Local News from Someplace Else. Marjorie Maddox

but feel,

      bricks untwining, ivy crumbling,

      smoke unbraiding from clouds.

      Maybe then you will turn

      away from the echo of a knock

      back into your own life,

      away from my picket-fence memory,

      framed still in this dilapidated doorway,

      wondering who you are.

      Housed

      The day we were to look for houses,

      wide with porches and promised sun, houses creaking

      with our middle-age bones in rockers; with shutters

      stretched open to your upcoming cries and staccato coos;

      houses brimming with your grins and girly muses

      singing nursery-land tunes in our sleep, our sleep,

      that day you, a backwards burglar in my body’s house, broke out

      in black water, too soon, too soon,

      sounded the alarm till Emergency came running

      to cuff you off to breath and barred hospital cribs.

      But first you had to live and wouldn’t cooperate.

      The authorities took you in hand, called in the helicopters

      to whir you over uneven rows of un-owned homes

      which we, the expectant buyers, didn’t see,

      didn’t see, because in your rebellious escape

      and capture into our lives, you were born,

      were born, robber of our once-empty dwellings,

      thief of our well-housed affections.

      Treat

      Shadows bloom and wilt across the patio,

      our new home sheds flakes of bright paint,

      and, of course, it is October; the neighbors we don’t know

      hang pumpkin lights like lamb’s blood over the threshold,

      and from their porch rocking chairs stare at us, the strangers.

      We disguise ourselves with smiles and wave.

      And why not? Let the leaves fall and the grass grow high,

      our new life floats around us in the frost-free air,

      and we own the chaos of autumn; the weeds

      would grow between our toes if we’d linger

      into another two seasons. We are giddy enough

      for a picket fence or a pink flamingo

      and bring out Baby to see the splendor.

      “Here,” we say like good parents, “is the color red

      and over there, the irrepressible orange of joy.”

      Sixteen-inch Black-and-white

      square — portal

      of space — to Space,

      that grainy, — last frontier

      now front — and center,

      armchair — and moon

      close — companions.

      Beyond camera and crew; beyond Houston; beyond

      airwaves that ride high outside our knowledge; beyond

      Mrs. Stouffer’s mashed potatoes, every mother, father,

      sister, brother huddled about a set, those grounded

      rabbit ears tuning us into a future beyond that edge-

      of-our-seats shot filmed ’round the world; beyond all

      that—we’re there, each of us, two-stepping between

      craters, bouncing into wild blue possibility far beyond

      1969 and our three-channel, living-room imagination,

      desperately dreaming of soaring beyond what we

      already know of beyond.

      Local News from Someplace Else

      It’s still sci-fi,

      this slim disk catching sky in its curve,

      luring invisible signals.

      Unsightly aliens,

      satellite dishes dot suburban lawns,

      click code into unsuspecting homes.

      Here is not anywhere close

      to captions crossing television screens,

      unconvincingly disguising our town

      as Tulsa or Tuscaloosa

      where the same two masked men

      stick up a shiny gas station,

      smile suspiciously into the eye

      of the security camera.

      Perhaps they are you

      or your cousins traveling through

      another state or time

      into this 27-inch space

      of otherworldliness, the familiar

      and foreign switching uniforms

      to the tune of Time and Temperature.

      It is always snowing or raining

      someplace like here

      while our own windows lie

      their pretend sunshine

      on a street somewhat like yours.

      Whom can we trust

      when a smiling anchor

      prophesies the utmost danger

      around the corner

      of tomorrow? Today, someone’s

      floods will rise up

      past the screen, our remote a small boat

      of numbers, helpless with no

      SOS in the making.

      Brushfires will spark from antennae

      hunching too close to our house

      while hurricanes huff through wires.

      We try to look outside

      to our own doings, but all fingers

      are frozen. No matter

      what channel we pay,

      there is still no news from home.

      Best Friend

      Hound Shoots Croatian Hunter

      –Newspaper Headline; Jutarnji List Daily, 10/04

      I could have told you, Spaso Ivosevic,

      this is the way of all clichés on friendship.

      If not your back, then your ankle,

      the bullet path centimeters outside

      your peripheral vision,

      the pain, yes, unexpected, but as inevitable

      as the woods’ lure, the joy

      of the kill.

      You’ll live but