. Bring on the pinata. The last party—the post, post-party. My elder daughter spent the night. She, my husband and I walked outside the door of our house and ceremoniously released the two week old, red and white helium balloons. We watched the small, merry crowd rise and break the taciturn, February morning with color. Now, I think I ready to let go of “fifty” and get on with the everyday celebration of life.