Bridge 1
Patricide
Question For My Father Who Lives Alone
Opera Night
Bridge I
The night I give you the story to read
I walk across the Duvall Bridge to photograph the moon.
Midsummer now, and she hangs
like a pomegranate, pregnant with seed.
I try not to imagine the drop to black water. My hand
tightens on the rail as a pickup blows past.
In the story I am sixteen and you
listen to Elizabeth Schwarzkopf on the stereo
while Mom tells you to get a job.
I’m studying for a final in molecular biology.
You say no. You’re a lawyer, damn it, and that is your job.
Mom says we’re eligible for food stamps.
You tell her you are about to take flying lessons
off the Aurora Bridge.
In the story, I come out of my room and stop you.
Only you don’t stop.
You drive to the Aurora Bridge and the water
swirls brown far beneath you.
Once a Metro bus was crossing that bridge
when a man shot the driver.
The bus leapt from the pavement
and briefly soared.
Another time a woman stood at the rail.
It was 5:30 with commuters stopped for miles
while she tried to decide.
Some guys in a pickup kept yelling,
Jump, bitch!
It’s just before midnight when I walk the bridge.
At first I cannot find the moon at all, then
there she is behind trees.
I had thought to capture her
reflected on the water.
Instead she’s caught like a cradle in the branches.
In the story, I talk to you on the telephone
at three in the morning.
I tell you to keep breathing
until you hit the water,
then
hold your nose and kick for all you’re worth.
Tonight you are on the eleventh floor
and cannot see the moon
because your apartment faces west.
Before I gave you the story we gave each other speeches about Mom.
She doesn’t understand me, either.
The camera in my pocket came from Rite Aid and I’ve already used
eighteen shots.
The moon looks phony through the lens,
like a utility light in someone’s garage.
The picture will come out a blurry spot.
Someone will mistake it for a rabbit.
By now you’ve read my version of our suicide.
I call it that even though we are still alive.
I say it just to be ironic.
Patricide
Mom takes me to an expert
so I will understand.
Sometimes they use a straitjacket, he says,
and I see you
holding yourself
like that,
all in white,
down the steps of our house,
down the walk. The car will be white, too.
I am my mother. I have to be.
No one else can be her, so I can’t
look at you anymore. You’ve become
the red-face man.
You must understand how it is:
we can’t be
a stupid bitch anymore.
We can’t go hiding
our bruises in motels.
We can’t
walk
anymore on the thin glass of threats
But I want you alive,
please,
alive
She is giddy
the night before she beats you to the punch.
Let’s bury the hatchet, she says, Then never again
for the rest of your life.
I wish we had not said that.
You study editorials while I steal looks at you –
the seer knows how deep
the hatchet cuts.
Enough now. I must execute my mission:
Don’t tell Tom; he’s only twelve.
Watch instead for signs of rage.
Dial this number.
They will come then. They will take the red-face man
in their strong arms
and they will sing to him:
sweet and low, sweet and low,
wind of the western sea
Over the rolling waters they will stay
the course of my treachery.
They will take you,
white in the dying moon,
they will hold you,
low, low, breathe and blow, they will
blow you again to me
Question
For My Father, Who Lives Alone
What if you and I were walking one day
and you said,
Can you smell the sap?
And I did?
What if you said,
The wind is brisk. It has a bite.
And I said,
Let's go inside?
What if you said,
Sit at this table.
Here are my friends,
here and here and here,
and I touched each hand?
What if you said,
I will die now.
And I said,
Yes.
And you closed your eyes?
Opera Night
Dad yells all the way to dinner:
Change lanes,
now, go, go,
Gun it!
Damn it, Kate,
you drive like an old woman.
The Tai Tung is at the farther end of rush hour.
At table four a cook tops and tails
a mound of snap peas;
he knows Dad takes the Combo Two
with fried rice.
Tonight he only snipes once about Mom –
her always-fearful driving.
She had reason, I remind him,
She was thrown through a windshield
when she was five.
Ah, he says. A wonder I was never in an accident;
The old man drove us kids from catechism
three sheets to the wind – assuming, I suppose
that we’d die in a state of grace.
Outside’s a deluge when I run for the car.
Dad lugs my laptop to the trunk,
cane in hand to defend me,
39 minutes until curtain.
In Zen composure, I glide through traffic.
We’re fine until the last ten blocks:
7:07, 7:12, 7:16 —
that left turn onto fourth
wasn’t there when he came here with Mom.
No! he yells. No! Not there!
7:17
DO not, I holler, DRIVE for me!
Especially when we have so little time.
I-know-what-I-am-doing-I-am
FORTY-TWO YEARS OLD!
I didn’t know, he murmurs. Here,
I’ll pay for parking.
Damn straight you will, I think
and do not say.
We sit in nosebleed seats
and pass the opera glasses back and forth.
At intermission he hangs onto the rail
while I try to hang onto him.
You can’t catch me if I fall, he says.
In the lobby he reaches out
and fusses with my collar.
It’s sticking up, he says,
and then, You’ve still got that fine hair.
Mom will plunge her hands into my hair
just like I do with my daughter.
It’s long, he says. I liked it short.
How did I never see
that this was tenderness?
Near to his apartment, he surprises me again.
I wish we’d had more time to talk, he says.
You sounded low last week;
I was afraid.
He never used to name the madness we both share.
I thought he didn’t want to.
You’re my flesh and blood, he says, my
cast into the future.
I accept this unexpected string of pearls.
What did I mean by, Do not drive for me?
We have so little time.