My Father Calls With More Bad News

A boy my sister went to high school with killed himself,
how? My father doesn’t know, can only read between
the lines of small town gossip and transmit the news
via telephone to me in Florida, far from Midwest tragedy,

like the closing of another factory, or another farm sold
off, which makes me think of my grandparents’ farm
auctioned off to the highest bidder, as they stood
in the dirt and watched their possessions disappear

into pickup trucks, loads to be sold on e-bay—a concept
they know nothing of. Now they live in town, close
to my parents, in a small house, where my grandfather
finds it hard to walk, to stay on his feet. Often he wakes

in the night, goes to the window expecting to see his fields,
his grape vines, his rundown garage where he spent his days
fixing the broken, breaking the fixed. Now all he sees
is his neighbors’ house, their teenage son in the driveway

saying goodnight to a girl, streaked blonde hair, they kiss,
like they’ve got the rest of their lives, and maybe they do,
or maybe something tragic is looming, like my best friend
in eighth grade who told me he wasn’t going to live past 18,

just had a feeling. This information terrified me—
until he reached 18 and survived, though his half-brother
nearly died that year, a car accident at 3 a.m., my friend
lucky he didn’t go for the late night food run. And I wonder

if he thinks of telling me this, us huddled at our desks, sharing
boyhood secrets. Or if he thinks of the night he confessed
that his other half-brother was gay and died of AIDS,
and then the night three years later, I told him I was gay

but wasn’t going to die of AIDS, over the phone, him
at his college up north, me in college too, but sitting in
Motel 8’s parking lot to get a better cell phone signal,
as to not cut out mid-sentence. Now we are both 25

and will continue to grow old, fade away in front
of TV screens, him watching episodes of the Twilight Zone,
me I Love Lucy, like I did every day after school my entire 5th
year as my mother hovered over the fireplace in her gold

sparkly sweater making fire out of old newspapers,
crushed in her hands. On NPR last month they reported
seventeen suicides by young girls all living in the same British
town. The whole place is spooked, a curse? doomsday?

or the plot to a really bad horror movie where anyone
with big breasts must die? After hearing the report I turned
to my lover, driving the car, and said, how strange,
where do you want to eat? And he answered with no comment

on the girls, the dead girls, and again I thought it’s strange
how tragedy that has nothing to do with us, has so little effect,
no sense of alarm that death is near, is all around.
That we may never again kiss in the driveway late at night

with old men watching, dreaming of snapping beans
on screened-in Indiana porches, the beans fuzzy against hands.
And now my father has reported more tragedy, and I’ve said,
how’s the weather? to change the subject, to ignore the fact

that a boy I once met has killed himself, but there’s no ignoring
the question of a suicide note and what it said. The pressure
of a good note would forever keep me alive, revising, worrying
over my last statements to the world, like my last words

to my dad before I hang up the phone and get online to search
for those dead girls, maybe there’s been an eighteenth body,
a discovery of some letter that explains everything (alien
abductions, government plots, terrorism), something I can

tell my father next week when he calls with more bad news.

Protesting the Circus After Watching 12 Monkeys

We were too law abiding to unhook the latch
on the elephant’s steel cage. Could only stand
twenty feet away with signs alerting circus-goers
to the cruelty inside. Faces of children pressed
against car windows asking parents what “boycott”
means and why those boys are holding hands.

We stood in peaceful protest with strangers:
the pregnant vegan lady, the cat tamer, the man
with buggy eyes and hands that waved with the ups
and downs of his voice, his back aching.
We were in desperate need of a Brad Pitt, of a sexy,
crazy man to make us believe in the beauty

of un-caged animals, of giraffes on bridges, of lions
that stalk skyscrapers. And I wished you were him,
the man to insist we let the elephants roam the mall
parking lot, trampling cars, children, shopping bags.
And I imagine being your accomplice, removing
our clothes with careful fingers, chaining ourselves

to the cage with the handcuffs we bought in the toy
department of Wal-Mart for late night sex games.
Or how the authorities might aim guns at us, insisting
we unlock ourselves, cover our growing erections.
But we’d just stand there roaring at the top of our voices,
holding each other like prisoners of war,

until the police would discover the release button on our
plastic handcuffs and drag us away, lock us up, label us
insane. Perhaps even make us suspects for greater plots:
man killing viruses or deathly explosions. Yes, I long
for us to go crazy, to lose ourselves for love, like silly
silver-screened heroes. If only we could be left to rot

in an asylum, drool dripping down our faces, watching
Bugs Bunny in black and white, dreaming of a world
where animals might rule the earth and humans might
live beneath the ground, forever banished, forever
forgetting the taste of fresh air, the sound snow makes
under boots—those very feelings that once defined us.

Sleeping with Peter Pan

You were bigger than I expected,
taller even, your shoulders square,
your legs long and tender in tights
green as grasshopper legs.

You told me stories of wingless boys
flying, and I thought of dying,
of drowning, of my inability
to get on a plane without shaking.

Don’t be scared, you whispered
from the ceiling, boys are meant to fly.
Yet I stood tip-toed on the bed unable
to levitate, to let go of gravity.

It wasn’t about sex, but red hair
between our thighs, treasure chests,
and rusty hooks I kept under the bed,
for safety, I said.

We sat naked on the floor, your shadow
doing tricks against the walls,
until I caught it in my mouth, curled it
with my tongue, and sewed it

back to your feet with needle
and thread, careful not to prick.
When I finished you held my hand
to the light, pretended to see my heart

beating between my thumb and index finger.
Then you danced on my window sill,
cracked the glass, and slipped into black,
knowing I would never fly after you,

never see the world upside down,
or reach that ship in the sky that looks
a lot like a boy, his arms spread wide,
his hat cocked a little to the side,

thinking only happy thoughts.

Sleeping with Robin Hood

You showered me in stolen gold,
wowed me with your bow, your arrow,
your precision,

and when I begged to leave your tree house
you bound my hands with vine, stripped off my rags,
and told me soft against my face

how green was your favorite color,
how you loved the smell of pine,
sap on your legs, in your hands, down your throat.

You were like a fox wise in the woods
but with a soft underbelly, a coat to keep us warm.

I feared winter, feared the ice would overtake us,
like water, like death, like a snow globe, you said,

we are caught in continuous weather.
But you had done this before, a con-artist for all time.

You entered me in disguise—a beggar, a pirate,
a solider, a man in a dark hood.