Major Arcana: How My Father Got to Reno

The Fool

Father of second and third chances,

you are no homemaker.

The basement is damp with mildew

and mosquitoes thrash

through the open door, bite our legs

when we try to sleep.

The yard is overgrown and wasps

saw rings around their paper hives.

Winter mornings, you take out the trash

and boil a pot of water—

leave our house to hack

through strips of thin black ice.

But the sun is still rising over us.

You watch your step out the door.

The High Priestess

You stay downstairs when we play chess:

folding laundry, calling out your moves,

never once looking at your position.

I sit at your rosewood board

in the seat where, nightly, you sit

to take your meals or watch TV.

Summer chokes your potted plants;

daylight clings like sweat.

When you win, you show me

how I could have forced your hand—

how, like Bobby Fischer as a boy,

I could have sacrificed more

if only I knew what to give up,

what was standing in my way.

The Empress

Eight years younger than you,

bad divorce and no kids.

She smiles when she speaks

and stocks our kitchen with fruit—

strawberries, grapes, pomegranates—

all bright and sweet.

She’s from the opposite coast

and sleeps at our house each night.

When you look at her

your eyes are blind as stars.

The Emperor

You do not punish me

when I start fires in the yard,

when I get high across the street

in the cemetery-dark.

You thaw chicken and shuck corn,

wrap a thick forearm

around her neck and shoulders,

tough muscles braided like rope.

I watch West Coast baseball, scrub

grass stains and mud off my Nikes.

I watch you: pulling her into your hip

like she’ll grow around you—

shoots lifting through black soil,

corkscrewing, rooting down.

The Hierophant

Between heaven and earth, snowfall.

We wake in the dark

and dress in flannel, lamb’s wool.

Winter feels deepest now

though soon the cold will break—

soon it will be warm enough

for rain to shower the harbor

and soften the earth, for gutters

for me to stay outside

with the neighborhood boys—

biking to the corner store

to buy soda and smoke cigarillos—

long enough for me to leave the house

the two of you fill.

The Lovers

Early summer. The champagne

is bright and dry. No honeymoon,

but you move into a Cambridge loft

with steep steps and ivy

draped off the brick face;

tall windows that frame the Charles’s

trick of light, bank and run.

White sails blow past. The city buries

its stars each night. Evenings, I memorize

which streets reach the river’s mouth

The Wheel of Fortune

The fevered southern sky

bleeds into distant farmlands.

Goldenrod lines the interstate on either side.

It’s almost autumn when I move down

to North Carolina, drive myself

past Chapel Hill’s shops and spires.

Father, I know this is where you married

my mother, built that brief life;

this is where you imagined

a home you would never leave.

The Hanged Man

What does it matter that you don’t cry

when you tell me about the split?

You pick me up from Logan

and we walk together into the city

talking the nuts and bolts:

she changed her mind

in those few months, wants to be a mother—

not mine, but somebody’s.

You still live together, sleep

in the same bed. Your hair is strewn

All week I listen, mistake the loft settling

for footsteps climbing up to us.

Death

It’s not as bad as it sounds—

break up the house and leave

quietly so no one sees you go.

Brief goodbye and you’re gone.

Don’t look away from the night

closing in above you;

don’t forget to lock the door.

The earth remembers how to grieve:

frost tints your windows, rhododendrons

curl around the cold.

The river water freezes on top

but still keeps pushing out to sea.

The Tower

Dry heat. Neon wash. You, a stranger,

driving three thousand miles west.

You, starting from scratch. Shot in the dark.

All of a sudden, gone.

The Moon

See the coyote limp across the road

toward you, how his eyes flash

in the dark and his dirty fur catches

what light lingers in the desert.

He’s hungry. He’s not afraid.

You’ve already found scorpions

in the new house, heard snakes

rattle out in your yard.

The World

The mountains nearly brush the sky

set deep and blue and bright.

You tell me about the woman

who cuts your hair, the track marks

dotting her arms, how lucky

she feels to be alive,

the snip snip snip

curling around your ears.

You’re almost lucky yourself

you say, with the western winds

and the long spring, the high sun

that falls everywhere.

Each night, you slice California tomatoes

careful not to cut your thumb—

you crack the windows open an inch

then bolt the door shut.