Jazzercise

In a room brimming with women, you are the only man.

You pull out moves you never have before—

hold in your core, chassé right

into a back ball change, plié over

a hypothetical garden hose,

try to stay invested, keep a serious face,

keep your arms above your heart.

The instructor pauses mid-hip walk,

says put on some makeup, I can’t see you.

You feel your pocket. Your wallet

is nonexistent. Your water bottle

is an unsculpted block of marble.

You bounce outside on a medicine ball

and decide you need a hammer

to throttle that pesky worm in your ear.

In the pattering rain, in the blear

of streetlights, an Ace materializes.

You march past the riding mowers,

wave off the overalled clerks,

bypass the siding, the overhead lighting,

reach the back counter where new metal

is ground, where the must is strongest.

You try to describe your key

from memory. The woman throws up her hands

and says I’m not an artist. A cuckoo

emerges from a gingerbread house.

You cough and you’re in the stacks

lifting a book about a book about working out.

Toilet flushing—no, child slurping

a chocolate malted through a straw,

regarding you from a rocking chair,

your football knees and marching band feet.

You’re listing to the right. You flip

reckless through the five-thousand-plus pages

in hopes of an illustration.

Marriage

The memory slaps his face

like seawater, and he shudders:

years ago, in a different persona,

steering the hatchback

down some county road,

passing tobacco barns, sensing

there never would be a house

or a woman to keep him around,

total control, therefore no point

in feeling anything but good.

He exits the interstate,

sees three saplings

planted in the median, green limbs

straining toward the sun, bees

murmuring and drunk on their mission.

It takes his breath. So much so

he pulls into the church parking lot

to await his breath’s return.

A long time he lived by himself.

These days, he and his wife

go to lots of celebrations

with lots of food and familiarity,

and he often sits off to the side

oohing and aahing,

sometimes just nodding,

and he’s grateful and content

to be ensconced, to see time

both behind and in front of him.

He recites this under his breath.

When newlyweds burst from the sanctuary

and run through a shower of birdseed,

he rolls down his window

and cheers the loudest of anyone.

Then, another feeling

and another vision, a strange one:

a man in a leather jacket,

motorcycle helmet under his arm,

sunglasses, stubbled chin,

stubborn jaw, standing in the middle

of a bed of pink and red azaleas,

water can in hand, not quite

himself, not quite not.

In Your Teaching Dream

Twenty-two students and the cat in your bedroom.

The brainiac lolls on the beanbag chair.

You mumble something about the need for research.

Roll book, lesson plan, posture: forgotten.

The room feels full of marshmallows

or just a lot of lukewarm water.

Everyone has to use the bathroom, two at a time.

The troublemakers from world lit

are rifling your bureau and arguing

who has the best chicken strips.

You seem to remember a project was due.

Sam Cunningham, who sat next to you in band,

walks in and tries to give you his journal.

You say it’s late. He smiles,

lays it down and walks out. On the cover is a clown.

Let’s try again tomorrow, you say.

Everyone scatters. Not a book to be seen.

Someone’s left an Etch-a-Sketch on your shelf.

You shake it once or twice. The maraca inside.

A woodpecker jackhammers the house.

You run out, throw a suitcase at the roof.

No bird. The rattling moves to the hedge,

the mailbox, up the predawn street.

You’ve never left this lawn in your life.

You step off the curb into a fusillade of eggs.

Hopkinsville

Town outside time, smug, self-satisfied.

Tobacco browning. Amish buggies kicking up dust.

Quiet neighbors. Dead mall. Three Chinese buffets

in the same half-mile. Mill grinding around the clock.

I didn’t want to make it work. Bigger things awaited.

Yet it sticks to my dreams. I persist

in believing I left behind something shiny.

Friends, you met there, got married and stayed there.

You drove five hours to see me get married,

drove back that night. Did that happen?

That’s been forever. I know you were here,

you're in this picture from the reception

decked out in black and lavender. I’m sorry

I didn’t stay at your table, you know how it goes,

you’re skating on the surface, you don’t see people,

I mean you do but you’re circling so fast.

I wanted to be funny and dumb with you again.

I want to say I think you were destined

to be together, the picture proves it.

for Taylor and Julia

The Miracle Worker

On the shoulder, on all fours

on the potholed county road, clawed

near death by the indignity of people

bound determined to not listen

no matter how many mandates you issue,

you wobble, wounded company man

miles from your cubicle

on the ground floor of the squat

office complex, and howl,

deep-seated, sourceless, existentialist

tears boiling up into a drenching

flood in the field ahead

where cows, upright and unruffled,

shimmer on the edge of sight.

You didn’t know you had it in you

but now you are lighter, look,

on your feet and striding,

the day a lighter shade of slate,

the trees a darker green,

and a limo slows and sweeps you up—

later, awake, you remember

back in the field you mouthed

I hope the cows will be all right—

and you’re ascending in a jagged diagonal,

riding away from and rising above

the water you’ve just let loose,

the flat land you’ve left behind,

broken white lines whizzing by, and where

this limo which is really a helicopter is headed

is anybody’s guess.

Three Storms

1

Our oldest dog was an oak.

Ate everything we fed her and a lot we didn’t.

Burst first out the door

to keep the neighbor dogs in their place.

Storms rolled through and she was inconsolable.

Followed us from room to room.

Panted. Paced. Burrowed the throw rug

wearing a weirdly ecstatic face.

The doggie rapture? We couldn’t be sure.

It was a wet, portentous summer.

Trees fell eight hours apart

at opposite ends of the street.

Every morning another roach belly-up in the study.

We ordered her a thundershirt.

The name sounded great: chain mail,

suit of armor, happy place,

pliable yet inviolable.

The idea was we were to wrap her up

snug as a sausage; the pressure

would work its magic.

One night the power went out.

We played backgammon by candlelight

until I grew tired of rolling the dice.

A last pass at our phones, and to bed.

Looked out at the flash-bulb sky,

heard the thunder roll into itself.

Shuddered. Drew into each other.

Sweated through our separate dreams.

The dog snored,

blissful inside her shirt-shield.

2

                Roughing it.

Rain tapping for two straight days

                           our pop-up camper,

                fog shrouding ground.

Flu-ridden, under a quilt,

                           I’ve seen nothing

                of the other family

we’re camping with:

                           father who works with mine,

                soft-spoken mother,

snooty daughter

                           I sort of but don’t much

                know from school, or want to.

Lukewarm bath-air,

                           my stomach straddling

                full and hungry,

little TV making

                           the hollows of Dad’s cheeks

                glow with advertisements—

tires, power tools,

                           knives so sharp they could cut

                silence. My head is hot.

Mom slides the cold thermometer

                           under my tongue:

               ninety-nine and holding.

She floats the theory

                           of leaving early. No response.

                Pop tab hiss, cola cracking ice.

The other father and his daughter

                           climb down from their camper

                in raingear, disappear

down a trail. We’re here

                           until the bitter end.

                A sick miracle

how this is understood

                           without being said aloud—

                suck it up, ride it out.

Mom flips on the burner,

                           flings pasta into the pot,

                is traveling somewhere

I can only imagine.

                           In the wet mesh window

                between me and the elements,

I trace my name:

                           first and last, all caps.

3

How this man in camouflage manages

to make it out the convenience store door

holding an extra-large cappuccino

and a paper-sacked twelve-pack of beer

and an opened umbrella over himself

in this Biblical rain and this night

like the inside of a silo,

walk into headlights’ blear,

bluetooth in his ear, speak soothing syllables

to his wife or his child or someone else close

and in need of advice, and know

exactly in what corner of his pocket

the keyless remote is lodged, fumble for and find it,

and press unlock without having to look

escapes me. I text my wife:

If it’s right to say these clouds are brewing,

imperial stout shall gush from the great heavenly tap.

No reply. I wish you were here with me. Smiley face.

The man eases his purchase onto the back seat,

takes his place behind the wheel, turns the key,

rifles his glove box for the right CD,

slides it into the slot, and takes off.

In Your Eggshell Dream

“I let you close once and what happens?

The floor’s cut up in this one corner

and something in the ceiling is redolent of Death!

You forgot to put out more cans of air!

The curlicue-and-shrink-wrap shipment

continues to be unopened! And funny—

we sold no folderol last night

but now somehow we’re out?

What is this, your personal treehouse?

When I get back with my large triple

chocolate chunk caramel skim latte,

I’d better see some evidence

I’m not dreaming!” But he is. He’s been

assistant manager too long

or humble not long enough

or the trees have shriveled in the record heat

or a million other possible tropes.

You, you’re no trope. You throw open the doors.

In marches a skeleton holding a handbag,

demanding a refund. You handle it.

The skeleton blows you a kiss and skips out.

In a minute which seems an hour

you take back a beaten guitar,

scuffed sneakers, driftwood, a Christmas tree,

someone’s great-grandmother’s butter knives.

You take a whiff of fresh Sharpie

and mark everything down

to two-seventy-nine. The phone keeps ringing

some jingle about redemption.

You poke your head outside

expecting the curb. You get the inside

of another store: eggshell walls,

empty shelves. One foot follows

the other across the threshold.

Windows without sale flyers—

endcaps without mouse pads or batteries—

register swaddled in plastic—

counter pristine as the dash of a Cadillac.

A store with nothing to sell—

your breath the only air.

Two orderlies muscle in, strap you into

a gurney, push you through a portal

to a clearing, a meeting

of guidance counselors. In the dancing

shadows of campfire flames

they sign rapidly and with much agitation.

In their shoulders hunches

a hushed, indeterminate fear,

which is what you hear

when you wake to the sports talk station rant

and slam the snooze button.

Your forehead glistens.

Once you were pretty good at stopping

your dreams on a dime.