I liked holding the hand-blown glass bell

from Czechoslovakia up to the light,

the jewelled clapper swinging lazily

from side to side, its foreign,

A-minor ping. I drifted, an itinerant,

from job to job, the sanatorium

where I pureed peas and carrots

and stringy beets, scooped them,

like pudding, onto flesh-colored

plastic plates, or the gas station

where I dipped the ten-foot measuring stick

into the hole in the blacktop,

pulled it up hand over hand

into the twilight, dripping

its liquid gold, pink-tinged.

I liked the donut shop best, 3 AM,

alone in the kitchen, surrounded

by sugar and squat mounds of dough,

the flashing neon sign strung from wire

behind the window, gilding my white uniform

yellow, then blue, then drop-dead red.

It wasn’t that I hated calling them, hour

after hour, stuck in a booth with a list

of strangers’ names, dialing their numbers

with the eraser end of a pencil and them

saying hello. It was that moment

of expectation, before I answered back,

the sound of their held breath,

their disappointment when they realized

I wasn’t who they thought I was,

the familiar voice, or the voice they loved

and had been waiting all day to hear.

Singing Back the World

I don’t remember how it began.

The singing. Judy at the wheel

in the middle of Sentimental Journey.

The side of her face glowing.

Her full lips moving. Beyond her shoulder

the little houses sliding by.

And Geri. Her frizzy hair tumbling

in the wind wing’s breeze, fumbling

with the words. All of us singing

as loud as we can. Off key.

Not even a semblance of harmony.

Driving home in a blue Comet singing

I’ll Be Seeing You and Love Is a Rose.

The love songs of war. The war songs

of love. Mixing up verses, eras, words.

Songs from stupid musicals.

Coming in strong on the easy refrains.

Straining our middle aged voices

trying to reach impossible notes,

reconstruct forgotten phrases.

Cole Porter’s Anything Goes.

Shamelessly la la la-ing

whole sections. Forgetting

the rent, the kids, the men,

the other woman. The sad goodbye.

The whole of childhood. Forgetting

the lost dog. Polio. The grey planes

pregnant with bombs. Fields

of white headstones. All of it gone

as we struggle to remember

the words. One of us picking up

where the others leave off. Intent

on the song. Forgetting our bodies,

their pitiful limbs, their heaviness.

Nothing but three throats

beating back the world — Laurie’s

radiation treatments. The scars

on Christina’s arms. Kim’s brother.

Molly’s grandfather. Jane’s sister.

Singing to the telephone poles

skimming by. Stoplights

blooming green. The road,

a glassy black river edged

with brilliant gilded weeds. The car

an immense boat cutting the air

into blue angelic plumes. Singing

Blue Moon and Paper Moon

and Mack the Knife, and Nobody Knows

the Trouble I’ve Seen.

Balance

I’m remembering again, the day