She
Notices Things
Cherries at the bottom
of the crisper drawer
dented like car doors.
A child’s tiny
yellow socks
on a stained sidewalk.
That the old husband
next door has stopped
mowing his own grass.
She thinks it would be easy
for her right tires
to drift from the highway,
to forget how to walk
or her own name.
Still, sometimes
she puts on baubles
and sits next to you,
this close.
Imagine that.
Watching Kinsey on Valentine’s
it seems
we’ll have the theater to ourselves.
Array of chairs, red
for the picking, enthrall you.
You think it’d be funny
for us to sit
on opposite sides of the room.
Because we can,
you grapevine down the aisles;
I sprawl like a sunbather
at the foot of the screen.
Only after do I worry
I might be lying in soda.
Long last, two young couples,
shyfaced, wander in.
You call this “Singles Awareness Day,”
wedge your sport utility purse
in the seat you keep between us.
Touching
in public: a game
in which a jacket’s thrown
over my head
while you keep me
from smacking into trees.
Glimpses of shadow, sensed changes
in direction cinch my grip
on your waist;
You’ve never held me tighter.
The film hurts
like an empty plate,
gapes so wide
I could crawl inside it.
You chuckle, I grow angry
as Kinsey forgets
that his subjects, friends, wife,
have larger hearts
than gall wasps.
My exhausted tears
can’t be caged.
When the lights come up, you ask coarsely
why I’m “leaking.”
The
pit bull puppy had hair your color,
jaws that closed around my curls.
I watched your hand rise and fall
cupping her hot belly as she dozed.
Sleeping with limbs splayed,
stomach exposed,
means trust.
Only animals
seem to soften you.
Arm in arm through the dark
parking lot, its potholes small lakes,
we trumpet like sad old men
a pub’s just spit out.
We shrill with laughter
at each other’s ravings:
“Clean out-the-house,
clean out-the-yard,”
a dumb radio ad
we can’t stop parroting.
I remember Mr. and Mrs. Kinsey
in bed, laughing ‘til laughter yielded
snorts, then tears.
Nerdy, dysfunctional,
swaddled in billowy nightwear,
laughter was their only resort.
Monday
you drank too much
white wine. I didn’t think
I’d be able to tell, since ten vodka shots
with shepherds on the Eurasian Steppe
hadn’t fazed you (or so you’d said).
This time, you found you
couldn’t hum a song in key,
or decide whether “Lynchburg”
was spelled with “u” or “e.”
You were flushed as if you’d just made love,
your eyes,
shameless, blazed
with earnest light.
When you try to hug me
goodbye, I decide
your outstretched arms must mean
something else—
perhaps a court jester’s
customary dance, or a grandiose
good-riddance gesture—
and I fill my arms with luggage
instead of with you.
Then when I kiss the top of your head,
you won’t turn around.
What do we fear? Perhaps
how quickly we morph into satisfied
loners the moment we separate,
or how, in each other’s absence,
the rain-slicked road
like a jet cat’s sleek spine
can still shimmer hello.
Even from this distance
I feel your heart's cherry-stained
door crack wider for me.
Suddenly my nails are in my teeth,
and what I want to do would tease
the dark that huddles panting
at my uncurtained window.
Tonight some boldness moved
me in my smoking jacket
to ride the rattling grocery cart
down the iced parking lot.
Winds only kick up
the wild in me
when no one’s around.
But your gentle disclosures
have earned one by one
the winterberries
of my trust. I think
when you come back to me,
I’ll retain this daring
that seasons my solitude:
hair snaring snow
as fists brace fiercely;
wide-open eyes
keen as the chill bite of dusk.
Copyright
© 2007 Leia Manuel
