and then blow lightly
until the tire began to spin.
1
Skimming
It was nothing more than a summer job,
hopping the low fence to my neighbor’s house,
where I paid out the long hollow pole
through my hands, and dipped the skimmer’s
blue jaw into the pool to strain
the insect wings, bird feathers
and carob leaves that lay like the night’s
siftings on a huge blue mirror.
Evenings from our patio next door,
I heard my neighbors thrashing
in the shallow end, their voices
wild in the cool element, their feet
padding heavily over the concrete deck.
And later, in darkness, they slipped back
into the green water silently.
The yellow glow of the citronella candle
flickering far away through the oleanders.
Its oily lemon fragrance heavy in the air. Sometimes I heard the woman crying, sometimes the man, and once I heard a gasp
as dry and sharp and loud as someone
taking a last breath before he drowns.
Some mornings I’d find the pool light
burning faintly in the deep end,
the surface covered with all that was attracted
to the submerged glow, and once I found
a bat floating in the shallow pocket
of the stairs. Its wings spread out
like a Gothic W. Its feet angling
from its belly like a ship’s screws.
And lifting the black mass gently from the water,
turning the skimmer over in the grass,
I tapped the bat out and let it lie face up
in the morning sun. Its features
like a rubber mask’s, reddish, roughened,
as if its passage out of the attic or cave
had been difficult and the twilight air
of the neighborhood provided nothing more
than blue shadow on blue shadow.
V-8
The motor hung in my neighbor’s back yard
for years, tarp-covered and lashed with rope.
Suspended from the rusty block and tackle
of an engine hoist, it cast a constant shadow
on the concrete pad. And all around it lay
the necklaces and hoses of its accessories:
the black spark-plug harness, the bedpan
of the air filter, the fuel pump and distributor,
the carburetor on its side with its barrels
and chambers exposed. And though my neighbor
never rebuilt the engine, he must have thought
about it often: a heavy pendulum that
no wind moved, a plumb bob fixed dead center
like some bulky reference point he ducked
and dodged each time he passed through the yard.
And each time, too, he had to pass the small side
door to the garage which held the silent tools:
the bright chrome sockets and ratchets, wrenches
and drivers bundled in soft canvas, like good silver
shoed in its polish cloth. I was too young to know
what a life’s work was, too impatient to understand
how our true affections are deflected, shunted
by the domestic, by the hard promises we make
to another. What did I know of our capacity to transform
bitterness into love, as he did helping
a teenager load the V-8 into the back of a pickup,
cranking the hoist winch down slowly with one hand
and with the other fending off the willful spin of the block,
until it settled in the bed, tilted on its side,
leaking a puddle of oil, dark and latent?
Iodine
The cure-all bottle fits the palm
of his hand, and the rubber nipple
of the squeeze top rises like a black
thumb in the shadow of his thumb.
Skull and crossbones on the label,
and the wide morgue of the medicine
cabinet open. The order of gauze,
tape and cotton on the glass shelves.
The flesh-colored bandage held
in a tight roll by its butterfly clasp.
Dusting of talc. Flocking of toothpaste.
The white soft ridges of soap in the empty
dish. And his other hand under the rush of cold
water. The sink filling with rosy, thinned
blood. The blue razor blade he was trying
to fit into the cabinet’s disposal slot
lies like a fish fin on the pink ceramic counter.
Then resting the cut hand on the rim of the sink,
fingers held up to slow the flow of blood,
my uncle fits the bottle in his mouth.
The exaggerated squint of one eye
as his teeth tighten on the plastic cap
and his good hand strains, like a wrench,
until the seal on the vial breaks. Then his tongue,
ferrous with the leakage, sputters and spits,
his lips wiping the bitterness on his shoulder,
the back of his wrist. His head crazy
with the mistake. And the water he cups
in his hands, brackish with blood and iodine,
is the color of the veil that shrouds
his life and its absurd diminishment
there in the bathroom of his sister’s house.
The Pageant
When Brian McCarthy, the male lead
in our third-grade, Spanish-class
production of Alice in Wonderland,
didn’t show, Mrs. Carrera’s husband,
Tito, had to read lines from the wings,
where he also managed the plywood
and canvas scenery. Paunchy in a white
T-shirt, sleeves covering tattooed anchors,
he lost whole sentences in drapery
and