Open Mic

On Being Billy Collins’ Hypothetical Post(wo)man

First, I would probably rub my eyes with my fists

to ensure my contacts had not fuzzed

and blurred the name wrong.

Then, I would slip the envelopes addressed with his name

into a quilted paisley patterned mailbag

and set off into the Bronx

to hunt addresses on skinny streets

saddled by houses that rise steep

and narrow into the sky.

As I walk, conversations would play

in my head, first a whisper, chit chat—

maybe slip a book in with the envelope in hopes of a signature—

and then, as daydreamed conversations often do,

it shifts to me standing on a podium

after him, reading my words

in the bored, buzzed drawl he taught me,

my books companioned with his on the innocuous table

somewhere in the back of the room.

I won’t remind him of the time when I, seventeen,

handed him a copy of his book,

giggling when he asked my name,

blushing when he asked me to repeat it,

my laughs high and clear notes

richocheting off the walls of the City library auditorium.

Kitti, I said,

Kitti, like a cat, but with an I.

My friend’s laughs

rolled around the room like spilled pearls.

Someone meowed, and we collapsed

into the bundles of our coats,

clutched each others arms, our breath tight,

our faces red from mirth—me, embarrassment.

He looked tired, the lines of his forehead creased

like rumpled linen. Black sharpie bled

into the table of contents as he signed my name, then his,

and slid it back across the table.

I gazed at him, feeling I should recite

some grandiose monologue

about how he taught me

to drop mice into poems

and watch them scrabble the walls for an exit,

how I inexplicably link Emily Dickinson

and Victoria’s Secret models together now,

how lanyards equals boondoggle in Utah,

and I can do the square and the circle,

but instead I said

Thanks.

Just thanks. He gave me a way

out of the stuffy, boxed poetry

of my peers, and I gave him

giggling-teen-girl induced headaches

and occasional shout-outs in poetry classes.

I don’t think that makes us even.

If I found his hypothetical address and knocked upon

his hypothetical door, I would hand him

his letters, I think, tip my hat at his balding, thick knit

sweater clad self, and slip back to the sidewalk.

Maybe someday, after he’s learned my name—

the real one—I’ll pull

the mouse out of my poems,

present it to him

like a medal, and say

something a little more profound

than thanks.

Somebody I Used to Know

9.1.11

Let’s go to the lake,

he says, and pulls a dress from my closet:

the black one, knee length, with oversized roses in purplepinks

and yellows and oranges. I inch it over my hips,

wincing as the fabric pulls against girth,

and ask him to zip it. His hands are strong

and soft against my skin

as he pulls the zipper up tight,

and I imagine he is stitching my veins

so blood doesn’t pour onto the moth eaten carpet.

I am stitched together and he is whole and lovely

and taking me on a drive to our favorite canyon lake

before it is eaten by snow.

When he kneels I don’t expect it.

I am pulling ahead of him to meadows

with swaying grass and wildflowers

that dot pinpricks of color in the green.

I want to run around the lake,

sit at the sunken bench on the pier

extending into the shallows,

watch the sky turn citrus shades

as the sun sets behind us,

but he touches my hand with his, stops me

from joining the meadow, and he

has a question for me

and the ring is white gold filigree and heart inlays

framed by a delicate blue box.

I forget about the bench

and rays piercing the still water of the lake

and just say yes.

People across the boardwalk are cheering:

ladies with ill fitting capri pants

and clunky shoes,

balding, bearded men holding bulky cameras, clicking

the shutters, happy to have stumbled

upon the moment when we decide to take a leap

into the dark together, fingers entwined like wire.

Let’s walk around the lake, he says, 

and then we’ll go dance to celebrate.

So we walk, past the meadows and the sunken bench,

past the wet and muddy rushes where ducks play hide and seek,

past the signs warning what to do

in the event of an angry moose.

We stroll along a meadow boardwalk in fancy clothes

and talk about our future,

surrounded by pines and slopes

topped with gray, never-melting snow.

As the water begins to stain orange and pink and blinding

yellow, we drive back to the city,

the ring glinting prisms

off the sunken sunlight

and my heart pumping like a fist

against my chest. I am nervous

to tell my parents and nervous about life together,

but we are holding hands

as we carve our way down the mountain.

We are holding hands

and we will hold hands forever.

Three Twenty Eight Twenty Twelve 

8:26 PM

Dear,

I thought about what you said last night
and I agree:

You deserve to be married
to someone 

who wants to be married.

That isn't me.

Aftermath

8:27 PM

Sweet chai frothed

from the top of the cup as I leaped

from the rickety, torn cushion barstool

and fled the jungle painted premises.

It dribbled down my hand,

hot, sliming my keys and dripping

onto the sticky wood slats of the outside porch.

I didn’t feel the heat. I didn’t feel anything

until I slammed my car door shut and screamed

to the ink black interior. I screamed

until I lost breath.

Then I called. Twenty-five

times I called, tracks stamped

on my cheeks, huffing and sobbing.

Twenty-five times

I heard your voice, the jingle

of your syllables announcing

your absence, and twenty-five

times I begged you to stay,

asked you why

you had to do it this way.

Sixty-three months since we locked eyes

and you asked how you knew me. Seven weeks

until aisles and vows and a three tiered cake with frosting

shaped to look like hydrangeas. Twenty-five calls

until the ringer stopped and shot straight

to the jar of your voice.

I clicked the phone shut

and stared at the road in front of me.

Traffic signals reflected scattered rubies

onto the asphalt. When the rubies became emeralds,

I turned left,

traced the route home,

let the gems stay shattered on the asphalt

embedded between tar kernels.

Delilah

I.

Two days after his departure,

I partake in a biblical ritual.

II.

The stylist tightens the black cape

across my clavicle, ties it in a neat

bow at the nape of my neck.

She assembles her arsenal,

scissors and razors that gleam white

 in the too bright salon lights that line the walls.

In the mirror, her reflected eyes meet mine.

What do you want?

Shoulder length. Movement. Anything

but what it is right this moment.

She begins cutting carefully, sidesteps land mines

hidden in casual conversation, carves small talk out of spring air.

III.

In my ear, the slow, methodic sound of shears

slicing through hair follicles is the same

as my scissors cutting crisp cardstock for our invitations.

Every snip sends wisps of golden blonde hair to the floor,

falling in a spiral, like the propeller shaped pods

that cluttered the sidewalks of Cedar City every springtime.

He would scoop them by the handful, twist his fingers

as though they were tops, and send them flying

like tiny helicopters. I laughed then, and he would send more,

a battalion of pods to ambush the ants that congested

the sidewalk cracks near my apartment.

IV.

Where do you wear your part?

Her voice brings me back to my reflection,

and I study the straight line creeping into my scalp.

I don’t remember. I never remember. I guess the right,

and she shifts my part to the side and begins the layers.

I imagine her cutting strands like flower stems, at an angle,

to better soak up water when placed in a vase.

A month ago he gave me roses, pink ones.

Fat, heavy blooms with ruffled petals.

I plucked the leaves and snipped the stems

at an angle, to better quench thirst, and dunked

them in a vase I found above the kitchen sink.

When the blooms hung bulbous, the stems curved

like shepherds hooks,

Mom tied the bunch with string and hung it in our living room

like a dressed deer. It withered and dried in the winter sunlight,

and when she cut it down a week later, petals, dry and light

as fallen leaves, slipped from the choke and crumbled.

V. 

My hair, once grazing my elbows, laden with tangles

and weight, now skimmed the curve of my shoulders.

As I walk out of the salon,

the sky shifts to a burnt orange sunset,

and I drive north towards the curve

in the Wasatch, the opposite of him.

I wait for a crescendo of self-realization

to pass in the moments I drive past numbered streets

back to my home. It never comes, and I am just another girl

who cut her hair in mourning, hoping that the sacrificial locks

that littered the floor like grass cuttings

somehow meant power over all this.

Lilith

You cast me out of your garden

like a gnat whose body you pinched

and flicked

off your skin. You sip your juice

from hollowed wood goblets and laugh

your belly full of nuts and seeds,

but not fruit. No fruit,

not yet.

But you forget, my dear—

our bones formed

from the same churned dust.

My heart is your heart,

my skin your skin,

my ribs your ribs—

but you’ve

plucked one from your body

like a wishbone, burrowed it

inside another,

left a space.

Take heed, my darling—

You have one less rib to protect

that blood-wrapped fist

some will come to call your heart.