Photograph: North Carolina, 2005, and: Tonight in the Desert
- Photograph: North Carolina, 2005, and: Tonight in the Desert
Photograph: North Carolina, 2005
See the spring light beating down, the shadows pooling in the yard, how my mother
tilts her chin back and folds her hands.
Speaking for the first time, see how happy the two of them look together— my mother and stepfather— the world so green behind them.
Her eyes pinch at the corners, like maybe she’s laughing and now he smiles back. Someone points a camera. The shutter clicks.
I must be up north, sailing across town on my bike or watching TV with my sister,
and in this moment, I hope my mother has forgotten us. I hope she’s thinking instead about the sunlight surrounding, the stranger at her side:
his two boys and their farmhouse out in the country, the stillness he must feel
walking those pastures each morning beneath a sky pale as linen,
the cicadas surging, fog dissipating around his boots. [End Page 528]
As she turns her head to speak, I want her
to imagine she’s alone again —just for a minute—
just long enough to consider where this man came from
and how suddenly the heart can fill;
how sometimes, the day turns so bright it almost hurts to look. [End Page 529]
Tonight in the Desert
Moonlight unclenches fists of snowbrush. Gypsy moths land on windows, hunt the spark
inside the glass. And just now, my father comes home from a bar where he’s called stranger—
my father undresses in front of a mirror and spits inside his sink. He takes refuge
from evening’s wind, coyote howl, burnt diesel lifting off the interstate. He ignores the stars
to the west, how they twirl awake, sink down like spurs into night. Across the valley, a city glows.
Owls swoop low in fits of hunger. Nothing here sleeps, and this late, it’s all my father can do to pace
the hall speaking to himself, smelling of mint. As he shuts off the lights, as he turns each lock,
does my name soften his lips? Room by room, he’s sweeping through. Even in the dark, he’s shadow. [End Page 530]
rob shapiro received an MFA from the University of Virginia, where he won the Academy of American Poets Prize. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, River Styx, and Blackbird. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
