Lake Como, For Instance

 

 

Was lethal with pebbles.

 

The dog ate debris and stopped defecating.

 

I tried hard not to look provincial in my sabot shoes.

 

Like my background, it was comfortably uninteresting under the trees.

 

In the horizon, a windsurfer.

 

The way he fell into water swooshed of safe sex.

 

I was hoping for a different bench, something with fixed paint.

 

It’s hard to appreciate the present, like oil stains on paper.

 

Out of spite, people continue to bring up the topic of my birthday.

 

The lettuce in my ham sandwich tasted of a pipe organ’s hundred years.

 

I stepped on someone’s extra scoop of pistachio ice cream.

 

I still insist on addressing these everyday things as mortal remains.

 

Summer left abruptly.

 

How does one live with a lost toe ring?

And I Was, In Those Days, Sober  

There were flies. I counted them on both hands. The overcast blew fish faces from the clouds and blended with one of my mother’s dizzy spells. She was again with child. Coffee stained the plastic spoon. Cream hurt the wallpaper. I was two-fifth saccharine. The kind that killed or got killed inside a body. Despite yards of tissue, my father’s chest remained hammered in, disfigured. Curious neighbors entered through the backdoor. Everyone wanted to see the bullet extracted from his lung. He never knew it would outlive him. Some lung, the doctor told him. It was a ploy to get under his skin, her skin. My parents could pretend to be friends with anyone. Here was thirst before I learned it: paper horses and apple trees, Newton as he carved his initials on a wide-brimmed hat thinking he might gather gravity on his head.