anna leahy

MY UPPER PENINSULA

We were all suffering from a kind of incandescence.

Would rather fling all the freshly-baked rolls

down the stairs than face the accuser.

I wondered if I was moldering. My mother

didn’t even recognize the ravioli that I edged

with my spinner. I’d filled it with scraps of cloth

anyway. All the girls in my class had hair like Journey

and mouths the slashes of red a wolf leaves behind.

Save me, oh god of direct and swift evacuations.

Some day I would be lecturing a class of students

or getting tangled in the horizontal blinds

in the middle of an emphatic statement. Nobody

there to wield the tin snips. My pack of girls only

a trigger on a night at the county fair, the reek

of funnel cakes scissoring long-sleeve blouses

into the ratty tanks we’d stash in our purses for later.

There was something dangerous under our skin.

I ask my class again to mark up this draft of the globe.

They’ve never been drunk in Nice and vomiting across

multiple electrified rails. In a dream, the double that is more

authentic than the original walks down a street with me.

We stagger in unison. We’ve both had to begin the dessert

again from scratch, not being able to resist a swift punch

to the center of the springform pan. We’d both rather

surrender all of the wooden coins before anyone asks.

Is there anything more exhilarating than a good wait

in damp clothing, or the moment you open your mouth

and realize you know the language after all, you can call

off the dogs or invent the numbers for the payphone,

and the man who shows you to your room won’t leave out

a tour of the aluminum shower down the hall.

He whispers you can both fit in there. He’ll write down

every stranger who leaves a card at the front desk.

CLYDESDALES

Each time you stumbled

out of the john, you dipped

a hand into the plastic bowl

of peanuts on the bar, ran

fingers through your hair

to brush off the extra salt.

Clydesdales stampeded

around the light fixture

in circles. We had dreams

of a 60’s split-level house

with hideous switch plates,

threatened to move back

to Michigan if smoking

was ever banned indoors.

Those days I was the only

thing between you and

the river, lied to bouncers

that you were quivering

with nerve damage,

not vodka. I blotted

the pool table dry with

my sleeve. Six months

later my father would grab

you off the street, bind

your wrists with twine,

parade you back and forth

outside my house until

your left shoe fell apart.

You slept on stacked books

when the pipes burst, and I

smashed your bedroom

window to wake you up.

How long did it take

for the water to rise above

table level, your papers

turned to transparent rafts?

I ripped my wool gloves

hanging on to the train.

The dogs all knew you

weren’t hiding. The trees

shed everything the river

promised not to keep.

eric morris