SAFE
In my safe, small, boring hometown there was
a murder on the day that I was born
in a house six-tenths of a mile from mine.
We’d pass by it on our way to The Spa,
which was where you bought comic books and gum
and Dad would get his Sunday New York Times
(and on hot summer days we’d park it at
the counter on those backless swivel-stools,
put up a dime, and slowly sip a root
beer on tap or a lemon Blend®, which Henry,
always mouthing that unlit cigar,
served in giant frozen glass mugs for nothing).
No matter with whom I was biking, they
already knew which house it was so I
could not tell them anything, and did not
want to look like a fool, so I was not
about to ask them what they knew, and so
I never knew more than which house it was
which, when a frozen mug with lemon Blend
or root beer waits for you, is everything.
Nine-tenths of a mile from my house is where
Reggie Lister lived, who had played the lead
in the big musical at the high school
where he sang songs like “Whe-e-ere is Love?”
and “Who Will Buy This Wonderful Morning?”
One night—when I was sound asleep, I bet,
and only nine-tenths of a mile away—
his father shot his mother and killed her.
His father went to jail, at least, but then
got out. I never saw Reggie again
to ask him how he was, what it was like
to have your only father be the one
who killed your only mother. I mean, did
he even keep in touch with his father,
say, holidays, for the rest of his life,
or even have holidays anymore?
Reggie would have had a lot to tell us
if he had been around so we could ask
him everything. But who was going to ask?
After I left my hometown, just a half
mile from the house where I grew up, a third
murder took place. On the very same street
as murder number One, only about
nine houses closer. It was in the papers.
They found the brother’s corpse stuffed in a closet
when the home owner wasn’t home. It had
begun to stink, and when you live with stench,
you do not notice it from the inside
as much as neighbors do from the outside.
The murderer got a life sentence, since
fratricide’s unforgivable, I guessed,
unless it was because he kept the corpse.
Which, if I’d ever had the guts to kill
the one brother of mine who totally
deserved it, I would not have done. I’d seen
Rear Window, see, the Alfred Hitchcock flick,
and knew there was a better way, in case
I found myself in such a situation.
Back when I was a kid, my dead-end street
saw its share of cop car lights many nights.
We all knew which houses had husband-dads
who almost killed their wives and my friends’ moms
every so often. Usually when drunk.
There was a made-for-TV movie where
Mike Farrell from M*A*S*H played the dad who beat
his wife (although like Alan Alda he
did seem to be a nice guy in real life).
Meredith Baxter-Birney, blonde and smart
and pretty, played the wife-and-mother role.
Because it was a Movie-of-the-Week
we knew it was a headline-topping topic.
Statistics were reported on the news
or maybe it was on Phil Donahue:
one-third of husbands in America
were violent; one-third of married women,
victims of domestic abuse. They called
them battered wives, a new term. There were no
hot-lines or shelters when I was a kid.
Well, sure enough, three of my street’s nine homes
with dads had cop car lights and drunks for dads.
(In two of the eleven houses, my
friends’ dads had died long before I was born.)
Anyway, one of the three homes was mine.
Which is why, even as a Catholic
I thought divorce made one great heap of sense
as I would have become a murderer
myself because I swore to God I would
if my dad ever did again what he
did when I was four five six seven eight
nine ten and eleven. When I was twelve
he left, and I thanked God, yes on my knees,
and every Sunday till the day he died,
for keeping my mom safe. And me. And everything.
SHOCK
I was not ready for the shock of you.
And yet now that you’re gone it seems I spent
a lifetime getting ready for the shock
of you. First the cool shock of meeting you.
Then the hot shock: finding out who you are.
And subsequently, what you are. Or were.
Were, since you’re gone now. And it seems I’m still
in shock. And now you say you’re passing through
and (did I get this right?) you want to meet.
I bet that you remember I could not
say no. But you’ll be shocked to learn that I
cannot, in fact, say no to anyone.
Not just to you. And haven’t, since you left.
So name the time and place, and, sure, we shall
be glad to meet with you. But (as they say
at times like this) get ready for a shock.
THE NAIL
is fashioned
by its maker
with a point.
Of course, being inanimate,
it does not know;
being insensate,
it does not hurt
when hammered
on its head time and again
into a realm it never dreamed was there
where it shall remain
the rest
of its existence;
or, if pulled out and withdrawn
it ekes its final moments
as a bent thing
soon tossed out.
So like the nail are we
both individually
and as a whole.
Some tell me I am dreaming.
Some tell me I am bent.
Some tell me I am rusty, useless, moot.
Being sensitive
and not of iron
I may hurt.
Being animate
they overlook
the most important thing:
the point.
James B. Nicola’s latest of eight full-length poetry collections are Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. A Yale graduate and returning contributor, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice magazine award, one Best of the Net, one Rhysling, and twelve Pushcart nominations—for which he feels both stunned and grateful.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 