PSH: Poets of the Week

Bio (auto)

I'm twenty-two. I live in Buffalo, NY. I go to school. Work

a trunk in the attic

back then, you disemboweled
the box of tissues.

i banged the triangle
against the ringing in my ears.

your uvula was a windshield
wiper as i drove
through the valleys in your voice,
only to find you blowing my nose.

my diphragm was a trampoline,
a button you pushed
to open my head's trap door.

i always wondered how
you got up there.

i thought that elephant
was a forklift.

misconceptions

crumbs of my breath
spat along the early pillow
first fragments of
a previous night's punch
in the face
like religion when
death finds a priest.

forever

i want to parachute
into your bed

on muscle relaxers

flling down
the fire escape

while choking on the cap
of my asthma pump.

i would be a leaf
floating in a glass of water,

sunlight trembling
in my veins

when you set me down
on the coffee table.

The Magician

My father disappeared often -
an accomplished magician,
he showed my mother
how to slice him in half,
push his head, with torso
to one side of the house,
his legs to another.

For days he would remain
this way,
in two boxes,
never once asking
to made whole again,
never once asking for any of us
to push him back together.

We moved around him as though
he wasn’t there - set the table,
watched television,
went to school.
Eventually, the red scarf
would turn into a dove,
the wind would tap at the windows

and he would return to us,
in his suit and tie
fresh from the commuter train.
He opened the front door
of our house
with an odd look on his face,
as if seeing us all
for the very first time -

the woman he loved
coming from the kitchen,
his children rushing toward him
in relief,
their small arms wrapping around
his unsturdy legs,
pulling his hands free,
making him whole once again.

Linda

Linda’s father wrote
Rock Around the Clock
that what she tells us
and we believe her.

We write that we hate
our mothers in our
black composition books,
but we love our fathers,
even those that have gone.

We see Linda’s father
as an escapee from this
small, oppressive town
that has locked the door
behind us, the whole world
just on the other side.

Even the piano
he left behind, untuned,
or the vintage car
with no engine
rusting in the driveway
forgives him leaving.

But the beautiful mother
left to raise three daughters,
coming home from her
second job, exhausted,
she cannot be forgiven,
not now.