Insert, Reference, Footnote

* Nowadays, he thinks of her like an asterisk: substitution or addendum, blank-faced skeleton of a star where the letters of her name used to be. He doesn’t think of her often and pretending she is a vulgarity or an endnote – preferably something obscure, like a footnote within an endnote – makes it easy to forget her soft, taut body, made for birthing fairies and guerrilla warfare in the mountains of Bolivia. He does not like that she and California are assonant, too. He cannot rid her of that n-i-a. He cannot rid her of that extra feminine a. She and California share that last syllabic plateau and her feet are soft, like a rain-slicked boot. On those occasions when she makes an appearance, requires a glance, he squints his eyes, cocks his head a bit, thinks her ropes of hair are like ivy, parasitic and thirsty. His mouth is dry as he turns away. He thinks, "I couldn’t even read her handwriting."

Sequence

Here goes the thinker, my grandmother would say

when it was his turn in Sequence,

because our impulsive decisions

earned us nothing but

the tapping of her slender fingers

on the wooden wings of the table.

Waiting for my grandfather’s strategic move

was like coaxing clouds right there below Paradise.

The cube he built me to improve my spatial reasoning

did not make a difference:

I could never recline against a fencepost the way he did, a day’s work,

or watch the stock market, even once,

stand below the trees outside, and fix things:

a radio, a bicycle, a pair of eyeglasses.

It wasn’t more than a few weeks ago

that I stood at the foot of the bed,

and he asked me:

                           Are the fruit trees blooming?

Slight shake of my head, the tip of my glance on his tired eyes,

my grandfather never hunkered down like this;

if he were here, he would tell me now,

                          Turn on that light, if you’re going to read.