Another Creature: Poems

My Neighbor’s Fence

My Neighbor’s Fence In their loosening, tightening V, the southbound geese flap and bark their goodbyes to the wacky makeshift fence she’s erected the month since my neighbor’s stopped speaking to me (You’re not even listening, are you, to my stories?), the month since her marriage crumbled like bone-dry leaves that blow over from our shedding maple, a fence to keep us and our foliage OUT—NO TRESPASS—OUT!!! of the sweep of her rage. Nine summer screens, the cage of a grown child’s rabbit long buried under bulbs’ rusty sleep and grubs’ tight coilings. Three upside down trash cans, stack-n-store lawn chairs cracked with the weight of tipsy relations eating from soggy plates in her back yard. A friendly mutant zoo in molded plastic. And Pick ‘n Save bags, brimming with brittle sticks. She must really hate you bad, says my teenage son. If you want I’ll go over and moon her, he offers, so kindly I almost take him up— a full autumn moon shining over my neighbor’s crazy fence, the full kind of crazy she’s finally gone, the forty-some moons she’s collected this rubble, cobbled together to stand, goddamn it, for something, something to show for the diapers, the car pools, the bottom-burned cookies, the casserole scraps afloat in cold dishwater. She’s leaving the floodlights on and hooking the screens. She’s covering mirrors with black satin, chiffon, and lace from her trousseau (I don’t think you’ve ever heard a word I’ve said). 15 And Lord in my own list of days you have seen me thus. Howling full-blown mad in moonlight, demented or drunk enough to raise a fence from whatever trash is left me, mean streaks aflame in my hair. And Lord spare my boy the world’s broken pudding skin, spoon cutting into the soft sweet places we hide when the edges peel back and the borders fall away. May your lightning not strike my neighbor’s blue plastic schnauzer, sitting mute watch with lizard and hen. Nor her red-hatted gnome with its pointy ears, grinning its horrible grin. 16 ...