PUBLIC EDUCATION
Some smart-ass peed on the bathroom radiator--
the whole school stunk. One of my best friends
dying of cancer. My students saying what they wrote
didn't have to make sense.
Secretary in the main office having an affair
with the Metal Shop teacher. Janitor caught them
naked in the gym showers. That'd be the last place
I'd go to screw somebody said in the lounge.
I chewed my pencil for lunch. My friend's sub
getting pretty chipper about his prospects for staying on.
Me, I'd just want to get my hair wet, I said.
Everyone turned and stared.
Three days to Christmas break.
It doesn't have to make sense, I said.
¤ ¤ ¤
CHRISTIANITY EXPLAINED BY A MONK OF THE TAKE-OUT ORDER
My daughter thinks Haste is an efficient friend
who went with the Virgin Mary to visit
her sister Elizabeth. She wants to know about
this Jesus kid with the round yellow hair
in the manger and if the animals are going
to eat him. Sort of, I say, for I know nothing.
My grandfather's old nativity set--
beat-up dime store figures held together
with glue from the fifties when every
body believed. She wants to know
how my friend does magic and why
he doesn't talk when he does mime.
Jesus was the first mime, I say. I loved
my grandfather, though he didn't talk much.
¤ ¤ ¤
FOURTH OF JULY MUG SHOT
Sweat streaked white across the black
pillow case. His and his alone.
He felt safer driving without a license.
He sighed luxuriously at stop signs.
His mother checked his breath at the door
but he had other weapons. The Family Picnic
but his ex-wife had the kids. This is a funny
one. Did you hear the one about.
The hot dogs were black and shriveled.
He did not use condiments. He liked the grit
between his teeth. He smiled
for his father's camera.
¤ ¤ ¤
MENDING FENCES
Our neighbors' beans grow through the fence.
Cindy says we can pick the ones on our side.
Last night I heard her yelling through the two
layers of brick that separate our houses
Go ahead, leave, go out and find wife number four,
you shithead! I laughed aloud next to my sleeping
wife. The kind of laugh--
you shake your head, glad it's not you.
I've been leaving the beans. They grow
fat, bumpy, inedible. Today I pick them all
and hand them over the fence to her.
You guys need them more, I say. Steve's sledge-
hammering something in their bathroom.
Our hot street holds no secrets. Open windows
feed the mirage of a breeze. This morning
dried sweat salted lines on our black sheets.
My wife threatens to call the police, or worse,
tell them directly to stop the screaming.
They're scaring our children. We just yell a lot,
she tells me, as if that explains everything
and nothing. You guys are so quiet over there
we think you must be dead sometimes. I don't have
an answer for that. I think we're alive. I sing
my children to sleep with the Canadian national anthem.
Maybe we're just Canadian inside. I hope so.
Canada has a small army and no magic bombs.
Cindy and Steve joined the Syrian Orthodox Church
around the corner, though they're neither Syrian
nor Orthodox. For years, I've been trying to get rid
of the morning glories in our yard. It's impossible.
And now, my daughter, four, gleefully points out
each blossom. I will stop pulling them up.
They're trying, next door. We're trying here.
Nothing's Orthodox in this city of tilted chimneys,
soot-stained bricks. Weeks later, I'll spot her
reaching pudgy fingers through the fence
to get those beans on our side. Today, she takes them
from my outstretched hands. I can barely breathe,
she says. Maybe it'll cool off tonight, I say.
We both look up at the hazy sun. A bus rumbles
up the hill behind us. It is never quiet here.
