USA

tonimiro@sfsu.edu

Lint

Tonight you see it coming, a squall off the sea. The child swirls around the room, picks at things: a brown sweater pilled at the elbows, the blue couch, full of nibs. Any stray thread.

You walk over to the bookcase--Spock or Piaget?--need something to remedy
her fidgeting, but come up short. What did your mother do?  Milk, flannel,
a pale yellow quilt. Picture the old blanket, the welcome fray.

In the orphanage’s gray room you heard the nurse whisper, the latest sick crop, then learned each Romanian child receives one diaper change a day, 5 minutes
of contact. What replaces touch?  When you return home you vow to bring
her back to life through the tactile: cotton, lotions, massage, cure.

She stops spinning, as if some need is satisfied, then turns her back and flees
(As her mother did? Or her father? Her genetic history all a guess), straight
into the bedroom, into bed.  Listen to her rock back and forth, crib song,
no need for you.

Watching her sleep, you notice her small hand cupped tight to her cheek.
Maybe she’s holding the tiny toy bird you gave her, the red cloth heart.
Then you look: Inside her palm, against her skin, a soft blue-gray marble,
the view of earth from space, a round ball of lint.

(Santa Clara Review)

The Croatian Riviera

     In Vela Luka, all the sailboats are for hire. No one is sunbathing, but not for lack of sun. Here, too, the grass is singing. Bathhouses that line the shore are empty showers, but forget the association. No one is being taken away.  In town you will get the best room, there isn’t any shortage. Not like in Nice where Madame charged a pretty penny for a chambre near the beach. The croissant the next morning was stale, the coffee cold. In Vela Luka, the hotel manager will recognize your family name and tell the police so they know you're not a spy. Why aren't the people smiling? You have come to wish them well.  In the restaurant there is always a table; the octopus comes in vinegar to remind you life is not always sweet. The waiter will ask, "Big fish or small?" then bring a platter with an orange carp and an eel. He will cook it how you like it and any tip will do. He looks like a man you grew up with, so you say, "I know a descendant when I see one, I know your twin." If you can forget what happened in Mostar, you could have an American holiday, but for the Bosnian man you met in Split who can't go home and you, too, who must leave for this is not home. When you ask about the war, it would be wise to change the subject, wouldn't it?  "The Serbs are different than us," is what the man said. If you can forget that once, growing up, everyone you knew was a Slav, there were no divisions, you could rest, recoup. Look, the beach is empty, the water bluer than the Cote d'Azur. Except there at the edge, a little muddy, the new dirt running down to the sea.                                                                       

(ZYZZYVA, Spring 1997)

Force  

It doesn’t help to force it; the lock, the jar, the poem to come
unbidden. Applied pressure is not an applied science. Doctor
Doolittle knew as much, his Pushmi-pullyu couldn’t be ramrodded
or cajoled, was anatomically unable to move forward or move back.
Every forced effort is, by its very nature, over the top but there are,
of course, exceptions to the rule: Smile, Marcella, Smile, is what
a mother yelled as her daughter paraded by on the homecoming float
and Marcella, knock kneed, intemperate, reared back and forced
a toothy grin. Faced with her mother’s iron will, that force of nature
no wonder she caved. Everyone knows we need to let go and let god—
or some deity—take over, we must not press, but when asked
to go against type our thoughts become weak, wrinkled, in a world
where force is exalted but where might might be wrong. So while
it might be harder to force a camel through the eye of a needle than
the rich doctor into heaven, while no amount of water can wrest water
from a stone, minor adjustments can work miracles. A small yet sharp
increase in temperature forces steam through an iron’s tiny little holes.

Practice

On the evening before his interview he irons his interview clothes: the starched
white shirt, black slacks, the suit jacket, well worn, shiny at the elbows (but
necessary, providing the right note of authority), then a patriotic red tie. He irons
each with care, the way a mother irons each item in the laundry, shirts, sheets,
hankies, right down to the underwear.
After he’s through he puts them on; the slacks, the shirt, suit jacket, the tie.
His black socks. His wingtips. He stands before a mirror, gives a crisp salute, then
practices making himself look tall, for he is short, too short, and this is his last
chance. He has found a small police force out in a remote town that may stretch
the rules--the legal height requirement--and let him serve.
He lies down on the bed, fully clothed, and practices how to answer the question:
Would you turn a family member in? He doesn’t have to think long (there’s a brother
in for murder, another on the run). He practices saying yes, without hesitation, yes,
unequivocally, how one would say yes, to good fortune, to happiness, to the question
would this job give your life meaning, yes, yes, yes,
until he falls asleep.
In the morning he awakens without the alarm and calls out, as he will call out on
the police lines, hey you and you and you. He calls out and they come to get him, his
other brothers, all deadbeats, all in trouble with the law. They lift him as they
have been instructed, as if he is a board, a plank. He holds his body stiff, like the
protestors he’s seen on TV, never willing to cooperate, and they carry him outside of
the house that way, how you might carry a body out of a building, one brother holding
the head, the other the feet. They slide him into the back of the truck and drive
off. Not once, during the long journey, does he move. When they finally arrive they
lift him out, stand him upright, and he walks in, tall and proud, before gravity has
a chance to pull him down and make him short again.

A week later he knocks on my house, loudly, with authority. Before I answer
I practice my congratulations, practice what I’ll say. When I open the door, I see
him there, dressed in the suit, the tie, carrying a black valise. He pulls me over to
the side, hands me some samples, says, “Avon calling,” and like with any officer of
the law I have no choice but to cooperate. I have to let him in.

The Seamy Side

We travel fast, tickity boo, along the track, the passage of time, of town,
one long continuous thread across the continent--golden or violet,
a little piping along the sleeve or seam of Canada. From this vantage

point, everything seems small, itty bitty farms and fields, and seems
becomes a word that begins to repeat, without the confidence of is,
giving nod to the idea that what we’re seeing is only the first layer,

the casual observation, the oh, look there, what one can ascertain
at first glance. Does the overuse of seems come from having been
proven wrong, time and time again, that our assumptions are often

faulty, wonky, off the mark? Or is it that the word is so useful--
we take a look at the seam of life or the seam of an envelope,
or a straight edged seam pressed into the trousers, as if viewing

just the edge of something. What’s desired is a larger view, yes, that,
and seamless transitions, as in the execution of the double salchow
went seamlessly or from the gallows to hanging the execution seemed

to go very well indeed. All the way across Canada we never saw
a Mountie but we saw a moose, an elk, an eagle and what looked
like a mountain goat and it seemed like we were in a theme park,

but wasn’t this the real thing? How could we be sure the wild life
wasn’t simply placed in the landscape just as the white tin soldiers
were placed on a green felt field in the gift shop in Toronto, guarding

the fort from the black tin Africans with their raised spears, attacking
from the bush. Someone, it seems, was playing with history. Noni,
a fellow traveler, piped up and said she lived in the bush and her

traveling companion, Alice, said that just last week a lawn mower
had fallen on a woman in the provinces and that the injuries were
terrible. It was unseemly, yes, freakish, yet everything we pretend
to know is not as it seems or it is.

(The Progressive,
February 2002)
 

Honorarium

This year the child is a princess. Last year a witch. Once a bumble bee.
When she knocks on the door we say yes, we’ll judge the pumpkins,
our yearly duty, and walk back with her leading the way, around
the fence that separates our houses. Five pumpkins are in a line up
on the front lawn. Four bear the markings of an adult’s hand. One is
the child’s. Candles flicker in each like nightlights shorting out.

The adults form a semi-circle. The child’s parents, another neighbor,
one grandparent. Everyone is lit. The neighbor, who drives a Monster
truck, staggers forward, bows before the court. The mother and father
stare at the stares. The grandmother wears a clown suit; red pom pom
buttons, a rainbow fright wig. “Just call me Drunko,” she says and
raises her can of beer. “Hi Drunko,” we reply.

We pace back and forth, hold our thumbs up as if viewing paintings
in a gallery, make judge-like comments. “Innovative concept,” we say
about one. “A touch of abstract modernism,” about another. “Scary”
about the next. We confer in hushed conference. The parents come in
second and third, respectively. Drunko receives an honorable mention.
The neighbor doesn’t place. As always, we choose the child’s to win.

The princess gasps, drops her wand. She clutches her hands to her chest,
cries out, “Oh…my…God.” She turns champion, turns beauty queen.
In this crumbling castle, with the King on his second case of Bud and
the Queen falling into the street, with the stars fading and the monster
on a tear, the jack-o-lanterns flicker in unison. Everyone is lit. Drunko
stumbles over, gives us a six-pack to take home; our honorarium.

(Blue Mesa Review, Issue 14, 2002)

Persist

Even though it would be nice, wouldn’t it, to go buck naked
into the world, shed snake skin, second skin, but never second sight,
it’s still unfathomable, isn’t it, the degree we need to let go of the past,
to dress down. There are veils and shadows and shadow puppets
in the firelight glow, someone’s hands all over the strings, ghosts
who manipulate (darling, will you steer?) and a story--classic, long
overdo--is projected on the screen: good and evil spring from
the same source, a heart of gold is tarnished, someone gets their
comeuppance, life treads on. The past is clearly no longer of use--
last year’s model, the old prosthesis, the circle pin--yet what is no longer
serviceable still persists, like a cough, or a mangle (we need some days
to make things thin). Let’s then, for a moment, let the old wall heater
kick in and warm our backsides with this spanked heat.


(Magazine, Fall 1999)

© All Copyright, Toni Mirosevich.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.