Sum Poems and Prose

Silvercup

Driving past Silvercup Studios,
The highway stretched out like the million-heiress’ abandoned mink stole,
I feel the wind hit me,
You are trying to say things to me,
That I wasn’t understanding,
The wind swallowed us both up.

Fruit Stand

Quite like 3AM.
The peach fuzz shivers.
The freezer whirrs.
Nothing has ever felt quiet as this or smelt any better.

Tennis

I follow your groundstrokes
The elliptical motion of your arms
As they sweep forward to
Lob a kiss

The Edge

Lay low with me in a meadow and forget, for a time, that things have edges.

For 99

I don’t believe in hexes anymore, signs, superstitions or that corners cave in when no one is looking. In diners with eerily smooth jazz, we killed time until we made a home out of our conversations. Laughing at the hubcap truck, leaning wearily with its steel crows feet and all diner placemats set at the drug time, why after 10 years had we just noticed?

Haven’t talked about it yet, not with them, seems like I can’t find my way, a jug handled conundrum. What I do do is wish to have waited and flirted with the man who sold me that can of Country Time, all day long, all summer. Because part of me still feels like if I did, you would still be here, you gluten free, quick stick-shifted, yelling at misbehaving dogs, ten octaves louder than your small lithe body.

Someday I will write something good about all of this. I will title the poem August. And I will write till I get it right, because I’m through chasing every August away.

Today

Set fire to my insides, let me feel something besides the cool morning air that huffs up my breath. My hands are paralyzed. I am rubbing them, sitting on the stoop, the same spot where my younger sister would wait, but today there is no riding—our block blocked off, the yellow of the school bus replaced with that of the caution tape. I watch my mother kneeling, dipping. She mixes the brush in a tin can, drawing out black paint. Her lips tight like the clasp of a purse. Today there is no howling, crying is as useless as pennies. My little sister, Priya, runs up. This morning my mother has let her dress herself, she’s picked up what’s left on my floor— a T-shirt too wide and long, she trips and her nose hits against the wire mesh of the screen door. Giggling, she asks me to play video games. Today there is not much talking. I nod and follow her, obscuring today’s vile curse from her view.

I hear my father in the kitchen with the police officer, telling him how he found the first word. I picture him pulling out the drive, stopping at the edge of it to pick up the paper, spotting the first aerosol letter within inches of the little golf clubs on his tie. When they hear Priya and me walk across they speak lower. Priya says what the words mean. I say which ones. She leads me by the hand to the porch window, parts the curtains and laughs at dirty words on the wooden planks. Today there are no explanations. I shut the blinds and we walk over to the game unit, we play a round of Alien Versus Predator. I let her win. She’s sitting Indian style, eyes squinted, thumbs pressed against the controls, elbows fanning out like wings, with every point they soar. She breaks my record, the top scorer chart appears on the screen, letter by letter she enters what she has seen, those vile words, again she giggles, but quieter like the murmurs in the kitchen. Today we don’t speak up.

My mother comes in with the can of paint. Today, she is not wearing a sari but a simple white salwar kamis, sewn from an old bed sheet, stained. Priya looks over her shoulder and then back at the television screen. The only noises are those computerized crashes and screams. I get up, lift the can out of my mother’s hand, go through the back door. I step onto the porch deck, towards the words that haven’t been covered yet. I fling the pail down hard, spilling paint, all over, it is a black ribbon that unfurls with the rotation, it is what has bound my hands and gagged my throat. Black hits my feet, black hits the words, black slips through the planks and through the wood.

I step off the porch, walk through the grass, towards the tree-lined fence, light a cigarette, my finger tense. I watch the smoke’s harsh course, winding slowly from my mouth. My mother calls out now, worried about some danger on the other side, stands guard now, her white salwar blackened with paint. For a moment, through the parted wood, I think I see fear of those older dangers on her face, but our eyes meet and they are tucked away again in dark corners, defended like her right ear was from the report of ammunition, it is a story muted, only revealed in bits and pieces like the letters peeking out of the black patchwork, specks of neon aerosol light. She says come in, come in. I say not yet. I want to look at it, my eyes like the police officer’s camera flash, a popping cube of light, the image shoots through my insides, its held captive, its heat contained, I am looking at it, capturing the last of today.

Corner Of His Eye

He can see them sometimes out of the corner of his eye. He shifts them right to left, left to right. Everything else is tight, reigned, still. When he looks at them out of the corner of his eye the stiffness grates and his mind undoes itself like a piece of Velcro. In the center, Julie, red and white polka dot dress, the whitest pearls, she nods, demure, photographs well that way. On the sides, Bobby and Chris. Each one with hands in their pocket, looking bashful, looking down. Why are they all looking down? He wonders.
They hardly come around anymore. He holds his breath for long intervals and when he lets go they are there. First though he must stop up his nose, the rib cage must rise, bellow, then constrict, a corset of whalebone, and then release, laces of corset undone. Sometimes they are festive, sometimes they have all come in wearing blue shirts and don’t realize it. Sometimes they carry the cold in with them, if they forgot to shut a door. They won’t come for days sometimes weeks and in the meantime, he’ll sit back and watch the scene unfold. People walk by and swat at flies with
butter-gold swatters. He watches a swimmer in Speedo take a perfect dive. Listens to the noise the body makes as it breaks against the water. Life passes by like this, life seems to float, thought seem to puff out of the top of his mind, conversations passing like clouds overhead, like floating text boxes. His mother walks by with a glass of lemonade.
In his bedroom, there are books under his bed. The bed is low and when he used to slide his hand under there, it smelt like cool clay. He remembers this now and then the memory retracts, like the tricky wheel that pulls away without even realizing.
Some days are like fish in a tank, got to tap the glass in order to make them move, but Julie, Bobby, and Chris always arrive in time, their own strange clockwork. They dole out memories, unfurl ribbons of all different colors, red, gold. They repeat stories, poses, like a clothing catalog, but funny. Sometimes one of them hangs their feet in the pool with their head down. Sometimes he realizes this after they have left. Sometimes the disconnect is unbearable.
And when he can’t bare to see even them, he bends his head low, in supplication, lets two hands press against it, cups it, bends lower and the content just seems to pour out with the tilt.