Poem with Eyes & a Knife
Here is the bus stop
where dad drops us off,
where we will wait the 8 promised
minutes for the last bus back
to our hotel across town.
He lives here because the rent’s cheap
& he likes the locals, he says, how at home
they are. At the corner bar,
he bought us cokes, & a round for the room,
sampling their slang. He ordered rum & pineapple juice
when they’d turned away.
Earlier, he gave us money to get ourselves
dinner—too much
of it—handing me hundreds
behind the wall of the sculpture garden.
Don’t draw attention. I feel like a John.
Maybe my little sister
wouldn’t know what that means.
I am the elder daughter.
Here at the bus stop,
Bobby isn’t looking to go
anywhere. He’s lived in this neighborhood
all his life, homeless now, but still
here & good
to talk to, my dad says, introducing us.
Old, with knuckles
grandmother-like, as if he’s held
a wood spoon for much of his life,
he tells us we have Irish eyes.
Dad tells him to watch out
for us, then leaves
for the night.
Next morning, packed to go home, we’ll wait
in Dad’s truck while he cries, the only time
I’ve seen it happen, fat sloppy drops wetting his face
—a rock in the desert, struck open—
I’m becoming such a sap.
Six months later, he’ll rig a shotgun
so he can pull the trigger
while the barrel’s in his mouth.
They’ll mail us his boxes:
cigarette butts, blank paper. I’ll find
a powdered mirror, his dented pocketknife,
half a paperback
of The Dharma Bums, only one
brown bloodstain,
but I’ll say there were more,
telling this story.
I’m a sentimental old man,
he said in his truck that day, & we two daughters
were afraid to comfort him.
Here is the stop where we wait.
It is close to midnight.
Here is the street, candescent
with old rain, fresh-stubbed
cigarettes, stars out
overhead, those sterling pneumatic tubes
shipping light from the long past
to us, waiting, & because
I am the eldest, I turn to Bobby.
You don’t have to stay.
We can take care of ourselves.
& Bobby, who is holding, now,
one grandmother hand against the other, says,
I know you can, girls & leaves.
But we see him, stalling, watching out,
at the corner of the street.