Sherman and the Coffee Creamer

It looked like a distended shotgun cartridge lying on its side on the sidewalk. Sherman kicked it with the tip of his shoe and it exploded in a trail of white liquid. The sound it made as it rolled was the soft tick of plastic and not the coined, clean ring of metal. He wanted to spread the coffee creamer out among the divots in the sidewalk’s sharp surface, so the white streak wasn’t as noticeable, but he didn’t, mainly because it was getting difficult for him to control his movements. The alcohol and general exhaustion were taking their toll, as they do after five hours spent drinking at a handful of bars until three in the morning. In the dark, the creamer shone like a magical type of blood, fired from each cell to glow and be seen, to tell whoever found it necessary for it to be shed that it was worth more than they could imagine, that it was worth something even in itself, even when it lay streaked on the sidewalk and couldn’t support life.

A woman in a white raincoat with enormous, useless buttons appeared. She stopped mid-step on a flight of cement stairs that led from an underground apartment just off the sidewalk. She held onto the black, iron railing and watched Sherman, her mouth gaping like she tasted death and needed to spit it out, but gagged on it instead. Sherman could only look like a threat if he was completely sober and he tried, and even then it was laughable. He felt ashamed so he tried to pull his shirt collar over his face, trying to hide, but then realized that he was only wearing a t-shirt and that the woman probably thought that he was getting undressed in front of her. He wasn’t surprised when, with his shirt half over his head, he heard the woman scream and felt her thin elbow dig into his back, pushing him into the street.

Excerpt from JoySorrow – “Tioni and John”

If she took the wrong pills, she’d sometimes see John. She’d never decide to take the wrong medication. It just happened when she wasn’t thinking or when she was on the phone. These pills, the other orange pills, would cause her to see John standing in the corner of the kitchen, his pale blue button-up shirt the same one he wore when he was in his twenties. Yet, when he saw him, he was in his late sixties, like the last time she touched, smelled, tasted him. He wouldn’t talk. He just stood there in the corner or sat at the dining room table, smiling at her. Maybe he’d accidentally hit the teacup Tioni set out for herself so that it would fall to the floor and its handle would become chipped. Maybe he’d turn the shower on before Tioni undressed. Maybe he’d hide behind the curtains like a spook but then step out from behind them and into the living room, pushing the curtains away like a jogger encountering a low-hanging tree branch. Usually he just sat, or stood, and smiled.

Tioni chopped a few cucumbers and a summer squash for a salad. John stood in the corner, his face half turned away from Tioni. It looked like he was staring at the kitchen clock above the door to the basement, but he didn’t look like he was trying to tell the time. His eyes were unfocused and he wasn’t concentrating. Rather, he looked to be resting his eyes while they were wide open, like keeping his eyes shut was more of a strain than the opposite. “John, you’re staring at the clock again,” Tioni said. John turned to look at Tioni and smiled. She smiled back and continued chopping. The sun had almost set. Tioni needed to finish the salad before she felt too tired to stand.

John walked into the living room as Tioni went to the drawer to get a bowl for the salad. Something glass or crystal shattered in the living room. “John, what did you do now?” Tioni called. She walked into the living room. Not seeing John, she held onto the back of the recliner and crouched to see what had shattered on the floor. “John?” she said, looking at the floor underneath the curtains to see if she could see his loafered feet, or next to the fireplace where he sometimes swirled the ash, drawing circles and spirals if he was in a happy mood. She looked back down at the floor, glittering with shards of crystal and glass. The shattered figurine added color to the room in the way it reflected the ceiling lamp’s light. It also made everywhere Tioni stepped a danger of getting glass splinters in her bare feet. Thinking of this, she edged past the side of the recliner and onto the rug, putting on a pair of slippers that she left at the foot of the chair.

Excerpt from JoySorrow “Julian at the bagel shop”

There was a bagel shop near Julian’s high school. He would go there for breakfast sometimes. He associated the shop with Julie since the old man had loved cream cheese and would ask for a different flavor every time. The day after the crash, Julian entered the shop and watched a man in a suit lower his body into a booth. His slicked back hair made him look like a FBI agent or a con man. Julian walked by the man and ordered an onion bagel with butter. It was too soon for cream cheese, even though he shared his grandfather’s love for it. The thought of biting into a bagel with cream cheese was painful in that he knew it would taste like the pain of caring for a dying man. He didn’t thank God that Julie was dead. Rather, in a way that an outsider could consider selfish, he thanked Julie for dying. There’s no denying that Julie was a burden, as most people are when they reach a certain age. Who’s to say that children aren’t a burden on their parents, no matter the ways in which sun-faced mothers and fathers laud their little boys and girls as buckets of joy and the best things that ever happened to them? A burden can be a blessing, certainly. After his death, Julie still provided for his grandson, the orphan who had to grow up too soon. When he was still alive, Julie shared wisdom and compassion, teaching his grandson that misfortune introduced strength. Julian knew that it was only because of his grandfather that he even knew what being strong meant. Yet, Julie was dead, and it was better that way.

The con man sitting in his booth a few down from Julian’s focused on his bagel instead of catching Julian’s eye. He read The Economist and jotted down some notes or statistics in his notebook. Julian thought that the man might have been drawing pie charts since his hand moved in circles for several seconds. Sometimes Julian felt awkward observing people, like he shouldn’t be allowed to peek into the windows of so many people who just seem to be living their lives. He wasn’t one to watch a panning shot of a tsunami on the news and try to imagine what it’s like to live or die in such a catastrophe. The men, because they were men more often than women, that he observed lamented no urgent misery, they displayed no hopeless endangerment. They weren’t open, exposing their raw flesh to horny gnats or epithets. These men were only what Julian made of them. He created their resumes and chose to groom their hair in the morning either with an ivory comb or a mildewed, wooden brush missing patches of bristles. Now that Julie was dead, Julian began developing more intricate histories for the men he saw. Maybe in doing this he’d happen upon fractions of his father.

Excerpt from JoySorrow

Before Julian’s grandfather was given an expiration date and started to lose his understanding of how to fix a clogged drain and, on the bad days, inhale, he could be seen driving around the north side of Indianapolis in his ’56 Ford Sunliner convertible. The wind would fluff up the white hair that remained on the sides of Julie’s head and catch not only a few grey women’s eyes as he passed through the shopping and arts’ districts. He’d stop at a hat or shoe store and pick out a new pair of penny loafers or a fedora that asked for the Florida Keys or the Hamptons but had to settle for the flat, beachless part of the Midwest. Julie liked driving around the north side much better than down south because of the long stretch of corn fields and farms that didn’t need to acknowledge highways larger than two lanes or gasworks that burped death. It was clean up in the upper crust of Indianapolis, and it tasted sweet to Julie. Like coconut at night or peach ice cream during the day.

Julie’s role as “grandpa” suited him. His daughter was a wreck and nothing that he did or tried to do seemed to help her. She didn’t call him “dad” anymore but “Julie” and his grandson demonstrated a potential that Julie couldn’t help but compare to his own at that age. He would kid with Julian about going into the hardware business like him, but he made sure not to force anything on the boy. Julie’s father wanted his son to go into banking, even going so far as buying him a lot on which a bank was being constructed for his high school graduation present. When Julie become an apprentice to Mr. Jennings – a plumber, carpenter, and electrician who lived in one neighborhood over -Julie’s father didn’t talk to his son for two months. His father died of a heart attack before he could see his son earn a comfortable living off of his hardware business.

Cruising in his well-oiled and polished convertible, Julie’s pride was only a side-effect of the image he gave off. Sure, his car was flashy in its robin’s egg blue and cream, but the man was just that, a man. That’s why he attracted so many eyes. He was accessible. He had liver spots on his scalp, arms, and hands. His smile was genuine. He did not appraise everyone he saw according to their relative status, lowering his sunglasses onto the tip of his nose to peer and then scoff or tisk tisk. He beat that image and threw it out in the street, it being a hijacker that Julie just didn’t have time for and could easily out-struggle.

Now if Julie decided to take home any one of the women that he met and spent a wonderful evening of chatting and flirting with, she would be disappointed. She would see the car and wonder. She would meet the man and smile. She would talk with him and laugh. She would have a drink and maybe something to eat with him and she’d wonder again, and maybe she’d start to feel those vibrating pinpricks in her stomach and the pokes on her shoulders and around the sensitive areas of her ears that might every now and then announce the beginnings of love. She would be invited back to his house after telling him that her place was unavailable because of the mess. They would laugh at the idea of a messy room, like they were in college, remembering their messy dorm rooms. She would wear his leather jacket around her shoulders if the wind was too cold. Their bodies would be imbued with an excitement, again, like they were young. And then he would pull into his driveway and she would wonder, confused. It was a one-story house, and he lived with his daughter and her son. His daughter was insane with something, and his grandson, even though doing his best to give his grandfather his privacy, was there with his young opinions and ideas about older woman. She would think of the boy judging her, and she would leave, saying that she must have caught a cold from the evening wind. His gut and face would slacken, and he would drive her home to her messy apartment and say goodnight with maybe a kiss on the cheek, but most likely only a pat on her shoulder, bare because she had taken off his jacket at his house. She would not be at the same restaurant as him again and he would be at the same house for the rest of his life.

Noises

Making the beluga whale blow

it’s triumph, a nice hum , a tale

like the sweet crumble of earth

under your boot, you share, you rail

not like a honeybee,

but a timpani.

Lake Wananaca

Sometimes I can fall asleep floating on my back, you know,

If I really try. And if the sun and the coolness of the water balance just right,

I might even be with my brother.

 

On the nights when I feel most awake, I dance with Deborah

Down at the city square.

She saved a boy who almost drowned in Lake Wananaca last spring.

She told me that he couldn’t lift his head up off of the pillow

Until she finished wiping away his tears,

And made sure that he didn’t come down with pneumonia.

We would dance in our plaids like near-colliding, mating birds

And forget about some things on the more popular nights,

But reminisce about others when there were only a few other

Sweethearts on the dance floor.

 

First Sergeant in Vietnam told me my kid brother had died back home –

Didn’t look where he was diving and broke himself.

Said that he lost a lot of blood, near dyed the shore red, in a comical voice

I couldn’t do anything where I was, in that heavy jungle,

I couldn’t get him back to the surface.

 

I rent out canoes and kayaks for $5.50 an hour,

If you’re a student I’ll give you a discount, but you must provide a valid ID.

No one’s going to come to the lake today.

Anything too strenuous on a day like this, what with the fog and the kind cold,

Is best left undone.

 

I get aboard my favorite canoe: a rich green one with a violet border.

The name Josephine Sprints in light blue paint flaking at the stern.

If someone could see me, maybe I wouldn’t be so odd,

Floating on what should be water to the eye, but I can only see my fog,

I see my brother again.

He never got beyond the doggy paddle when he was alive,

But he now knows how to float on his back, like me.

Our fingers almost touch, the wind pushing us in a race with itself,

But we never get too close, which is fine.

The thought of me getting back into my boat and leaving him alone,

It makes me stay.

 

Getting Involved

Plenty of people, lined like mushrooms

along the booths, learning about Africa’s poor

and the dwindling seriousness of live comedy

from young faces like their own, like my own.

I want to get involved, and need to spend my day

Doing these things that make a night worthwhile.

So I stand and rotate in the parking lot where booths are parked

And make a day out of planning to make more of my days.

I run into someone I remember from yesterday,

a kind woman with buried, trilobite pupils

and she notices how I stand among peers,

and shake with every breeze from incoming Fall,

like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree –

sloped and with a big, red ornament branching from

the tiniest of frames. I try to smile for real, she walks away.

 

But as I look to my left I notice a group of three men

dressed in the traditional Islamic garb, no beards but one,

on the face of someone that I remember from four years ago.

He dressed up in a tight red dress and high heels one high school day,

saying hello to me near the dark-red lockers with a giggle and wave.

He beat-boxed, a white dude in a mostly black, public, inner-city school.

With a minute in the shade I could discern a hard life outlook on life,

But not too glaringly one-sided like a capsizing ship.

He plans his day around prayer, something I can’t guess at,

And the clothes and customs are buried under a youth

That is likened to the Dark Ages.

He is not of the Homecoming spirit week.

Now, still with a few crumbs of crust between my teeth from lunch,

I try to smile for real, but the new, Islamic version of the guy I knew

is serious now, even though he points at me,

as if I were a joke.

Pigeon Carrier

A Greek god that makes non-harp music

And wings the dust, breaks the electricity

Of the day into cement bits

 

Like a prehistoric firework.

With an animal’s speed, this god is

Wrapped in antique tufts of flight.

 

Let the message be delivered,

Held dearly like a clay cuneiform or a stiffened parchment tube,

Because this god does not warrant a saga

Or a history of his own.

Put to the test, against a new age of wires and illuminated threads,

Thrust from the egg and mythology against a silicon backdrop,

This well-winged god does not make himself seen as inferior.

He grips the air,

Making a message concerning death seem light

And the life of a God seem so deathly routine.

 

This messenger is quicker than the processing wires;

The wires that often fray and split at the flick of an antediluvian wing.

From “Carrier pigeon beats South Africa’s Telkom in data transfer race” Earth Times September 2009

The Katedya Marketplace at 8

In rainbow robes, stained wife-beaters, and the Western pale shirt and tie,

Spindly Ghanaian salesmen of all sorts.

Fuzzy shaved heads coming into contact with my bony shoulders

If I happen to make one ill-laid step.

Mothers with children hanging like howlers on their backs,

Secured by a mile of cloth, lined in golden, flattened grapes,

They walk assuredly, necks craned, balancing ridiculous bowls

Atop their small, magpie-black heads.

The open sewers are waiting to devour a reckless tire,

One or two that happen to wander too close to the paved, red clay edge of the street.

I must keep walking, I feel strangers breathe on my neck, brush my shoulder,

Grab my arm because of my white skin, which means money, and I know that

The mother in front of me must feel her child’s face being pelted by my Bruni breath,

which must smell of palm-oil fried plantains and yams – last night’s dinner.

A pastor shouts sermons from a loudspeaker on a sidewalk.

He’s advertising himself.

I block out his voice with my fingers.

From one of my Summer 2009 experiences in Kumasi, Ghana

Family Reunion

A world heavyweight and his deadpan

Jowls limp and unheightened by the tears

That now stain the waistline hem of his shirt

The old faces that he does not remember

From a time and country that was meant to remain as home

But is not as profitable to him now

It is not where he will lace his boots

And walk comfortably during the night

When the quick, artificial head-bobs of the lizards

Can been seen upon the shower curtained sidewalks

He, a teenager, likens the reunion to an aged and dust-bunnied photo album,

Quietly certain that the moments and awkward stances in the photos

Took place at a time of relevance,

But not sure at all as to the circumstance of the photo

or if he wanted to smile or not

but still smiling, even when he knew that he would be standing

among familiar strangers

 CNN 08/30/09 “A child’s reunion in China”