Evelyn 1909-1937, A Life in Six Sections

1.

She stood at the water’s edge.

They all said she was in love.

She stood at the water’s edge;

a hand grew from the surface,

sprouted like a pea plant.

She plucked waterlogged nails from each fingertip

and cracked them open like peapods.

She was searching.

We all knew she was in love.

2.

She wore a white dress.

Damp, it clung to her body—

something like foreplay the way it groped her.

Some said they saw him:

flashing and flailing, drunken and dying.

She stood at the water’s edge.

Maybe a head was visible somewhere

in the depths, through the fog.

She stood staring, deeply in love.

3.

A spring day, 1932

and everything was white.

He was happy and she too was smiling.

She said important words;

he repeated them but with feeling.

Flowers, rings, gems, kisses,

and were there doves?

Standing at the water’s edge,

Maybe she saw the blurred reflection of doves.

4.

Oh, he touched her.

He scraped her white flesh

with razor finger nails—

told her to moan.

He bruised her,

mostly where clothes covered.

Oh, he touched her when he was drunk.

She was in love at the water’s edge.

A hand grew out and touched her.

5.

She stood at the water’s edge

and we watched her weep.

They knew that she loved him.

Into the pool, blood dripped—

but no tears— and screams flooded. Screams.

Oh, he touched her.

She dropped slowly to her knees,

knelt at the water’s edge,

screamed, but we saw her weeping.

6.

Oh, she was deeply in love.

Against a bloody hand, she fought.

Her body writhed almost as during rough sex

and blood dripped and bruises formed,

and she resisted, then weakly resisted.

That strong hand held tight.

From the depths, he tugged,

and at first, she screamed.

Then, we knew, too in love, she fell in with him.

Two Weeks

I put my lighter away in the drawer

for the fifth time this year

(it’s only March).

It cooed I’ll see you in two weeks.

No, you bastard. I’m done with you.

But we both knew there was a reason

I didn’t throw it in the trash.

·

Again, it’s been two weeks,

so I take the slow walk

past the Methodist Church and

show up in your living room.

You look up at your calendar,

Oh, two weeks already?

reaching for our pill bottle.

Yes, I say, but I’m not staying.

I just wanted to see if

you were dead yet.

You take two.

With a smirk you retort, I’m trying,

but not hard enough, I think.

I’m leaving you.

This time it’s for good,

I tell you.

·

Well, it’s been three months,

and my nerves still shake for you.

We first met in the waiting room.

They told you,

You have two weeks.

I figured I could collapse with you

among Benzedrine and cigarettes for that long.

You can sleep when you’re dead,

but stubborn as hell,

you’ve developed a living slumber.

Now, I’m just trying to keep awake.

Three Months in Forty-Six Words

I saw some sort of Art Punk movement coming on.

My feet scrambled to find the words

and my tongue died somewhere along the grass path.

My hands found shooting stars against your breasts;

that was the worst part.

But, like I said, I saw it coming.

We Were Always Looking for the Best Things in the Wrong Places

We would search for wildlife on neighborhood streets,

and we spent many an evening hunting skunks and raccoons in backyards.

We sought out love in the caverns of each others’ eyes,

and tried, hopelessly, hour after hour to force it from between clenched palms.

What I Can Still Hear

I can still hear Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Someone sang it when I was young

but now I can’t remember who.

I can hear tires screeching

as I chased a pop fly

down the middle of the road

before that car crashed

into my tom-boy body.

And then, while I sat in my bed recovering,

with bruises all over my face,

the neighbor boy strolled past,

so I called out the window, “Hi, Jimmy”.

I can still hear him screaming all the way home

“A monster! A monster!”

I can hear Bethel cursing my name

when Jack and I popped out of the rumble seat

after she and her fiancé

had driven out to the woods

for some alone time.

Actually, I can’t. I’m overwhelmed

by the sound of childish laughing.

I can hear “Don’t tell Mummy!

Don’t tell Mummy!” Rudy standing over my chest

while I lay flat on my back on the pitcher’s mound

with a baseball imprint on my forehead.

I had thought I would be the nice sister,

give him an easy pitch.

I can still hear those rascal boys squealing in terror

after Grandma dropped a sheet over her head

and went and knocked on the clubhouse door

crooning “Woooo,”

holding a butcher’s knife.

I still hear my cough,

horrible and persistent,

the dry kind that tears apart your throat.

That was when I went to the hospital.

There, they asked me about all those ear infections.

I can still hear my mother in our one bedroom,

“We just can’t afford the doctor, Sweetheart,”

but at the hospital she had to say,

“Go ahead with the surgery, sir.”

I can hear myself screaming FUCK YOU

and my fist thudding against his cheek

after the doctor scribbled what had happened.

Although, I guess that was really

the first thing I could not hear.

Dad's Apple Tree

When we were very young we often escaped out

to that old tree dad planted in the backyard.

We ran in circles around it,

me, slender and with rosy cheeks, chasing you,

or you, wheezing but giggling, chasing me.

Apples hung weighty on the branches above

but we never knew where they came from.

Mom would serve us cold lemonade

and cradle your fragile back

when we fell to rest in the grass,

you, exhausted, and me, playing along.

She would remind me in a whisper,

Maddie, you can’t tire your brother out like that.

Dad never allowed us to pick the apples

but they would eventually plummet to the ground.

Then we walked out to the backyard

and picked the rotten fruit from off the ground.

I always carried the basket back to the kitchen

because your frail arms couldn’t handle the weight.

There, we helped mom turn the apples into sauce.

Once, you tried to cut the tree down

with dad’s axe, revenge after being scolded

for playing outside in your church clothes.

You failed to fell that tree,

the axe was too heavy to swing hard enough,

and when you returned inside, panting,

dad hit you with his belt twelve times,

once for each year you had neglected

to become man enough to chop that tree through.

Covered in bruises, you carefully fell asleep

with your head on my shoulder that night;

I couldn’t even console you—

the pain was too overwhelming,

so all night I lay, unable to sleep,
staring out the window at the tree,

apples dangling from its branches.

That was the day we stopped playing out back,

we stopped looking dad in the eye

and we stopped asking mom to make sauce.

We stopped because now we knew

that those apples came from dad.

Cute

1.

She told me, “They’re cute.”

Mom always said, “They’re cute.”

I snapped, “Bitch, I’m not painting self-portraits,”

and so she asked if I needed to get laid.

The answer was no but I fucked her anyway,

mostly to stop thinking about my mother.

2.

I think that I am cute

because I was often

told that I am cute.

I think that cute

is childish. I do not

want my art to be cute

and I do not want her

to hang it on the fridge.

3.

Once, when we were naked she sweetly called me Darling,

just like Mom called me when I helped her with the baking.

I scraped four bloody lines across her back in retribution.

Later, I painted her shapely scab-lines across a bronze canvas

and called it art. She did not call it cute.

Finally, she has learned her lesson.

4.

Mom and I never had sex.

That’s the main difference

between what I’ve got here

and what I had then.

5.

She cooks and she cleans the house up pretty nicely.

She manages the bills with money her father left her

and she quit smoking because of my asthma.

I mostly focus on painting.

She always knocks before she enters my studio

and she often surprises me with exotic lotions

and skimpy negligee.

I mostly focus on painting.

6.

I mostly focus on painting

because I can’t focus on her.

When I do, I focus on her dinners

and the mopped floors.

Then I focus on my mother’s ashtrays—

unused because of my asthma.

I try to focus on her

sweet smell and on her perky tits.

I try to focus on her bronze skin

but I can only focus on the luke-warm

bathtub, on the red drops covering

her pale skin, on my father’s scream.

7.

About my paintings,

My mother always said

They’re cute.

If she could just appreciate my art

then she would be different;

then things would be different.

Then I could save her.