This Morning

Water boiling for Vaughn's oatmeal
in the kitchen behind me.
Chorus of “surf's up, surf's up,
ho daddy, ho daddy,” coming from
the living room where Vaughn and Dash
are kneeling on the hardwood floor.
Harsh hush of cars rushing by outside.
Sharma's claws tug at her ottoman
tucked under the desk
in the dining room. I stir
the oatmeal and bring it to my daughter
not because she asked politely
but because we must be going soon.

Dash's Poem / Waiting for the bus to pickup Vaughn

It's sunny and cold outside.
A school bus goes by.
Why's the car wet?
It didn't rain.
I think maybe
we should play catch.

Dark Telephone Pants!

“Dark telephone pants!”
That voice from a farther room
is Dash’s as he and Vaughn
are playing some obscure
childhood game, deeper
and more complex than tag
or hide and go seek.
“You’re supposed to do this
and I’m supposed to do
this ! Oh man, now we’re rowing
out to—now I’m in your house.”
The game could go on for hours
or evaporate in a few timeless
tom-tom moments. Now someone
has cast a spell and they are trapped
and Vaughn is being pulled
by her mouth and yammering
on like a chimp. I guess it could
go on for days if anyone would
let it. “The bad guys are guarding
me.” “They’re guarding me, too.”
“Oh man, they’re letting the horses
out. One by one. We have customers
in our restaurant. I mean, we own
a bookstore, right? Every day
is a different pony.” “But you didn’t say
anything about the Fraggle Rock
mystery?” Quivering lip, quaking
cloud. O epic, O broken lyric heart!

Dash's List of What He Loves

Trains
Trucks

Mommy
Daddy
Vaughny
Sharma

Everybody in the world

Wet floor signs

Nobody reminds me

Nobody reminds me of anything. I had something to say but then I forgot it. Oh yes, I remember now. I am eating meat loaf. Few words could be more meaningful. Dash is calling me from his toy telephone. I don't understand a word he says. It's big like a 1980's car phone. Yesterday driving home from work I wondered: Do ants have noses or don't they like to fuck? It's a long drive home and the radio reception is awful. Candlewood Lake was black and blue with evening coming down. I wondered how KC's day went at the high school. Not teaching but observing. When I get home she reminds me of something that I'm so thankful for but now I don't remember what it was. The best writing often contains an unsurpassable attention to detail. A strong memory is helpful. This reminds me of Jack Kerouac. I used to drink with him. It was just before I stopped. No, it was just before I went mad. He plunged me in and then he saved me. The pages were yellow and it made me sneeze, but it was alright. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am nobody who will remind you of anything. They took me to the hospital. It was a garden of wandering minds. There was an old woman in a wheelchair who sang “God bless my underwear” followed by words I couldn't make out, her verses punctuated with “fuck” and “shit” and “assholes.” There was a twenty-something, very masculine-looking gay Hispanic man with the saddest eyes I'll ever see who had tried to kill himself by drinking cleaning products, I don't remember what exactly, to get away from his family. There was a surly but friendly overweight redhead who used to be a thin, sane psychiatric nurse until she was attacked by a patient; she had been stabbed by many things, syringes, I never got the full story. She had just had a spinal tap when I met her, or maybe she was just about to go for one. She taught me how to play spades. A few days before I left, a young Hispanic woman with slashed wrists arrived. The older manic-depressive woman who had stopped taking her Lithium, or maybe it was that it had stopped working, called her “a real spitfire,” so I learned a new word that day. I don't know why but she was crazy about me: not the older manic-depressive, whose name I think I remember was June, the young Hispanic. I would have gladly fled the country with June had she been forty years younger and shown the same kind of interest. For a few days I had a roommate who practiced karate; he was a veteran who had been stationed in Beirut where he lost some friends. He was from Michigan originally and liked to tell me about how that was the headquarters for so many of our national chains. The craziest of us was this middle-aged woman with a broken arm. We all called her The Debutante, the way she wandered so lightly around, head tilted back over her tall, bony frame, nose to the stars that weren't there. At one point she threatened to kill the redhead. One day when I was sitting in the lounge she came in and sat across from me. I wasn't looking at her but I could feel her attention. “So you're one of those, too,” she said. After a pause I did look at her. “Some send and some receive,” she said. Then she smiled and left the room, leaving me here.

Dash's Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene,
please don't take my
cheese,
no, no, no.
Don't eat the candle,
no, no, no.
Candle light up,
oh!

KC was singing “Jolene” this morning when Dash took over. From the “cheese” on, it's all him. Here's the original version by Dolly Patron:

Dashzilla

Vaughn sitting on the floor
in the living room, rebuilding
her Lego tower. When Dash
totters over and knocks it down
again, she turns to him and says,
“You're a monster, Dashiell.
You're the god of grief.”

Stumble through the hall

Stumble through the hall of morning's first moments. Familiar rumble outside from the construction across the street. Into and out of the bathroom. Into and out of the dream. Into and out of the thoughts that aren't there. There might have been a dream, sitting in a cell block, looking at a clock through iron bars. Some chubby guard with a dumb grin, fuzzy eyebrows, and big blue clothes. Big ol' Hollywood keychain hooked to his big black belt. Pacing the hall in his big black boots. Down into the morning, Vaughn at her desk in the kitchen, cranking out the multi-colored Play-Doh. Dash tottering between Vaughn and his mom as he learns how to walk. Magnets across the floor—an orange g, a green o—and tupperware and toy silverware, and toy-sized tins that either are or aren't toys I have no idea. Sometimes my guts want to give up and seep back into the earth. The little noises too much. The excesses, the effusions, the never enoughs. Vague and dizzy feelings cradling objects. "The sky / is a black / sudden cloud, / a sun. / Speak / to me, say / what things / were forgotten." (Creeley, from "The Shame")

bits

Sitting at the dining room table feeding Dash bits of peaches and whole wheat bread. Curtains drawn to shade the room. Vaughn seated at the chair behind me, working on a grilled cheese sandwich. She starts singing, "Higher, higher / the room's on fire." I ask her where she picked up that song. She says "It's from London." "From a movie?" I ask her, thinking Mary Poppins or something. "None movie," she says, "I made it up for you. And Dashiell-do."
      —•—
Took a book from the shelf, last night. Opened it to a little brown bug. Closed it back up and put it back on the shelf. Wonder what he's doing today.
      —•—
Vaughn at her desk in the kitchen, kneading a Play-Doh sky. The whistle of a truck blowing by outside, not quite as loud as summer's seething insects. Grumbling construction across the street. The rumbling stomach won't settle down.
      —•—
Vaughn: "Ow, the chair went on my toe. Ow!"
KC: "I'm sorry you got hurt, honey."
V: "Oh, when will I never get hurt, Mommy?"
K: "Unfortunately that's part of life, honey."
V: "When I die I'll never get hurt."
(Pause)
V: "Ow, I'm so saturated."
K: "Exasperated?"
V: "No, I'm so saturated."
K: "Saturated? You might say that if you were wet."
V: "No, I'm saturated that I'm hurt."

The Pepto clouds

The Pepto-Bismol clouds of sunset, yeah, they're there, just like the fever clouds behind the hills, the remnants of rural lives, the groves and canopies and houses with fields. I woke up hours later, around three a.m., exhausted from too much sleep but feeling better than I had in twenty-four hours, even the sludge slogging through my digestive system was approaching settled. What was with that Ziplock of leaves fallen in August? Vaughn, her bed slightly lit now for the past few days since we bought a night light for the bathroom so she can find her way in the middle of the night, looks to the north I suppose. She who sleeps deeply and thrashes into the wall at times. Her floor a mess of wooden blocks, Lego bits, and books. Dash's door is closed. He who sleeps lightly and gnaws the white paint off his crib when he wakes up. The dark blue night through the window in the hall, the veil of Mary. You can't get rid of what they give you when you're young. I can't at least. I stagger down the stairs, lift my head at the cat as if she can understand that means "hey, how you doin'?" Pour a glass of water. Sit down at the dining room table. It's covered with newspapers, magazines, and old bills. The bananas in the fruit bowl are perfectly spotted. The street's actually quiet. Through the bowed opening of the curtains where they're supposed to meet: blue night, low rock wall edging the neighbor's driveway, vinyl siding and gutters, garden hose, wire fence with chubby posts, the cement walkway ending out of sight, their dining room window all lit up, some people never sleep. I sip the water. My stomachs don't feel better anymore.

      —•—

from "Sixteen Sloppy Haiku"
by Paul Blackburn

A sound you'll never
hear again:
pissing in the toilet
about 3 A.M.
 

strange bug, etc.

Been a tough week for writing. Vaughn picked up some strange bug in Maine where she seems fine all day but wakes up in the middle of the night and throws up three or four times. Dash had it, too, the last night in Maine, and then he had, you know, that other digestive issue for most of this week. Took them both to the doctor Monday and the dr. said wait it out. Called him on Wednesday and he said call him back on Saturday if we need to. Dash did finally seem to be over it today, but if Vaughn yacks again tonight, it'll be off to the doctor again tomorrow.
      —•—
Tuesday night at work I got a call from KC saying it was our anniversary. Not your stereotypical wife-nagging-hub call. Nope, we both forget the day. Every year for four years so far. Probably something to do with being together for like seven years before that. Also maybe that we both primarily look at it as a good excuse to go out to eat. So today Meme watched the kids, and KC and I went out for lunch at the Cookhouse. KC had the lemon-butter grilled salmon, horseradish mashed potatoes, and coleslaw; I had the lemon-butter grilled salmon, horseradish mashed potatoes, and a salad. There's a reason we're together I guess. Conversation was mostly about the kids. KC mentioned a really interesting take, intertextual, on one of the Harry Potter characters (I haven't read the books at all; she tells me about them, then when the movie hits we check it out). She asked if I'd been writing political poems lately because the various notes she's seen around the house are mostly political. Not really, I tell her. No more than usual. Not as much as I'd like, perhaps. She told me how she tried some gelato they now have at the bakery on the green. We considered stopping there on our way home, but it was getting late, meaning close to the time I'd have to leave for work, and I wanted a little more time to spend with Vaughn. We'll go with her when she's feeling better. Back home, Meme, Vaughn, and I played a game of Crazy 8's that just wouldn't end. It went on so long, I ended up getting into work just on time: the latest I've gotten there in months. Vaughn won the game, just as KC was about to take my place.

The Bridgewater Fair, 2007

                Vaughn showing Dash her new "tattoo"

Heading to the Bridgewater Fair, we have to drive like a mile-and-a-half around the fairgrounds to find the soccer field where we're supposed to park. When we finally get there we actually get a spot all the way up on the baseball field, right next to the pitcher's mound, nice and easy to remember. We unload our stuff, our kids, and head in the direction we saw others head. A woman calls out to us from a school bus: she's trying to fill more seats before shuttling folks right to the ticket booth. We think probably not, what with the stroller and all. KC asks her how far it is. "About a quarter mile," she says. I shake my head; we keep walking on. There are about a half dozen buses here—spewing their exhaust into the air because of a quarter mile? I shake my head. Eight bucks a pop for KC and me. Vaughn and Dash are free. "It smells like animals," Vaughn says. Smells like shit, I think. The first thing we see is an area roped off around some antique machines. One of them generates a mini waterfall. All of them spewing more exhaust into the air. "I'd rather smell the animals," KC says. We head over to the large white tent where the sheep are. Vaughn wants to see the black sheep. They're in the other aisle; we slowly make our way through the crowd. She says "Hi" to the black sheep, stares at them for a while. I wonder what the heck all the adults without children are doing here looking at the sheep. Make room for my kids you jerks. A sheep is bleating loudly. "I want to see the one whose baaing," she says. We follow the sound to end of the aisle. There's a white sheep being sheared. Face held still in some metal contraption. Beheheh, she bleats, mournfully, as if trying to reclaim whatever dignity she can.
      —•—
After the sheep, we head to the rabbit tent. But Vaughn's not too interested in the rabbits—she saw Uncle Joe's neighbor's two rabbits up close last week. Instead, the crowing of roosters at the other end draws her over there. We talk to a few of the roosters, but spend more time checking out the muscovy, and then listening to the very talkative African goose.
      —•—
We move on to another tent with a couple of large black horses, 1,600 pounders. They're busy eating and mostly we see their big behinds. On the other end of the tent is a small calf and a young bull. Vaughn takes to the cow, affectionately naming him Long Horns. I start to explain that the emblem on the hat I usually wear is for a college football team called the Longhorns, but I quickly realize that's much less interesting than the bull itself. And the next tent down is a whole long tent full of cows. She's really into the cows today.
      —•—
KC and Vaughn get a soft serve ice cream; we sit and they eat. Dash is good through all of this, taking in the scene, the crowds, the cooking smells, the exhaust smells, the carnival rides and game booths. Finally we head over to what was Vaughn's favorite activity last year at the fair: the sandboxes filled with dried-out corn. The boxes are crowded and Vaughn is shy. I point out places where she can squeeze in and start playing, but she's wary of the other kids. Finally, two girls, who look a bit old to be playing in corn, shake off and leave, and Vaughn gets in. She takes a shovel and fills a bucket, pats it smooth, then dumps it, and does it all over again. One boy gets really upset when his grandfather tells him it's time to go. The boy throws corn all over, flails his arms, has to be carried out. Later, a girl whose mother tells her it's time to go is met with screaming and violent whipping of the head back and forth. Vaughn won't be keen on leaving either. I think maybe they shouldn't have this attraction. I tell Vaughn we have to go soon. She says she doesn't want to. She has "finished" her most recent bucket filling. I tell her one more and then we're going. She scoops and fills, scoops and fills, and before too long smoothes out the top. She dumps it out, stands up, shakes off any pieces of corn caught in her dress, and reaches her hands up toward me. I picker her up and put her down where she can put her purple clogs back on. We head out with KC and Dash toward the women's room.
      —•—
One more thing to do before we go. We wander around and finally find the face and arm painting place. Most of the designs cost $2 or $3. Vaughn picks out the Little Mermaid, which is $7. KC talks her out of that. Vaughn's next choice is a unicorn, also $7. Lucky for us, Vaughn sees a heart in the $2 section, and she decides that's what she really wants. When the heart's dried on her arm, Vaughn asks us not to wash it out tonight. We tell her if she stays clean, we can do a sponge bath tonight and make sure the heart doesn't wash away.
      —•—
On our way out, Vaughn and KC cut through the tent where Long Horns is kept so Vaughn can say goodbye.

Dash is sleeping

Dash is sleeping. The cat looks like she's thinking: sitting on the hardwood floor, head up, in the sun as it has filtered through into the dining room. I feel like I'm feeling. The washing machine is rinsing. The dish washer's waiting to be run. How do we fill it so quickly? Dash is sleeping. KC and Vaughn are shopping. Sharma has now been eating her dry food and licking at her water dish. My hands are cold and typing. A knock at the door. It was a Jehova's Witness. "What turns you off about organized religion?" his response when I said "I'm not interested." "I'm letting the cold air in," I answered. "Have a good day," as I closed the door. My hands are colder. The cat is curious. Dash is sleeping upstairs thank goodness. The cat might wonder why I refer to her sometimes by name and sometimes as "the cat." "The cat" is a consequence, mostly, of the kids—she was more often "Sharma" before them. My hands are too cold—what am I anemic? Remember the wind blew the hairs on my shins—and my toes? That could be funny if properly plotted. What couldn't be funny if properly plotted? I get annoyed by distinctions between funny and humorous, comedy and tragedy, as if all drama were Flarf. I forgot what that means. I forgot for a second how my hands are so cold. They're very, very cold. And typing, of course. I feel like I'm feeling. The string trimmer next door might as well be a chopper. Motorcycle or helicopter? Either way is enough to make me forget my hands are so cold, and I was typing about something. Oh, flarf I like as a lowercase term for collage poetry based on search results or spam. Why bother with the specifics? Like when the penis winks its eye. Think of the sun outside. The cat has climbed the love seat to stretch into sleep in the passionate sunbeam. Passive I mean. Dash is sleeping. The string trimmer is singing. The song is one of constant praise. A severe praise like taxidermy. Typing has finally warmed my hands. Birdless on Grove Street, I listen for something more than the washing machine now spinning, the cars whooshing by the front of our house, the grinding engine of that damn string trimmer next door. My feet are freezing on the hardwood floor under the computer desk. Dash is sleeping upstairs. I can't see the cat anymore.

The eye bends the

The eye bends the horizon to see it. Nearly bereft of objects, the horizon, old professor, is not--not quite--a straight line. Long-bow horizon, arrow eye. A lighthouse to the periphery north at the end of a sleeping spine of rocks. Masts, dendrites, or a bit of spider web stuck in a corner. Sand-whipping wind over the beach late morning. Feet anchored below the ankles in the shallow surf, I hold Dash's hatted head close to my chest. The looking's slow, slow as words creeping through, into. Ocean sky. What's that? A kiss. KC lifts Vaughn by the arms to help her jump the waves. Colleen with Antonio, reckless boy, smashing the water with his three-year-old feet and shins. Rob's shaved head like a second sun against the dark marine: he seems to be the only one on this stretch of beach fully in the ocean, swimming this windy almost-chilly morning. Vaughn has fun until an almost-big wave surprises her and she decides she's had enough. There's a middle-aged couple playing bocce ball; and a very young couple, twenty yards apart, tossing a football; a father digging a big ol' hole, it's up to his waist, for his son with people gathered around; J.J. building a mountain of a sand castle complete with moat. Vaughn runs far ahead of us, eager to tell Meme about the water. A couple of women, older, cross in front of KC and me; they're watching Vaughn, smiling. As we get near our spot on the beach, I see beyond us in the rougher sand, another little girl and her parents walking among a dozen or so ring-billed gulls. The girl is trying to give them something; I don't think it's food. A shell? A rock? I look around and realize there are almost as many gulls as people here today. I hand Dash to KC. Not far to my right, a gull, disappointed that whatever he just pecked at wasn't food, keeps moving along: An eye on the ground, an eye on me; an eye on the ground, an eye on me. Vaughn leaves with Meme to collect shells and rocks. KC nurses Dash in Colleen and Rob's tent. I don't consider it odd that Dash's bathing suit and swimmy diaper have left my T-shirt wet even though he didn't go in the water. It's just a wetness that I'm sitting with, like sun screen, as I stare out at the browns and greens and whites and blues. Objects, I guess. Words? Mmm.

Drove the night

Drove the night to Maine. Rainbow north of I-84 just past Hartford. Old Testament longings, belongings--what Vaughn packed in her frog backpack that we let her pack for herself: fuzzy yellow weed flower, shrivelled; Jakers coloring book & fresh pack of Crayola crayons; her orange calculator; her frog calculator; yellow fork from her plastic kitchenette set; address book/notepad; small, rainbow-colored basketball; little sheep figurine; two post-its with "notes" on them; Peterson's Field Guide to Eastern Birds, which I hadn't realized she packed when I said "Oh, we should have brought the bird book." Light traffic, cruising just above sea level, eighty-five under tunnels, over bridges (50+% chance of faultiness) into sunshower, a small mass of dark clouds displace the earlier backlit clouds--old cellulite of clouds on the horizon. Stop at Old Sturbridge to pee, stretch back, snack on granola bars and raisins, gulp bottled water under moving clouds, then quick back on the road, into the night. A couple hours into this trip and kids strangely still awake when a half-hour drive's enough to knock them out. Through the road construction, bumpy surface, glump-glump tires, high road noise of the Civic, lane shifts ahead just around the bend, Dash throws up, "Projectile vomit," KC says, keeping an eye on him as I slow to sixty and get over to the right lane in case we need a quick exit from this shoulderless stretch. Sour milk smell fills the car, we lower the windows, pushing on--O puddle of puke. We pull off into the next rest stop. Vaughn's finally conked out. KC and I clean the car seat with baby wipes, but we know there'll be no ridding of the smell tonight. Light sleeper like his mom, gets carsick like his mom. Just hope he keeps eating his veggies like his mom, not like me and Vaughn. Long second stretch of the ride up into Maine, Dash's whimpers alternating with his quick loud little noises, punctuating silences. O hour of nothing with your black trees, heavy lights, and heavier eyelids. Wipers on, wipers off; wipers on, wipers off. The exits in Connecticut come one right after the other but not here in Maine. Finally, we reach the exit we need, take a few turns until we're on the Post Road and find the condos where we'll be staying. Meme and Aunt Colleen are waiting for us. No parking spaces open; they say "OK to park on the grass." Vaughn wakes up and Meme carries her inside. Vaughn bounces up and down on the air mattress on the floor. We say "Quiet, your cousins are sleeping." Dash crawls all over the mattress getting himself briefly stuck under the coffee table pushed against the wall. It takes a while but finally everyone settles down. I start off on the sofa; KC, Vaughn, and Dash on the mattress. But Vaughn wants me next to her so I try the floor, and soon I'm squeezing onto the mattress. Dash gets his third or fourth wind and starts crawling all over the place again. Vaughn wants me to get between them so I move inside and she slides to the end. Then Dash crawls over me and KC follows him and I end up on the other end. Dash keeps bopping everyone on the head and laughing so KC moves up to the sofa with him, leaving Vaughn and me on the mattress. We decide to play rock-scissors-paper. We can barely see so we have to push our hands together to see who wins. We play the best of seven. I take the first "throw" with rock-breaks-scissors. The second throw is a paper-paper tie. After that Vaughn wins the next four throws doing something she had never done before: changing her throw each time. "Let's play word association," she says, and so we do. "Dog," I say; "song," she says. "Moon," I say; "flower," she says. "Sun," I say; "rain," she says. "Cloud," I say; "rain," she says. "Seagull," I say; "cardinal," she says. After this, the game devolves into nonsense syllables I can't quite recall. Soon we are tossing and turning ourselves to sleep on the lumpy air mattress. I wake up frequently with dreams I think I'll recall in the morning but of course I won't. I remember only the one bit of a dream where I was with my family in some kind of lodge with a deck out back and a sliding glass door, and pacing out there was Jordan Davis, someone I've never met and only know of as one of the editors of The Hat and someone who who written some poems I’ve enjoyed, and anyway he's out there, looking like D.H. Lawrence, wanting to kill me, but only in a nonchalant "maybe I will, maybe I wont" kind of way.

In front of the peach trees

In front of the peach trees in our front yard, Vaughn runs long looping "circles" around KC. It feels like a silent movie as I watch them from the living room, holding Dash up on the sofa so he can watch them, too. The late afternoon sun has softened, and the humidity, perhaps. Behind me the roar of a TV crowd: Tiger Woods has nailed a put for birdie, giving him a commanding five-stroke lead, well on his way to winning his thirteenth major. Hard to disagree with excellence in sports. The peach trees look heavy, almost tired of standing, longing, perhaps, for someone with proper pruning know-how. They're not there for the fruit, but for the shade and the privacy they're not really great at offering. Even on the downside of a lazy Sunday, the cars, SUVs mostly, buzz by at regular intervals. Tired of watching KC and Vaughn, Dash turns and reaches for me with his drool-webbed hands. Lets out one of his happy Hehs as I scoop him up. We wander into the dining room, where I look down at the table. Time is open to a picture of Mia Farrow; she has volunteered "to trade places with Darfur rebel Suleiman Jamous, who has been under virtual arrest at a U.N. hospital for more than 13 months. The Sudanese government has threatened to arrest Jamous if he leaves the building's confines." Dash gets bored as I stand there reading. He pushes a hand in my face. So I walk around the house. The world's sick and I'm part of the disease. My ill effects are in Iraq. Regular people's bodies blown apart every day. For a scam? Dash shoves his wet hand in my face again—Ok, ok, I'll put you down. He crawls over to the seed crate where the Duplo blocks are stored, starts taking them out, looks up at me. It's fine I say by walking to the sofa and slumping into the seat. Nearly 200,000 firearms gone missing in Iraq? And this after admitting 300,000 barrels of oil per day had done the same? And, as The Daily Show pointed out, after 380 tons of explosives and $12 billion of tax-payer money had also disappeared? Too much incompetence to be believed. The sham war's a scam, too. When will it end? A trick question. The war never ends: it turns into something else. "We are disease," an old friend once wrote, "communicable in all the wrong ways." Dash keeps taking out the Duplo blocks and tossing them every which way. Tiger Woods is down to a two-stroke lead, but he looks as in command as ever. CBS shows a clip of his wife in the clubhouse holding their two-month old daughter. Vaughn clomps up the porch stairs outside, soon she and her mom are coming into the house. Dash forgets the Duplo blocks and scrambles for KC's legs. Vaughn runs over to show me a leaf she found. "It's red," I say. "And yellow! and green! and brown! and pink!" she says, then rushes off into the kitchen to store it who knows where. Alone in the living room, I stare at the overhead view of the golf course on TV. Clashing shades of green. Can't prove a negative, yet here I am, blank lines where words should be. Tiger's back up to a three-stroke lead, about to win his thirteenth major. Only 31. Can't disagree with excellence in sports.

Up at the cry

Up at the cry of dawn. The grownup groan responds to. Discrete moments of consciousness. In and out. What are the days but shiftings between such things? Vague as the sky is clear. Quick as the eye is slow. A robin whistling solo over the little rhythm of a sucking mouth. KC nursing Dash beside me. Stray little noises, chirps. Wholesome as salad. Warm as a cotton ball. I curl into the small of KC's back. Disappear again.

Vaughn and Dash splash

Vaughn and Dash splashing in the wading pool on the front porch. KC watching over them, sitting in one of the green plastic chairs we bought years ago for the Brookfield apartment. I sit on the other side of the living room's east windows, away from the allergens outside, reclined in our home's conditioned air. Feet up on the ottoman, I read slowly Hoa Nguyen's Red Juice, lingering over the words—"like some food / to nurse / a book" and "the blue blaze of watery Earth"—though partly it's that my eyes are moving sluggishly because I'm fighting a headache for the eighth day in a row. Too much time staring at monitor screens? Or do I need new eyeglasses? Hope it's one of those and not something else. "Wore a Hemp Hat" lists some potential baby names. It makes me think of a few of the names on our list we didn't use: Auden (too soft or too trendy), Parker (if we had had another girl), Creeley (if we weren't Keeneys). I struggle through the brain-throbbing skull-pounding for a few more pages of the finely-made chapbook, then give up. Pull off my glasses, set them down on the seed crate, toss a pillow on the floor, and lie down. No sooner do I close my eyes, there's a rattling of the doorknob at the front door. The door flings open and Vaughn rushes in, "Got to go potty," she yells as she rushes through the living room and into the bathroom, where she struggles to take down her water-soaked skirt and underwear. "I need help, Daddy." I get up to help her, ask her if she wet herself at all. But no, it's all wading-pool water. Normally she plays in the wading pool with nothing on—must have wanted to go for something different this evening. While she pees, I lean my forehead against the doorframe of the bathroom. Close my eyes for a few seconds. Vaughn asks for help pulling her soaked skirt and underwear back up, tells me she's going back out. She washes her hands as I fetch her an animal cracker. "Thank you," she says as she takes it, puts it in her mouth and heads to the door. I open it for her. Poke my head out and see Dash still splashing under KC's watchful eyes. Everyone smiling. I close the door and lie back down on the floor, wondering when the Tylenol will start to work.

At the familiar

At the familiar task of cradling Dash and swaying, trying to sway him into morning nap. Vaughn gone to the bank with Meme; KC drying her hair; all of us immersed in the morning routine. Sonic Youth on the stereo, "Wildflower Soul," as the words—heard or misheard—sway in mind, arrange themselves.

                        See-through child eyes
                        as old as magic
                        spinning gold
                        leaves fall in
                        to the water

Dash's head rests against my chest, softly placed under my shoulder blade. We move toward the window by the front door. The American flags that dot the neighbor's fence point to the ground. Drooping, staring down. Tired of wars. Tired of the word war. Empty rhetoric of wars against abstractions, as if abstractions could be eliminated. As if wars weren't waged against lives. As if innocents were casualties rarely or never at all. KC steps down the stairs; Dash lifts his head just enough to notice her. He won't be napping now. KC takes him and I head upstairs; my turn to shower. Turning light and water on to shave, I think of my depression-era grandmother, Mary (Messina) Keeney. How she lived detesting the slightest bit of waste, whether a single drop of water or the last bit of creamy Italian dressing in the container. Though the disposable container itself wasn't recognized as waste. Remember the excesses of the 80s when my step-father's extremism about lights being left on around the house seemed like an anachronism. Remember seeing Long Day's Journey into Night with my Aunt Marie and Uncle Sebbie. The father in the play with his obsessiveness about shutting off the lights around the house. How my Uncle had remarked what a different way of life we have now. Didn't seem so different to me, but I understood his point, how it was right at the time. But now we've gone forward into the past. Judicious use of lighting. Turn it off when you're not in the room. What we pay for water. What we pay for power. After shaving I switched off the lights before switching on the fan and stepping into the shower. Now I stand pushing the last drops of shampoo into my hair over my scalp. Suds like words pushed from a mind into a mouth. How needfully thoughts get silently worded. How subtly words get tongue-slapped into being.

Sharma sleeps on

Sharma sleeps on the ottoman under the desk in the dining room. Her favorite place to be since our second kid came along. A purple mouse-toy clumped with cat hair looks almost gray as it pokes out from under her fat rump and stupidly eyes the Georgian green wall. Torn envelopes and statements sticking up at all angles from the mini mail sorter. Constant on-and-off again beeps from the construction work across the street. Rumble of dirty yellow machines moving dirt around. Toy plates and baby-doll paraphernalia across the floor. But Vaughn is upstairs in her room building a Lego tower shaped like a bird, and Dash is conked out in his crib, lullabied to sleep perhaps by the whispering water of KC's shower. Alone in the back room with my mug of black tea staring stupidly with half-awake eyes into the harsh light of the monitor screen bearing the news of a massive Fisher-Price toy recall, unacceptable levels of lead paint found again in toys made in China. Makes me wonder why we have so many toys, especially when Vaughn's favorites, often enough, are Birdhand and Duckhand, which would be my right hand and my left hand. I suppose we have so many toys (it's not so many really) because our families love them, and holidays are capitalist events, and most importantly grownup hands get tired.