The Tattoos of My Youth Were Numbers on Forearms
(South Fairfax, Los Angeles, 1983)
My first pedicure was the morning of my wedding.
The woman took my hand, led me to a chair,
patted it, placed a basin on the floor
then knelt before me on the dirty linoleum.
She took my feet in her hands, scraped my callouses,
rubbed sweet lotion into my calves.
She wiped her forehead with her sleeve in the LA heat
and under the heel of her hand two rows of numbers.
My Yiddish worse than her English. We chatted
about the nissuin, the mishigosh. She nodded,
smiled, said mozel-tov, many kinder, cupped my face
in her hands. When went to leave, she said
mechaye, mechaye, mechaye
what I knew as my pleasure but later,
when I asked my grandmother, she said,
mechaya is a joy, something
that brings you back from death to life.
Hereafter
When we buried him in the rain,
the pine coffin bobbled in the muddy water
until the clods piled high enough
to pin the box to the ground,
a final buoyancy. One year later
at the unveiling, his mother said
parents who bury children believe
and who dare challenge us?
Lord knows she’s paid tuition
for a higher learning and I listen
when she says presence is an emptiness
but is no less present
and sorrow beads like joy, a glistening
visible and invisible
in each and every drop.
Visiting Grandchildren
My son is holding his son, his other two playing
at his feet. I watch him cup his newborn
with his shock of black hair in one hand, shuffle
a drawer for diapers with the other.
He was a bald baby, curled as a potato bug.
I conjure the scent of his downy fuzz, its bristle
soft against my upper lip, something I do
in moments of deep drift like at the end of yoga class
when we practice death. I know time is a river
that picks up speed as it rolls, but I’m surprised
to find myself so far downstream, and these young parents
busy living their own stories don’t want to hear mine.
The problem is, I remember everything. The first breath, the pinking,
the leavings, the whoosh of the river into the mouth of the sea.