Each Time

The first time it happened 

I twisted my leg muscles

I rose from the chair

realized nothing

remembered nothing

Later I would say

I remember

I was reading Sylvia Plath’s poems

finished watching a movie about her

gazing at the cats on the sofa

The second time

I was reviewing the police report.

I did not need to see a doctor.

Gasps in logic

watching them carry the body

away like watching someone

you don’t know getting undressed.

At an age where I should be settled—

own a house, pay a mortgage,

though I wouldn’t have lived on a busy corner.

Worse than a 100 year old plant dying

worse than wondering if it would

ever bloom, hummingbirds pollinating it

on the small porch

white blooms.

Can one ever be satisfied?

Each time I tell people

eyes hungry, questions

“good detail” they burp

like trying on a girlfriend’s clothes

they run throiugh the scenario

and see if it fits.

I want to share

I don’t want to share

Each day clearing the bottom rooms—

kitchen, dining room, and how living room,

I hear the crash—

how much easier it would be now

with nothing in those rooms

to slow it down.

I think of the burger place on Cutting and San Pablo

the Black woman with a white hair net

her son helping out.

Next door the barber with a bobbing bird

in his window—

buildings one

or re-used

then gone.

We would push against the counter

to stand up.

Such a bargain.

Even now, inquiries.

Like my mother’s stroke and six months later

her death, it keeps coming—

different seasons but the same

nausea and unanticipation

no way of pressing a blade

closer, shiny, fixated

alone, a wimpering animal

against the cut.

All at once I felt a snap

and a rush and as if it were

100 below I was shaking.

I could hear my mother’s voice,

“put a sweater on” but I didn’t.

I was crying to live in those

moments, as if a door had slammed

or someone had locked me out

of life. Chest heaving,

my neighbor called—

“stay with me” I said

until I realized I couldn’t hold

the phone anymore.

What would I take?

The cats wouldn’t come into the carriers.

I emerged into the outside

of my skin, the street,

the house like a reptile

regurgitating its meal.

Sirens without noise,

red engine,

white pickup, 

crowd across the street

everything ready to explode

“stand back,” he said, as I filmed

two trucks pulling the criminal truck out of the house.

It would be a week until they bandaged

the house, wound gaping

but not repair it yet

even after a month.

First the abatement

“rip it out” then stabilize.

In a world of dead languages

the same worn phrases used

pain described of a structure taken apart.

A few people were crying, or at least

hands on their faces.

Go away I wanted to shout

and to the man who stepped in front

videoing, blocking me,

it’s me you are taking a part. 

My mind completely mixed up

like a puzzle—what’s first

like an argument about my own identity.

What stability means, in one

moment having to leave, skip to the next

chapter because the reading has been interrupted.

Not a Bomb

—after “Leap” by Brian Doyle

People heard it from a half mile away

down on San Pablo Avenue.

People heard it from across the street.

Yasmin texted her husband the construction worker

before calling 911 and reporting the accident.

Mr. Ayres’ son Mark rushed over with his fire extinguisher,

as did Liz, whose husband Steve was not home yet.

The new neighbors diagonally across the street 

came out of their house, saw the car plough through 

four cars at the intersection at 5 PM,

saw the pickup hit the house. Saw the fire,

wondered if someone was inside.

But there I am inside

sitting in the leather chair,

hearing almost crashes, skids outside

then

screech    crash    boom

then 

enter enter    louder louder

walls layer by later

pushed    pushing through

closer and more

closer and more    and louder

and it keeps coming and

no    no    no    no

the cats run upstairs

I stand up from the chair, leg muscle twists

Neighbor calls “don’t go out the front door,

there’s a fire” and I run upstairs

don’t see the cats, but close the door anyhow

grab my purse,

what else to take—laptop, oboe—

and I leave without it all.

Outside the house police and fire

a white pickup truck stuck in the bottom of the house.

Neighbor in front of her house talking to another neighbor,

across the street a dense population watches

like it’s a New York corner.

Cars dead in the intersection, a wooden sided trailer

in the middle, 

or did I see it pulled to the side? 

What happened first? 

What did Yasmin see from across the street?

I have to tell someone I am okay. The policeman says,

“In a minute. We’re taking statements from eye-witnesses.”

The fireman crawls under the house,

then he and PG&E go into the dining room, and I follow.

Shattered plaster walls, 

bookcases dumped like trash onto hardwoods

all the words out at the same time—

Adrienne Rich, Margaret Atwood, 

Trees of Northern America, East Bay Out,

maps from everywhere I went or wanted to go—

where did I want to go?

the “Bay Region” map AAA doesn’t make anymore

Mother’s pictoral map of Spain.

The Sachses’ dining room table and chairs untouched,

the jade and blue bowl by Kimmi Matsui cracked.

In the kitchen I see the linoleum floor buckled, pale dust

underneath, “asbestos” they say.

Plaster walls popping off, earthquake cracks made new

with a herringbone pattern as if someone took a razor and cut,

brown teapot on the floor. It was already broken.

People heard it from a half mile away.

But there I was inside, unable to think.

Days later, I will be told all objects need to be wiped before packing—

“don’t go in there”, don’t. You will get sick,

you will sue the owner. 

But the toxic report will not have come back yet.

One expert will comment “there are a few types of asbestos,”

and it becomes a pattern, like everyone’s estimate of the time it will take 

to put it all back together. 

And the boom keeps coming, as I box up wreckage.

Wreckage not because of being broken,

but because I can’t—

the scene is too new, too loud, and inspectors, engineers, and architects keep coming,

along with the Nashville musician chimney expert with his bright yellow truck.

They all prod and comment 

and just like that I’m back with my Mom in rehab,

then assisted living, then board and care, then the nursing home—

how people treated her as wallpaper, not as a person.

She was—

the same way here

as I go through belongings from devastation.

Neighbors walk by, don’t know the insides

don’t see my body tensing—

how my leg at the moment of the accident,

standing up from the chair, wrenching—

how my ears, ringing—

They don’t know how three years earlier, I couldn’t absorb the shock of Mom’s stroke,

the question in the ER that night, how they asked, “does she wear a diaper?”

how they saw my Mother

while to me she was fully competent—

what they saw—

she was invisible to them. 

As I am now. part of the wreckage.

This is not a flash of enlightened realization

I do not know where the story is heading,

the car tearing into the house a part of

my skin like a never return,

like a bomb.

Untie His Hands

In prison drawn

men in a circle

let him do to himself 

what he did to others.

How can we forgive,

like bees in a hive

working towards a common goal?

The day of the incident he wore an unfamiliar

brand of grease in his hair

slicked back, excess of moisture,

mouth an “O”, semi-permanent,

teeth slammed against the car bag

that saved his life, already bruises

on his forehead, shirt cut

left arm bare—

these photos in the police report—

more real than when I saw him cut out 

of the truck after he slammed into our house.

Not Latino but Italian it turns out,

Gino, father of two little ones

but in these photos

the white Honda that he hit crumbled

like a tub of toothpaste

at the intersection,

driver taken to the hospital

in serious condition—

no statement from her.

“I felt the side of his trailer,”

another driver stated,

“He was going 45 in a 25 zone” said another

and other—

through a red light, four way stop

photo of a woman in a gurney

photo of a fireman looking underneath the house

where foundation bent

where beam broke

where the fire started

and was put out by three neighbors.

Before he got in his car that day

did his wife froth eggs

in two swipes, did she

kiss him goodbye

or did she, years earlier

abandon his name,

move to Richmond.

No alcohol detected, no drugs, no

poison. Did he finish high school?

Did his father or mother come from Italy,

own a restaurant, a construction business?

Did he fall on hard times,

prepping his hand-made trailer

that morning, oversized construct

sailing behind him up the street, out of

alignment with the truck?

What kind of grease did he use in his car?

As they wheeled him out

his fingers, inert,

did not hold onto anything.

“Unconscious” said the police officer

like it happened every day, consequences

of his job, holding everyone’s gaze 

as if he were famous, 

but he was not the center of activity.

Dried blood on Gino the driver’s neck—

you have wrecked the house—

floors, walls, cabinets, chimney, underpinnings—

you have wrecked lives

exhausted your channels

like a stove, pipes. clogged.

I’m trying not to rely on heresay,

to stick to the official line

but the green tablecloth is patterned 

with lead paint and the bookcases are like mis-blown glass

in pieces on the floor.

The sound of grief in the morning,

I cannot put my finger on this winter

in late summer, cannot categorize the level

a hurricane of red within.

Some epiphany may arrive

from reckless abandon

walking down the hill to familiar lands.

I am not graceful

but make my way quickly and effortlessly

with my fists clenched.

I will not make promises,

shattered upon waking.

Your vehicle was not carrying mercy and salvation

at 5 PM on a weekday—

spirals make the evening

lives were saved.

I was not burned, not hit,

not killed by imprecise hands

through the stop light.

And I need no one’s permission to stay in this

ever-state. Some did not make their way home

from that day, noise a permanent marker—

some, like me were on the edge

are still on the edge,

almost gone.