Convince Me Twice
In Nature's Way
Signs
In Memoriam
Metaphysical
Cat's Cradle
You're Not a Good Judge of Character, Said the Artist
Three Artists
Exquisite Distraction
I Misunderstand the Weather
Everyone Should Get Their Eulogy While They're Alive
There are two dolls on a bench looking out the window;
the brunette leans into the taller blonde one.
It’s dawn and I’m squinting from the toilet seat.
I want them to be two dolls, and the more I squint
the more I believe it. Squint harder, it’s a pile of laundry.
I’m breaking up with an old friend. What wasn’t I
seeing, what were we doing all these years? Don’t I
tell my children about the value of lasting friendship?
There's a cop outside our house—shaved head,
long bushy beard. Cop cars and flashing lights
at the end of our quiet street. My son is walking
home. He calls me and a cop gets on his phone,
We’re not letting anybody through.
My son walks in, says we need to stay inside.
Our new lock is broken and the Lock Doc has to
come back. I already told my husband I wouldn’t
have him back because of his politics. I watch
a video on my phone of a crying toddler
being taken and strapped into a car seat.
Everyone around her filming and screaming.
It starts to replay, then an ad for anti-aging serum.
Where is our moral center. I’m embarrassed,
says the Lock Doc, In all my years, nothing
like this has ever happened. Everything
like this has already happened.
I was in a construction site digging
for herbs in my friend’s dream.
I didn’t know what I was doing
when I dug up the potatoes
too early on the farm
at summer camp; our counselor
knelt in the dirt, said an animal
must’ve gotten to them in the night.
I was too ashamed to admit
the animal was me. The crows
are loud this morning, I try
not to hate them—not their fault
they look the way they do
or take the cardinal’s eggs.
A friend’s daughter cried
during her eighth-grade graduation
when she released her graduation
trout into the stream and the men
told her about electrofishing.
My son comes downstairs holding
a bloody tissue to his mouth,
says it's his wisdom tooth.
I don’t see anything, keep searching.
Half a molar, Nothing to worry about.
Please know that I think very highly
of you, my old friend wrote
in her final email. Too complicated
to put in writing, she would explain
when she saw me. That was
twelve years ago. She identified
with ravens, used to tell me stories
about friends she’d cut out of her life.
Like the woman who ended up
in a sanatorium in Paris,
wrapped in a blanket on the roof
amongst the gargoyles.
What’s the difference
between a raven and crow?
I used to pity those women,
then I became one.
My son closed the front door behind him
and the knob fell off in his hand.
Those fancy designer locks never work,
said the graying locksmith. He installed
a keypad, showed me how to use
the backup key until I really got it,
and asked if I skydived. I was
in a Wisconsin Skydiving Club t-shirt
I’d picked up at a thrift store.
Turns out he’d given up skydiving
to be the LockDoc on Ice Age Drive.
We talked about our cats; his two
Abyssinians and my two Siberians.
They’re kind of opposites, I said.
He handed me the bill, I gotta say,
that’s the best lawn sign I’ve ever seen,
even though it takes a swipe at me.
It takes a swipe at you, I asked.
Yes, but that’s ok. He was almost
cheery about it. A big black cat
knocks over a tiny elephant
in a bright orange wig—the only sign
I’ve ever knocked into our front lawn.
Weeded over, the gardener said
when we moved in, then
ripped up everything. Ripped out
the Lilies of the Valley—my favorite
—and planted spiky Casa Blancas.
The woman who planted the garden
raised her kids in this house.
Our neighbors spoke about her
cancer in hushed tones.
She was adored, maybe a kind
of artist; she’d laid mosaics of mirrors
around the garden, likely planted
the Japanese Maple out front.
The gardener told me I have to
rip it out eventually or the roots
will invade the house.
I’m not ripping it out;
the leaves glow shocking pink
in the sun and now reach
up to my daughter’s bedroom.
My daughter spends a lot of time
studying her changing face
in the mirror. She doesn’t like
her face. The gardener is here
for a spring cleanup. We need
more mulch. My neighbor walks by
with his dog. His face looks
different. He tells me he needs
help with his yard, can’t do it
on his own anymore. He was
always using his leaf blower;
it drove me crazy.
You know I have cancer, right?
I didn’t know.
Brain cancer, it’s gotten into my bones.
He turns to leave, I don’t want
to waste any more of your time.
You’re not wasting my time,
I call out, but he keeps going.
I was running late
for an appointment once and
called from the car. Don’t worry—
life is long, my acupuncturist said.
My Lilies of the Valley are coming up
this year, took them a minute.
What will the neighbors say about me.
You were saying something important
and a flash of Frida Kahlo crossed
your face, said my acupuncturist.
Then something about the fibers of
my soul. She’s become a gimmick,
but who wouldn’t want to be
seen as a visionary. In my dream,
one of my cats escaped. I looked
everywhere. When Henry finally
returned on his own, he was
a white and gray Husky with
pale blue eyes. The next week
I flew to New York; at a café
a blue-eyed Husky came up to me
and sniffed my hand, wanted
to stay by my side. Yesterday
I couldn't find my favorite kitchen knife.
I’d been holding it a moment ago.
My husband helped me; we looked
everywhere. He opened the garbage bin,
and it was blade down like a dagger.
I worry about losing everything.
I watch a documentary about
a telepathic parrot named N’kisi.
He has conversations with
the woman whose mind he reads.
He asks to go for a ride in a car.
He asks her for a kiss. She hugs
him—you can hug a bird.
I get a massage; the woman says
only, Turn over. She lays hot stones
on my back, hotter than I expect,
and my teeth start to hurt.
My first massage I was maybe
twelve, in the Ouray hot springs.
The masseuse walked me through
a path in the woods to a tiny cabin,
asked if I’d gotten my period yet.
The woman digs her elbows into
my scapula–I want her to stop.
When it’s over, I want her to keep going.
You can't hear a cat breathing,
but you know they’re there.
Before the sun came up, I heard
three clear breaths beside me.
I put out my hand, hoping for
soft fur, but there was no one.
My son cuts his baths short
because of my breathing.
He can’t stand the sound—
I don’t make any sound.
I was eight, I was lying
alone on my parents’ bed.
In the blackness, a red sphere
passed by the window,
floated through lit-up
skyscrapers—we lived
on the thirty-third floor.
How do you tell your
parents, anyone, you
saw a small planet say hello.
My son wasn’t yet two
when we left Central Park
and crossed Fifth Avenue
in a wind tunnel; the red
balloon we’d just bought
flew out of his hand, whipped
across the street back into
the park, and he looked up
at me from his stroller
and said, That okay.
You're Not a Good Judge of Character, Said the Artist
In her studio, a floor-to-ceiling miniature city in pencil:
a couple having sex on the Brooklyn Bridge,
people walking their dogs; an outlined figure
the size of a fingernail sits on a windowsill
holding a flaming pot out the window—
I found the photos he took of his ex,
put them in a pot, and set them on fire.
Love doesn’t exist, said the artist. We were in Warsaw,
at The Zachęta. I’d traveled with her to scout locations
for her installations. She was hard to like; she was
revered. She was known for filming herself
walking against a tide of people, her back to
the camera. Good luck, said the former assistant
as she showed me how to install her tablecloths
at the zoo. In France, she had me walk ahead
and take photographs of her talking to the director.
I took my own photos; a guard in a gallery
with paintings on the floor waiting to be hung,
a bright red bus shelter in the sun surrounded
by willows, a dancing man doing leg lifts
in the Luxembourg Gardens, boxed
red currant juice in my room at the museum.
On the taxi line at Kennedy, the artist asked
if I was still living with my parents.
She fired me the next day, demanded all
my negatives. Then said I could keep them,
You’ll never do anything with them anyway.
Do you still have that vagina painting? asked
a friend from college when I ran into him uptown.
I’d forgotten about that one—a floating vulva
in shades of red with words scratched into
hard wood. Donna was our TA; from the South
with a crew cut, she wore cargo shorts
even when it snowed. I’d made a place
setting resembling skin, twisted metal
into pointy utensils, sewed a patchwork mat
in silky shades of pink. Be bigger, she said.
In her small studio, we built a table taller
than me. I painted it powder pink and
scrawled eat me, drink me, cut me.
When it was finished, we took the table
out to the quad and she handed me
a blowtorch. I put that piece through the fire.
K. walked up to my drawings pinned to the wall – his nose
almost touched an empty grade-school classroom, rows
of desks facing a blank pull-down screen. I saw myself
from behind, watching myself watch him. I’d spent hours
painting layers of neon yellow, violet, ultramarine
on thick watercolor paper carpeting the floor.
Then shades of terra cotta and cement. I folded
and unfolded the weighted paper into cracked grids.
Sanded the surfaces, burnished them to a silk finish.
The underpaint showed through the cracks. K. and I
faced each other in metal folding chairs, under
white fluorescent light in the windowless room.
Open studio night, I wore a cloth knapsack that read
“Lolita.” I like her backpack, I heard him say to my friend.
In the passenger seat of his beat-up silver Honda, I was
a runaway; how could we have slipped past the other
students unnoticed. Downtown, we ate fried spring rolls
and Pad Thai and drank icy beer from amber bottles.
The whole time I couldn’t get over the transgression.
I never talk to my students about their work after
they graduate, he said. Then something about making
an exception for me, and an invitation to Bard that summer.
When I ran into him and his four-year-old on their way
to an opening in Soho, he asked me to join. I carried
his little girl on my hip. In front of a wall-sized painting
of a couple having sex, I swung her away dramatically.
I thought I caught people whispering about me, about us.
August train up the Hudson. After dinner, a gathering
with students and professors. It was shocking to see him
dance – robotic head and hands, black bangs flinging.
We took a midnight walk. An eruption of cicadas –
You look different, he said. Then hips to hips,
an unlit kiss. My last night, at his professor’s rental,
he pulled me up from the sofa and kissed me again;
it wasn’t what I wanted after all. His hands on my body,
he said, I just want to go back to that place. I wanted
to go home. The next day under leafy green cover,
eating tomato sandwiches by the water, a friend asked
him about spending time with students like this.
An exquisite distraction, K. said.
What do you think of me? he asked, the first day
back to school at the coffee shop a block away.
I said something about my thesis. He asked again,
But what do you think of me? A glance down at
the orange Formica table. What. Do you think of me?
He finally paid for our coffee. We walked back to school,
rode the freight elevator up to the studios in silence.
A rush of turpentine, an image in my head: the picture
K. took of me at the bluffs that summer, his gaze heavy
on the back of my neck as I looked toward the horizon.
I got to work painting black and blue silhouettes
on a muted mint background. Sanded and buffed
and burnished the surfaces, until I broke them.
I still had one more year to go.
How’s your mom? I ask my friend.
She’s dead. I sputter apologies, search
our conversations, can’t find
the one where he tells me she died.
You’re alive, my yoga teacher tells us
while we hold tree pose.
She must not have liked you that much
to begin with, says my daughter after
I tell her about the time my friend
broke up with me in high school.
Leah was obsessed with Metallica.
We spent time at her brownstone
in Brooklyn with her divorced mom.
Got Mexican food near my apartment
and ordered sugary frozen daiquiris,
got tipsy together. One day in homeroom
I confessed I didn’t like Metallica.
She never spoke to me again.
I tried to explain our closeness,
but my daughter’s explanation
made the most sense.
Open your ear canals, practice receiving.
The sun is shining and for the first time
this winter I go for a walk. I leave
my hat at home and the cold wind
rushes in and out of my ears.
Everyone Should Get Their Eulogy While They're Alive
A woman smiled at me on the bike path
this morning and I smiled back
despite the times. I follow my feet
with my eyes up a dirt path lined with
fresh sawed stumps, unnatural blue-gray
rings and shavings scattered at the roots.
I come here daily to understand I have
no limits. Veer into the woods, turn
right and suddenly I don’t remember
this felled oak, this shed peeking through
the yellow leaves. Don’t panic—I climb
over the oak, up a ravine and I’m spat out
into the Jewish section of a cemetery.
Am I getting Bat Mitzvahed? In the doorway
of our kitchen, I watched mom make dinner.
I’d heard about my younger brothers’
upcoming Bar Mitzvahs for years. She didn’t
stop scraping carrots, I don’t care if you do
or don’t—doesn’t matter to me. I was the one
who liked Hebrew school. My brothers
had a huge party, professional photographers,
break dancers, zabaglione for dessert. I wore
two different Laura Ashley sailor dresses.
I never got Bat Mitzvahed. Outside the shed,
a parking lot of golf carts. Rows of headstones
alongside pristine green hills. I walk the path,
stars give way to crosses—a teen boy’s
headstone covered in mini pumpkins.
On a granite pedestal, a glass girl
with the misguided proportions of a woman,
stone mother and father reaching for her
outstretched arms. Under a sleeping calf:
Our Boy, Fay Shaw Lamp, Aged 6 Years
5 Days, For Of Such Is The Kingdom
Of Heaven. I trip over a low headstone,
catch myself and hike back the way I came.
In the middle of the bike path, a dead squirrel
lies on its side, paws in frozen prayer. I walk
faster; it’s time to pick up my son at the bus stop.
Rebecca Michels is a poet and artist living in Madison, Wisconsin. Her recent work appears in Plume, Midway Journal and Does It Have Pockets, and is forthcoming in Grand Journal.
