To Get Here Today (a piano)

up and down the coast of Spain, and a black round

of coral my ex-boyfriend’s mother had given

me after she lost her other son—and walked-run

to the bus with them and the gargantuan Norton

Anthology of American Literature (Shorter 7th Edition)

because I’m teaching Fitzgerald, and The Dream

of a Common Language because I couldn’t seem

to find my Audre Lorde and I wanted to send

her something beautiful and surviving, not

something that dwelt only on the pain, but

that explored a way out; someone who knew

(to kill oneself doesn’t require, though,

a disaster) what pain can do.

No books composed by suicides. No

Deborah Digges, no Paul Celan. To

get here I walked to the bus stop planning how

and when to explain where babies come

from, for my child’s already asked . . . and I thought,

I’ll tell her in the summer,

for I’m a single mother.

To get here today I lined my eyes with dark sky,

filled in with moss green, and in the crease,

stone. In the street I realized my leggings

were on inside out. I quartered a kiwi

and halved a passion fruit, for I love the feel

of infinity in the sandy crunch of seeds,

and the viscosity of the other’s jelly reminds

me of the frog egg clouds we used to find

as children in the pond in Texas. We’d slide

them into the claw-foot bathtub that sufficed

as a cow trough, caress them saying caviar,

by which we meant luck and money, the stars

that hung over the house in the dark,

and which I’ve not had in ages. Today I rode

the #56 bus down Derech Hashalom,

to Aluf Sade, and just past the stop

where the soldiers get off, I noticed someone

had painted the white wooden slats of his fence

black at even intervals, turning his

privacy into a piano again.