Forgiveness Parade. Jeffrey McDaniel

      SURVIVOR’S GLEE

      I strapped on an oxygen tank and dove

      into the past, paddling back through the years,

      emerging from a manhole on memory lane.

      The boondocks were doing just fine without me.

      The car dealerships. The trash heaps. The stream

      of consciousness where I learned how to skinny-dip

      had slowed down to a trickle of amnesia.

      All the houses had been gutted, except mine,

      where my family was still eating dinner. My parents

      welcomed me with opened elbows. My brother

      looked up to me like a cave drawing on the ceiling.

      The night hobbled by, rattling its beggar’s cup.

      A pipe burst behind my eyes, which brought out

      the plumber in everyone. At a loss for words,

      I placed a seashell on my tongue, and my relatives

      wore bathing suits when they spoke to me.

      HOSTILE PROCTOR

      The only thing I remember about my mother

      and the third grade is the afternoon she wasn’t there

      when I got off the train. After a thousand shoes

      shuffled by, I asked a pair of penny loafers

      for a dime and punched out the number. The phone

      rang and rang like a slapped cheek. A hundred

      briefcases swung past. I tightened my face

      and sailed the thirteen city blocks without her.

      I pressed the doorbell, like gum into a bastard’s

      skull. She appeared, clutching a wine glass

      like a passport, a tiny black suitcase under each eye.

      I peppered that pathetic pink nightgown

      with curse words, until she chased me up the stairs,

      swinging a wire hairbrush. Later, I called Dad

      at the office to complain, but no punishment came,

      and after that, I walked home alone every day.

      WHERE BABIES COME FROM

      For my eighth birthday

      I got a toy train set

      my father helped assemble.

      My job was to hand him

      pieces of track and re-light

      the cigarettes that went out

      in his mouth. Halfway

      through, I asked him

      where babies come from.

      He told me that eight years

      ago today I showed up

      on the front stoop

      in a cardboard box, how

      he spent the whole afternoon

      putting me together,

      just like this train set,

      that I was probably lucky

      the box arrived on a Saturday.

      THE FIRST ONE

      Who knows what led me there — a twelve-year-old,

      leading my eight-year-old brother and his overnight guest

      into the one clean room of that four-story brownstone

      and plunging into the booze while our parents slept.

      Maybe it was genetic curiosity, colliding with vodka,

      a fifth of cheap Russian, and scorching a freeway to our guts,

      as we quivered on the oriental rug, passing the bottle

      beneath the fancy paintings that held the walls up.

      Consequence was a planet whose orbit we couldn’t respect.

      When the clear stuff got finished, red wine came next,

      with little bits of the cork I wedged down with a knife

      bobbing like chaperones forced to walk the plank.

      The room began flipping like a pancake. We dropped

      glass anchors from that third story porthole,

      transforming the neighbors into a frenzy of phone calls.

      Who knows what emotions my parents were wearing,

      but whatever they said didn’t make any sense,

      as we wiped our lips and spiraled into black.

      MANNEQUIN COMPLEX

      During my formative years,

      my mother had this annoying habit

      of taking me into shoe stores

      and forgetting all about me.

      She’d try on heels and pumps,

      sandals and beige leather boots,

      winking at herself in the mirror,

      like she was Cinderella.

      I’d crawl into the stockroom

      behind the stacks of boxes,

      until the last employee clicked

      off the lights and headed home.

      Then I’d emerge, place a shoe horn

      in the palm of my favorite mannequin,

      and sleep at her feet gleefully

      because she was my flesh and blood.

      BROKEN TOY CLUB

      The years begin to show more of his forehead,

      where the creases deepen into wrinkles,

      and with his three packs a day, a cough

      like a goat being skinned alive, it won’t be long

      before I have to pick up the phone and make

      arrangements. There’s so much to say,

      but as he rattles the ice in his Bombay

      and tonic, the only words that fit in my throat

      are designed to hurt. With each sip, his eyes

      brighten until they shine like flashlights

      onto our past. As a child, he held me on his lap,

      planted words in my ears that later bloomed

      in my mouth. Then the seeds stopped,

      and I blamed myself, and when that failed,

      I blamed him, performed a nightly Sun dance

      with my tongue. Daaad became a bell I rang

      to remind him to be ashamed for the skyscraper

      of dishes in the sink, the banana stains

      on the ceiling, the weeks of dog turd in the yard,

      while his wife perfected her script of white

      wine and downers. Now, half-cocked,

      in