but is this his flashback now

or mine? Last summer I tracked him down

to the woods upstate. He didn’t remember

the years he lived with us, not

clearly. He asked, did you people even know

I’d been in Vietnam? In my flashback

he shoots out all the windows, splinters

a chair, cuts his hand deep

putting it through a cabinet door.

By morning I find blood pooled on the yellow

linoleum. It is quiet. He is

gone. In my version

it’s raining that morning, the rain

drops a blanket on the house, I poke a finger

through soggy wool, press my

mouth to the holes to breathe. Where

is my mother in all this? Two lights

embedded in the kitchen ceiling—one

or the other always burned-

out. She stands at the sink, looking out

at the rain, the dead bulb

pushing down on her shoulder. Even if I could ask

she might not remember it this way. I don’t

think about him at all anymore, my brother

claims, while John busts up the house

for the umpteenth time, & behind locked doors

we hunker down, yelling, Leave.

No Map

Ghost stars convincingly stutter,

you can stare all night

& they might not even exist. As we line up

the teacher asks, Is there a sign that says

touch the wall? Then don’t

touch the wall. On the radio a man sings, I’m

gonna make you love me,

but he doesn’t say how. We scour

pornography, study bodies like maps

of lost & distant countries. We all have

nightmares—a man’s voice

getting closer, a woman hovering

just out of reach. Mary

smears lipstick on my ears

as I search for her clitoris, having read

that if I apply the perfect balance

of thumb & forefinger

she will love me forever. In school

they give a test: Please _____ me

a napkin, _____ the wagons up the hill. We learn

that all the salmon are becoming

confused, that the center of the earth is a planet

spinning within a planet, & the universe

is smaller than expected,

yet filled with more

than we ever imagined. Please

sing me a napkin, plant the wagons

up the hill.

Wild with Dandelions & Roses

Like sands through the hourglass, the tv

intones, every weekday at 3,

bending my grandmother into her stories, trapping me

on the swirling rag carpet

as I drive my matchbox camaro

to the stitched center & back. Saturdays

Tarzan fills the room & I learn

about quicksand, how the less you struggle

the slower you sink.

Here is her hallway, the lightswitch buried

under years of wallpaper, so many layers

the corners are rounded, the walls springy,

like the earth beneath an ancient cedar. Her yard is wild

with dandelions & roses, her fingers gnarled

from turning over flowerbeds, from crushing

Japanese beetles. She gives me clorox

to pour on anthills

& popsicles in the summer, her sidedoor

unlocked for me at night. She gives