#excelano project

"471" by Ivy Sole (of the Excelano Project)

Hanging on the wall  was a photograph he took of a lion.              I asked him how he got so close, and he replied that the lion told him he could get really close,  as long as he took a good picture.  My mother asks me if I’ve written about Bruce yet. I tell her “No.” I’m not lacking in language,  Just afraid that I’ve been living my life in service of a man I never knew. But Bruce was in the army, so Maybe he’d understand. I imagine he never shook Uncle Sam by the hand. But if he had, Uncle Sam probably would have stood up a little straighter. I want to make peace with the pieces. Eyes  like the bullet casings we collected at the funeral, Cheeks crisp as the crust of September, Bones too ornery and orchard to fit the confines of “grampy,”  so we call him Bruce. When I am seven,  I tell him he’s my special friend. He tells me I’m his special friend too.   August, 2004: he presses a ring into my palm. It’s from India, where he served in the war. It’s made from seven silver bands that fit together just-so.  He teaches me how to solve it. September: leukemia gorges his marrow to mincemeat. Mom isn’t at home very much. October: The doctors tell him not to stand,  so he folds into the driver’s seat and revs the engine to see me one last time. I am thirteen, and from the Bat Mitzvah bimah,  I know little of adulthood, only that I hope some boys will slow-dance with me at my party. I notice Bruce, a bit jaundiced, but smiling. He made it. I smile back. November. On the hospice form, he checks “other” next to “how are you feeling,”  and writes “philosophical.” An urn on the dining room table. I write “childhood hero” in the dust of a man  I never said goodbye to. They fire shells in his honor, My grandmother flails between rows of blue tombstones. I try to trace the ghost of my grandfather,  and slice my hands on the jigsaw.   Bruce.  I swear one day I’ll visit Arlington. I’m sorry that it’s taken me eight years to face you. Did your hands shake when you took photographs. What was my mother like in high school. Where did you learn to talk to lions. Why must this poem taste like surgery. I have forgotten how to solve the ring he gave me. Heirlooms, like grief, don’t come with instructions; they are rich with mud and salt water. Hanging on the wall was another photograph  he took of the Taj Mahal,  a monument built in memory of a great love lost. Bruce. This poem is not a monument, Nor a resurrection. I know nothing of marble. We sleep in alphabets. I keep a picture of you on my bedside table. This is my attempt to face the lion. 

‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” I cringe when told this and I can’t be alone. I find the droll proverb Appropriately pithy for the topic, pits included Is a persistent troll of the reddit thread of my Soul. OK it’s true that, like my father, I indulge my wells of anxiety, and I have an aversion to building Ikea furniture, but My relationship with my parents is strictly corporeal, not arboreal. And even if it was, speaking metaphorical I pray the twisted branch From which I plopped Was perched on a steep pitch. And the apple rolled away, away, away. I love my family But please don’t Place my heart’s best bet to be some limp palimpsest Of my father’s signature over my Crayola calligraphy. I measure my life in snapped crayons. And every time like a car crash whip lash, At neck break speeds our bones burst forth and contract, I went from itchy turtle necks, To necking tall girls, but the nick of time draws blood, So let it flow, without parental dam. You’re damned if you dam. When death comes to you, will your life be a log jam? Will the autopsy report find young hopes and nightlite dreams under your liver tucked in like a sleeping child who hasn’t awakened to the dawn. Will you watch from above as each buried treasure is  Removed from your very dead chest plate, to glitter in the sun? Portentous, yes, but with human potential of such high potency, the stakes are all. Just remember, Your father is not a tree, but an apple, too. His sunfaded skin blotched from dreams botched, Failed plots, lovers debauched, Forget-me-nots that were forgot. Imperfect, of course, Just one apple in a field of millions. The results of inertia on the same endless plain And all of us bruising just the same.

I belong to you.

When you realize a pen can only touch so many pages before it runs out, remember. I belong to you. Just like it, I’ll touch and stay before I go but I’ll touch longer. I’ll speak to you like my words are no language without your ears. Like they belong to you, like I belong to them. 

When your school bus driver complains to you about always being on the road but never toward the right destination, tell him my love can relate to this

and then tell him that’s probably why I belong to you and him 

and to the girl who laughs loud enough just to hear herself laughing, and to the grandmother who always seems to prefer sobbing over tearing,

I always try to tell them,

I belong to them like I belong to all the breaths under the river

and to all the dead souls trying to break free of their ghosts just to touch us

and to all the dark alleys trying to make the passers-by

belong to them, I belong to them like I belong to you. 

There’s a blind man who plays his saxophone underground in London. He only hears the touch of coins against his case

and the thousands of people hurrying to the tube he can almost see them

more than they see him as they give him their coins,

and there’s a guitar man in New York City who stomps his feet as he strums,

we always smile as we leave him by Penn station.

He belongs to the stomps and strums so much he doesn’t even smile back.

So we smile more, and can’t tell where we are because it’s so familiar, like many other places

Warren Street Station Mile End Road Kingscross Manhasset

so we start belonging to low rooftops, scarred walls, loud footsteps, and wordless music stations,

to the feeling of seeing something for the first time that you've already seen before on an aging face,  in eyes covered by black sunglasses, and dimples hidden by wrinkles that you still can see because the grin is just too wide.

So I start belonging to you , to them,  to myself to this little girl Salma who has too many big sisters

that are not her own, including me. She tells me what her father did as he left her, what her brother did as he left her,

and when I ask her about her favorite people in the world she asks, can my father and brother both be #1 ?

so I belong to her more. I teach her to learn from the sun, how it exhales loudest before it sets to sleep

and I teach her to learn from the last page that absorbs all it can from the pen that’s going to run out on any next word

and I show her what guitars and problems have in common, how you can’t make music out of either one until your fingertips are callous enough

and she teaches me how to belong,

she teaches me how to belong

same way I’m trying to teach you, so belong to me, to all the rooftop drinkers, tree top climbers, basement poets, and to everything they belong to.

So when you’re walking through a dark alley tonight don’t reach the end of it,

and when your love is everywhere, when it’s always on the road but never in the right direction, don’t tell it to find home,

and when you visit your grandmother tomorrow do not ask her to stop sobbing,

and when you think of ghosts think of the souls waiting to break free of them just to touch you