Suki Wessling

.. home ..

THIS SMALL PLACE

In a small place, you can see it all with an eye, the other
left over for dreaming.

The beautiful coffee girl serves chai & scones & dreams
of a trailer & a baby.

As in every place, we have a man of matted hair who walks,
though kempt, pleasant, nameless.

My sister says in places like this people with descriptive names
can find fame in the weekly:

Randy del Grande stares largely from the photo she displays,
a man of flesh.

& Dick Small, my sister remarks, appears again, his name
synonymous with local history.

In this place we have Randy, Dick, the beautiful coffee girl,
& the man who walks.

In this place we look forward to pancake breakfasts & the parade;
it runs the length of town.

My sister says she'll move back to the city, where people have sense
& change their names.

The man always has a dollar for coffee, or the beautiful coffee girl
pretends he does.

To appreciate Randy & Dick, & the man with matted hair who walks,
this is what I have learned.

In the grocery store, I learned the man does not smell, & seems to
have money for chocolate.

What were we doing that day in the city? Standing in line
to see the new museum.

Why did we turn away from the man with the matted hair
& faraway eyes?

I AM IN THIS DRESS

I am skinny, a child with longing curls
to brush and skin to wash
and touch--
I am in some other child's dress,
the no longer hem that decides me

I am with pony, a child on dirt floor
of given up father to whom I wife
and mother
am to children still younger still
dirtier still losing teeth, hair, flesh

Children sing my name in melody,
know the house, the pony
and floor
They know how we drowned the kittens
rather than feed them no food

I and pony, led out of dirt yard one day
to a neighbor farm where grass and--
they say
come anytime to ride but how am I
in torn dress and still refuse?

Disappeared that night just up and
followed the moon past school
and sleep--
Just up and followed the moon to stream
where I wove myself

a dress of emerald green
a dress of leaves
a dress of leaving

In night's dark hem with skin
open to all possibility I am
I am
drowned myself in wonder:
I am in this dress and still, I refuse

QUIET DISASTER

Mom stood at the basement stairs
watching her teenage son in the joy
of loot rush down to rescue his records.
A slow sort of disaster, not like earthquake
or storm, this was now the time of rushing,
filling. Soon they stood in wet
to their knees, making them
a little lighter than the rest of us.

Far away in California I heard
the evenness of their voices, reports
of thirty thousand dollars damage
and complaints about insurance.
As the water eased back down the hill
I helped decide by telephone on black
counters, gas stovetop, and unnecessary
new curtains. Their lives pieced back together.

When I returned to the unfamiliar new kitchen
my family had resumed the set faces
of our German forebears. My mother
produced the loot she had saved for me,
childhood scribblings on purple notebook paper,
flattened, dried, and saved in a ziploc bag.
As I opened the bag and saw their faces
recoil at the breath of flood I released,

I realized what I had missed.