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At Last the New Arriving Read Poem

Like the horn you played in Catholic school
the city will open its mouth and cry

out.

Don't worry 'bout nothing.

Don't mean
no thing.

It will leave you stunned

as a fighter with his eyes swelled shut
who's told he won the whole damn purse.

It will feel better than any floor
that's risen up to meet you.

It will rise

like Easter bread, golden and familiar
in your grandmother's hands.

She'll come back,

heaven having been too far from home
to hold her.

O it will be beautiful.

Every girl will ask you to dance and the boys
won't kill you for it.

Shake your head.

Dance until your bones clatter.

What a prize
you are.

What a lucky sack of stars.

Captain Lovell, ["Dad calls her the Dowager but I call her Aunt G."] Read Poem

Dad calls her the Dowager but I call her Aunt G.

Aunt G.

at the Polo Lounge.

Aunt G.

drinking gimlets
by the pool.

Aunt G.

asking about Babe even
though she’s the only one who sees her that much
anymore.

She wears ten rings.

Seven on her
right hand, which Dad calls the Seven Stars.

They make the glass seem like it’s going to crack.

She doesn’t like me very much.

I know it.

I’m not her kind of girl.

I won’t wear dresses
and when she placed the ring inside my hand
I just said, “No, thank you.

” Not even thinking
how rude that might sound.

What would I do
with a ring like that?

I’ve got my own stars
and she doesn’t really want to give

me presents anyway.

She gave Babe a car,
her dark brown Aston Martin.

And she gave
David a watch to “remember home by.

”
She gave my Dad a look when he said, “David’s
a good soldier.

” Like he gave her something bad
to eat.

She just shook her head and said,
“I’ll never understand what kind of man you are.

”

And then she said Dad would have that young boy’s
blood on his hands.

Which I don’t understand.

Or why she said, “You’ve gone and lost the both
of them.

You’re your very own Pol Pot,” while looking
through her purse.

It shone so bright it blinded
me.

For a second I saw spots and couldn’t focus
on the thing.

One clear stone that caught the light

and made reflections on my glasses.

I didn’t want
it.

I don’t wear things like that.

“Who are you?

”
she asked, not in a mean way but like she truly
didn’t know.

And didn’t really care.

She took it back
and asked me if  I’d talked to Babe and I said
I had not and no one else had either.

I said, “She’s living in the hills.

”

And she looked at the ring for a minute
and put it back in her purse.

Captain Lovell, ["My eyes are shaky and glimmer like the stars"] Read Poem

My eyes are shaky and glimmer like the stars.

My head turns to the left and it moves
just like a pendulum.

The kids laugh and shake
it back to me, all the ways I’m stupid,
not like them.

But I know how the grass sounds
when the locusts come, like a spaceship
taking off and how it makes the air shake.

Captain Lovell, I heard it in the branches
and the leaves.

I heard the rocket leaving.

My teacher said it wasn’t so, that you’re
past hearing but my father said I could.

He puts his hands hard on my shoulders
from behind and holds my head still
with his looking.

But I can feel how much

I want to shake and let myself go loose
and double like a cloud of mayflies on the lake,
you know just how they rise so you couldn’t
see just one of them, not even with your thumb
held up to catch one with your eyes.

It’s something
I can’t do that Babe and David can, can’t sight
the stars or use a telescope or ever fire a gun.

Dr.

Lovell, I like to think you’re spinning
and can’t feel it like I can’t feel the world shake
unless I’m really tired and then it’s like a gift
to let it go and just stop trying so hard.

I like
to think you let go too and when the kids
run at me and move their heads from left
to right and call me “Zigzag” I look up

and wish myself up there with you
just calm and swinging through the stars.

Captain Lovell, ["Shakey Eyes Horton had nystagmus too"] Read Poem

Shakey Eyes Horton had nystagmus too.

That’s what my father said and took me
to the record store so we could buy him
and take him home to listen.

Babe says
he’s so square but we go all over.

We listen
to music for hours and dance around
the house like crazy skeletons: loose

with all our bones knocking, we go,
“click click click” and wave our arms
and shake until we rattle all the china
in mom’s cabinet.

He turns the volume
up and we spin like planets round the sun.

Babe says he’s no fun but I know different
because I see him laughing and Itry,

which she just never does.

She walks
into the house with Jasper waiting in the car.

She grabs some clothes or asks for money,
though she doesn’t even come to do that
anymore.

They don’t even talk.

Last time
we had the music on loud and we were dancing.

I was letting my head swing back and forth

and she just stood and watched us with the strangest
look and I said, “I’m Shakey Eyes! Come dance,”
and moved my arms around.

I followed her up
the stairs, swinging like a satellite and going,
“Ooh ooh ooooohhhhh,” just like a low-down good-
for-nothing so and so.

I know she thinks I’m funny
but she didn’t laugh and I said, “Comedance!

You know you’ve got the blues.

” Then I said, “You’re
no fun.

” She said, “You don’t know him like I do.

”

Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love. Read Poem

Do not care if  you bring only your light body.

Would just be so happy to sit at the table
and talk about the menu.

Miss you.

Wish we could bet which chilis they’ll put
on the cubes of tofu.

Our favorite.

Sometimes green.

Sometimes red.

Roasted
we always thought.

But so cold and fresh.

How did they do it?

Wish you could be here
to talk about it like it was so important.

Wish you could.

Watched you on the screens
as I was walking, as I was cooking.

Wished you
could get out of the hospital.

Can’t
bring myself to order our dish and eat it
in the car.

Miss you laughing.

Miss
you coming in from the cold or one
too many meetings.

Laughing.

I’ll order
already.

I’ll order seven helpings, some
dumplings, those cold yam noodles that you
like.

You can come in your light
body or skeleton or be invisible I don’t even
care.

Know you have a long way to travel.

Know I don’t even know if it’s long
at all.

Wish you could tell me.

What
you’re reading.

If you’re reading.

Miss you.

I’m at the table in the back.

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. Read Poem

Do not care if  you just arrive in your skeleton.

Would love to take a walk with you.

Miss you.

Would love to make you shrimp saganaki.

Like you used to make me when you were alive.

Love to feed you.

Sit over steaming
bowls of pilaf.

Little roasted tomatoes
covered in pepper and nutmeg.

Miss you.

Would love to walk to the post office with you.

Bring the ghost dog.

We’ll walk past the waterfall
and you can tell me about the after.

Wish you.

Wish you would come back for a while.

Don’t even need to bring your skin sack.

I’ll know
you.

I know you will know me even though.

I’m
bigger now.

Grayer.

I’ll show you my garden.

I’d like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you
want to jump in?

I’ll rake it for you.

Miss you
standing looking out at the river with your rake
in your hand.

Miss you in your puffy blue jacket.

They’re hip now.

I can bring you a new one
if you’ll only come by.

Know I told you
it was okay to go.

Know I told you
it was okay to leave me.

Why’d you believe me?

You always believed me.

Wish you would
come back so we could talk about truth.

Miss you.

Wish you would walk through my
door.

Stare out from the mirror.

Come through
the pipes.

My Perimenopausal Body Cistern Disappointing How Surprising Read Poem

Bled all day.

Stopped bleeding.

Bled some more.

Went to the doctor who reached inside the woman
body I try to live with: make peace with: but also ignore.

Sad tenant, my uterus.

One day the tenant turns
out to be the landlord.

All day I wonder what
it means, a clock I know as well as I know anything
but also never wanted.

And also won’t give up.

In the history of my light body it will show I could
have been another.

The shots, the surgeon’s
blade.

That freedom.

But I hold on.

Not out of fear.

Well maybe, but also: this body I fought for.

Timid
skin sack that grew into a kind of magnificence I’d
not expected.

I tie my bow tie around my neck that’s not
quite the neck I want.

But still: the neck survived:
hours on the floor begging for my life: bent
head crying in the bathroom: bent head walking
by the boys yelling, hog and dog and ugly as an animal.

It’s confusing.

I protect the breasts that I live without
in my mind’s eye.

I look for hours
at men’s trousers and kimonos and bleed all day.

My mind says:take it out.

And though
it’s one step closer to one true self I wanted, also
I’d miss it in ways I can’t explain.

Burnt off scroll.

I’m a mirror of a mirror.

When I was eight at daycare
my friends pulled me aside to talk about a “sex change”:
all of us in our Catholic uniforms: Meg, Emily,
Nadine, and Brian who got kicked out because of me.

That’s later in the story.

We drew me in the sand.

We planned and wondered how much it cost
to be another body.

But now?

I know my body.

I pull up my pants and feel the lack of one thing
as the muffin top reminds me of the persistence
of another.

Me who’s with me always.

This pillow that looked over me.

Pillow
of skin and fat that I’d call Rubenesque.

It tried its best.

To cover me.

So I worry over it.

Strange companion.

This body that covers me.

And bleeds all day without ceasing.

I say,Come on.

I say,Stop.

Like I used to when I’d get too scared
of one thing or another.

God comes back
to find me in the most confounding ways.

Me and my body.

Who are often not the same.

Poems by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is an American poet, editor, essayist, and professor.

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