a cognitive slip so garden-variety
I flush to mention it: a name
scrawled on a vacant
envelope and dropped
in the unfathomable space
between the wall and dresser.
2.
Six years ago saw
my grandmother buried,
calendar blockslike train ties
spreading
eternity between us. Some details
are discarded, documents, hair,
the final phone call, a vital element
always misplaced.
3.
Her first name was Dorothy.
4.
My dream tornadoes strout
like corn here in Iowa.
Wide as a forearm, they pitch
and turn, harrowed from hauling
the weight of the world. Inside
are fragments: street lamp,
bed frame, limbs of a red oak
throttling a Ford sedan. A narrow margin
between wind and earth, they gaze
down as they churn, pairs of ruined eyes
inviting me to a fractured table. I decline
by spouting verses, I believe O Lord I believe.
I hide in available basements
with farmers and their wives, waving like fields
in wicker rockers, faces averted
to a sea of surges green and bitter
through high window sills. My nother
finds me. We link hands and run,
fingers pressed as if in prayer
against what’s still undone, what
our bodies hold together.
5.
Dorothy taken by the twister, sits up in bed,
all curls and gingham, open like a star,
and looks out her window, where the apnes
have cracked. The Wicked Witch cackles
in green facepaint, peeling under pressure
to resemble ancient canvas, a torn map.
Sneering, she points to a mother and two little girls
dressed for church, the smallest clinging
to her hat with rose and cornflower blooms,
the oldest girl a pinwheel. Her eyes reflect the wall
of wind, Dorothy’s eyes. Long ago she released
her bonnet. plain straw, and her hold on her skirts
so that a lacy pair of drawers poked skyward
for every cycle of legs and hair, her face
twisted in a snarl. She plows fingernails
in her sister’s fine scal. The hat tumbles away,
and Mother cuts through the wind, avenging
demon with a birch switch. Bitter still, the girl
takes refuge near half a dance hall, where couples
revolve like a missing factory to Jimmy Dorsey’s
big band. The girl folds her hand between loose slats
in the fence, and a man smears the back with ink
from a used ticket. She’s admissible now, but
before her patent leather mands on the doorstep,
a cross-current drags her to a dinner
where she serves hobos and Bible
study wives. A bug turns over in a ditch outside.
One soldier with head wounds calls her name,
and she rushes to cradle his lacerated skull
in her lap. He asks, “Lady, am I going to die?”
Facing the question like a point receding
on a map of the world, she smiles and tells him nothing.
6.
The hall clock keeps
a steady down-beat
filing like Memorial Day
into her bedroom. The walls
are pink, her favorite, to match
curtains and satin sheets,
the sweet scent of Rose Milk
on a four-poster bed. This is
the room I haunt. I am
the perfect houseguest,
keeping windows washed
and carpets free of doghair,
cobwebs. Her medical bracelet
I leave on the nightstand
beside needles and boxes
of chocolate-covered cherries,
which I replace every few
months when the cellophane turns
cloudy. From the bureau mirror
snapshots of grandkids observe, faces
no bigger than watches, surprised,
bawling, indifferent. They await
a result. But until she returns
I vow to maintain my post. Shackled,
I pace the room in a circle,
trapped in low orbit, spinning
frail and intricate textx, unread
contracts, pleas, bargains with God.
7.
There is no end to the storm,
only time to crawl above ground
and begin salvaging what’s useful.
Scoring the landscape like a highway, shards
og my grandmother;s house lay embedded
seven feet in topsoil. A wide band
to cover on foot. My nails fill
with grit as I excavate, each scrap a vast
finger pointing skyward. The storm will build
again, but my bodt’s only pieces
held in place by mirror tricks and a receding hope
that from this wreckage, there’ll be something
I can recover.
