One morning I woke to apricot light
out my bedroom window in the still-vacant
lot not yet forested
with orange two-by-fours—another house
rising between us & the corner place,
where I first tasted tangerines the people
there had got from California
& dipped (if memory serves) in sugar section
by golden section. My white pj’s
were neatly decorated with cowboys
riding tiny bucking broncos,
& I’d hallucinated the motif
on my papered four walls, delirious once
with measles. I remember my grandfather
eased me back asleep, as he had soothed
my mother as a girl with scarlet fever.
When I felt better, she would read to me
about the Little Green Car, & I’d listen
to the Lone Ranger on the radio
at night. In the kitchen
I found my mother working at the table
she’d painted red
herself, her square bread board floured white.
Outside on the line, my father’s white shirts
she always called the size of tents while standing
at her ironing board snapped in the breeze
like flags, & the starchy smell in the air
went to my head like pop fizz up my nose.
Filled out with wind, they blew up big as clouds
& sprinkled me with rain that gave me shivers
as they dried in the sun. The light was still
everything I could have wanted, but then
I couldn’t trust the sun
to be there for me every day.
Just to get out of bed, I needed something
to anticipate before the sun set
on me, as if each day were my birthday
& I could look forward to an ivory
plastic guitar with ebony trim small
as a ukulele, two-tone
(black & white) cowboy boots, plus a silver
studded black leather holster set with twin
pearly handled six-guns blond Hopalong
Cassidy made popular Saturday
mornings he fought the snow
on our first TV. Day in & day out
I came up with whatever lit a fire
under me each morning, & I harbored
what the light promised
like a secret. Setting my heart
on this or that meant I was never bored
at least, because I knew
the little thing I envisioned the day
held out was waiting. When I stopped being
satisfied with such small crumbs as my life
doled out to me
to savor, I began to put my faith
in divining the magic words
that would align the world
& my desire to be at one
with it, however briefly & in theory
only. My wish to speak
without speaking became a daily lump
in my throat, an ever-present
feeling of words about to come
to me so that I’d meet the light
on equal terms by rendering the same
in my image, the way the minuscule
shadows memory traces day by day
tell the other side of the sun’s story.
White Bread
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