Family estrangements aren’t sexy…..

I miss my Dad.

He looked so different

He looked so different online; Jesus Christ…
with clichéd spiny hands and beady eyes
that detail of his drive and Northern Lights; 
“While here the chicks wear short-shorts and get high”—
Again there’s coffee and another lie—
our angled photos, fiercely hiding truth.
 I can’t get over chin and mouth that spies 
my own (a grotesque notion.) Quite uncouth 
for someone like me… Grinding grinds and tooth 
we sit and talk about our lives. I leave
and yet we both feel less. Here’s solemn proof:
still driving home to cats and empty sheets…  
And yet, despite the fickle web I spin
I know that I am lonely, just like him.

so small

Stuck in this cemented state of wishfulness,
longing to wake up one day to find that you've grown
to be six foot four, your feet dangling off my bed,
pushing me in deep sleep with your trumpet arms.
It really sucks when all that stands between us,
is 14" and our complexes...
You never seemed so small.

Strutting down the speckled pavement

Strutting down the speckled pavement,
clad in Minnie-Mouse-onesy
having happy two year-old first walks—
little wobbly paws and fuzz,
moving along in a
clear California winternoon,
down the block while dad
captures the moment for the books
and the tail drags along the cracks.
Mom right here close,
mushing high-pitched
words into the sky.

But, deep down it’s blue
and “agoo” and
about to whisk me up—
the long palms and then
dad’s gone.
Dee Dee with the thoughtful look of
something that’s just sorta
there beneath the wear and tear
of a Minnie Mouse onesy
with pointy, little ears
that are always listening.

Night stand

I’m beautiful.

It’s hard to remember, when you smell like cheap cologne,

and sting like the long drive home, listening to the sound of

unfulfillment swell about the car. Hard, while following

to some static room where SNL and infomercials sound

as he awkwardly fondles and frets and you wonder what

time it is… are we over yet? But it’s still there—behind forced

conversations and “what the fuck am I doing here?”;

limit the eye contact and remove your glasses for groping.

Polite moments, and then flash-forward to 3am laundry,

doused in rubbing alcohol and familiar thoughts.

An accidental catch-the-glance of an eye behind the glass

and it’s almost striking.

Mom’s going to die someday

Mom’s going to die
someday. While driving to school,
fiddling with cds and a sore throat
the thought suddenly chokes,
like the number of cars in front
of me, long-lines of cold
color. One call and all will
stop-short.

Childhood let’s us
float with Barbies
who don’t get grey hair
or lose mortgages to men in
dense offices. We fly
from markings on walls–
up and higher, until soon
we’re at the high school lot,
and mom’s nervous
in a passenger seat while snotty teen
whines, “I know, I know!”

Thoughts are postponed
and prepared until one day,
while 19 and soiled in traffic,
late to something (that’s really nothing,)
it dawns that there will come
a morning when we won’t be
able to push
button-number-two,
dialing away on the 405
and feel pacified.
There won’t be an answer
or help on how to drive;
where to steer.
I sob and pull to
the side.

For Monica

Is it wrong that I hate you
and your rank morning-breath,
that taught me to seek solace by the window
on raw, morning drives to school?
With forehead pressed, breath
making a mist, I’d clench, knotting
teeth and grinding hands until stiff;
(since it was too early for Enya,
and passive-aggressiveness.)

Because I used to sit on Dad’s lap
and hold on tight in the blue Mustang (a ’65)
while winding down the first freeway
in California, feeling warm and high. And
I was his girl. No need to park in the street
or sit in the back seat while you complain
that he pays too much attention to me.
(I’m not the only one who needs self-esteem.)

And where will you sit, when it’s my turn?
On the side of my groom? No. I’ll make you shake
hands and smile for a change or
just don’t come and let my dad, alone.
What a spectacle you’ve made:
whisking away our brother from the hands of my
“deranged mother;” bringing up the will
and your better life in Brazil; and recall those
family trips, kissing our cheeks with tight lips
before the car pulled out and
we waved from a driveway.

So, I resolve to go and recall
good times through old photos.
Make a point. (Did I really just
delete my dad from Facebook?)
Life is full of consolidations; selling
Mustangs and making a choice between
calling on holidays or calling at all.
It’s been dampened and so I pound my fist
on drywall as you build a new home and buy
silly things to flair your gills and make
life seem superior. And I hope it’s
better for you, as it will be for me,
and someday I’ll bring over my child
and pretend to be okay that he isn’t
in a frame over your mantle.

From a balcony in Santa Ana [in progress]

It’s still magical, even from a balcony

six miles away in Santa Ana, the far-off

sonic booms and pixilated workings of color

and spectrums. I envy those

stroller-years when God was pyrotechnics

and a chocolate-dipped banana.

Now I’m alone, and a carton of ice cream is

still relief, but not so sweet when on a balcony,

alone and goosebumped. How pastel it all is—no

bold colors tonight with lights polluting our

skies, molding alongside ash. When you’re

young and dumb, you don’t think about the silence

in between the Disneyland “Parade of Dreams”

but simply marvel at the workings of

fireworks and a chocolate-dipped banana.

A Letter of Resignation

It falls, her bag, as she moves
to her room, and recalls,
“get going you old hag.”
And it’s done.
Weeping like melted ice
she sits thinking of time
and life and how fast
it’s all been (though she can’t find
words to describe.) With kids grown,
and gone, making once-a-month visits
to quiet home, she’s
odd. Her patrons have passed and
while two still call,
she has too much pride
to set up curlers and a wash
in a home so small.
Hunched, the silhouette’s cheeks
are wet-on-the-bed, while the
coo-coo clock sounds.

And so it’s done—
and empty hands with time
to re-arrange furniture and
make a meal are worn
fine with thread-like wrinkles
that once held a comb, and
did something to heal the
fear of how many more years…
And it’s done: the final march through
automatic doors to pass one note
that couldn’t abridge fourteen years.
Wobbling to the kitchen
to prepare another meal,
she takes up an onion, and peels.

Glow-in-the-dark

As a kid I’d wipe the snot

atop the bunked bed next to

plastic stars glowing stark,

unaware of the day when

we’d move and I’d get caught.

With a beet-red glow, not unlike each star,

I put them zip-locked away in-a-box;

and learned that people see

what happens in the dark.