Homeland

The next 7 poems are a series I've been writing this whole term. I posted them backwards so you can read them top to bottom, starting with Springfield, ending in Galesburg.

I've entitled my portfolio Homeland this term, because when it comes down to it, these poems are just trying to find a way home. Sometimes they're retracing my steps, sometimes they're acting as a temporary shelter, sometimes they're just lost and calling out.

In the end, "here" can mean both a place and a gift, as in, Here, take this. And "there" too: There, there, it's going to be okay. These poems try to remember that. Whether you are here or there, all is not lost. There can be gifts, there can be comfort. Home could be just around the corner.

Springfield

Some days I think I know Abraham Lincoln

better than I knew my own father, and you too

have grown up with your dad halfway

across the planet, but Lincoln

just around the corner, his home

wide open for visitors,

so when I sit across from you

at that Thai place and you ask about him

for the first time, I don't know

which facts to spout off: my history

or the story of this city. You've just written

a musical where the heroine is fatherless,

and though I don't know this, I slip

into her skin and tell you everything

I can remember: his leather jacket,

the blues he listened to while he

choked on carbon monoxide,

the long time after when I wouldn't

take off his watch. This

is the point where you fall

in love with me. I fall

when you say you'd use the word

shit in a Good Friday sermon,

if you ever gave one. And again,

when we run to the cornfield

during the January storm,

and you brush the wet hair from my forehead

before leaning in. And again when I

snake my hands from your shoulders

to your chest, mapping out the way

to get inside you.

You, in Kosovo

When you leave for Pristina

I have visions of the Sharr Mountains,

their orange grasses shivering

against your legs and fingertips,

but the fields are green in your pictures

and you never get that far south.

There, you meet Altin, whose Allah

sounds so much like your God,

and you walk through monastery ruins,

relics from the war like all the pictures

of people still missing

lined up on the fences.

There, you open all the windows

in your parents' rented home

hoping for a dusty breeze, something

to lift this heavy summer,

and since you cannot call you write

to me, Here, a boy becomes a man

at fifteen when he gets his first gun, and there,

you at nineteen, still learning how

to reconcile your voice

with the consonants of Albanian,

to speak across the water

to the woman you love. There is so much

darkness, not meaning just the blackouts

or the bombed-out buildings,

but something in your own

American hands.

You, in Hawaii

Sometimes you taste wild, like that summer

in Michigan when you were all lake and forest

and sweat, and I would have done anything

to crawl inside your sleeping bag. I imagine

you're like that now, except with a little more soot

under your fingernails from digging trenches

in the volcanic rock. You tell me about

feeding the pigs with the leftovers, how

sometimes it's ham and you're sorry.

One boot slips off, then the other.

You wind up the telephone wire and lasso me

closer and closer, into an armchair

and the way you would read aloud

in the park near my house, and my hand

on your chest, and the tree you would press

into my back when you kissed me.

Weeks later, you'll watch the pigs' necks

being sliced open, and tell me how it feels

to break the spine, and like the cowboy

you always wanted to be, you'll go hitchhiking

across the island to clear your head.

You, in New York City

I want something loud enough

you can hear it in the shower, like a gunshot.

But you're living so close to Harlem,

I'm not sure you would even blink.

You tell me about feeding the homeless,

sitting with them on the streets.

I change the subject to art history,

because the one time I worked at a soup kitchen

my ex-con coworker called me a snowflake,

said, with an ass like that you better have a boyfriend,

and all I could do was try not to sneeze from the pepper

all the drunk men shook in their soup.

I've visited New York four times with my mother,

but never lived there. We ate at a gospel church

turned into a pizza joint, balcony still echoing,

and went to see Vermeer at the Met, his girl

with her pearl earring. I tell you all about it,

but you never go. You prefer eating soup

and sleeping on the floor in the apartment you share

with a girl from Colorado you admit to liking

and two Fins, three Koreans, and an Egyptian.

Your English disintegrates the longer you stay.

I pace the kitchen floor when we speak

on the phone, plucking at the cabinet doors

while you figure out where you're going

next. The day you skin your knees

on the sidewalk, you tell me

you're coming back to the Midwest

I'd never give up for good,

back to the cornfields we know.

You, in Michigan

You don't invite me

to your family's cottage this summer

though you could have, though

last year you held me

in the cold mornings

on the screened-in porch

before we shuffled towards the wood-burning

stove and coffee in the kitchen.

This time you run the Cherry Festival Race

with only strangers—mostly tourists—

cheering you on, and you kayak

further into the lake

than I ever could. Maybe

open sky is what you need

to love me right after so much

city, so little direction. Manhattan

is thirteen miles long, but the island

in the middle of this lake

wouldn't hold a house, not even

a cabin, so you sit in the weeds, decoding

your heartquakes, again and again,

so unlike Traverse City, its predictable

festivals and cherry-themed sales.

So unreliable, that trembling.

You, in Indiana

You're understudying Prince Charming

in the winter opera, tenor voice

telling me how you always imagined

sharing the stage with the woman you love,

and I—tone deaf, terrified of crowds—am no

Cinderella, throwing down her broom to waltz

with you. Instead, I drive

to Anderson to sit beside you

on the piano bench as you play

the song you wrote for me

using the poem I wrote for Virginia Woolf,

the one where she's walking to the river

and I try to save her. Later I kiss your back

as you rest between my knees like a cello.

You tell me, There's no such thing as a mistake

with you, and I don't correct you, because I want it

to be true, this moment of grace,

this invitation to dance even if

I'm covered in ashes, even if I'm

knee-deep in the river, even if I can't

sing to save my life.

Galesburg

John always sings the same songs,

and I walk to the coffee shop

every time he plays folk.

It's good for the soul,

like going to church, except with banjos.

The loose leaves in the bottom

of my Earl Grey tea

are shaped like an anchor—stay,

stay a while. I see a woman

who looks like your mother,

knitting in the corner

and here becomes

our home too for a moment,

then a confused rooster of a town

again, the trains crowing

at all hours of the night.

My friend tells me a story about walking

four miles to get to his bed,

but I'm thinking about your hands,

and John is singing, If I knew the way

I would take you.

If I took you home I would crawl

for miles inside your chest.

The Museum of Natural History, New York City

I dream I lose you here

like a child, and wake up to the news:

a killer whale killed its trainer,

grabbed her round the waist and held

her under, one lonely

boot lying poolside.

I think of the ocean hall, the blue whale

replica looming over us, and the frozen

battle between squid and sperm whale

hidden in a dark corner. You could be

anywhere: behind some glass,

inside that cave of a mouth.

Ten years earlier, they found a man

draped over the same Orca, naked

and bruised, dead from the cold

of the water, but chewed like a toy.

It could happen to anyone, really. Please

tell me you're not lost, tell me you're

just hiding, that you'll whisper

from behind the directory, I'm here—

we're both right here,

under the star.

Samantha Jane's Wedding; Bloomington, IL

I've never lived in this city, but you dear sister

are about to be married here, and we've slept

in the same bed of our mother's body

so my heart can't be far from the earth

under this church. You hold out

a book of letters for him, written

back when you didn't know each other,

but already loved. The only pages missing

are the few years you were so sick

you tell him I didn't think anyone

would want to marry me. It's then I know

that even though that disease nearly crushed

us all, even though our childhood home creaked

under the weight, we could still

give each other everything. I would stand

waiting at the front of the church for you

if he backed out, if sisters could keep each other

forever. Instead, I slip your wedding shoes

on your feet, kneeling before

the ruched satin of your dress like a prince,

though I have not always searched the kingdom

to make the impossible love real, not

like you have, making a home

out of whatever sticks you could find,

inviting us all to walk

down the aisles of your heart.