Whistled Alive
Late fall, the world again closing in
upon itself. Nights extend, days stall,
and the chill takes hold of Pennsylvania.
We hibernate under artificial light
in the practice room where wrestling coaches
bark enduring truths then whistle us alive
in this rite reserved for the quick, the strong,
the sinewy light doggedly wary.
This must be some kind of love, this shutting out,
shutting in, this drain of self into self,
more weight to shoulder through our hunger.
We shuffle and tender sugarfeet.
He’s a mirror-me: I claw, he claws, heads butt,
hands seize sweat-slick muscle. I collar him,
rough a forearm hard to his clavicle,
stutter-step. Balance, balance is all.
I am stronger, faster. So say tight grips,
the hurried brawl. I flash to a leg;
he drops to splay his weight over me,
the way soggy nautical rope might feel—
knotty, tentacular, doughy. He grabs
my head, wheels on the axis he makes of me.
His strength meets mine, I parry his every move
(each the other reified). The mild sorrow
of blood rises warm in my mouth.
He’s on his back! I power down, but he rears
unstoppably from the mat. Sudden loss,
sudden win. We practice both, again, again.
No winner here, it’s him, myself, I pin.
[first appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review]
Crossing Over
above the Pacific, January 1969
Rows ahead, rows behind, soldiers hunch
into themselves in the ghostly quiet
of this chartered, carpeted 707,
jungle fatigues bloused at boot tops.
Ventilation panels flank our ankles
for Southeast Asian heat to come.
We are dog-tagged numbers dangling
on beaded chains, but the Army covers
all bets: blood type, religion, metallic name.
I’m a child beside an infantry captain
whose silence sprawls over the armrest
into my space. He fumbles a passel
of photos, shuffles a wife, blond kids.
He’s a mountain, sloped, bucolic, stoic.
Our porthole’s a tondo of black sky, stars.
I conjure my mother, father, sister,
a paddy in which to hide. The stewardess
attends us tenderly, and as she leans in
to ask what I’d like, her hair, so clean,
falls toward her lips, and one fine strand
shines free. She slips away through jet-whine,
enfleshing what feels like abandonment.
[first appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review]
In-Country: Day One
Duffel bag stuffed in the back, he bounced down
Cong Ly on the suicide seat. The sergeant crowed
they’d stolen the mud-scarred jeep the night
before on a Cholon whorehouse street.
His starched jungle fatigues and boots were a joke
in a city of thousands, .45 hard
on his hip. Dressed in yellow, Saigon hummed
like a factory. Fuel-stench hung like a scrim.
The sun seared down on angels in ao dais,
silk panels in a red soft as wet blood,
in the green of his mother’s eyes.
They skimmed the simmering sidewalks,
at ease in their beauty under the palm-leaf
shade of conical nons, the calm rise
of dry heat, skirts wafting in spiraled mists
of nuoc mam, the smog of fried steam rolls.
That night, he sauntered down Tu Do Street.
The bar girls called and the cyclos spat
their two-cycled rasp. Distant iron bombs dropped
from B-52s burst out of the dark,
laying a blanket of moans over him
and the street and the girls too young in the night.
He glanced at the stars and felt himself
holding onto his gun with both hands.
[first appeared in Connecticut Review]
Music Lady
My wife is in the kitchen making
kitchen sounds, odd arhythmic tunes
she’s always played: the skillet slide
across a grate, the counter thump,
the scrape along a carrot length,
tunes that somehow call to mind
her birthing cry, her calves and inner thighs
in nylon, scuffing one another,
back when she could walk in heels.
In those days, the music drew us in,
slow-dancing close at night,
lights dimmed in the family room,
the kids asleep, the Divine
Sarah Vaughan on the stereo,
or Miss Peggy Lee vamping a saxophone.
Because we can no longer dance,
the music only now remains.
She speaks of something into
an empty room, her voice-tones round
and shushed.
Her good leg drags the bad
across the kitchen’s hardwood floor the way
a jazz brush slurs a snare drum’s skin.
[first appeared in Salmagundi]
Know Thyself
I’m an old man now, getting to know myself,
my marbles still neatly arranged, like my taws
and cat’s eyes in Quaker Oats boxes Mother
saved for me. But this morning, scratching an itch,
I noticed that my wrist is tiny, tiny telling lies.
So I checked a leg—my mighty quadriceps,
which have powered my life of runs and matches,
so many steps—and was appalled. Now,
there have been hints of a certain smallness
since starting out at six pounds, but this
—what can only be called a boy-sized leg
flexing in a failing crop of white leg hair—
gave me a start. I’m ridiculous it seems.
Do others know? I think of fun with my wife
in bed when I’d whisper, “Go ahead,
cop a feel of my massive thigh” (always
italicized), and she’d ooh and ahh
while stroking my strong, bowed legs, my grandpa legs.
She was in on the joke, I only sort of. I’ve run
for miles, lifted weights, done squats, climbed
up and down stairs, but it seems I’ve been gilding
a miniature lily. It seems this self I’ve carried
through time and place has been poorly housed
all along. My advice to young people:
As you make your way through life, check now
and then to be sure you know who you are.
You may be smaller than you thought.
Back of the Envelope
You’re still drowsing upstairs, crumpled
under the comforter. I’m in the kitchen,
wrapped in my robe at breakfast, peering
through swoops of frost at sun-bathed snow outside:
the veiled lawn and stubble, lamp post, roll and roll
beyond the pond, the sheen a mile to the pines.
I’m doodling on a security envelope,
a #10—so handy for shopping lists,
for reckoning mortgage amortizations,
for juggling our shrunken life expectancy
with income, savings, expenditures,
for indulging arithmetic fantasy:
that our last dollar might be spent on our last day.
This time, though, I’m thinking about last night:
how in our heat we smoldered into sleep
before we could re-sense or re-dress ourselves,
how we melded to embrace our warmth,
the way a cabin stoked for night turns in
upon itself, snow-draped in winter woods,
how we woke in the quiet of first-light,
eyes on eyes, lips pouting with last night’s love.
Hmm. 31.5 times 365,
plus eight leap days, and days magnified
by Saratoga, San Francisco, Princeton,
Portland, all of it compounded over years.
I hope you’ll come downstairs soon. I’ve made
coffee and a fire. I’ve found some old photos
that show us in our strength.
I’ll put on the mackinaw and tuque,
shovel to the shed to get the sled, and soap
its runners well. But first, let’s watch the logs
rearrange themselves in their diminishment,
how the embers crackle stars until the very end.
[first appeared in Bellevue Literary Review]
© Greg McBride, all rights reserved
