My New Friend, and: Disowned, and: Imbalance Appraisal, Homeopath’s Waiting Room

My New Friend

In a photograph, her father’s cap is jaunty, his beard wild. A hooded falcon

poses on his outstretched hand and he is everything you want your father

to be. My new friend doesn’t wear makeup. Her feet are tiny, tattooed. She’s broke,

but spent a whole summer driving the craggy roads of Iceland. She says that

in Reykjavík, they drink until dawn, sometimes after. It’s normal there. In Minnesota, she met

a fly fisherman in the woods, and they made love in the river while timber wolves

skulked nearby. She builds dollhouses, spending hundreds of dollars on tiny chairs, a fireplace

with pasteboard flames, inlaid parquet floors for dining rooms where there will be no meals.

My new friend spent a weekend eating Egyptian blue lotus in Joshua Tree. The night closed

in around her but she wasn’t scared. This was when she dated a movie star. You know

his name, but I can’t tell you outright. My new friend makes my old friends jealous. They call

her a liar. We were sprawled on the rug, watching television, mooning over River Phoenix

when the fetus she didn’t know was curled inside of her quit its dying and she writhed,

wailing. I led her to the bathroom floor, and as she lay on the cold tile, the low moans

streaked from her mouth like crows.

Disowned

after Toni Morrison

Mother says I am not the villain, but I know   that everyone stands for something. That

a name is a prayer and a damning. This novel,   its characters named from the Bible,

the Greek: each a consequence of a writer’s   fascination with God fury, Earthly women

who won’t obey. I am cast out, hauled back,   strung through like the sampler that hangs

in my family’s kitchen, an anniversary   gift, the intricacies over which she fretted

before it was wrapped, handed silently   to my father: Bless this house. Before

her eyes began their slow failing   and she switched to crosswords

to stave dementia, keep her thinking fresh.   The puzzles’ empty squares as tiny as the labels

she sewed into my underwear and socks, lest I ever   fail her, lose the fine things she’d given me.

On the evening I was born, my aunt phoned   with congratulations, had already embroidered

on a square of linen the date, asked what name   they’d chosen. When they explained: how I’d

be called two things, tribute to each   of their mothers, she sighed, said

they’d have to pick just one. Only half   would fit in the small wooden frame.

Imbalance Appraisal, Homeopath’s Waiting Room

Year of tuna on cracked wheat, slim triangles

  wrapped in plastic. Year of the gas station, the toll

violation. Year of passing through. Year of the slow

  cooker—all day heat. Year of the beach chair,

the oiled thigh. Year of the mole, its scalloped edges. Year   of the scalpel, the heated coil. Year of the bleed.

Year of the cotton ball, sopping. Year of barium shakes, year

  of the long swallow. Year of reds by the glass.

Year of the Vicodin, the Valium. The airport security

  line. Year of jet fuel. Year of the pool table, the lifted

skirt. Year of the thumbprint bruise. Year of rate your pain.

  Year of 7.5. Year of nuclear medicine, ivs whispering

your belly full of stars.