Lua was a woman of few words
and fewer teeth. She awoke
to a scraping sound and hushed snickers:
two boys in ball caps
sliding the coins that collected
on her bench each night
into their pockets,
trying not to wake Loony Lua.
Her right eye peeked open and the
boys scrambled, sending nearby pigeons
into flight. She never chased the kids,
didn’t mind the quarters lost
so much as the nickname.

She braced her wind-thin frame against
her cart that always pulled left,
and plugged her headphones into
her prized AM/FM radio–
missing its batteries for years,
but that never stopped the music for her.

The street filled with umbrellas as Lua
made her way through town.
Paul McCartney’s voice drew her to a stop
outside a restaurant. She peeked inside:
“What station you got playin out on the patio?”
The hostess’ perma-smile wavered
as she pointed to a jeering Customers Only
next to the door. “C’mon miss, I just wanna
listen on my radio.” The woman sighed,
walked behind the bar to read the station.
Lua turned a **** with her thumb,
adjusting for static,
and returned through the drizzle
to her bench in Sheridan Park.

She tilted her head back
and inhaled deeply, thinking how that rush
of rainy salt air made her feel like a fish–
breathing in the ocean
without worry of drowning.
Lua turned the volume up,
and watched the clouds sway with the music,
humming to herself
*it’s gonna be a great day, ooh.

He perches on his black-crate bandstand,
stationed between the payphone and postbox.
The view from his seat never varies:
a restless audience of briefcases and knees.

He closes his eyes, concentrating
on breath becoming buzz becoming blare,
and he pictures his notes glossing Manhattan’s
thunder-colored walls.

Each tone fills the pavement, square by square
until the sidewalk is a harlequin filmstrip,
colored by notes coaxed from his brass mouth.

Passersby withhold their gaze, because giving a nod
obliges giving a dollar, and no one is inclined
to employ this trumpeter. But he pays no mind;
his own eyes secured until song’s end.

As long as his fingers are jumping,
he doesn’t have to be Gerard Wall–
who lost his wife to cancer and mind to the War;
he can be Louis, Miles, or Pinetop Smith.

When he looks up once again,
sun and spirit have faded,
and he watches the evening embers
drift out of his horn.

I’m in a folding chair in the basement
of Forest Hills United Church,
nursing a styrofoam cup of coffee.
We’re all here hoping to find some inspiration
in someone’s else’s version of the 12-step story:
“I’m Rob and I’m an alcoholic.”
Hey Rob.

There’s the downward spiral:
one drink that always leads to six more,
*****-soaked nights, fetal-curled in alleys.
Velleities of sobriety.

Stealing grandma’s bunco winnings,
laughing at your girlfriend’s abortion,
DUIing your way into a kid and his dog,
sweaty shakes in a hospital bed.

And then the first meeting, a white chip,
a higher power, a sponsor.
You finally make it to one of your daughter’s
ballet recitals– the first in seven years.

And now it’s black chips and clean blood.
Reverent mornings on your knees,
and evenings in this basement.
Thanks for sharing Rob.

We file outside: inhale, exhale.
Floating blazes glow and fade in steady rhythm.
Heels grind ashy tobacco into asphalt
and we return to hear the next monologue,
leaving behind us our smoke
that whorls and wends
into a single plume.

I am a face hidden by a camera lens,
mismatched earrings and an empty locket.
I am a memory curator, boxes
of cards, ticket stubs, pressed flowers.
I am a back-of-the-hand to-do list
and a corduroy jacket.

You are a sunrise and a 12-mile run,
sweaty feet and 3-day stubble.
You are dry eyes, even at funerals,
and a soft spot for golden retrievers.
You are a rusty blue Chevy
that you’ll fix up one day.

We are hands lingering after saying Grace.
We are “I’ll get this, you get that,
and we’ll split them.”
We are Alanis Morissette in the rain,
and a view of the fading day
from the rail of Boylan Bridge.

The first was taken before we ever met.
My sister: curled beneath insulated blankets,
a pink bow vaseline-glued to her bald head,
glassy infant eyes turned in the direction
of a picture of me (red striped shirt, my favorite overalls,
velcro shoes). Mom taped it against the outside
of her incubator; so she would know her big brother
even if I wasn’t allowed to visit her yet.

The second shows the two of us at the back door
of our house on Circle ***** Drive. Her palms and nose
pressed firm against the glass as she peers out at Whitney,
the cocker spaniel who became an outside dog
after knocking her over one too many times. My hands are tucked
under her armpits, and I’m using every ounce of my
three-and-a-half-year-old strength to make sure
she don’t teeter back onto her diaper-cushioned ****.

The third, a candid from the family trip to Islamorada.
She and I are walking down the pier, on opposing sides
of Ganga, each holding one of her soft grandma hands.
She was our buffer for those eight days,
and years following the trip. We face the sunrise–
electric pink sky dotted with periwinkle wisps.
Later that day, my sister asked me to come look for seashells
with her; I told her I wished I had a little brother instead.

The final, from my college graduation last May.
My sister and I are laughing in the arboretum.
As excited as I was to never again sit in Hamilton 100
or bubble in a Scantron, I was already missing
eating pho and reading poems, making her matzo ball soup
when her throat hurt, and trekking to the taco truck at 1 am.
Neither of us knew then that I would have this job and this desk
with these four photos, and room for more.

If my someday-daughter,
age six, tells me
she wants to trick-or-treat
dressed like Spiderman
or a fireman, because she dreams of
stopping the bad guys
and pulling cats from trees,
I will not require royalty from her.

I will not advise her choices
by asking if she’d rather be
Belle, Ariel, or Jasmine.
I will not concern myself with
princess-aisle gossip
as the mothers in the costume shop
gawk at my daughter
waltzing over to the boys’ section.

But should she ask for a gown and tiara,
I will adorn her with sparkles and frills,
all the while reminding her
that Disney didn’t create beauty,
and glass slippers are far too fragile
for feet that were made
to take this world by storm.