​I was leaving at last. That meant the
purging of some things. Abandoning
some dust to the corners of what would
be from now on a guest room.
 
You handed me a stack of wire bound
notebooks. So old that my handwriting was
like a foreign language. So old I
couldn’t remember the name of the adolescent
I devoted forty pages to. So old
that I signed each page with a
different pseudonym. So many things
given up and placed in the bottom
of that drawer. 
 
I reflected that each had
been a new born blank slate. A white
potential waiting. And then with each
long dreary day at school
they filled up with doodles
and fragments and pieces
of poems and reflections.
Each entry staining the leaf
the way a cancer stains an
organ, the way gravel stains
snow. Until every possibility
was used and every idea
half-conceived.
 
I held one close to my face
as if checking for a pulse.
Then I burned them in the fireplace
reflecting how my mind burned
when I wrote.
 
Each ash had a fragment of my scrawl.
“Truth” “rain” “lov” “hea,” atoms
broken down to solitary protons and
electrons. A man divided into cells.
 
Attempts at truth should
be buried at sea.
 
Originally published in The Portable Wall, 1994, Issue No. 23

I don’t remember the first time I met Stephen. It seems like I’d known him forever. He rode by my house on his Japanese motorcycle and leather jacket every day and at night I heard his bike thundering past my window like the voice of God. I would get up and watch him race by with the wind lifting up his long brown hair.
                Back then I was never told to stay away from Stephen. It was something everyone knew instinctively. He was someone I was too young to understand or have any feeling for except irrational fear. Blondes with sculpted hair were his passion then and I saw them on the back of his motorcycle, clinging and huddled close to him as though he was a fire and they were engulfed in snow.
                There were darker things I about Stephen that I knew as well. He was rumored to be the son of a prostitute and was thought to have a violent temper. I had never seen him in a fight and I don’t know anyone else in town who had seen him fight, but that was the rumor. If nothing else, he always looked like he could fight anyone and win, and that seemed to be enough.
                Even though I had noticed Stephen for years he didn’t notice me until I was fourteen. I was walking out by the river late at night with my friend Katie. We were out talking girl talk and had sneaked out of the house to smoke where our parents wouldn’t find us.
                It was dark and the only light came from the moon. Unbeknownst to me, Katie, who was a year older than I, arranged to have her boyfriend meet her there. She acted surprised but I knew she’d plotted the whole thing weeks before, she was just that type of person. Katie went into her stupid girlfriend mode and I wandered off into the woods, not wanting to see them kiss and feel each other up.
                I had wandered just a little bit when I heard a woman screaming. I ran to investigate wondering what my cop dad would do. I tore away some bushes and saw a rustling of white skin. The woman was still screaming, but her yells were punctuated by “Yes. Yes.” The same things every woman says in a porn video. I wonder if everyone’s sex life is shaped by what they see in porn videos.
                Anyway, that’s when Stephen looked up at me, he was on top. I was shocked because he was looking at my face. I was an early developer and was used to all the boys staring at my breasts instead of my face. But Stephen looked at my face with this flushed, sly, almost drunken look. Then he laughed loudly and I ran away, not sure and yet totally sure of what I had seen.
                I walked back to the lake and watched the moonlight on the water. It was another hour before Katie finished making out with her boyfriend and came looking for me.
                The next day I ran into Stephen at the store and he looked at me with that same sly look, as if I was the one who had been caught naked instead of him.
               
                Looking back, I guess the thing that surprises me the most about Daddy molesting me is how long it took. Daddy was one of those strong silent men who hardly said anything, but kept this kind of quiet tension. People got this feeling around him, that any moment he would snap. This served him well as a cop. We were close to Portland, Oregon, and so occasionally a dealer would try to sell in town. Besides this, the town was basically without crime because the residents knew they would have to answer to Daddy. I think I was more scared of him than anyone was. I remember him glaring at me when I was a child and I felt perpetually guilty. When my breasts developed, I felt his look on me even more intensely, as though he was angry with me for developing so fast and so fully. I guess he wanted me and hated me because of it. I honestly can’t remember anything I might have done to encourage him. He scared me and I did everything to say the hell away. 
                 The first time happened when I was thirteen and had just come home from school. He had been leering at me more often than usual that day. Daddy was working the swing shift and had just finished putting on his uniform.
                “Come here, Tracy,” he said.
                “What do you want?”
                “We haven’t had a talk in some time.” We never talk, I thought. “Come over here and sit on my lap the way you used to.” When was that?
                I did as he told me. This was the first time he had said anything to me in days and I felt this might be important. Under my thighs, I felt the gun he wore on his belt.
                He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. I felt his badge poke into my chest. None of this made any sense to me. He never showed any affection towards anyone. I’d never seen my parents kiss or heard Daddy tell Mom he loved her. He still looked angry with me.
                “You sure are growing up fast,” he said. “A year ago you didn’t even have these.” Then he grabbed my right breast and squeezed it hard for just a second. He let go and gave a nervous laugh as if it was all a strange joke.
                I wanted to get up and run, scared of his strange behavior and the groping, but there was another feeling too. This was the first time Daddy had shown any affection towards me. As I sat there on his lap I was angry that he held me so tight I couldn’t get away without a scene and also strangely happy that he noticed me at all. At last he said he had to go to work and released me. That was the last time I would ever be happy for my father’s attention.
                He came home that night drunk around four in the morning. I had never seen Daddy drunk before. I woke up to him shaking me. “What is it?” I moaned, only half conscious.
                “I need to talk to you. Your mother’s asleep. I need to talk to someone.” He grabbed me and held me tightly to him again, this time my cheek was pressed firmly against his badge. Daddy told me how hard his job was. How he’d been out all night chasing a dealer around town, how he’d been shot at the week before breaking up a domestic dispute. How Mom didn’t understand him and didn’t want him to touch her. They hadn’t touched each other in over five years. This was a side of him I’d never seen and at that moment I wanted to do anything to help him. He cried for a moment or two.
                Then he stopped and within that moment he put his hands on my breast again. He wasn’t laughing now though. It was violent, like the unspoken completion of all those years of silence. With his left hand he grabbed my hair and in one motion yanked me down on my back.
​The other hand went down to my crotch and I felt him pulling on my panties. I squeezed my eyes closed so hard until they hurt and prayed for it to be over.
               
                I ran into Stephen again two weeks after the incident at the lake. I was down at the lake again in the middle of the night after sneaking out. Katie wasn’t with me this time. Over the last year my tolerance for the company of others had gone down. I went out with friends when they called me, but I never made a move to do anything with anyone myself. “Daddy’s girl sneak out again?” said a voice. For a moment I could have sworn the voice came from the lake itself.
                I looked again and saw Stephen out on the shore holding a beer and looking absolutely beautiful under the moonlight. “Leave me alone,” I said.
                “What’s the matter?” he said. “You’ve been out here every night by yourself for days now. I’ve been worried.”
                “You don’t know me.”
                “No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be worried. Your daddy’s worried too. I guess he told Chelsea Gordon that he didn’t know what to do anymore.”
                Chelsea Gordon ran a hotel the immigrants stayed at and it was reputed to be a place where easy women hung out. “What else does she say?”
                “She says your daddy’s worried because he thinks you’re a slut and you’ll get pregnant before you’re fifteen.”
                “That’s a lie.”
                “That’s what I thought. Like I said, I see you here all the time and never you—“
                “I mean Daddy would never say that about me.”
                “I suppose you think your daddy would never hang out with prostitutes either.”
                “Shut up.”
                “I know it must be hard to believe. Your daddy being a cop and all. Chelsea says if your mom wasn’t frigid she would go out of business.”
                “Shut up.” He did. We stood there like idiots for a long time. I was ticked off by this person I hardly knew, yet also excited. I knew Daddy would hate it if he saw me with him. I also thought of Stephen’s smile and laugh when I caught him with that girl.
                He was looking away and the silence seemed like a promise of things to come. I wanted to go home but it seemed wrong somehow to leave without saying anything more.
                “This place is beautiful,” he said at last. “My mother used to work for Chelsea when we came into town. I sued to come out here at night so I didn’t have to hear the sounds of her and whoever she was with. There was one customer of hers that wanted her to scream and talk dirty. I got tired of hiding my face under my pillow and came here. It’s one of the best places on earth. I used to think it was mine and mine alone. But it’s not, is it? It’s your place too.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to do. He sat down and we stayed there for the rest of the night until dawn came. We looked at each other in the new light and, without saying anything, went back to our homes.
                I wondered continuously about what he said about my father. I wondered whether the molestations were my own fault from the way I was shaped or whether they were my mother’s fault for turning Daddy away. I didn’t even think they might be his fault.
                I saw Stephen again after school the next day. I was walking home and he pulled up beside me in that bike of his. “Need a lift?” I nodded and got on the back of his bike, imagining all those blondes I had seen on the back of it. I laughed as we took off, the wind rushing past me as if trying to blow me off into the asphalt. I clung to him to keep myself on the bike. The smell of his jacket went rushing through my nose and it felt good against my skin. We went in silence until we reached my house.
                We both got off and he followed me to my door. I opened it and looked at him. It seemed like he was waiting for something. “What do you want?” I said.
                “I’m not sure.”
                I opened the door, but lingered in the doorway before going in. He looked desperate.
                “Tracy. Tracy… I’m not sure what I’m doing. It’s just that… watching you at the lake these past few days. You looked… so sad. And yet you were so pretty. I want to know you.” He moved close as if to kiss me. I put out my hand and he moved away.
                “No,” I said. “I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”
                “I understand,” he said and I knew that he was the only person in town who could possibly understand.
                We never did kiss or anything else and if I have any regrets in life it’s that I didn’t take him into the house and lay with him in my bedroom.
                Though we were never lovers, we did become friends and I soon saw more of him. He picked me up after school on his bike and I saw the other girls look at me and could almost hear them thinking, That slut. A few times I was asked directly if Stephen and I were having sex. I didn’t deny it, nor did I say it was true. “We’re friends,” I said with a smile.
                “That’s it,” said Katie. “They must be screwing.”
                “Why’s that?”
                “Nobody, and I mean nobody, goes out with Stephen that doesn’t screw him.”
 
                One day he gave me a diamond earring that he said belonged to his mother. He had a matching one in his left ear. “I can’t take this,” I said. 
“I want you to have it.” Then he paused. “It’s the only thing of worth we ever owned. My dad gave them to her when they were dating. When she left him they were the only things she took with her.” He paused again. “Except for me, of course.”
                I asked him for more information about his family. “You don’t really want to know. It’s not that important.” I understood that. I could certainly never tell him about mine.
 
                A few weeks passed without any more incidents. I spent my days thinking about and talking to Stephen and my nights hiding under my covers wondering if Daddy was coming for me that night.
                One day Stephen didn’t pick me up from school. I didn’t think much about it, though perhaps I should have. I only lived a few blocks from the school after all and he had been picking me up so often I felt guilty.
                I froze when I saw his bike and Daddy’s patrol car in front of my house. I entered the house somehow sensing that I needed to make as little noise as possible. No good. From the moment I stepped in the house I heard Daddy’s voice.
                “Come in, Tracy. Looks like we have a visitor. I saw him waiting for you at the high school and convinced him to wait for you here.”
                Stephen sat on the couch looking scared out of his wits. Daddy’s gun was still in its holster, but I noticed that the strap was open and his hand seemed to drift to it every few seconds.
                “Now, Tracy,” he said, drawing out each of his words so each of them seemed several seconds long, “will you mind telling me why you’ve been seen with this drug fiend almost every day the past few weeks?”
                “I’m not a—“
                “Shut up! I know what you are. The whole town knows what you are. I’ve seen you at the high school selling pot to kids.” This was nothing even close to the truth. The closest thing Stephen ever came to drug use was drinking when he was only twenty years old, a crime most of the town, including Daddy, had committed. Gossip about Stephen had been hot since I was in junior high school and if there was even the slightest suspicion of drug use or selling I would have known about it.
                “How’d you like a beer, junkie?”
                “Mister Co—“
                “You’ll do as I tell you,” he said. His hand gripped the handle of his gun. Stephen saw this and did not say anything more. Despite his leather and motorcycle, he wasn’t a fighter. Not in a hopeless fight anyway. He knew anyone my daddy shot would have been shot in “self-defense.” For a moment it seemed as if time was displaced. Like this was some town out of a gray celluloid western. Only this time all the roles were reversed.
                After Daddy went into the kitchen I went over to Stephen. He slipped me a piece of paper and whispered, “Sit back now. Now.” I did as I was told.
Daddy brought the beer out in glasses which was strange because he always drank them straight out of the can. Stephen said, “Could you please—“
                “Shut up and drink. We’ll do this like gentlemen.”
                A long five minutes of silence passed. At last, they finished and Daddy’s body moved forward in his chair as if ready to move his rook in a game of chess.
                “Now then, Stephen. We’ve got ourselves a problem here. You want to hang around my daughter. That isn’t going to happen. I’ve got a place here in this community. I can’t just let my daughter hang out with a drug dealer, can I? Your family has been nothing but trouble since you came here. First your mother’s whoring, and now you’re pushing. I think the town is tired of dealing with your family’s bullshit.”
                Stephen began to speak, but Daddy raised his hand. “Now. I give you until midnight to get the hell out of town. I think that’s fair. Do we have a deal?” Again, Stephen started to speak. “Do we have a deal!” said Daddy. Stephen nodded and walked out of the house, not even looking at me as he passed. He went out the door and drove off on his bike.
                Daddy turned towards me, but I didn’t wait to hear what he said. I ran up to my room. He called out after me, but I had already closed my door. In my room I opened the note Stephen passed to me. Meet me at the lake in an hour.
 
 
                There wasn’t much I wanted to bring with me. A few clothes and tapes was all. I had my suitcase packed within a matter of minutes. I snuck out of the house and crept out of the window like I had been doing for so many nights. As I walked past the house with my suitcase, I saw Daddy looking at me from the living room window, looking almost stoic in his robe with his cigarette in one hand and glass of whisky in the other. I stood there waiting for him to motion to me. To give me any sign he would stop me. He didn’t. I moved on.
 
                There was a moaning coming from the shore. It sounded like it almost came from within the lake itself. Then the moaning turned to screeches like the sound of an animal being experimented on by an unusually sadistic chemist. I dropped my suitcase and ran to the sound. Stephen’s face was cut and bleeding. Both of his legs were twisted and appeared broken. The gashes on his head oozed blood down in and around his eyes. Blood soaked his long brown hair.
                I suddenly remembered when our Irish setter hand been run over by a car when I was a child. The way the dog lay twisted on the asphalt. I stared at the dog for a long time and it was Daddy who came to me and told me things would be fine. It was Daddy who bought me a puppy the next day and buried our setter in the back yard. That was before. Stephen had the same look in his eyes the setter had before we put it to sleep.
                His entire body twitched and dirt shot up around him as he writhed on the shore. I spoke to him, first quietly as though I was at church, then yelling at him. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
​For a moment there was recognition. “My bike. My bike.” He pointed to the lake. I shook thinking how close he came to drowning. Stephen’s moment of rational thought ended as suddenly as it had begun. He was screaming again and thrashed violently on the short. Blood flew off him, dotting the shore and my clothes.
                I panicked. I suppose there was nothing else I could have done. I ran from him, screaming for help. Katie’s house was close by and I banged on her door. The door opened after what seemed like five minutes and I called 911 from there.
                Daddy arrived there before the ambulance did. At first this surprise me, but I suppose it shouldn’t have. I remember searching for my suitcase, only later learning that Daddy had put it safely in his car.
                It took almost an hour to put him into the ambulance because he was thrashing so bad. They told me it was a miracle he could even move, but move he did. His fists flew out in the air and one of the paramedics got his nose bloodied from where Stephen hit him.
                He died.
                An autopsy was performed at Daddy’s insistence which I first thought was odd. The verdict came out exactly as Daddy thought it would. Stephen died as a result of injuries from an overdose of PCP. Daddy poisoned him. Committed murder for a reason I still didn’t understand and got away with it. I imagine that he got the drugs from one of the dealers he captured.
                Daddy never touched me again and even looking at me after his murder seemed to cause him pain. I’m glad. He still looked at me with that angry glare, as if I had not only caused him to molest me, but I also caused him to kill. There were perhaps five words we exchanged between then and when I left home at sixteen. Even fewer words were shared with my mother. Those two years were distinguished by silence and seemed to predict the future to come and my quiet about Daddy. I break this now. He is dead and I just returned from his funeral. I only wish it had been sooner.
 
Originally published in artisan, Summer 1997, Volume 3, No. 3
 
                

​The wind makes
the trees talk as I walk
along this back road.
It’s been weeks
since I last met you.
Weeks since I came down
this road with its potholes
and dogs wandering
towards me.
 
But still the wind bites
against me. I hear
the trees bow and bend
as if asking me
a question.
 
I walk up the white porch
steps and knock on
your door. You aren’t
home though your dog
barks from inside.
He remembers my scent.
 
I sit there for a minute,
smoking a cigarette
and watching wind take
the smoke out and away
from my face like a message.
Down the torn street and over
the trees.
 
 
Originally published in Advocate October/November 1996 Volume 10, No. 4
 

We talked again
about the same old nothing.
Playing the same old games
of touch me—don’t touch me,
and I love you—but I don’t.
 
I watched you while
I tried not to look at you.
You were curled up
like a madwoman or
a white rosebud, and
I wondered if I lifted
you and took upstairs, if
your petals would fall
to the floor and
you would wilt in my arms.
 
 
Originally published in Advocate August/September 1995 Volume 9, No. 4

​My father crawled under the car
despite three back surgeries and advice
from his doctor. His back broken
from accidents and the strain of lifting
for so many years. He closes
his eyes with each movement,
like a man carrying a too heavy child.
 
I watched, holding his tools
for him, and wondered if
this scenario would ever change.
Slowly he turned the wing nut and released it.
Removed the shock and
pointed out the missing cushion.
“When I’m done,” he said,
“you won’t feel any bumps.”
 
Years ago he took me and
my three brothers fishing.
Tried to pass on what he
learned from his father.
Instead he spent the day
moving from boy to boy
untangling
lines. We never fished again.
 
And now I see his reluctance.
As sweat drips down his face
and mingles with grease. As
I fail again to understand
him, he looks, not with scorn,
but with a face avoiding
scorn. Wanting to teach, but
wanting no more entanglement.
 
All this time wasted. Times
when he needed my thin fingers
to reach the narrow places,
turn screws, and find missing
bolts. Times when I carried
his parts to him because
he could hardly move but
had a job to do.
 
My mind busy with books, my
body intent on girls, I had no time.
But now I listen to his words
and watch his hands and
secretly keep a phone next to
me in case his back fails yet
again. In case there is
anything I can do.
 

​He walked the wooded path
around Multnomah Falls.
He watched that splash of water
fall below him.
 
He realized he knew none of the trees.
Couldn’t tell a fir from a pine or a
maple. Every leaf an unknown message.
 
“I’m too old for this,” he says.
“I’m too old for new things.”
But he kept on.
Tried to remember the last
time he breathed plant-
made air.
Not the stuff that came into his office,
tainted by sweat of workers
below.
 
The stars appeared in the sky,
slowing showing their lights.
Some whose light was older
than Earth.
“It’s about time you’ve come,” he says.
 
 
Originally published in Advocate Volume 11, Number 5 October/November 1997

Paul lights up the cigar, stolen from where
the field boss left them. He and Jake take small
drags, letting smoke fill the mouth like nectar.
 
Later they drink whiskey for the first time.
The bottle snatched and drained from the liquor
Cabinet in Paul’s house. They are fourteen.
 
They’ve missed three straight days of work. They prefer
to visit girls at two in the morning
and kissing on the bench at the mall. Four
 
nights without sleep and the world is hazy
like stolen cigar smoke clinging to their
hair and shirt. Pilfered whiskey
 
in their blood. High school starts again before
long. An end to fields and dirt and rain. By
nightfall, they finish the pack of cigars
 
and buy cigarettes to replace them. The
stereo blares in Paul’s basement, mother
and father gone somewhere. There is only
 
the music of Rush and a craving for
nicotine and the wish to cradle the
possibilities. The smoke meanders
 
inside, but they don’t notice, already
used to the clouds and the gray fog cover.
 


Originally published in South Ash Press, ​Volume VII, No. 9. May 1997

Your claws are out and
scratch lightly across my
face this morning. In the
subdued way someone might
 
wake a love. Later I will
hold you down and
snip them until they are
blunt and no threat. But for
 
now I will
wonder how you can use those
hooks so softly. How they can be
drawn, but still gentle.


Originally Published in Calapooya 19, Summer of 1997

​

 
one
 
My watermelon head is too big for
my body. The gray matter is pink from the ocean of
blood which creeps in and soaks
 
my cells, nibbling on my neurons dancing with the
endorphins in an electric
chemical tango. And yes there are seeds
 
there. Little black thoughts like tumors that want to
be spat out on others and plan deep within loved
ones. And yes, my complexion
 
has turned green. And yes, the only fit thing is to cut
up this skull and share it in the summer. Please feed
some to the sparrows.
 
two
 
My heart is carved into a misshapen
acorn—afraid to attempt oakism.
Passed around by rodents and then thrown by
wind onto asphalt. The shell is hard and
 
callused but has kept a crack from which its
one eye peers fearful at the three blades of
grass forcing their way through the pavement,
and the tree which casts a shadow over it.
 
Planting would be a good thing, yes, finding some
space in soil and tucked deep in that
brown sweater. But there is something else it
needs. How can it crawl in earth and crave
 
light at once? Now there is only concrete
and the thin veil shadow from nearby oaks.
 
three
 
My penis is a dowsing rod for females.
A branch cut apart from some other thing’s tree. It
works in solitaire—it does not care about my moods
or what may be best at any time. Conventions mean
nothing—and big tits are not needed. Some
 
times just a smile in sunlight. But yet at times it is the
only part of me I can depend on. My head can fly off
on anything and can never seem to stick to the
subject. My heart speeds at sex
and fear as if they were the same thing. At
 
least my penis is predictable. Though
there are times when it points too proudly.


Originally published in The Portable Wall, No. 25, Fall 1996