The Kindness of Strangers
we emptied the old house of everything
it collected over sixty years in our family
and everyone gathered to say goodbye
in the front entrance. None of them
noticed I was gone. A tall, leggy beauty
who flipped houses on the real estate market
was oooo-ing and ahhhh-ing
as I used my once useless
and extensive knowledge
of our family’s history
on the tour I charmed her on.
My vivid stories impressed her
before she handed over her business card.
I said goodbye to the old house by reciting
all of my crooked nicotine stained wallpaper memories to a stranger before
we locked its doors a final time
and I didn’t look back when
I followed her shapely ass through
the front door and out of the past.
____________
Prison Wives
They are all scattered
about the seaside waiting area,
applying last minute touches
of makeup and straightening
their pantyhose. One by one,
we enter the security checkpoint.
We stare at the guard in disbelief
when he commands our mother
to remove her brassiere after
its underwire sets off
the metal detector. They hold
it up for all to see like a prize
or a Ripley’s Believe it or Not
oddity before they grant us access
to the next security checkpoint
across a concrete bridge
closer and closer to
a bittersweet family reunion
beyond the chicken wire,
my father in tears
while I bounce around in his lap
and in the blink of an eye
they take him back
passed the iron doors
after he makes out
with my mother
in a frenzy
of desperate passion
while the inmate
next to us sticks his hand
under his wife’s dress
in front of their children,
and her eyes roll into
the back of her head.
____________
What Were Those Idiots Thinking?
a couple died
of carbon monoxide poisoning,
my aunt says as we pass
by a motel where the couple
in question tampered
with the heater in their room
and my aunt seems detached
in her description of their grim
and harrowing end
after our family’s most
recent little parade of death
left us all here in a numb void.
I listen to her cold question
of what those idiots were thinking
before I climb out of the backseat
of my uncle’s car into
a world of indifference.
____________
Be Careful What You Wish For
My father had finally come home
after twelve years in a federal penitentiary.
It was the first birthday I spent with both
of my parents. The day I became
a teenager. My brother had moved
out of the house three months before,
so I had them both all to myself.
We decided to visit Forest Lawn
in the hills overlooking
the movie studios, where
we paid our respects to
the dead movie stars
who I worshiped with
the hope that I would escape
from my lonely childhood
at a time when
black and white ghosts
kept me company, and
I discovered who my parents
pretended to be before
they both became ghosts who
watched me grow up in the dark
in search of them in a place
where dreams go to die.
