"Neither Sound nor Silence," "Deep-Fried Satsuma Poppers," and "Still Life with Happiness"

Neither Sound nor Silence

My daughter wants to go on another joyride
with her grandfather. To rattle down potholed paths
where island birds nip salty puddles.
Feel the jitter of the exhausted golf cart they easily evade.
To go out on a scud, natives say. Or so I’ve read
in the blue pamphlet of Ocracoke brogue
bought for two bucks at the little museum by the pier.
 
But my daughter doesn’t say scud or joyride.
Parked beside the screened-in porch
in its patch of rented grass, she just eyes the golf cart—
hides anticipation to sweeten the ride.
 
By now she’s learning to harbor a silence
peculiar to humans. I see in her brow the furrowed ghost
of my boyhood. On trips to Uncle Alan’s farm
in Michigan, the adults sat for hours
in the large yard beside the house, sipping lemonade
in lawn chairs. Every time grandma lit
another cigarette my gaze would lock on the barn.
 
In the dark only closed doors speak of
the golf cart sat in the silence of that telling. Behind
the barn, untouched by the cast spell of
my eyes, the cherry orchard wilted. The apple orchard
fell to ruin like Uncle Alan’s collapsed lung.
I’d brave a tug on grandpa’s sleeve, and he’d know
it was time to bring the trails beneath us.
 
At the edge of the orchards, we’d find the eagles
nested in a copse of elms flanking acres
of open pasture. For hours we’d sit in silence, waiting
to see wings—to hear the hush of our waiting.
 
Now, on the island, mourning doves are cooing
between seconds of silence. My father-in-law compares
the sound to counting time in a storm—a secret
whispered between the boom and the flash.
His granddaughter laughs. Soon the somnolent salt-wind
will carry him from the porch into dreams
of older stories. First, he’ll buckle her next to him.
The scud of years ahead and behind.
The quiet aching to hold her open hand in his.

Deep-Fried Satsuma Poppers

Remember Vince’s saucy smile
as he tonged them from sizzling grease?
Each plated on its own square
of paper towel? Remember the pics he sent?
I probably have them somewhere
in my old Yahoo account.
That little golden-brown bundle shimmering
in his kitchen like slivers of sun.
Then Vince in the second—
a popper pinched between tongs 
above the sputtering fryer. 
It was close to 12 years ago, but I bet I could
hunt them down. In the archived
ruins of emails—my forgotten failures
and successes shelved above
and below—I bet they’d look just as strange
and delicious as the night
we ate them on the reserved balcony
at Boudreaux and Thibodeaux’s.
Just let me say it again: deep-fried satsuma
poppers. There’s a metaphor hiding
there somewhere. Tell me if you find it
wriggling out of the phrase.
I’m stuck on the poppers arriving—first dish
of our first anniversary dinner.
Remember that grotesque spread of food
Vince delivered in dashes
from his apartment on Park Blvd?
I remember a couple lit candles
melting. A haphazard scattering of flameless
tealights. That vintage floral
tablecloth beneath. A Bluetooth speaker
propped on a brick window ledge.
And there we are, elbowing the balcony rail,
sharing another Parliament.
Maybe I’ll force a comparison—the burnt
orange of a deep-fried popper
with the lit end of the first cigarette
we’d shared the year before. Remember that
Halloween reading? I was dressed
as Dorothy Parker. Vince was Dickinson.
Like any dolled-up ghost 
in black lace, all I wanted was to smear
my sloppy lipstick over yours.
Maybe I’ll get lofty and describe the sky
above Baton Rouge as a carousel
of stars. See where it leads. Maybe 
add something abstract: the night opened
like a mouth craving a voice.
The poppers long gone, I could move on
to carving into cooked meats
just for the sound. Maybe I could
raise Neruda from the dead just to mention
my hunger for your hair
draped over 3^rd street. Throw in a bird
perched in a dream. Recall
the feathery edges of a long-forgotten joke.
The language of telling. The laughter
of having heard. Or maybe
I’ll just spill into a fairytale beginning:
Once upon a time, deep-fried
satsuma poppers…Other than keep going
without knowing the end,  
who could possibly know what to do,
other than keep loving them.

Still Life with Happiness

Though it’s been scratched to shit
by the cats, he’s the slouch
on the chair he insists on keeping
in a corner of the living room.
 
He’s dozing between poems
by Rodney Jones when he hears
the eight-year-old voice
of his daughter’s bestie Claire.
 
They’re both in the kitchen 
painting pictures of blue unicorns.
But Claire’s getting serious.
He can hear it in her tone.
 
He can tell she’s tabled the brush
to inform his daughter that
clouds don’t actually move at all.
That they only appear to.
 
It’s because of the motion
of the planet, she says, that makes
them seem to move. He almost
speaks up without thinking.
 
Having moved from New Orleans
to escape hurricanes, he has
respect for wind. Besides,
they really should know the truth. 
 
He decides to google it anyway.
He too wants to have all the facts.
But then Claire adds that
she’s feeling very happy today.
 
Now he imagines the moment
that follows: his daughter’s smile
when she looks at her friend
before dabbing the brush down
 
as happiness breezes right by them.
The swath of painted cloud
drying fast in a corner of the page,
he keeps still in his shitty chair.