The Folded Heart - Michael Collier Wesleyan Poetry Series

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and then blow lightly

      until the tire began to spin.

       1

       Skimming

      It was nothing more than a summer job,

      hopping the low fence to my neighbor’s house,

      where I paid out the long hollow pole

      through my hands, and dipped the skimmer’s

      blue jaw into the pool to strain

      the insect wings, bird feathers

      and carob leaves that lay like the night’s

      siftings on a huge blue mirror.

      Evenings from our patio next door,

      I heard my neighbors thrashing

      in the shallow end, their voices

      wild in the cool element, their feet

      padding heavily over the concrete deck.

      And later, in darkness, they slipped back

      into the green water silently.

      The yellow glow of the citronella candle

      flickering far away through the oleanders.

      Its oily lemon fragrance heavy in the air. Sometimes I heard the woman crying, sometimes the man, and once I heard a gasp

      as dry and sharp and loud as someone

      taking a last breath before he drowns.

      Some mornings I’d find the pool light

      burning faintly in the deep end,

      the surface covered with all that was attracted

      to the submerged glow, and once I found

      a bat floating in the shallow pocket

      of the stairs. Its wings spread out

      like a Gothic W. Its feet angling

      from its belly like a ship’s screws.

      And lifting the black mass gently from the water,

      turning the skimmer over in the grass,

      I tapped the bat out and let it lie face up

      in the morning sun. Its features

      like a rubber mask’s, reddish, roughened,

      as if its passage out of the attic or cave

      had been difficult and the twilight air

      of the neighborhood provided nothing more

      than blue shadow on blue shadow.

       V-8

      The motor hung in my neighbor’s back yard

      for years, tarp-covered and lashed with rope.

      Suspended from the rusty block and tackle

      of an engine hoist, it cast a constant shadow

      on the concrete pad. And all around it lay

      the necklaces and hoses of its accessories:

      the black spark-plug harness, the bedpan

      of the air filter, the fuel pump and distributor,

      the carburetor on its side with its barrels

      and chambers exposed. And though my neighbor

      never rebuilt the engine, he must have thought

      about it often: a heavy pendulum that

      no wind moved, a plumb bob fixed dead center

      like some bulky reference point he ducked

      and dodged each time he passed through the yard.

      And each time, too, he had to pass the small side

      door to the garage which held the silent tools:

      the bright chrome sockets and ratchets, wrenches

      and drivers bundled in soft canvas, like good silver

      shoed in its polish cloth. I was too young to know

      what a life’s work was, too impatient to understand

      how our true affections are deflected, shunted

      by the domestic, by the hard promises we make

      to another. What did I know of our capacity to transform

      bitterness into love, as he did helping

      a teenager load the V-8 into the back of a pickup,

      cranking the hoist winch down slowly with one hand

      and with the other fending off the willful spin of the block,

      until it settled in the bed, tilted on its side,

      leaking a puddle of oil, dark and latent?

       Iodine

      The cure-all bottle fits the palm

      of his hand, and the rubber nipple

      of the squeeze top rises like a black

      thumb in the shadow of his thumb.

      Skull and crossbones on the label,

      and the wide morgue of the medicine

      cabinet open. The order of gauze,

      tape and cotton on the glass shelves.

      The flesh-colored bandage held

      in a tight roll by its butterfly clasp.

      Dusting of talc. Flocking of toothpaste.

      The white soft ridges of soap in the empty

      dish. And his other hand under the rush of cold

      water. The sink filling with rosy, thinned

      blood. The blue razor blade he was trying

      to fit into the cabinet’s disposal slot

      lies like a fish fin on the pink ceramic counter.

      Then resting the cut hand on the rim of the sink,

      fingers held up to slow the flow of blood,

      my uncle fits the bottle in his mouth.

      The exaggerated squint of one eye

      as his teeth tighten on the plastic cap

      and his good hand strains, like a wrench,

      until the seal on the vial breaks. Then his tongue,

      ferrous with the leakage, sputters and spits,

      his lips wiping the bitterness on his shoulder,

      the back of his wrist. His head crazy

      with the mistake. And the water he cups

      in his hands, brackish with blood and iodine,

      is the color of the veil that shrouds

      his life and its absurd diminishment

      there in the bathroom of his sister’s house.

       The Pageant

      When Brian McCarthy, the male lead

      in our third-grade, Spanish-class

      production of Alice in Wonderland,

      didn’t show, Mrs. Carrera’s husband,

      Tito, had to read lines from the wings,

      where he also managed the plywood

      and canvas scenery. Paunchy in a white

      T-shirt, sleeves covering tattooed anchors,

      he lost whole sentences in drapery

      and

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