Too fine a line of cloud to stand in for the dust above Manhattan, the smudge of gas over Auschwitz, the mushroom in all our waking nightmares. But still we remember.
I look for clouds that can hold me when I turn from my magazine and glance distracted out the airplane window. Such round comfort. Like the down on my son�s neck I stare at, remembering, for once-- how brief--
Both times we�ve played this board game I�ve given him hints and forgotten to move my piece until--at last -- a tie. He is almost five. I don�t know how to teach about not winning.
I�M NOT HOMELESS, MY SON FELL ASLEEP
Sitting propped against the storefront, I try yelling it at the people staring their clenched stares. The pavement is cold against my ass, the child so hard asleep against me I can yell and not wake him. One woman smiles. Another just keeps looking, forgetting to smoke. Most look--quick-- and look away. I watch all of them passing. I am tempted--I could just turn my palm to the sky, hold out my empty hand to everyone I see.
HARD HEADED WOMAN, OR GETTING IT ON WITH YUSUF ISLAM
from The Smart Girl Poems
I�d heard Cat Stevens singing so I was ready to believe a man lived who was looking for a hard-headed woman. But the smart boy editors on the student newspaper in 1979 were looking instead for Candy Chatham, who climbed into their laps in the fluorescent night of the student center lounge. I tried turning away with a look I hoped was hard headed, finished typing my story on the new exhibit of lithographs in the school library. My coeditor Charlie shrugged. What could he do, Candy perched and vivacious in his uncertain lap? Cat Stevens got religion. I got the ache of his voice turning scratchy on the turntable late into the dorm room night.
Sarah Browning�s first book of poems, Whiskey in the Garden of Eden, is forthcoming in 2007 from The Word Works. She is coeditor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology and coordinates the group of the same name. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Shenandoah, The Seattle Review, and Sycamore Review. She is currently organizing Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, to be held in Washington , D.C. in March 2008.
