No More Snoring
to sleep in this night of three months
of no sounds but the humidifier breathing moist
air and Pixie scratching at the door to be let into the
room where I dream now having rented out
the one we used to share having given you the bed
we used to share so much we used and were used by
abandonments – your mother’s confidences
and hugs withheld when she’d grown ashamed
– intrusions – your father’s theft of money you’d
earned stocking groceries after school – he took it to
gamble but never said so promised to pay you back but
you knew he never could or would and yet you were a kid so
what could you do? intrusions – my father-psychiatrist
striding into my room as I changed at the age of thirteen
brand-new breasts still shocking my body and – abandonments –
when tears came he said don’t be a baby – now, in this bunk bed I pleasure
myself – if you can call it that – with you not here curled behind my curled body
or curled in front of my curling I cannot cannot whisper to you cannot call you you
have said it harms you to speak to me said I am poison and
you stayed for too long and there is nothing left to understand
except what you have finally understood about my harmfulness and
in your new role as commander of us you order me not to phone not to
speak as though everything I’d ever said were false the universe of my love a
fiction and only you owned the God-awful truth of us – this is why I rock back and
forth like an insane yet savant person in an asylum while you – omniscient doctor –
write your diagnoses of my condition our condition our marriage and your training has
made you wise yes truly wise but even the truly wise fail to see what they cannot – as do all
doctors – I know – I am the daughter of one – and you the saint of the two of
us – and I the sinner of the two of us all that time could not see ahead could glimpse
perhaps an instant no more though you’ve managed to compress our years together into
an opaque bundle – solid and unbearable – a
package that can never be hoisted up or opened – wrapped in
brown paper tied tight with twine and labeled with impenetrable
neatness.
My Name
It is a fact that day is done
dishes
when its usefulness
when the sun
when the one
I never know
shirtsleeves
comes back at
dusk to
listen it’s a fact failing
railing, bridge
leaning over
ranting moreover
you never let me be
burgundy
be finished with
you you return asking
alms, explaining
I want that condition
where you forget your
identity wander
barefoot
in the city
from gym to
internet café till
they find
you bobbing in
the water of
New York
Harbor
breathing and they
tell you to
remember who you
are like
coming back from
the dead,
anesthesia and you
don’t want at that
moment can’t see the
point for what you
need is
sleep.
BLACK LACE
What wisdom?
I am in a new
valley. I no longer
weep. It was silly to do so. We lived together eighteen
years – eighteen equals
life according to the Kabbalah. And in as many days, I am for-
getting. It
was silly of me to cry – and besides you used it to
get back at me. Why think of that photo you transported to your
new place – the three of us when our daughter was one
day old and my hair was
short – in the exact same pixie
cut she now wears? She was too young to
smile, but we weren’t – and we
did. Our daughter was
born. She was meant to
be, but that has little to do with
us. Your
traces: a telephone
message from a doctor’s office unaware
of your new phone
number. A piece of
mail the post office has missed
relabeling. A few
items of laundry – T-shirts stained
with perspiration, striped boxers with
stretched-out
waistbands – mixed
in with my clothes before you
moved
out. I
have no
desire to hear your
voice – that silk lining the
burlap, your anger not to be
trusted – nor do I ask to be
touched by you. That last time, I would now call
rape. Go on, cringe, but I know what
happened. You’d requested black
lace and red
nail polish. I went shopping for
you. I just didn’t
realize. Afterwards, in the
shower, I under-
stood how
far away you’d
traveled. It was
worse than being touched by a
stranger – it was
stranger.
Laurel Kallen is a poet and fiction writer who holds an MFA in creative writing from The City College of New York. She teaches writing at the City University of New York. Laurel received the 2009 Stark Short Fiction Award and the Teacher/Writer Award. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Global City Review, Legal Studies Forum, La Petite Zine and Atlanta Review. Her poetry collection, The Forms of Discomfort, will be published by Finishing Line Press in Summer 2012. She has been a featured reader at Perch Café, Cakeshop, Cornelia Street Cafe and The CUNY Graduate Center. Laurel was a speech writer for former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. She also holds an MA in French and is an attorney admitted to practice in New York and New Jersey. Her daughters, Maia and Chloe, are strongly opposed to their mother’s presence on Facebook.