The Derelict - Sharon Olds

He passes me on the street, his hair

Untitled - Unknown

When you finally forget her,

she’s standing in the kitchen.

She thinks it’s something in the water, and it is.

Her hands stop moving,

coming to a standstill in those rubber gloves

she seems to wear like armor.

And she looks out the window.

And she takes a breath, turns off the water

and goes to sleep.

And in the morning,

she wakes up

and makes you breakfast without a word.

Even when you break the plate.

Because you don’t remember the last time you were sober

and the lines between desperate and despise

start to blur come sunrise,

so you’re never awake to see it.

And it’s her fault, really.

After all these years she still can’t cook the eggs right,

still can’t shut up the baby.

Still can’t cover up bruises quite right

so it’s her fault when the questions come, really.

What were you supposed to do.

For her, it was a quiet affair,

she washed the dishes and made you dinner and

poured whiskey till her hands shook.

And she let you slip away.

Put the baby to bed and just let you slip away.

You’ll never forgive her for that.

But what about the kids.

They all say it, they all knew before either of you did.

But what about the kids, and all the time,

what about all that time,

and wouldn’t it just be better to stick it out.

Just hold on.

Just til Christmas and then we think about the broken glass

and the doors that don’t lock. Just wait til Christmas.

And what was she supposed to do.

Let the devil keep writing messages in the mirror?

Let the kids find out?

Let her traitorous hands burn the place down?

So she just pours you a whiskey.

And she waits til Christmas.

And the kids don’t find out.

And the house stays unburnt.

And she wears her rubber gloves like armor.

Like maybe you can’t touch her

if she’s washing the dishes.

And eventually you forget her.

She takes a breath.

And puts the baby to sleep.

And she lets you.

COLLECTING FUTURE LIVES - Stephen Dunn

Now that everybody was dead

only he and his brother knew

the blood secrets, the unequal

history each nervous system

keeps and rehearses

into a story, a life.

Over the years they’d agreed

to invent and remember

a long hum of good times,

love breaking through

during card games,

their father teaching them

to skip stones

under the Whitestone Bridge.

The smart liar in them

knew these stories

were for their children

who, that very moment

over dinner, were collecting

their future lives.

But sometimes

in their twice-a-year visits

late at night

when their wives had tired

of the old repetitions,

they’d bring up the silences

in the living room

after a voice had been raised,

father’s drinking, mother’s

long martyrdom before the gods

of propriety and common sense.

In their mannerisms

each could see the same ghosts.

And if they allowed themselves

to keep talking,

if they’d had enough to drink,

love would be all

that mattered, the love

they were cheated of

and the love they got,

the parental love

that if remembered at all

had been given, they decided,

and therefore could be given again.

VOLUNTARY - JR Walsh

My little sister said why a lot. Why this? Why that? Why everything.

My father said, Stop trying to answer every question every time.

So I said, She wants to know why so I’m telling her.

My father said, She doesn’t care. It’s involuntary.

She’s two years old and wants you to talk to her.

I’m tired of both of you. 

I didn’t ask why. 

My father left for work.

My sister wanted to know why.

So I said, To get away from you.

Then my mother said, Why’s your sister crying?

I didn’t answer why.

Maybe my father was right.

The Voices - Richard Shelton

Suddenly dawn

had to get up and build the trees.

I could no longer deny

the voices so I came

to terms with them: glistening

votaries dipped in madness,

a blue eye in the wrong socket,

an old chair

rocking by itself,

leather with its memory and silk

which forgets everything,

a machine producing time

in the factory.

This does not mean

I learned to trust them

but I came to terms with them

because, as they said,

we are the only family you have.

intellectualism - Nikki Giovanni

sometimes i feel like i just get in

everybody’s way

when i was a little girl

i used to go read

or make fudge

when i got bigger i

read

or picked my nose

that’s what they called

intelligence

or when i got older

intellectualism

but it was only

that i was in the way

a wild, fresh wind blowing... - Charles Bukowski

I should not have blamed only my father, but,

he was the first to introduce me to

raw and stupid hatred.

he was really best at it: anything and everything made him

mad—things of the slightest consequence brought his hatred quickly

to the surface

and I seemed to be the main source of his

irritation.

I did not fear him

but his rages made me ill at heart

for he was most of my world then

and it was a world of horror but I should not have blamed only

my father

for when I left that... home... I found his counterparts

everywhere: my father was only a small part of the

whole, though he was the best at hatred

I was ever to meet.

but others were very good at it too: some of the

foremen, some of the street bums, some of the women

I was to live with,

most of the women, were gifted at

hating—blaming my voice, my actions, my presence

blaming me

for what they, in retrospect, had failed

at.

I was simply the target of their discontent

and in some real sense

they blamed me

for not being able to rouse them

out of a failed past; what they didn't consider was

that I had my troubles too—most of them caused by

simply living with them.

I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even

stupidly happy almost without cause

and left alone I am mostly content.

but I've lived so often and so long with this hatred

that

my only freedom, my only peace is when I am away from

them, when I am anywhere else, no matter where—

some fat old waitress bringing me a cup of coffee

is in comparison

like a fresh wild wind blowing.

The Forms - Sharon Olds

I always had the feeling my mother would

die for us, jump into a fire

to pull us out, her hair burning like

a halo, jump into water, her white

body going down and turning slowly,

the astronaut whose hose is cut

falling

         into

              blackness. She would have

covered us with her body, thrust her

breasts between our chests and the knife,

slipped us into her coat pocket

outside the showers. In disaster, an animal

mother, she would have died for us,

but in life as it was

she had to put herself

first.

She had to do whatever he

told her to do to the children, she had to

protect herself. In war, she would have

died for us, I tell you she would,

and I know: I am a student of war,

of gas ovens, smothering, knives,

drowning, burning, all the forms

in which I have experienced her love.

The Clasp - Sharon Olds

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,

we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,

I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his

face, again, and when I had her wrist

in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple

of seconds, to make an impression on her,

to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost

savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing, the

expression, into her, of my anger,

"Never, never again," the righteous

chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very

fast—grab, crush, crush,

crush, release—and at the first extra

force, she swung her head, as if checking

who this was, and looked at me,

and saw me—yes, this was her mom,

her mom was doing this. Her dark,

deeply open eyes took me

in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment

she learned me. This was her mother, one of the

two whom she most loved, the two

who loved her most, near the source of love

was this.

FOR THE LEAVING - Andrea Gibson

Nobody

ever thinks

about the weight

of a comet, how heavy

something has to be to go

that fast.

when the one you thought, finally, wouldn't, does, - Marty McConnell

where do you go? the hole in your hands

keeps getting bigger. first a pencil falls through.

then your teacup, then entire bodies

like light, like you’re made of nothing stronger

than tissue, than sugar heated and spread

to look like glass. not the real thing. not you.

your atoms sit so far apart, your lovers

walk right through. one might say, over

the top of you. but no need for that, when you

can bend around their many departures, the most

porous door. she came back. they always

come back. why not. you are not a creature

of consequences. one way to survive a fall

is to believe very strongly that you

do not have bones. another

is to watch the hole in your body grow

until you are nothing but hole, and who

doesn’t love a hole. you’re the great circle

they can write their lives inside, a flat

unused womb they can crawl into. in this

way, you are useful. this way, you can sleep

in the house that raised you.

BROTHER - Richard Shelton

you still carry

your guilt around for company

I will not deprive you of it

but I have an empty space

where my hate lived

while I nursed it

as if it were a child

brother my only

brother it was too late for us

before we were born

it was too late

before you learned to be brutal

and I learned to be weak

your childhood

was a hallway of doors

each closing just as you

got to it

but I was younger

and all the doors were closed

before I could walk

how could I have expected you

to save me when you could

not save yourself

brother my only

brother if not from you

from whom did I learn

so much despair

I went in search

of a father and found you

with a whip in your hand

but what were you searching for

in such dark places

where I was searching for love

On An Unsociable Family - Elizabeth Hands

O what a strange parcel of creatures are we,

Scarce ever to quarrel, or even agree;

We all are alone, though at home altogether,

Except to the fire constrained by the weather;

Then one says, ‘’Tis cold’, which we all of us know,

And with unanimity answer, ‘’Tis so’:

With shrugs and with shivers all look at the fire,

And shuffle ourselves and our chairs a bit nigher;

Then quickly, preceded by silence profound,

A yawn epidemical catches around:

Like social companions we never fall out,

Nor ever care what one another’s about;

To comfort each other is never our plan,

For to please ourselves, truly, is more than we can.

Downhill - Julia Vinograd

I don’t have a home

and I live there

all the time.

Animals - Louise Glück

My sister and I reached

the same conclusion:

the best way

to love us was to not

spend time with us.

It seemed that

we appealed

chiefly to strangers.

We had good clothes, good

manners in public.

In private, we were

always fighting. Usually

the big one finished

sitting on her little one

and pinching her.

The little one

bit: in forty years

she never learned

the advantage in not

leaving a mark.

The parents

had a credo: they didn't

believe in anger.

The truth was, for different reasons,

they couldn't bring themselves

to inflict pain. You should only hurt

something you can give

your whole heart to. They preferred

tribunals: the child

most in the wrong could choose

her own punishment.

My sister and I

never became allies,

never turned on our parents.

We had

other obsessions: for example,

we both felt there were

too many of us

to survive.

We were like animals

trying to share a dry pasture.

Between us, one tree, barely

strong enough to sustain

a single life.

We never moved

our eyes from each other

nor did either touch

one thing that could

feed her sister.

Telemachus' Detachment - Louise Glück

When I was a child looking

at my parents' lives, you know

what I thought? I thought

heartbreaking. Now I think

heartbreaking, but also

insane. Also

very funny.

It's Good To Be Here - Alden Nowlan

I'm in trouble, she said

to him. That was the first

time in history that anyone

had ever spoken of me.

It was 1932 when she

was just fourteen years old

and men like him

worked all day for

one stinking dollar.

There's quinine, she said.

That's bullshit, he told her.

Then she cried and then

for a long time neither of them

said anything at all and then

their voices kept rising until

they were screaming at each other

and then there was another long silence and then

they began to talk very quietly and at last he said

well, I guess we'll just have to make the best of it.

While I lay curled up,

my heart beating,

in the darkness inside her.

How to kill a living thing - Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh

Neglect it

Criticize it to its face

Say how it kills the light

Traps all the rubbish

Bores you with its green

Continually

Harden your heart

Then

Cut it down close

To the root as possible

Forget it

For a week or a month

Return with an axe

Split it with one blow

Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open.

The Untrustworthy Speaker - Louise Glück

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.

I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.

When I speak passionately,

that's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised

for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.

In the end, they're wasted--

I never see myself,

standing on the front steps, holding my sister's hand.

That's why I can't account

for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.

People like me, who seem selfless,

we're the cripples, the liars;

we're the ones who should be factored out

in the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.

A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.

Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas

red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself

to the older daughter, block her out:

when a living thing is hurt like that,

in its deepest workings,

all function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.

Because a wound to the heart

is also a wound to the mind.