Reunion, a poem

Eleven summers after we buried cousin Gavin

under the backyard pear tree,

his bones still orchestrate the steady plunk

of fruit bodies onto his parents’ bedroom ceiling,

rust-colored pears whose midnight knocks

remind us all that we will not be sheltered.

On the porch bench, cigarette between his fingers,

gran’pa dozes in a pool of light.

Maybe this is salvation or

maybe it is the truth: an old man

on a morning when his children

are too busy to notice him.

The dogs smell his

feet as if he has spent the morning

in a butcher-shop,

as if the last time

he hit the ground running

wasn’t in Pleiku, where, groaning,

the sky had splintered upward

along with all the bones

in his left foot.

In Jack’s room, a goldfish swims

in a plastic tank,

greased-up and greenish-white.

Can’t tell if it’s dead or alive --

but does it matter?

The only one who has ever passed

a glance at it was Marley,

who has sensitive ears.

(This is a family of

misinformed desires.)

In the kitchen,

empty palms concertina upward

from the twin, rust-colored ribcages

that dot my aunt’s kitchen countertop.

Marley, who is indefatigable,

tells me that hugs comfort

because they make us feel that

we are in the womb again.

I want to tell her that still,

there are days I cannot run a knife

down the belly of a glaze-eyed fish

without imagining

the skin of Gavin’s wrist, opening

under all the disquiet in his system,

the electric vibrato of his pulse

spilled onto a kitchen floor.

But instead, I lift her up,

she, who at seven,

is the cleanest thing in this house.

Come here, say my arms,

the concave of my pear-skin hip,

Let me give you the life of myself.