Trucks muscle aggressions down Second and I
race across, a little late, raising my arms in greeting. She sees
my form. How holy the eager heart. We move inside
the lean light of the diner. Her wide voice whittles
its tempers from a thick pulp to a diaphanous
weave. Had it not been for that, I might’nt have thought
to a far time when I was still milk and silly. When the moon
and its waxy white busted her open. The surge
of the Unification Church hung over—forcing, and she
followed its crescents. You know, back then there were two
verbs: trust and flight. How much enough is enough my father asked
as he and my mother tugged her from plentiful failure,
from faith, unstitching her logic. Took her to the small
room she rented with a rectangle of couch
and bed, a plastic bin of albums: The Who, The Dead. Shifty
rug, a vase of wandering daisies. Again, she went
by the pigeons. Again, she stood with her soliloquies
and theories and candles at the airport, dealing
flowers. A focus, an axis. This was years ago. I couldn’t
feel the orbit of shamans. Didn’t know life had many
menus. I watched out the window at the journey. Now, here,
midday, midtown in this mustardy light, our hands loose
on Formica, she mentions memory as a suitcase and folds
into it only what she can carry. Honey, do you want more,
the waitress asks, a stained coffeepot in her hand. My aunt
shakes her full face. Hours turn willingly. All the past is the rest
of the garish city. At one point, we look to the streets
eager to overwhelm our eyes. To move off
the bruise of the worse lying still in our laps. What is life
but another loneliness, lights out? Our talk rises
and falls, becomes soft. Then we are done; we walk out
to everyone else’s scene, look at the comma of street, look
to the low moon.
Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press), which Publishers Weekly calls a “stirring, original collection.” Her poems have appeared in Witness, Poet Lore, Kenyon Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Los Angeles Review, and previously in J Journal. Honors include the Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, and Arabic. www.laurencamp.com
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