April 29 (poem 29)

"things that have made me cry this week"

1. he sang Palisades for the last time;
Jon do you remember when I offered you
my dna and the field in which it grows?
that offer still stands,
but I cannot promise that your children
would be able to maintain perfect pitch
through whiskey the way you can.

2. drifting through the place I used to call home;
it smelled exactly the same as four years ago,
only the names on the doors had rearranged their letters
and the postsecret wall I made was absent.
Emily do you remember dead poets society nights
and how your room always smelled like thai tea
and warmth, how we rafted mattresses together
in the lake of your floor, swallowing goldfish
crackers, chocolate chips, and orange juice?
Remember smearing purple shit into my hair
and how we stained every bathtub and shower
in the building for three whole months?
Meryl do you remember the time I dialed 911
the night I stopped loving the girl whose life
I saved by calling, how you anchored me to the good
dock of your arms as I sank again and again into
all seven seas of your chest?
Gabe do you remember how we played dirty scrabble
and translated everything into braille for your roommate?
Katrina do you remember how you used to stamp
kisses on the envelope of my cheek? It was the first time
I felt like it didn’t matter that I was gay,
you treated me exactly the same, thank you.
Do you remember the day Tea scraped a razor across my scalp
and Liz said, incredulous, that I was still beautiful
and my girlfriend’s silence said the opposite?
She was my first kiss, first fuck, first girlfriend,
and we had nothing in common.

3. the signatures orbiting the photograph of me as a baby.
I am not sure why I think I will miss a community that
made me feel so lonely toward the end.
I noticed when you made mix cds for everyone except me,
how your inside jokes sprouted in the sunlight of the
gatherings I was never invited to,
how I didn’t quite make it into all those photographs you took,
how David was surprised when I told him
I felt like a distant satellite most of the time.

April 29 (poem 27)

“imperfect anniversary”

It has been three and a half years since
I saw the candlewax version of you ensconced in a casket,
your cheeks completely the wrong shade of pink,
your eyelashes actually visible.
When no one was looking I touched the thing that had been
your hand,
and I could not wash the coldness off my fingers for days.
You did not look peaceful or asleep,
you looked like a casting of yourself.
Six months earlier you drove six hours to see me,
your first and only granddaughter,
graduate from thirteen years of doodling on public school desks.
You told me you were proud of me
and I didn’t understand why—
“It’s just school, Dad Dad” I said.
You were always Dad Dad because when my tongue
was first learning how to walk
it tripped over Granddad and fell on Dad Dad;
all five of your grandsons, tumbling out after me,
following my lead,
never learned the correct steps after that.
There are six of us
grandchildren,
and I am the only one who graduated
with you watching.
Now, as I prepare to walk again,
I wonder if you would be proud of me,
your bald-headed city-clinging granddaughter,
who you taught how to flip a fish inside out,
who climbed every tree you introduced her to
barefoot,
who begged for stories about hornytoads and rattlers,
who navigated Lake Chelan from the captain’s chair of your lap,
who brushed off beestings
and filled her pockets with river rocks shaped like feet,
but who never scooped together
enough courage to tell you she’s gay,
and who did not even cry for your funeral
until three and a half years later.