Thirteen Ways of Looking at These Brownies

Modeled after Wallace Stevens’
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

I
my grandmother’s hands
sifting the too-expensive flour
to make my father his
50th birthday cake
(the last time she would show me
her Italian kitchen)

II
the torn-apart bag
flour spilling at the reams
and the brownie recipe of my dreams

III
the first bite of brownie
a culinary orgasmic attack
against the tongue
of every sweet i’d
previously put into my mouth

IV
the shy nudge
the first placement
of a brownie on another’s desk
a reach for friendship

V
imagine a bicycle
a saddlebag
a laptop
five pounds of brownies
1029 feet of elevation gain
gratitude at the end of the ride

VI
Thursday evening
sun setting over every season
a thick black spoon
eight ingredients
black brownie mix
as thick as hope

VII
brownie thank-you cards
mysteriously appear in my mailbox

VIII
handwritten notes
begging to be included on
The Brownie List

IX
popping peppermint in at Christmas
and my daughter’s two-month-later birthday
because everyone has a favorite brownie

X
the joy that rests in your mouth
after eating the brownie
and the joy that rests in your heart
after sharing the taste–
they are one and the same

XI
the small hands
that crack eggs
that beg for a taste
that show the mercy of generosity
as together we make brownies

XII
4500 applicants
an ocean
an opportunity of a lifetime
a store without my brownie ingredients

XIII
seven of the best years of my life
a semi-broken heart
and all the brownies
i will never be able to bake

One

no one has called me that name in years.
i mix it with yesterday’s late-night confessions,
the pain that seeps beyond the Holocaust
through the Word Shaker’s mouth,
and the simplest thank you
that is worth to me a million
(dollars i can do without)

there is no irony in the song
that popped up first on my playlist
one
moment that i took to pick up a flyer,
to choose a school,
(i’m familiar with these small decisions)
to go to that meeting,
to start a troop,
to be here in this moment
more than the last.
one
day more than i had before
one
chance to be
the person i am meant to be

i find it all here.
i find you all here–
peppered streams of light
flickering in and out
of the history of me,
everything coming together
to make
one

Extra Piece of Life

buried beneath the atomic rubble,
deeper than bullshit,
lies a glistening extinction
reemerged for a day of reckoning:
a beauty that goes beyond science,
an art that can’t be painted,
and a gift more magical
than a long-lost remnant of DNA

(i will gather this day,
this extra piece of life
that is four years in the making,
and suck the juice until
my craving for happiness
is pushed back into the Earth)

Nature

we talk about the Japanese.
he raises his hand,
unable to fathom the honorable nature
of a country whose response to the bomb was,
“Details are Being Investigated.”

instead he rides on his parents’ coattails
and their dishonorable treatment
of the teachers who spend sleepless nights
worrying over their students

it isn’t the insurmountable
destruction that he doesn’t understand,
but the subtle differences in culture
that with his jokingly complacent nature
an atomic bomb couldn’t expose for him

Desperation

what i love
is that we have all been
in this desperate moment
(that one where we stood
across from the one
we have loved,
the one who doesn’t love us back)

i can hear the pain
move through his desperate voice,
his lyrics as pungent
as the images he puts forth,
the backbeat and opening chords
reverberating all those lost moments
of a life we all want to grab
and hold close,
a life that is so frail
it could end at any moment

we have all had those moments–
running into the street,
tears inside and out,
desperation the essence
of all that we are,
all that we feel we’ll ever be,
when the beauty of the world
is darkened by loss.

this,
this sharing of moments,
desperate or joyful,
is what i love
about sharing a stranger’s art

Nothing Short of Art

we sit in central citified sun
sipping smoothies and lattes,
munching on freshly baked croissants
and chatting with strangers
on a day so warm it can’t be
the third week of January
(a beauty we all share
as we peel off our winter coats)

they skip alongside on an impromptu adventure,
moving along the zero street,
playing pig and picking out dates
on ovular stamps in concrete.

we enter the train store
and examine the pure wonder
of details so tiny, humans
standing knee-deep in plexiglass water,
monkeys climbing up a fallen-apart billboard,
and fast-moving trains. one declares,
it is nothing short of art

later i pedal into the wind
around the dam and up the hill
until i see the circular beauty of the lake,
and its curvacious path
interweaves me with a hundred pairs of legs,
all taking advantage
of this day like no other

before i am home
i am home,
and can almost forget
the tears whose all night sting
kept my eyes bleeding till morning,
the two dark, cold miles of separation,
and the hollowness of our words
that find their way
into the poems he wishes i wouldn’t write.

Estamos Bien

mañana tenemos el
Acción de Día de Gracias tercera

he stands in an airport
with laughter at the back of his voice,
the emotion so close to tears
that they sit waiting
on the edges of my lids

estamos bien.
tenemos una avión mañana por la mañana

because we are all well
with them in our midst–
so un-American to be grateful
for a night longer,
a missed flight,
a smile that we’ve all tucked away
inside ourselves
(that he fishes out
as easily as catching
tadpoles on a hot June day)

Thanksgiving dos,
we sit and share thanks:
one of the four girls
mentions her extra parents
(the highlight of the evening)

i bring forth my Spaniards
(absent)
but with an ever-present influence
on every thought i have,
on every emotion that has crossed my heart
in the four short months
that i have made them mine

Isabella gives me the look
as if i could forget
the reason we are all gathered,
for without these four girls,
none of this happiness
could float in the room
carrying the
feliz día de los padres
mylar balloon
up to the ceiling,
zhuzhu pet attached,
miracle in place
(can you see it?)

and the Spaniards?
they would live somewhere else,
and our surrealistic vision
of tomorrow
would be so.
real.
so.
unimaginative.

instead?
i hear him laugh
about fumando el toro,
the night in the airport
and our third,
and final,
Thanksgiving meal.

Popsicle Sticks

pasted together like popsicle sticks
a child builds for a mini-fort,
we sit here stuck together,
our ends poking out in discomfort

i could take the posterboard,
bend it back against the table,
send us shattering to the floor,
a million tiny shreds of wood.

but i couldn’t quite piece together
all the hours the hands took,
all the bottles of glue,
designs and redesigns, that you can’t see.

instead i will place my memories
like stacked-up sticks on shelves
stored away at the back of my mental closet,
waiting for the day when you’ll open the door.

To-Do List

email daughter’s teacher
who doesn’t know how to read
pick up nuts
because i’m going crazy
learn Castilian Spanish
so i can speak to roommates
intervene in group work
for groups who won’t work
teach daughter to read
because schools don’t work
sit in meetings that don’t apply to me
so i can’t do my work
ride my bike to work
so i can see the moonset/sunrise
try to remember
that i cannot
make a list
that will quite
change the way the world works

Journal: September 11, 2001

Dear Brittany, Tuesday, September 11, 2001 8:30 p.m.

I just keep hearing it. A line from a movie? A speech from a long-dead political leader? Or a description, so precise, so harsh, so true of this very day in the history of the world.

“A day that will live in infamy.”

I don’t even know where to begin. Should I repeat, in this journal, the story that I’ve heard from 20 journalists, seen video and photos of over 100 times, repeated in over 100 ways? Or, when I look back at this entry years from now, perhaps as a mother, a grandmother, a dying old woman, will the date alone strike a chord and bring back the terror of this day?

Will I be able to look back, many years from now, or will this journal be ashes in the rubble remaining from days of nuclear warfare?

I face the same questions as everyone else; the questions I ask my students to answer every time they read a story or write a paper: Who? What? Where? When?

WHY?

HOW?

Are these the keys to good writing, or unanswerable interrogations about our country, our world, our humanity?

No, I cannot answer today; maybe not ever. I stare blankly at the muted screen, its words that so quickly skid across the bottom, blurry to my tired eyes. I can’t listen anymore. I look at the seriousness of the journalists’ faces, the grave, reserved anxiety, unable to keep my thoughts on track. What track? Where am I going? Where are we going? The questions again, endless, like the questions you ask yourself when you’re reading a great story.

Only, this isn’t a story.

–KMV