Poetry
by Ann Tweedy
Grace
for K.W.
when happiness arrives by an
unexpected boat from a lush country
i've never visited and
about which i can recite
only bland facts, i'm tempted
to turn her away. what could i offer
that would make her want to stay? she is
of course splendid, her velvet coat
richer and more colorful than joseph's.
i look at my unworthy life.
why did she come?
if i accept her, loss will swell into
a hibernating monster i'll tip-
toe around on my way out
the door, upon my return snores
will jar my sleep all my steps
careful ones until he wakes
up until she is gone.
only refusal could win hard-
collared certainty who incites
no wonder but spreads
calmness like a blanket and deals out
principles upon which to build
like gravity, like the earth's
orbit. certainty: an absence
to mourn a presence that bores
but the truth is my reception is
lukewarm. i am capable of neither
full acceptance nor outright refusal.
happiness, my wary heart can offer
you very little. i will go to the length
of the short rope it has tied me
to. i will cook you a modest dinner,
give you my floor to sleep on. but
understand, i know who is deserving.
Home Remedies
on my worst days i empathize
with murderous husbands from the forensic
tv show. beneath most killings festers
commonplace unhappiness: not enough
money, a pending divorce, an affair
on one side or the other. some things
are new; everything else
takes pains to be old.
at first i'd dream
the husband i've loved
for 16 years
might disappear miraculously
through no fault of my own.
poof. what easier segue
to lesbian could there be?
and then i could grieve
properly.
but now i see myself slipping
into the whirlpool
to disappear down the drain.
on tv, knives, bullets,
shoelace beckon.
in death, is any solace
greater than a loved one's
ministration? i picture my shining
dance into nothingness.
why won't he kill me?
Arson
when my father's job was to inspect
buildings for fire risks, i remember him
inspecting a gay-owned hotel in provincetown.
they offered to let me stay the night for free,
he said, the two guys who owned it. but i couldn't
do it. i didn't know how clean it was. you be
careful when you go to that town. i told
them i had to get back, but boy was i tired.
i wanted to stay in that hotel for him,
to present my vulnerable body to those generic
hotel germs, lick the walls if i had to, but all
i said was you should've stayed there, dad, because
our relationship was like that: he said what
he thought, no edits, and i didn't say anything
much. it's still the same, but lately i fantasize
about telling him what i am. i want to say
the bogeyman that haunts you comes from you, do you
understand? you helped build your own worst fear
and i'm proud of that for you. it took me 30 years to
get here, but i don't have to lick the walls now:
the poisoned sex, the twisted heart, i carry them around.
if my cells are born to deconstruct, i'll witness
it firsthand. this match, i light for you
The Full Pulse of Happiness
when i was in elementary school,
i watched girls and guys gather
in big old impalas and cutlasses
in the dirt lot behind george's cleaners.
back then the prettiest girls in the world
worked as cashiers at the supermarket--
but the rest of them were here
walking home from the grocery,
the five and dime, the train station,
after dark my mother and i would see them:
sitting in cars parked close
together, smoking, eating donuts,
drinking beer. the girls wore
tight designer jeans and spaghetti
strap tank tops. now and then, they'd ride
down north main with their boyfriends,
streaking on lipstick and shadow, brushing
swaths of permed hair. my mother thought
it was impolite for a girl to groom
in front of her boyfriend, but i doubted
politeness could get you anywhere
sometimes the mother of a kid that lived
near my babysitter was there, and sometimes
the kid too. she was a year or so younger
than me. the mother sat in a car
while the kid stood outside drinking soda
or eating packaged ice cream. an open car window
siphoned the mother's crimped voice:
tara, get over here. still, i couldn't help
but envy the girl--she got to watch
and, if that wasn't enough, they bought her
all the bite-sized pleasures a kid could bear
Ann Tweedy grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and moved to the West Coast in 1996. Her poems have appeared in the Clackamas Literary Review, the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, the Drag King Anthology, the Berkeley Poetry Review, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, and many other publications. By day, she works as a public interest lawyer in rural Washington State.
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