Broken Wings, Broken Dreams
He had been acting his spirit not his age
since they got married. She knew that
she would never be able to contain him.
She knew that it wasn’t her job to do so.
She thought he had an unknowable spirit.
Not the spirit of an old soul, but that of
a man that would change the color of his hair
as if he was a punk rocker
at the drop of a guitar pick.
He was a man that looked more for the adventure in
the mundane than for
the mundane that was adventurous.
The end of their marriage was not a riddle.
The marriage was over with the birth of their second daughter.
She supposed that his wandering mind came
from growing up on the prairie,
but growing up on the prairie wasn’t the problem.
He would have acted the same way if they had spent
Their courtship in the heart of Manhattan.
Yet, when you grow up in a MidWestern college town,
you end up knowing everyone: townie or transplant.
He felt lonely in San Diego.
He moved them back. She knew something was amiss.
There were friends always moving in and out.
Out of work actors. Workshop graduates.
Particle physicists.
But, he didn’t move back for them.
He moved because he wanted to shelter himself
In the blanket that was the familiar,
A blanket of wheat, corn, beans and pig shit.
He’d acted out of character
during the first birth as well,
Wandering the halls of the hospital,
unsure in what direction he was supposed
to be heading in.
Just as lost and lonely as before.
But, compared to the second daughter,
that first birth was easy.
He understands he had responsibilities this time.
He understands that his primary job was to continue
that type of support that he had been failing to give her
for the past nine months, but he had just started
to give her in the last couple of weeks.
She knew deep down, momentarily, at least,
He had the ability to be a good father.
He often showed signs of it.
There was the time that their youngest hit
her nose up against their concert floor
Trying to reach for a rattle just outside of her crib.
With the blood flowing, he rushed her to the hospital.
The fact that he was watching the Cubs that afternoon
While she was building a makeshift stairway to
Her liberation is of no consequence. He was paying
Attention when it counted.
They came out of nowhere, and
It isn’t as if he didn’t know the due date.
.
This trip to the hospital he felt there was no reason to rush.
Some old friends from college were in town.
They were a band whose lead singer had a connection to Iowa.
A big band that shouldn’t have cared about a city in the middle
of the prairie no matter how many
college students lived there.
They were men from California and Arizona.
Arid places with no corn, no beans.
It was this day
The day her husband went out for drinks
with the members of Mr. Mister instead of
attending the birth of their second daughter
that she knew that their marriage was over.
© James Cuebas: Mother at the Window, Silkscreen, 20″ X 20“, 2020
Open Fridges
On the typical episode, I would watch
Punky Brewster play in the tree
House behind the fence of
Her Chicago walk-up. Without fail, she would encounter
the Maytag, or Kenmore, that her friend, Cherri,
Had seen the sanitation workers
Bring to the alley behind their building.
Brandon, the dog, would climb in
And Punky’s friend, Alan,
All dimples, lisp and blonde
Mop-top would try to convince
Punky and Cherri that it was a
Pirate ship, or an Indy car.
Fifteen minutes, and
Two commercial breaks, later, I saw Alan,
Always Alan, thanking
Chicago’s finest, as they
Extracted him from his tomb.
I thought I had learned the
Lesson those first responders taught him.
The moustached firefighter would look
Straight into the camera
Reminding us viewers that we should not
Play in, or around, aboundanded appliances.
“You could suffocate and die.”
But today, while teaching,
I projected a picture of
A lone green fridge in an
Abandoned warehouse on the blackboard
and I felt the need for suffocation.
I felt the need
To jump in like Alan to
Punky’s horror.
Lines Thought by Vachel Lindsay Upon Visiting Sarah Teasdale at Bellefontaine
(The poets, Vachel Lindsay and Sarah Teasdale, both committed suicide in their mid-40s though it cannot be proven if Lindsay’s obsession with Teasdale after a lacklaster courtship was a cause.)
I took the train down from Springfield for this.
I never expected it to feel real.
Reflecting on death’s shabby appeal,
She was a light. A star. A good night kiss.
I never could have thought her life amiss.
When I would woo her, her joy would conceal
The fact love was extracorporeal
Effects of her undying sense of bliss.
I stand in front of my beloved’s grave.
In spite, my current wife shall never know.
I will hear the beating of her loving
Heart beneath the ground and in a cold cave
Along the Mississippi bank. Quiet though
Her soul found solace in silent nothing.
And Every Parrot’s Name is Polly
Six years old
Maybe, seven.
Before then, I had taken to water so well.
Since my family would travel back and forth to Florida all the time to visit my grandparents.
I spent lots of time in hotel pools.
My father successfully teaching me how to Deadman’s float without a hiccup.
However, the process of propelling oneself with just one’s arms and legs was something that
he
just could not
help me.
Instead, I would hold onto the pool’s wall moving around it at a crawl,
Loving the water,
But hating the ever present threat of chlorine clogged lobes of my lung
Fearing the inability to breathe
Maybe even worse.
The simple fear of knowing that death existed.
All these events happening right at that age when your mind realizes death has become a
possibility.
We made more trips to Florida that year I was seven then ever before,
As my grandmother went in for open-heart surgery.
She lived through it that time.
That time we visited her in the hospital and my mother and I tried to take care of my
grandfather.
I don’t remember being in any hotel pools.
During that self same summer, I only have one vivid memory of a pool.
That pool with the cabana-like bathroom where I would change into my swimming trunks
was
where my parents had signed me up to take private swimming lessons.
You’d step-out of that bathroom, and, as you made your way out to the pool deck, you’d run
into
a parrot, most likely a macaw
Just sitting in a cage, perched near the door to the pool.
The parrot seems like a dream, but it was all very real.
I know it must be real
For I remember the last day I was in class.
My mother decided to stay around the house that day instead of just dropping me off.
And it was the day I cracked.
I knew I wasn’t going to learn to swim.
Why waste the time?
So, with my green towel, emblazoned with my name on it,
The towel I take to the beach still today,
And with all of my street clothes on, I walked straight into the pool.
Not the shallow end
Not at the five foot mark
No straight into the section marked nine feet.
I could have not made it.
I could have drowned.
But I do not remember any fear around my drop into the drink
Instead, all I remember is the laughter of one parrot.