Fuel Read Free

drifting
    accumulation. A father goes months
    without speaking to his son.
    How there can be a place
    so cold any movement saves you.

    Ho!
You bang your hands together,
    stomp your feet.
The father could die!
    The son!
Before the weather changes.

STEPS

    A man letters the sign for his grocery in Arabic and English.
    Paint dries more quickly in English.
    The thick swoops and curls of Arabic letters stay moist
    and glistening till tomorrow when the children show up
    jingling their dimes.

    They have learned the currency of the New World,
    carrying wishes for gum and candies shaped like fish.
    They float through the streets, diving deep to the bottom,
    nosing rich layers of crusted shell.

    One of these children will tell a story that keeps her people
    alive. We don’t know yet which one she is.
    Girl in the red sweater dangling a book bag,
    sister with eyes pinned to the barrel of pumpkin seeds.
    They are lettering the sidewalk with their steps.

    They are separate and together and a little bit late.
    Carrying a creased note, “Don’t forget.”
    Who wrote it? They’ve already forgotten.
    A purple fish sticks to the back of the throat.
    Their long laughs are boats they will ride and ride,
    making the shadows that cross each other’s smiles.

BOOKS WE HAVEN’T TOUCHED IN YEARS

    The person who wrote YES !
    in margins
    disappeared.

    Someone else
    tempers her enthusiasms,
    makes a small “v”
    on its side
    for lines
    worth returning to.

    A farmer
    stares deeply
    at a winter field,
    envisioning
    rich rows of corn.

    In the mild tone
    of farmers, says
    Well, good luck.

    What happens to us?

    He doesn’t dance
    beside the road.

THE RIDER

    A boy told me
    if he roller-skated fast enough
    his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,

    the best reason I ever heard
    for trying to be a champion.

    What I wonder tonight
    pedaling hard down King William Street
    is if it translates to bicycles.

    A victory! To leave your loneliness
    panting behind you on some street corner
    while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
    pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
    no matter how slowly they fell.

SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS

    On the horizon, their problems
    loom as long as burial mounds . . .
    if we rise early enough
    we can visit their problems.

    Low-hanging fog.
    Planes held on the runway an extra hour.
    We didn’t get our ginger ales till Cleveland.
    Expecting some light chop
, the pilot said.
    Chop, now there’s a word.

    Their problems sound arrangeable,
    building blocks in a mesh bag
    strung from the doorknob.
    When I hear their problems I know
    what the next sentence will be.

    This is how they could solve them.
    This is what they could do.
    Hum from the lowest place in the body.
    Take the problems off like a shirt.

    Will they listen?
    Of course not.
    Without their problems they would be too lonely.
    A crisis pitch is, at least, a pitch.

    If they did not have extra sofas where would they sit?
    A walk without any scenery?

    Easy to stand back from anybody else’s problems.
    My own, now there’s a different feather
    sticking straight up out of the wing.
    I need it to fly.

MESSENGER

    Someone has been painting
    NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE
    across the backs of bus benches,
    blotting out the advertisements beneath
    with green so the strong silver letters
    appear clearly at corners,
    in front of taco stands
    and hardware stores.

    Whoever did this
    must have done it in the dark,
    clanging paint cans block to block
    or a couple of sprays—
    they must have really
    wanted to do it.

    Among the many distasteful graffiti on earth
    this line seems somehow honorable.
    It wants to help us.
    It could belong to anyone,
    Latinas, Arabs, Jews,
    priests, glue sniffers.
    Mostly I wonder about
    what happened or didn’t happen
    in the painter’s life
    to give her this line.
    I don’t wonder about the person
    who painted HIV under the STOPS
    on the stop signs in the same