Imagine a pair of shoes...

They are square-toed black boots, the kind that would hurt you badly if they decided to kick you. I was that kind of man. My hair was black and bushy, my beard was unkempt, and I tended to stink. That's mostly because I worked hard all day, but partly because I drank most nights. I had no education, and living that life just makes you mad at everything.

I was bad to my dogs. I feel bad about that now. They were the ones who loved me, so they tended to always be around for me to kick them, which I did, with my big black boots.

I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and worked at the slaughterhouse, so killing and hurting was as normal as breathing to me. I'm not saying I liked it--I didn't--but it's what I did every day and I didn't know any life other than the bawling of cattle and the stench of the entrails.

I married Polly when we were sixteen. I am proud to say I never laid a hand on her in violence. She was a good wife as wives go. She bore me six sons and a daughter, and she kept them out of my way, so I hardly ever laid a hand on any of them. That's a good thing.

We lived in a log cabin about a half mile from the stockyards. My father helped me build it. It was the last thing he did before he died. Polly made nice curtains for it and did her best to keep it clean, but it was still a dirt floor with a privy in the back and that constant stench of dying cows.

The biggest thing that Polly and I diagreed on was church. I know she worried about my immortal soul, but the last thing I wanted to do on my Sunday was listen with a hangover to that preacher drone on. She stopped nagging after a couple of years, but she never stopped asking. Of course, I made it to each child's baptism so I guess that was my compromise. I figured the whole household would be in position to pray that I wouldn't go to hell.

If You Were Here

If you were here, Mom, I don't know what you would think of me. People have been telling me to find you for 12 years now, ever since I turned 18. Everyone is curious, and I am too, but I am more scared. I keep thinking of great excuses to not look for you. I heard a couple years ago that the Catholic Childrens' Home Services agency shut down, so I thought maybe they'd lost my file.

And I always think, maybe I'll wait until next year, maybe I'll do something impressive and you'll think “Wow, my daughter really has her act together.”

But maybe I don't have room for disappointments, no more room for more crazy family members.

However, all of my selfish considerations don't take you into account. Maybe you want to find me, the child that abruptly ended your childhood. Maybe my grandparents want to know me.

As for Chris and his family, they've always wanted to find a certain Claude Miller of St. Louis, a black American soldier, a quartermaster stationed outside of Stuttgart. But Chris' dad isn't interested. Let sleeping dogs lie. I don't want to bring up the ghosts of the past.

My own grandfather I've heard was a fair, blue-eyed German army doctor. How funny it is to think the two unknown grandfathers were on different sides in the war.

How many of us really know our parents, our grandparents anyways? One in every seven Americans don't really have the fathers that are listed on their birth certificates. A lot of us don't really know where we came from. But I guess it must matter, everything else in life is so uncertain, where do we stand if not on the backs of our ancestors?

Dead in the Russian Snow

When we first moved here, mother took the blue mirror cross that hung over her bed in our old house and mailed a nail for it in the new bedroom of me and my sister. We had to leave the center of town because mother started hosting the black American soldiers. The villagers kept harassing her, so she found an abandoned farm farther from town and closer to the military base. Ever since mother got the letter that father lay dead in the Russian snow, my school mates grew distant from me. Irmgard and Ulrike used to be my best friends, but now they say they can't go pick cherries with me. They say mother is now a fallen woman. I am the oldest, and I help watch my younger sister, Yvi, while mother laughs all night long with the soldiers. I miss father, and mother says it's alright to cry as much as I want. The soldiers give me chocolate bars to comfort me.

At school, the other children said they had no sugar and no flour and no chocolate. They ate cabbage. Just watery cabbage soup. They dreamt of cake and cookies and bread and butter.
“We have all that,” my sister told them proudly. “The black Americans bring lots of supplies to our mother.”
“That's because your mother is a whore. Your father probably wasn't even frozen in the Russian fields before she started being a nasty whore!”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “My mother's not a whore! And we eat cakes made with a dozen eggs and honey and half kilo of butter every day! We still have meat! You wish your house smelled of Thueringen sausages!”
The school yard was silent.
“I'm sick of seeing your dirty rags and of listening to your empty stomachs.”
I grabbed Yvi's hand and we marched home to the farmhouse full of food, laughter, and father's handkerchief still rests under my pillow every night.

Fear

Prompt: A time when you felt fear...

Champaign, Illinois, Spring 2002, bitter cold, screaming wind outside, a turgid hothouse of jewel-toned sweaters inside the bar. It's another weekend night, I'm there with my gaggle of fellow grad students getting as fucked up as I possibly can. I'm so lonely, I hate this place. Even though I'm getting paid to work on my PhD, I've never been so unhappy. Everyone has let me know they assume I'm on scholarship for being Native American. This is the Chief Illini school. Most people here are assholes to me.

We've all had enough. I'm dizzy, I need air.

“Guys,” I say, “I'm gonna go wait on the cab outside.”

It's probably 20 below, but I'm on the deserted street sitting on the bench like it's a balmy Fourth of July.

I listen to the wind howl.

A black car pulls up in the alleyway.

I'm so wasted I can hardly remember my name. I love this feeling. I want to forget myself.

Four huge men step of the car. The exhaust pipe steams as the engine still runs.

Where the fuck is our cab anyways, I'm thinking with annoyance.

“Hey sweetie, why don't we go for a ride?”

“What? No. I'm waiting for my cab.”

“All alone, are we?”

“Fuck no. My friends are inside.”

I'm bluffing confidence. My friends are in the martini hothouse, it's loud, they won't come out until I go fetch them. I am alone.

“You should get in the car and party with us.”

“No fucking way.”

They are closing in on me.

I hate the Midwest. It's scarier than I ever felt in East LA, in the barrios of Tucson.

Being a tinge bulimic, I can vomit on command, and I do so. I spew all over them, their expensive shoes in the snow. The contents of a night out steaming like oatmeal on their pant cuffs.

The bastards curse me out, but they leave. I am laughing hysterically.

Now my friends are finally here.

“Where's the cab?” they ask.

Pantoum - Thursday class poetry exercise

Pantoum – poetry exercise

I see traces of you everywhere

the apartment holds artifacts of your daily life

So many years we've now worked opposite ends of the clock

Sometimes you reach for me at night as we both sleep

the apartment has evidence of your activities

your soccer clothes lay upon library books

sometimes we reach for each other while dreaming

I eat dinner alone every night

your dirty clothes stink up the library books

we share a marriage, but not daily life

you eat breakfast alone every morning

our friends are all strangers to each other

we are married, but don't share a daily life

post-it notes and text messages are the glue

our friends are strangers to each other

they say distance makes the heart grow fonder

sticky notes and voice mail are the glue

all these years we've lived in separate hours

distance makes the heart grow exhausted

There are traces and proof of you everywhere