2000 Deciduous Trees : Memories of a Zine (9781937316051) Read online

  He kisses her on the hip and climbs over the railing. The lights are orange over the water and the sky is close. He looks at the moon, that half-moon that you always wish is more poetic, and jumps into the river, letting her laugh and scream and cling to him all the way down.

  SAD ASIAN FACE

  Sad Asian face

  in a trench coat alley

  letting the snow go

  all around his

  thinning uncovered head.

  Warm brown face

  in an altogether

  huge gray world.

  Letting looks go

  too often towards

  the pavement and

  opening his closing

  gloved fists repeatedly

  against the cold

  professorial thoughts.

  MONDAY NIGHT RAIN WITH FOOTBALL

  The room was really too small for the size of all the men on the television. Like looking through a child's dollhouse window: valiant Patriots and runaway Dolphins came through the screen to us sweaty, and heaving.

  A fat Christmas tree wore a single ornament in the way a poor girl might wear a silver chain. It must have been a gift. The talk was small, filled with I remembers and the Well if I was hims.

  We all drank beer. Lots of beer and the short guy and his sister seemed to fight with the giants in the window for our attention.

  I would have left hours before if it hadn't been raining.

  YOU’RE SIERRA LEONE

  You're Sierra Leone. But just a child hiding out. Did you know there is a cottonwood tree here, too, young sir? Mine stands with roots tangled in dark Indiana soil, leaning over a river made simply when a strand of God's hair touched the earth by accident. It's in the little ravine behind my house where the vulture likes to swoop-beat slow and rise again on warmer air. I've known that tree my entire life. With its shivering leaves and its snow tears. Charming. Peaceful. My constant refuge of hide-and-seek.

  And now, God, now, I hear about your cottonwood tree. On its red soil. Where you must be afraid even of its immutable peace. Because the leaves are your only witnesses. Irretrievable when they fall.

  Can it be possible? Who is stopped listening to that? Can the world be so cruel? I had hoped not. But there you were, finding God's grace in a plane full of bombs. Saved from your own execution by so many others. And now these photographs. Coming to me between ads for push-up bras and cellulite cream in some Vanity Fair.

  These photographs of soldiers wearing blue flip-flops with their camouflage garb. Where bloody smiles point victoriously to severed heads. Where the man from Chicago, the good doctor who wanted to return for his family, lies watching death approach as if on a beach gazing at the gulls pass. He knows. He knew what I wonder. Who are these fucking murderers?

  You wanted to explain. So you began with your careful midnight matchsticks. Huddled close. Writing with lime juice ink. Waiting for someone to wet your autobiography with their own tears so as to be able to read it.

  But as you come running from the bombs with your new cache of these horrid photographs and you huddle with the cottonwood which shudders itself in fear, who do you meet? Are you looking for an accomplice? I only know how to play. Are you looking for help? I am only a child on a river bank. And if you are looking for someone who understands your hideous fear I am not afraid—don’t have to be. What would I fear in my cottonwood? I am only hiding from a friend. And you, oh God, you are hiding from the same kind of immortal accident that made my hairline river. From his shifting feet or leaning elbow. Trying to anticipate his tired movements so as to avoid his weight.

  God is careless, I recognize.

  And I begin to cry. You look at me, scared. Realizing that we're not hiding together. That your photographs can only be part of my game. I scream at you in my own defense, "Look! Look where your pictures are! Look what else came with them! Movie stars? Technology moguls! Shiny pages and pretty colors!" And I'm so sorry. In a thousand ways. Because if it weren’t for the movies, I never would have known. And if I never had known, maybe your God behind the cottonwood has no purpose.

  But now what? So many barriers between us keeping me from understanding or helping or from just giving you hand-holding hope behind that tree while you wait. Divisive realities.

  It's hard to be friends sometimes.

  So now here we are together for a moment behind our cottonwood trees, one on each side of the world, one on each side of twenty years. And all I can offer, all I can give you, is that I know what it feels like to be waiting there. Those moments under the cottonwood tree where the leaves chop sunlight into rain. And the wind having fought his way through the chatty leaves reaches your skin simply as a sigh-puff.

  To be there quiet. To be there alone.

  I know that, young sir.

  But I will not wish to share your anguish. Ever. Or to be hiding in that bloody kind of soil. And I don't know what to do, now. With these pictures on my late-night bed. You are gone, now. I suppose. And the cottonwood leaves have fallen.

  PAY DAY

  She sat with her shoulders forward. Slumped over her too-expensive food and listened to her fate sitting at a table nearby.

  She may never have noticed them. But when you are eating alone, even in an expensive and luxurious restaurant, people tend to steal your space. They know you have no real reason to defend it: you without your anyone who wants to come for dinner. And so they come up from behind your chair. They take the space you cannot catch. The space you cannot see. And because this is the place they are intent on taking, you shiver and recoil from their proximity.

  The girl sat rigid and the woman, deep in a discussion with her friend, leaned into that most precious space. Threw her coat on top of the girl with a curt meaningless apology. And insisted throughout the night on causing the backs of their chairs to click together but only once in a while. Like water torture. Or the way clouds slow down when you are planning their route across the sun.

  The woman explained life to the girl. Talking a little too loudly. Insisting that she hear. Jealous of her thin wrists. Even more envious of her naked face and hands. Their drifting voices told the girl: College would fade. She would be fat. She would have kids who hated her. She would want to cry for no reason on the most beautiful days. That's what they said, but even so the girl sat alone, treating herself to a dinner too big for her paycheck. It would have been nice: the thick old carpet, the crystal, the soft thin beef. But instead she was alone and unable to escape eavesdropping on the middle-aged women behind her.

  From across the table and faded blond, "Well, wasn't it just the funniest. How we have changed since then. I can't believe such a young life could possibly exist in anyone's heart anymore. Can you?"

  The first tilting her head and smiling piteously with only a hairsbreadth between the back of the girl's chair and her own, "Of course not." And with her neatly folded peacock tail napkin she cleaned the sides of her smirk with affected blots and dabs. She must have thought that rich people would approve. She must have wanted to be rich. She must have hoped someone was watching. After thinking too long and with no reason to say it, "Crib sheets have taken on a completely different meaning, haven't they?"

  It was sort of funny. Funny to think of women cheating the world with their over-and-over bassinet babies. Soggy morals and too little time to think of something better to say. But the other woman didn't understand. She had cheated too much in school and done way too much baby doll laundry to hear a connection so maddening.

  It was inescapable. The regular women dressed up in their going-out clothes. One with tacky lipstick. The other a country girl from New Hampshire. Only because she kept saying, with a condescending laugh packed between her cheeks like cotton or a bite too big to taste, "You know me, dear, just a simple country girl from New Hampshire."

  And the other laughed the same cotton laugh and pretended to relate. She did relate of course, she had to, but never really admitted how similar they were. Never really all
owed herself to be the same. And so the laugh was pretend, even though it shouldn't have been. (You know what I mean. They're everywhere.)

  And so the girl waited. Trying not to chew. Sucking on her salad. Her fork elbow glued to her ribs. The waitress was late to be somewhere else so the girl didn’t ask for ice cream. And when she stood up her chair knocked against the older woman's shoulder.

  The woman spun on the girl and stared hard into the young eyes silently with her scolding, "College will fade. You will be fat. You will have kids who hate you. You will want to cry for no reason on the most beautiful days. You will never learn to paint or act or be able to get into the best places. You will have to wash and feed the dog. You will never be thanked. You will have to give away your beauty to someone more deserving." That's what they said, those middle-aged eyes.

  And the girls stared back, "Perhaps, but maybe I am not as weak as you. Maybe I will be glad to do it. Maybe I'll always enjoy eating alone and I won't have to meet friends I don't care about. Maybe I'll be kind enough to appreciate a world that gave me constant change."

  Screaming eyes. Hateful and strong. Only for a second though. The waitress at the next table over only had time to pour half a glass of water and laugh with her, "No ice, please," customer.

  And the girl, having bumped the woman's shoulder, and insisting on overcoming whatever it was that made them the same, smiled and touched the selfish woman's arm. "Excuse me, ma'am. I didn't realize you were there." So close.

  The woman looked away and hid her shoulders in the hollow of her Sunday coat. The other woman sucked her salad. No one can really afford a manicure. Careless spending. Needless expense. It would have been nice though, thick old carpet, the crystal, the soft thin beef.

  Intellect is Imagination waking in adulthood.

  THE SOUND’S EDGE

  Here they are again: baby clams with pink, purple, and orange quarter-inch personalities. They're not all alive. Piles of tiny clam shells extend down below your feet in a cloud-colored shimmer given by some two-inch wash of the water. In a handful most are still alive, going on with the work of tickling skin. Some are newly crushed, learning a strange kind of dying, bloodless and slippery, thrust between curious fingers not quite wanting to help. But then those few. Past it all already. Tiny death leaves. Pairs of angel wings. And the tiny deaths leave pairs of angels' wings. No mamas laughing at memories and no reason to follow the tide. But such a beautiful tossing tomb there, two inches under the waves' own kiss goodbye.

  RIVERHEAD

  I know that a garden has died. Caught tight by a country road someone insisted on paving so the chickens forgot to come home for the ax and scald, the feathers plucked and then that potato field covered in sod long after the fourth child (quiet and chewing fast) knew she was the runt of their not-enough-for-dinner fish porches.

  I know that garden has died. Caught too fast by hungry water eating its way through the cliff and up under the house where a lemon yellow rowboat—named a dead sister—sleeps upside-down in the sand under a little ark, by the red broken heart wheelbarrow, handles sideways, and sandy cool.

  Fishing line wind chimes hang dead-tired of winter waiting for the doors to unlock.

  But a garden has died. Forgotten in the sun, like the blue-lidded bag of clothespins turned brittle (and the horseshoe crab) with the mildew and must; and the flag does nothing about screens lifting away from frames fraying, wire by wire, like family.

  A garden has died downed with the black cherry corpse of the hurricane season. No one’s watching the Rose of Sharon trying to hide in tall grass whispers left by an inattentive scythe, rusting in a shed, which needs to be painted, desperately.

  I know that a garden has died.

  LINGERIE HANGERS

  I found another flaw in our culture. Hangers. Especially hangers in the lingerie section of any major department store. Not hangers in lingerie stores, because they are specialized enough to have nice ribbony hangers with brass knobs to hold things in place. But in department stores, where everyone is supposedly accommodated with one fashion or another all in one place, there is simply not enough room for fancy, wide, ribbony hangers. This leads to a sad state of affairs.

  There is a very good reason why you sometimes find bras along the side of the road. Take for instance this afternoon. After shopping for some time I was in a state with which you are all probably familiar. My hair was all staticky from pulling my shirt over my head so many times. I was too hot. I was hungry. I might have had to go to the bathroom. The fluorescent lights were making me vaguely ill, and both of my hands were going to sleep as a result of having so many heavy plastic bags hanging from my wrists.

  Then I remembered I needed a bra.

  Fine.

  So of course being a rather small person with not much to offer in terms of business for the lingerie department, my size was on the lowest rack, very near the floor. I squatted down among my shopping bags and pushed my glasses up with my shoulder.

  Women are so enmeshed with retailers in a wrangle for self-esteem that the sizes on underwear are nebulous to the point of meaning nothing. God forbid a tag state the obvious. The retailers stick up pictures of tan, elongated, windblown underwear models and then try to appease every woman's wallet by assuring her she is one of them. This is accomplished through the use of this tag-code, which like any good tool of sabotage, is constantly changing. And with all the crash diets, exercise schemes, and preggers/postpartum expansion and contraction women's bodies are changing equally as much.

  The bra-tag code is based in a sort of reality: chest measurement and cup size. But the thought that this is in any way a determination of oneself and a tool used to quickly move through the merchandise towards what is most adequate, to say nothing of what may be desirable, is a farce. Then there are the countless added variables, like cute heart-shaped clasp-in-front rhinestone closures with bows glued on or racy tiger stripes rendered in twelve shades of hot pink.

  Whether or not the bow will probably come off in the first wash or the hot pink tiger stripes will show through even the most dowdy turtleneck and cardigan, let’s leave out preference altogether. Let us focus on need.

  A woman approaches a rack looking for a bra. Not a bra for a date. A regular bra to wear to school, work, and whatever community event to which she’s promised to devote much too much of her time. She gets caught (by her coat, her kids' coats, her purse, her shopping bags, and her child's hand, all of which she is holding) on every rack of teddies and negligees, which establishes the initial self-consciousness. Regardless of whether she is a woman who wears complex and deviant underclothes or is a woman so put off by the thought that she refuses to look at her four-year-old son for three days after he pulled the crotch of a black velvet hi-cut brief like a slingshot and flipped it into the aisle, seeing teddies and being engulfed by their insinuations of pleasure and one's inevitable lack of ability to live up to such fantasies run totally counter to trying to replace a bra which has begun to fray along the top, needs a safety pin to keep the strap on, or has bent its hooks in the back making it dangerously subject to springing off and discharging its contents at inopportune times.

  So after making it past the frilly sea-foam green and black things into the actual realm of bras in a rainbow of what are supposedly flesh tones, she must make another set of decisions. Now I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the fact is, women will never be liberated. Who has the time? Brand, color, strapless, cutest, wide strap, demi-cup, mastectomy, skinny strap, cheap and trashy, things that do a bra's job but aren't really anything at all except hooker uniforms, lacy, racer-back, refined, stretchy, front clasp, push-up, print, see-through, over-priced, grandma industrial strength, elegant, padded, cartoon character, cotton, synthetic, mesh, elegant, athletic, striped, underwire, handmade, miracle, nursing, etc. You might think that some of these decisions are not necessary to make.

  Since I am without children you would laugh at my mentioning the nursing bras, but it is absolutely
essential that a woman be on the lookout for the bras that she does not want. These antagonists have a way of ending up on the counter with the other bras and looking very normal until one gets home, loses the receipt, has only dirty or wet laundry, and tries to put them on. You can surely imagine how bizarre it might feel to be sitting in an eighth grade history class trying not to draw any testosterone-riddled attention as one tugs at the snaps and zippers in the cups of an inappropriately-purchased brassiere. However, it is my theory that it is because of such mistakes that women learn to feel any level of comfort at all when wearing the teddies and such with their zippers and snaps and inappropriately-placed everything.

  There is no sense in getting attached to a comfortable, regular, dependable bra. It is an impossibility for one to replace bras because they do not ever make the same bra twice. Even if they did the little tags that come on the little bras are printed with fadeable ink so that once the thing is washed the first time its identity can never again be ascertained.

  Then we come back to the hangers. My hands are turning purple with lack of circulation but I am focused and squatting there on the carpet among the thousand brands, colors, styles, etc. And I can't remember what is at home already in the ridiculously full top drawer. (I say ridiculous because although one wears only three or four of the twenty-some bras one owns, the mistakenly-purchased weird bras providing the bulk in number, one can never throw away bras that are perpetually new because they are so damn expensive.) I can't ever remember my size. And even if I did it would be different because of the brand and the amount of elastic and the length of the straps and the size of the cups and everything else.

  So I look over at the child who is pulling a magenta satin thong over his head while his mother intentionally ignores him by focusing on a pair of tummy-control hot pants and without another thought plunge my hand into the rack.