Sean Thomas Dougherty

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Five Beat Mambo      after Tito Puente


Tonight, the stars        are on lockdown,
the black freighter       far out on the lake.
You are the vanishing
sound of children running home
at dusk.
We are always in one way      or another choosing to die
or not to.

Like the old women    feeding the pigeons,
            or the sluiceway          of salmon returning home.
I chose the blue Madonna       the fender factories.
            Some things we should           only tell          
beside the ventilator.

I chose the scent of growing old,
            the purple sash of Ave Maria.
You drunk, passed out pissing.
You sucking on used fentanyl patches.
I choose it all. I choose
the late-night pain receding
            with the mourning light:
you quiet as a hummingbird’s hush.
            & your cousins’ parole board.
I chose willow trees weeping in winter,
            the silence just after snow
Like the silence of the cymbal
before it is struck,
Tito Puente on the radio,
hands cupped
around the false enlightenment
of rum.
You stealing quarters from our daughter’s banks,
hustling to the liquor store.
The unnecessary percussive
             improvisation of failure.
I chose the hard hospital beds,
& the parade of distracted nurses
who never answer the call button.
I chose something fragile
scribbling its story across the ER drive
like the pencils of the rain.
I pulled the dark of the room down.
I signed off on the oxy.
In the kitchen where no one was home to clean,
I threw away the bowl of rotting bananas,
fruit flies dying in a cup
of soap & vinegar, timbales
mimicking the sound of the storm.
I threw my wet clothes down
I chose the wrong guess for the right question.
I chose tragedy as if I was telling a story:
I chose StarShine. I chose the language of leaves.
I chose whatever you wanted.
I chose the right tampons
you sent me out to get.
I chose the bloodstained sheets.
You chose the abortion too.
We defied the dead.
We defied the odds.
I chose not to leave
when you chose not to get clean.
I chose a cartful of diapers
at the self-checkout line
at Walmart at 2 AM
high on what pills?
I chose gambling
despite the odds.
Tonight, the stars are on lockdown.
The dark like the county jail.
The freighters
carry their dark ore
like ghosts far out on the lake
like memories without details,
only gigantic shapes
drifting far out on the horizon
Our passports long expired.
We are the vanished
rooms we did not die.
You sleep with your hand
tattooed across my chest.
Our daughters fill the long absence
With their murmurous sleep.
What lament do I even own?
Which is to say we are alive,
bruised & blue, each day
without saying anything
we open our eyes.

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At the Hour of Late Light


through the kitchen window at the edge of the scythed fields, I close my eyes & breathe sea roses & half smoked cigarettes, & the jasmine my friend M sprayed her neck with whose eyes were light green with her blowsy blue hair & marigold sundress in that rented room, who worked at Dunkin & poured our coffee black & drew our portraits on napkins I should have saved, & her bad boyfriend B from Revere, with the bad teeth who drove a black Chevelle the one who grew to hit her one time too many times, off to the packie store to buy us beer. & A, strung out on the couch on the other side of the room the room decorated with sailboats & lighthouses & tiny suns on blue wallpaper in the time before our jobs meant anything more than paychecks, a few days off in a rented room near the boardwalk & the smell of sea roses & weed, before we took M's boyfriend down to the Goffstown trestle & beat him with a board snapped his wrist, & she gone after to Florida, & A gone to the place in his head, he stopped delivering pizzas, robbed  his own store, took the money & ran till it ran out & the room cleaners they found him blue-faced & slack-jawed staring off as if at a lighthouse, in that rooming house in Portsmouth where the Russian merchant marines boarded & drank too much vodka & belted out ballads on a planet I once lived, an alien in my own life,  far from this meadow of clover & bees on the edge of an old factory town, where no old stories I carry were written, & these wild roses that bring back the ocean & this open window where I have grown old carrying the weight of what I bear for having lived, how the light & the wind torment me with the fragile threads of what we were when we were young— the grief  of gravity pulls at my shoulders when I stand & take the pane  & push it down—

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Remember when it seems as if you are holding nothing you are holding the air


The man says he is not going back to bed. The man closes his door, but I can still hear him, as if from the other side of the veil. He is setting up his table. He is taking out a puzzle. He got up to pee at 2:14 AM & I said, nice job let me help you back in bed. He said, “No.” He said, “I am done dreaming.” He said, “You are the one asleep,” which is what I heard but he may have said you are the one who should be asleep. I thought he may be right, as we stood in the room bathed in the blue light of the Late-night News & Weather.

~
Is history only what we remember? It is the third shift. Everyone is now sleeping. I am done mopping & then I must go through to plan my med pass & breakfast. I have papers to sign. My name, the date, my name, the date, over & over. This is to say someone was there. Someone witnessed. I want to write down the history of the tiniest forgettable things. I drop a paper clip from the desk to the office floor. The sound, the tink, almost-not-a-sound. This means nothing, or does it? What can a paper clip mean? I think of our daughter, how she would find a paper clip & bend it into a shape, say this is a Tiger, roar. This is a Jackalope hop hop hop hop. You are the one dreaming, the man said. Then I said it is going to be sunny tomorrow; you are going to the Science Center. You are going to see the turtles. “I love turtles,” he said. I said get your rest, & helped him into bed, helped him swing his legs, then pulled the cover close to his chin.

~
Once, when you were in the hospital for weeks & weeks, one autumn day, the kids already at school, your parents helping out, I came home from the nightshift & stood in the yellow morning & watched a single leaf scuttle like a living thing, a crab, or some skittish rodent, in the wind, across the driveway. I became that leaf, so light & meaningless. I am a tumbling leaf, I said to the room absent of you.

~
Who was it that said nothing is ever empty because it has shape? I mean look at a black hole. Where is the edge of the world? How many of us have tried to sail off the edge? This man, who drove into a telephone pole. He is getting angrier. He wants to throw the puzzle away; he raises his hand. It is worthless he says & says it as if he is speaking of himself. So much that is said means more than what is meant. I put my finger in space. I tell him, I have this exact hole in my chest. & I sing in a country twang, after she done left me. I am lucky & he laughs, let us put it away & I will make breakfast. Piece by piece, together we put the pieces back into the cardboard box. The man will be ok. We do this or something close to this every morning. Nothing I do can save someone. I cannot replace the pieces of life. But I can help him get in the shower. I can help him read a schedule. I can help him put on his pants. I brought him a cup of coffee. He holds the warm cup in both hands as if it is a bird. The man is now eating a plate of eggs I made. What is the puzzle piece we are all missing? Do we walk sieved, letting the light pass through? My shift is nearly done. One by one I feed these folks. They argue & fight, they want, they need, they ask, they demand, they are impatient, they are preposterous & unexpectedly kind. Then someone is a motherfucker. I am a motherfucker. I am little more than a paper clip. A woman comes walking frantic, she cannot find her hairbrush. Take this pill I say, here, here, & I will find your brush. Afterwards she brushes her long hair as if she is brushing it inside herself. She counts aloud each stroke, seven, eight, nine. & what stumbles outside in this light between us still
born is what miracle I would ask
is for no one to leave
anyone
behind

the man stands up
he is gesticulating
he is pointing outside
look look look
& I turn
to witness,
out in dawn’s grey & winter light
on the lawn, a herd of deer
eating frozen apples.

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