HEAVENLY CREATURE - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

For Missy

I remember the day you showed up at the bus stop:

quiet, pale, a thick veil of dark hair, we stared

at each other through overgrown bangs. We were just

beginning our dry sentences at Baldi Middle School.

In those days, our jeans would be tattooed weekly

with the coded names of every boy who flicked

his eyes our way. The backs of our hands became

necks and lips for practicing on. I once even

doused my backpack with my brother’s cologne,

a sad effort to at least smell like I’d had a boyfriend.

Walking around your housing complex, we’d stare

through the windshields of every man who drove by.

We thought of our bodies as dangerous chemicals,

our breasts as match tips waiting for love’s flinty gaze

We were sure all the boys around had firecracker hearts

just waiting to explode. And look, I know I know I know

I am not telling the whole truth. Things in your house

were different, were not right, were accepted because

maybe no one knew any better, or maybe they did

and didn’t care. And whenever the whole dark truth

would spill out, I remember I’d gather my features

into the center of my face, unable to figure out

the right combination for my concern, for fresh alarm.

I’d forget how to sit, how to blink, breathe. It’s true,

sometimes you look back and all the things

you should have done rise up like volcanic islands,

whole civilizations, whole existences, whole lifetimes.

But what did we know then? Fourteen, I took

the hammer of my dumb tongue and tried to tap

comfort into your impossibly small ears,

your impossibly small fists. We were kids,

and the future was our dependable escape plan.

We’d be gone soon, so you had just better suffer through

it all now. We’d be gone, so until then, I tried

to make you laugh. I’m sorry I never realized

I could’ve unlocked your exit earlier, that I

could’ve released your story from the shogun

of my own throat. The letters you send me now

are like postcards from that hopeful future:

you are okay, you are alright, with no return address.

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that

I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you,

that when I remember you, I always remember you

as beautiful.

When a Friend (for Ellis Settle, 1924-93) - Stephen Dobyns

When a friend dies, part

of oneself splits off

and spins into the outer dark.

No use calling it back.

No use saying I miss you.

Part of one's body has been riven.

One recollects gestures,

mostly trivial. The way

he pinched a cigarette,

the way he crouched on a chair.

Now he is less than a living flea.

Where has he gone, this person

whom I loved? He is vapor now;

he is nothing. I remember

talking to him about the world.

What a rich place it became

within our vocabulary. I did not

love it half so much until

he spoke of it, until it was sifted

through the adjectives of our discussion.

And now my friend is dead.

His warm hand has been reversed.

His movements across a room

have been erased. How I wish

he was someplace specific. He

is nowhere. He is absence.

When he spoke of the things

he loved - books, music, pictures,

the articulation of idea -

his body shook as if a wire

within him suddenly surged.

In passion, he filled the room.

Where has he gone, this friend

whom I loved? The way he shaved,

the way he cut his hair, even

the way he squinted when he talked,

when he embraced idea, held it -

all vanished. He has been reduced

to memory. The books he loved,

I see them on my shelves. The words

he spoke still group around me. But

this is chaff. This is the container

now that heart has been scraped out.

He is defunct now. His body is less

than cinders; less than a sentence

after being whispered. He is the zero

from which a man has vanished. He

was the smartest, most vibrant,

like a match suddenly struck, flaring;

now he is sweepings in a roadway.

Where is he gone? He is nowhere.

My friends, I knew a wonderful man,

these words approximate him,

as chips of stone approximate

a tower, as wind approximates a song.