Literacy Begins

with a car that can’t go, and a chicken
in the car: the interstate, even on a clear
night won’t budge, the sludge of smoke

from a 3 alarm fire in an electrical
supply plant worming its way like death.
My heart sinks. I think of Bogart,

hat pulled down over one eye, face craggy,
voice like the whisper of a cigarette.
Smoking, a friend says, is the only

immorality we have left. Even thinking
of it my body shifts, much like a car,
gears. Such are the choices we make because

there’s not a tree left in Brooklyn
or, for that part, in Philadelphia. Here,
on my desk, a letter from a student

dead ten years. My car, he says,
is my grief. And mine. We attempt to move
despite the fact all around us burns.

My palms blister, my mind reels, my eyes
fog. There is nothing left to see,
and the heart, that beggar leaning against

the lamp post smoking an L&M, hums reality
like a song. The golden groves have unleaved
themselves like lost armies, and we,

the Missing in Action, pull our collars
up about our chins and cry not knowing
for what.


Copyright, 1982
Barbara Fialkowski
Abraxas Press

---

From the Rooftop
of the Life Sciences Building

we could view the night -- time
lay out flat before us, all things
at once, like stars, and we

could understand design,
what brought us here,
a confluence like Pleiades,

and we, the seventh, the missing
last. A planet
with three moons whirled

languidly, and a satellite
off which our voices bounced
arched in a silence

we could not hear to hear.
We watched with greater
clarity what we could see

without the telescoping
eye: 13 falling stars, the dying
of the light. Later,

coincidentally, the city
lights went out, and we
lit candles, our

little family of voices
wafting across the streets:
mother, father, son,

and felt ourselves a trinity,
all things at once, warm
and blessed with afterlight.


Copyright 1984
Barbara F. McMillen
New Virginia Review

---

Christopher’s Garden

A gentle delivery of air
lifts the birch leaves
in a silver tingle of applause;
all things bow
in his direction. Heat rises
from the heart of the matter:
to sift sand from one
bucket to another
is the fire of rehearsal
and distinction. He discovers
gravity, saying, This is my
jungle-island. My savage
child. Where did he come
from? His vowels
repeating, rise above his head.
They are the sun and moon,
and he, the boy who
put them there.

ii)

Beyond us, autumn’s sheer
shimmer. Winter trees
expose their nests
like the breasts of unabashed
hags. Something comes over
me and he says, Oh my god,
Mommy, I’m scared. In another
life, I opened myself up
to him, took him in. The clatter
of shadowless gods like rain
flooded our brains. I was his
oval image of light and he,
the apple of my eye. I was
everything he knew and he
gave himself up, willingly,
to my sleep.

iii)

Such is the pain
of the on-looker: to have seen
everything twice. Heat
rises from the asphalt
like a migraine aura. He swims
toward me mouthing what looks
like my name. I float back,
draw him out, a tide holding him
in suspension. This is the still
moment of birth, the time I
decide to die for him, to die
of him. Sing, Cut the sac,
as you must and forget
what comes tumbling after.
In Christopher’s garden
there is no place for me.

---

Our Adopted Son

closes his eyes jittering
in his seat though even
when his eyes are open

he is here and not here
listening like some creature
close to the earth

to the sounds of something
ancient, an approaching
quake, perhaps. Though

we share this planet
it is not the same, even our
moons differ, the old

laughing face a knot
of a fist he fights with his
night light. He throws

back his head laughing
at god-knows-what, though
nothing funny is going on,

and his eyes water, he
cackles, the budgies moving
nervously along their

perch. Sometimes he speaks
of his family as though we
are not, when in fact we are

not, the very shelves of the
earth shifting and rubbing.
At bedtime we insist that he

not get out of bed, though
once the lights are out, we
ignore his puttering

around: the chattering,
the rearranging of his bed,
his room, his life, all

shifting under his clattering
feet. Then, silence. We
feel him pressing his ear

to the floor, listening, he
says, for what’s coming, what’s
coming to steal him away.

Copyright, 1986
Barbara Fialkowski
New Letters