Jam Jars

Summer cherries
remind me of the 
creek bed with its 
weeping trees and 
slick rocks, we would eat the
red fleshes and 
spit the pits into
the stream.
Race them,
and yours always won.


Now I set the big porcelain
bowl out, filled with the 
red fruits and I remember
the jams I made one summer,
my kitchen covered in 
pectin and mason jars.


The pot on the stove was never empty
and the heat never did leave
from the place,
no matter if the screen door
is bigger now.
I still slam it to make sure
it closes, and it refuses to
take the abuse, swings open
when I'm not looking-
a child stealing butter
from the dish.


The parties with fruit bowls
and sangria, until late at night
under the cafe lights of my patio
we played drunken Scrabble and
I spelled out your name on 
accident. You weren't there,
and my bone chilled with
the alcohol.
Cherry pits littered the lawn.


I was carrying jam jars 
over to your own screen door,
past your laundry on the line
when your mother sat on the 
steps and wept big springtime 
tears not meant for August.


I dropped the jars and ran 
too far away to walk home,
so I sat in a field all night 
long, I swore you'd come back.


Nobody found me there,
in the infant corn
except grasshoppers.


The jars had broken and the jam
still spilled and crystallized in your yard.
It was cherry and I was going to tell
you stories from camp
while we ate it on buttered bread.


But I guess when you left
you were the color of our fruit,
and it painted your walls,
dripping through the ceiling.
She told me it was just like
jam. 
I wanted to put you in my 
mason jars.


The cafe lights flicker 
and I swallow more of the
acidic fruit- no cherries-
to drown out your name
I played on a double word score,
and retract my tiles for the
next round.


I never made jam again.

Winter Grey

He touched her arm on the subway, a gentle clutching, but she was too cold to feel it. Her winter coat splayed open in the front, thrifted and missing one too many buttons, it had lost all protectiveness it once had. He was shivering, and rightfully, pale and thin peacoat nothing but a newspaper cloak in this storm. And a wonder the subway still ran at all, the snow blowing down the steps and forming drifts on the platforms taller than he was, or would ever be. She was nodding off, the walking against the wind was just too much for anybody, let alone her sickly being. The city was hung in ice and a thick coating of snow like buttercream icing she used to know how to make. Things faded over the years, even winters like this one. He tucked her scarf up under her chin and frowned, eyes red from the wind, and wanting to cry. The sunny seats were almost ironic this ride, perky and unendingly bright, while above him New york dwelt only in shades of grey, would be this way for months and months. And probably months more. It was like lighting, fast and unexpected. The snow camp in wet clumps, pummeling each other on their way to the sidewalk, to stick and make a mockery of the traction of every New Yorker's shoes. And then everyone slept and woke to mountains and white-out conditions, level 3 snow emergencies, sometimes. And the ice hanging as Christmas decorations in all the parks in Manhattan. Morningside Heights' trees were the prettiest, naked in rows, glittering for the holidays. 


And it was Christmastime now, December 21st, and 15 degrees throughout the east coast. It was one of those slamming storms which comes every so often, just enough to keep you leery of wintertime and sidewalk salt. They had planned to leave for Indiana today, but the flights were cancelled, the car packed in its own igloo, and she ran a fever of 104. Which, as far as he knew, was not safe at all. He missed his family right now, ached a little from the longing, his mother would know how to fix her, his poor sickly girlfriend. He wanted to take her to his old house, and sleep next to her in front of the fireplace. He had planned to, until three hours ago. Her limp frame had hung in the door way as she said "I really don't feel well", and collapsed in a jumble of gaunt bones on the ground. He had made a loud sound, a mixed gasp and scream, had bent over her with a growing sense of panic. He was no medic, what could he do in that situation? He gently pulled her up to sitting and got her water. He said a prayer that didn't make sense and waited for her to resurface. She did, after a few elongated minutes- vomiting as she regained herself. 


It was truly the scariest moment in this young man's life, his girlfriend, in his mind, might have died. She could have hit her head on the door, cracked her face when she fell. What if she had a condition? Like leprosy or something. 


He knew, the hospital could fix this, but it was block and blocks away, and no taxis could straddle the snowy intersections. So it must be the subway, and so they ended up in these seats, after haphazardly pulling on every overcoat and pair of mittens in the apartment. They fell a couple times, and he carried her down the street for a stretch. The experience recalled for him the time he had carried his sister when she had broken her leg on their farm back home. A leap from the tire swing, landing wrong and folding in on herself. She had screamed, ear-splitting and pure, but now in the city he could barely distinguish her limp whimpering from the wind's own voice.


On the train he held her hand, checked her forehead, made sure she still breathed. She was so pink and flushed, her eyes hollowed out underneath, a purpling like grapes into wine, the way bruises splash on the skin. And he was scared. Alone in this car, only the smiling and defaced advertisements to witness his attempts at care. He pushed her cornsilk hair back, and it was damp with sweat, but she shivered in her sleep. The lights flickered overhead as the car bumped along the tracks. Oh fuck, he thought, will the electricity hold out long enough? At this point, it was anyone's guess as to how long until the entire island was pushed into darkness, forced to live like huddled penguins for what could be up to an entire week? 


It was almost Christmas for christ's sake, he wanted to be home baking cookies and getting buzzed on eggnog. Instead he was confused on a subway car that could not decide if it wanted light or dark. Holding his girlfriend's sick body to his. Damn hospitals, they're always too far away. 


Life had ceased making sense at this point as he took of his mittens and put them over her second pair. She didn't wake up at all while moved her hands and kissed the gloved masses that had turned into flippers as opposed to hands with fingers. He even looked at the map of the trains, even though he knew which branch went where by heart. But somehow he'd failed to realize they were on the wrong train. 


In his haste he'd brought her down the first set of stairs to the underground, instead of the second, which would have taken them within a block of the hospital. He looked at the map and traced the green line until it hit its final destination for the day. The goddamned beach. 


"Is this some sadistic joke?" He was enraged to the point he was crying, afraid she was dead and he was going to die on a broken down subway car in the middle of this fucking snow storm. The beach, he said over and over. And the beach was nowhere near the hospital, but by now, there were no stops left on this line, and to the beach they were headed. It was 3:37 pm, they should have been in the car, singing Christmas carols on the freeway towards home. 


He dug around in his pockets, hoping for some sign of life outside, a cell phone perhaps, but it was on the bedside table in the apartment, probably dead or without signal in this weather. He found a paperclip, 73 cents, and a peppermint candy. He ate the candy and it made him think of Christmas too much so he spit it onto the floor and watched it. It did not move, but he wanted it to, because he couldn't focus on anything. His vision was blurred from exhaustion. It took a lot to get her onto this train, and he wasn't very strong, was actually very weak and scrawny. But he had been going to the gym for five months. He had not gone this week.


The candy stayed, her body stayed, and his feet stayed as the train swayed to stopping, and the door cracked wider and let in the cold again. Where did subways go when they reached the end of their lines? Did they rest? He wanted to rest, but she might be so sick beside him that she would die. He picked her up, and she weighed less than she ever had. He wondered if part of her had disappeared when she was sleeping. He had read before, when he was young, about how when people died, they weighed 21 grams less than when they were living. At the moment of death they lost 21 grams. It scared him so that he couldn't sleep for three days as a boy, wondering why this happened. What if his soul weighed more, and it never ascended at all?


He knew she felt lighter, but more than 21 grams lighter as he lifted her up the steps into the blinding world. He paused on the sidewalk and heard the sea crashing a block away. He had never been to the beach in winter, couldn't imagine snow on the sand. He took his gloves back from her, feeling guilty. She was still not awake. 


He didn't know where else to go, didn't know if there would be any lines running towards home soon. And they were far from home, too far too walk, the hospital farther. And not a crawling Yellow Cab in sight. Not even a goddamned Gypsy Cab around. Nobody was walking, it was a ghost town like in Old Westerns, or that one episode of The Brady Bunch he remembered too well. 


He made the executive decision to see the ocean in winter. If he couldn't go home, this might be the next best thing. The walk wasn't tough, the snow had drifted all around but there were spots that were only a few inches deep, and he followed that haphazard trail to the edge of the sidewalk, where it met the sand. And the sand was covered in snow. Inches of thick white cotton and fluff above the beach. But the sea was not frozen, saltwater froze different he recalled from somewhere. It didn't matter, it was too nice to care for a moment. He listened to the waves, and there were still gulls in the air who cried out shrilly. The grey mass moved like always, motion as constant as the sun. He was too tired to walk anymore, he had ventured across the half the city by now, on foot and by train and he was tired. He pulled her scarf around her face, careful to leave her nose uncovered for breathing, and then he did the same. He was so tired, too tired; exhausted. He curled around her on the sand, after he cleared the snow with his frozen hands. She was still breathing. Still breathing and sighing. He was ok, he knew she was here, he was alright. But so tired. How did he get this tired? He couldn't remember. But he wanted to call his mother. His pockets had no phone, but did have 73 cents, enough for the payphones they still scattered every 50 feet in this area. 


He left her for a moment, because she was breathing still, and pulled himself to the blue phone to dial the only number he ever memorized right, and the mechanical sound that answered him was soothing. She answered, voice golden and dripping light, "Hello?"


"Mom! Mom, it's me. Guess where I am." He sounded five years old.


"Honey, where are you? Are you stranded somewhere? Do you need me to get you, I'll send your dad up to get you-"


"No mom... I'm at the beach."

MARY (II)

"Consumption"
I remember a butter
voice whisper, the cool
of a stethoscope 
on my chest.


Consumption,
like eating,
like learning to sew.
Like coughing 
in shades of silk.


I remember, in soft-edged
photos, only the maids.
Papa, a doorframe shadow
at best.


Sponge baths like the sea,
and faint murmurs
of my insides wanting out.
I spoke in two voices.


I remember the day no once came.
The white linens swallowed me,
spattered in my broken lungs.

MARY

I died in a 
'blaze of 
glory'
they wrote in the newspapers
across the state.


Died like a phoenix,
my wings fiery,
my voice fierce.


From the top of 
a grain elevator, tall
as heaven.


A crowd watching
as Icarus flew
too close.

"LYDIA G."

Wife of nobody,
at the age of 26,
I wandered pawn shops.
Lost money in cards,
lost memory in absinthe.


I made the green glasses,
like tires rolled in worms,
one told me- pouring first
water, then hallucinogen over a
sugar cube.


I served old men
who whistled and leered.
I then shook from them their
confidence with my drinking.


Lydia G, wife of nobody.
At 27, whore of everybody.
Sleeping in gutters is better. 
Snake fingers and sausage hands
molded my body into anyone they
needed me to be. I always looked
up at cracked ceiling constellations
all night.


Lydia G, dead at 27,
sleeping fast and loose
with the wrong men,
wife of everybody.


[Inferred from a gravestone marked LYDIA G. And her death date. That was all that could be distinguished from the corroded stone.]

L'enfant

"Infant"
it says,
"Aged 25 days".


Or more so,
"INFANT",
because in your death
you were powerful.
Kicking red-faced and wrinkled.


Fresh as white sheets I had
hung out, collecting in the
worldly smells. 


Wrapping your little feet
was hardest, the toes which did
not know dancing.


I wanted to go with you,
wherever you had gone,
bald and afraid.
I could tell, because everyone
is frightened of the dark.


"Infant" I couldn't christen
with a name, you were born
half here, mostly elsewhere-
fighting to hold the gods' hands.
Blue with holding your breath.


I covered your face,
bathed you and sang
shanties- shouted at God.


INFANT
aged 25 days,
stricken with homesickness.


[based upon a little grave marker labeled only "INFANT", aged 25 days.] 

Back in the Stacks

It scares me,
how I blink and 
it's gone.


A mirage of 
the midday heat.
The hundred stones collapse
in my mind, those lives
I tip over and annotate.


The empty spaces
between everything-
I want to be buried with 
my lover to dissolve
as the same being.
Absolve the space.


The apparent abyss in blank lines
and unmarked clocks.
Unless the minutes are denoted, 
I fear they do not exist.


Huddled to the metal vent
I hear the emptiness in the
ductwork. I guess I'll blink
and it will disappear- the 
skeletal spines bound in thick colors.


One is called 'Life' and I believe
it because there are no clocks 
with minutes, there is nothing
without 'empty'. 


[this is really cryptic, sorry. Written after a hot, hot journey to the Granville cemetery. After our return I laid on the floor of the mostly deserted library and feared life. This is the half-assed result.]

15/ Soda Jerk

[First experimentations with two-event poetry.]


Looking up, there was
the blinding halo-
how heavenly- ringing
the sinner's head.


As 15 stories our necks
did crane, our hair
catching the wind. He
was a miniature from 
down here. I expected a 
plastic parachute to catch
the little molded, mass-produced
man.


But none did.


I followed the fall
from the bird's eye view
I once had,
with the limp thud,
I grasp my scars.


----------------------


Funny, how she twirled those
dopey pigtails, her short skirt
riding up as she fidgeted at
the fountain- an ice-cold coke
for a stone-cold bitch.


The soda Jerk (real jerk)
bends to flirt with her 
cherry-glossed lips.


I sit in the vinyl booth,
my chubby legs sticking-
staring at myself 
ten years ago.


I remember to unbutton the top
two buttons, even now-
but no jerks look these days.

Garden Gnomes

Imagine the distaste.
The tiny toolshed,
locked up good and tight-
the wisteria curling its 
purple-blossomed fingers
along the windowpane.


A hearty sleep 
in the clean,
verdant spring hum.


But- alas! Oh the shock-
like eels you have grabbed
at in the dark,


ransacked!
looted! Oh the vandals of a 
college town. Just like them
to pick through trifles,
chucking their PBR cans as 
they drunkenly stumble over 
the garden gate.


The disgruntled nature as he
saw the lock-
haphazardly gnawed apart by tipsy
bolt cutters.


The exasperation in 
seeing those sly foxes
make off with the 
rabbit.


The shelves shiver in their
nudity, the window moans
with the wind running through its
opened body.


Deflating on an overturned tool chest
with the sun rising in perfect
indifference.


[Inspired by the Granville newspaper police reports.]

bingo! (Postage Stamp)

O-72!
The cage spins,
a racket of rumbling
like cows' feet.
A revolving birdcage, 
it seems.
The branded bingo balls
are dead birds to me,


under the guardian of a limp
moose-taxidermied back in '47.
He rigs the games in favor
of the Christians. They resurrect 
the dead birds- "Hallelujah!"


and a "Christ Almighty!"
clap as thunder, and the
way this hall shakes,
I would guess God
to be afoot.


[Inspired by "Colony Girl"]

Bronzed Girl Scouts

[written from the perspective of an honored girl scout- based on a newspaper article.]


Oh boy! 
Wiping my sweaty palms
on my Sunday dress
I catch my reflection
in my shiny good shoes.


I am red as a beat-
which really, are purple,
and Ana quivers beside me.
I clutch her pudgy hand
and grin for the flashbulbs
until stars dot my eyes.


A tall man speaks, squalling as a
pelican as I adjust my sash-
glimmering and glinting 
in the stage light
with badges.


Pelican man says my name
real loud and drapes the
heavenly medal across my
body to the sound
of thundering applause
spilling out the sides
of the VFW hall.

There Was an Old Woman Who Fell Into the Sea

How did it feel,
when you plunged
into the unforgiving arms
of the North Atlantic?


She was eaten up,
for how the sea loved her so-
it made a regal feast of her,


and as she drifted down, her 
legs must have been replaced-
granted life in a sparkling grotto.


The drop off the hulk of steel
wound round her like eels shivering
down her body. Cool alternating currents
as the sea admitted passage


into the abyss, and a gasp from
starboard, but she cried
"don't fret, my friends!"
as a wave folded over her form.


There was an old woman who fell into the
sea, and she roams
along the shoals
wearing skirt of 
seafoam,
trailing seaweed
and
stars.

Sea

Not unlike Tantalus,
it recedes- my clinging 
fingers can't grasp the
only place humanity 
goes to-


the ephemeral sea,
miss gossamer floss 
of seafoam- god bless
her tumultuous spirit 
which exceeds me now.


Oh, not the embrace of her cool arms
to my forehead- not now,
she will not quelch the fever- she
makes her coo-cooing into my ear,
the salt on my tongue.


She is here, I am gone.

Sky

[I'm going to begin posting my handwritten Reynolds poems.]


The lack of clouds-
the way the sky
bends- a perpetual
angle, you static horizon.


If I carried it,
this far-flung sky,
it would drip through
the cracks
in my human fingers.


The blue puddles are broken-
and unlike the bright picture puzzles,
I cannot bring the pieces to
fit.

One Lifetime

I have all my life
in front of me, to pick
linens, white and fluffy.
I can match or
mismatch my silverwares
and cups. Buy chipped
Fiestaware from old men.


All my life to make
bad choices,
I dig my heels in 
and sing. There, a wavering
in the sound that knows
I am free to pick
and choose for many years.


My curtains 
and the color of my kitchen;
of my boyfriend. 
Years to splatter paint
and kill plants
and count raindrops
on the roof from my bed.


All my life
like the sixties atlas
on the shelf,
a general landscape
I can still apply,
but the roads all curved 
different, new lovers' 
spines in my sheets.


All my life to 
smell their skin
and pick new soaps
to wash with.
So many dishes
to wash in my lifetime.


My hands itch,
to break free and 
catch the wind
because there are 
hours left for them
to work,
I need them yet
to fold the laundry,
build myself fortresses
of blankets.


All the kernels of popcorn
with my brother on the livingroom
floor. The numbers 
and math haven't been made up,
there aren't numbers 
that count lifetimes.


No limit to the mason jars
of sun-tea I'll make on my
porch, 
no limit to the love
I can make and
the flowers I'll
try to make bloom.


All my life to 
hang wash on the line,
listen for lobster boats,
and sing shanties.

Swimming in the Middle of Campus

The feel of wet denim
pressed to squeaking thighs,
the nights in which 
we feel alive
are the only ones
I remember. 


Saying "yes",
my lips kissing
the close of the word,
letting it linger
the taste of green apples
on my teeth.


I remember only the 
cool nights with long walks
and rambling stars,
held up by fishing line
so they shone real good
in the city. 


The plunge of my legs
in the campus fountain,
illuminated by the top heavy
clock, whose face watched us
carefully.


I remember
those news stories
of delinquents,
the two who held 
guns to car windows,
blasted through them
til they glittered 
on the sidewalk as mirrors
of the constellations.
Stole radios and were
swallowed up by summer air.


We are stealing time and 
stripping down the clock 
for a swim, the clear water
moving my toes like puzzle pieces
that don't fit anymore.


My memory loses pieces,
but the feeling of liberation
lasts and holds,
The faces of my friends
in the orange glow
as the waded in,
perfect glittering 'o's of teeth
and skin.


Saying yes, 
the best decision
I've ever made,
could make.
To recall long
from now in stories
lined up along bar stools,
to say I swam
in the fountain.

Lake Hudson

Quivering in a clear lake
like I had never seen
before, even though I rested
only an hour from home.
I saw the fish in glass,
suspended by wires I couldn’t see,
didn’t want to-
needed to
maintain the clarity.

And my legs stuck down
in pebbles and wavered like
buoys. The yellow ones
floated yards away in the moss.
And the yellow dock was
slippery in my hands.

I have never liked heights.
Incidents in nine-foot water
led me to become a drowning child
and today I am molding my fate.
Climbing a steel ladder
behind the nicest girl in
New Mexico. She plunges like
a bluegill, and I wander to the edge
my stomach backwards like waves.

I steady the longboard ten feet high
and look into a teal gemstone.
My feet leave anything solid,
I am an astronaut,
and know space in all depths
on the journey down.

Catching all the air
and knowing how dying birds feel.
And instant of falling
a faint memory of rollercoasters
and country hills.
And I touch down with
a sound like no other-
know all I have needed to know.
Every orifice is water,
every space in my body,
want to bury my lungs
in the hanging moment
in the lake, silver shimmers
in the clear.

Surfacing
is such disappointment,
and I gasp like
sepia movie stars.
Know the loneliness of mermaids.