Ordinary Hazards: List 2

It gobbles up all available space

in the brain,
leaves little room to mark

daily happenstances,

or even routine injuries

which are less than

life-threatening.

Innocuous classroom feuds?

Gone.

I've bridged the gaps

with suspension cables

forged of steely gratitude

for having survived my past

at all.

I focused on
cutting through the throng
to the local train station
and studying the subway maps
during the long ride
to a place in Brooklyn
I’d try to learn to call
“home.”

I’d have turned around to see who “she” was, but Mom nudged me forward, and ushered me directly into a wood-paneled room festooned with WELCOME HOME banners, pink streamers, and balloons bigger than my head.

The furniture was pushed against the wall, dance music blared, and busy feet already pounded the parquet floor.

“Get out!” shouted the store owner, a wizened old Korean gentleman.

The mere thought siphons air
from my windpipes,
and experience tells me
a full-blown asthma attack
can’t be far behind.

And just like that,
my abject fear
morphed into fury.

DELIVERANCE

Desperate for stories
of outrageous adventure
to ferry me far from
my world and my mind,
I reach for my stash
of library offerings

...I’m fortunate to find
a weathered volume,
blue as the sea,
bulging with Viking lore
suited to me,
tales that can
sail me away.

Flames licked the sides of each jar as wind
whistled through the room, sucking the
gauzy curtains half out the windows,
then blowing them in again.

An eerie drone rose from the center of the room
where my mother stood humming and
swaying her body in a semblance of dance.

She whirled round and round in
her filmy peignoir, her eyes flecked
with wildness, her bare feet silently brushing
the floor, her mind in some private galaxy of thought.

She could’ve won
a dozen Oscars
for convincing doctors
she was lucid as you or me.

The Snake Pit is only entertainment
if you’ve never lived it,
never walked the halls
of a psychiatric ward,
squeezing past bug-eyed strangers
in oversized pajamas

My much-rehearsed grin
and tremulous hello
elicited the usual
drug-induced spasmodic twitch
routinely followed by
the catatonic stare.

My much-rehearsed grin
and tremulous hello
elicited the usual
drug-induced spasmodic twitch
routinely followed by
the catatonic stare.

My much-rehearsed grin
and tremulous hello
elicited the usual
drug-induced spasmodic twitch
routinely followed by
the catatonic stare.

My much-rehearsed grin
and tremulous hello
elicited the usual
drug-induced spasmodic twitch
routinely followed by
the catatonic stare.

I caught Mom reading about
the Freedom Rides
and was well-versed in the
horrors of lynching
long before puberty.

I caught Mom reading about
the Freedom Rides
and was well-versed in the
horrors of lynching
long before puberty.

I’ll just have to meet her
on the other side, where racism
has been excised
and justice is
common as dirt.

A young man named James Meredith
flashed across the screen,
hedged in by snarling white men,
women, and even children,
celebrating their communal hatred
by pummeling this brown man-child
with eggs and epithets
I wasn’t allowed to use.

A young man named James Meredith
flashed across the screen,
hedged in by snarling white men,
women, and even children,
celebrating their communal hatred
by pummeling this brown man-child
with eggs and epithets
I wasn’t allowed to use.

A young man named James Meredith
flashed across the screen,
hedged in by snarling white men,
women, and even children,
celebrating their communal hatred
by pummeling this brown man-child
with eggs and epithets
I wasn’t allowed to use.

CLANDESTINE CHRISTMAS

Clark’s son, Ronald,
came for a Christmas sleepover.

Mom placated me by suggesting
we open one gift apiece
before going to bed.

Mom would lay down
her winning hand with a flourish,
fanning the cards out
in front of her
like some show-off.

He didn’t even deign
to look up.

The August heat
added to the fire
in my bones,
and no amount of
ice cold pop
could cool
the seething inside me.

...the friends
I do remember
were splendiferous.

Thirteen was a year
of revelation.

I turned out to look
not so bad, thank God—
despite my detestable
horn-rimmed glasses.

My sister—damn her—
turned out to be voluptuous,
while I was merely cute.

It hardly seemed fair,
but, for the record,
by thirteen,
I ended up the tallest
in my family, a proud fact
which, at times,
made me insufferable.

But, the way I figured,
since she’d saddled me
with this oversized proboscis,
I had every reason to tease
her limited stature.

I woke to voices clanging
like a discordant gong.

He ushered me into
the mess of his
two-bedroom flat,
clothes strewn everywhere,
dirty dishes in the sink,
nothing in its place.

Instead of plying me
with questions
I wasn’t ready to answer,
he reached for me
and, after a moment’s hesitation,
I let his arm
make itself at home
around my shoulder