Grammar Lessons
When my students ask me how to use the future tense,
I tell them that we use “will”
for a promise or a threat.
I will always love you, for example.
And to make a plan, we use the “present continuous,”
I am divorcing him.
And when they ask about the “simple past,”
He loved me a long time ago . . .
It’s not that simple, I tell them.
There’s certainly nothing perfect about the “present perfect,”
I have loved you since the day I met you.
By definition, I ask them,
Does this mean that he stopped loving me?
But loving is a “non-continuous verb,”
Loving, I tell them, is incorrect.
And for the modals?
(Though confused, I know I still have their interest)
I may, I might, I should, I could
keep going, but I won’t.
Instead, I tell them:
Love is full of tenses.
I Remember Not Sleeping
I remember lying on a squeaky cot, in a room full of Czech women,
listening to them breathe like lung machines.
I remember steam hissing from radiators, heels clicking down halls.
I remember, on the psychiatric ward, thinking that the patients were doctors
who were there to save me because I was dying.
A flashlight shone in my eyes every two hours during the night,
a needle poked my arm.
Someone always watched me in the shower with a flashlight.
I remember waking up at night to use the bathroom
and seeing Czech nurses watching porn on TV.
I remember having sex with men, multiple men, and women,
but I don’t remember feeling anything except sore.
I was never tired. And never hungry.
I got a day pass from the hospital and snuck into a man’s car.
We smoked unfiltered Camels and listened to Metallica.
I hated heavy metal, but it felt good to be held.
I remember the doctor asking me if I had been breastfed,
and what it meant to throw stones in glass houses.
I was afraid if I didn’t get the answers right, something bad would happen to me.
One doctor said sleep deprivation causes mania.
My roommate swallowed a crushed light bulb.
I remember the bitter taste of pills I hid under my tongue.
I remember how good it was to come home—to stretch my legs across my bed, wrap myself
in clean, cotton sheets and listen to the rain.
Snow fell my last night in Prague before I got on a plane to the States.
I wasn’t sure I would come back, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I’d have to be up for 20 hours or more to get home.
Weekend Call to My Father
When my father can’t lift his wife
off the kitchen floor, he calls the fire department.
“They come so often to the house,” he says on the phone.
“I buy them boxes of doughnuts.”
He coughs a few times, as if he’s clearing
his throat, then blows his nose.
I can picture him, sitting on his cracked blue
leather chair, newspapers strewn
over the worn carpet.
I used to watch my father talk to himself,
his shoulders shrugged as he pulled
his eyebrows, hands moved as if
he was shooing flies.
In our musty garage, his punching bag
hanging from the ceiling,
I once stood next to him, while he fixed his car.
Hands covered in oil, he yelled out,
“Screwdriver!” but when I gave him
the wrong one, his bald head pulsated bright red.
He asks, “How are your finances? Do you need any money?”
He’s pressing cherry tobacco
in his pipe, cracking pine nuts with his teeth,
his stocks rising and falling on the TV.
I need to get off the phone, use the bathroom.
I haven’t even had my first cup of coffee.
But now, he’s the one who has to go,
his wife’s calling him from somewhere
in the house, somewhere I hope
he can get to
in time.
Swimming in the Rain
With my hands on her still strong shoulders,
I steer my mother
to the discount rack,
so she won’t complain
about the prices.
The sales girl comes over,
wearing an Oregon Ducks T-shirt,
her smart phone squeezed
into the back pocket
of her rhinestone jeans.
Cracking her gum, she asks
my mother in slow motion,
CAN-I-HELP-YOU?
My mother is slow as rain,
a creaky, twisted
bicycle chain.
Back at the car, she lifts
the black bathing suit
and folds it neatly on her lap.
“I look like a fat seal in that thing,”
she says, and I tell her,
“And I’m a seagull
crashing into the surf.”
It’s been raining
for hours
both of us swimming now
in unchartered waters.
Remembering Her Less
My mother
rocked us in her chair,
untangling my thick braids,
brushing my hair until
covered my shoulders.
Lately, I’ve been
forgetting small things,
even her voice
is starting to fade,
as in her old age,
those songs she sings
but cannot name.