Skyscraping - Cordelia Jensen Page 0,3
Hudson,
beg it to take me away, under a bridge,
out to the ocean, vast and wide,
beg someone to make me blind,
take me out of this shady city,
to a country, a continent,
a universe away
from here.
BLURRED
My eyes blur,
I don’t know what I’ve just seen.
My legs shake,
the earth has shifted.
THE MILKY WAY
I wander over to Broadway.
All these people
moving in all their directions.
I sit on the bench.
A mom prances with two kids, hand in hand.
Her ponytailed hair straight, a mom
who sings while she vacuums, plans Disney vacations.
Watch them cross.
A man with too many dogs,
barking at him, at each other.
A small concrete island
in the middle of rushing traffic,
a halfway place,
crowds just rush past.
Sitting here
surrounded by trash, cars, people,
hanging
in the middle of the Milky Way,
a nebulous mass
containing millions of tiny things
smeared across the sky,
in this crisscross rush,
blinded by lights.
Just one random person
in this ever-spinning city,
never colliding.
Alone on a bench.
Once whole
but now
I am
shattered.
FLOATING
I have change in my pocket,
could use the pay phone,
call Chloe. Dylan.
What would I say?
Hey, what’s up,
my dad’s gay?
Instead,
I use my change
on the bus
float
back across town.
Run upstairs
to the Yearbook office.
My advisor’s there.
Asks if I’ve thought of a theme yet.
Suddenly New York City feels like a lie.
Fake. Filthy.
I look up at the white ceiling,
dotted with a million pinpricks like stars,
and I say
how about space?
FREEZE-FRAME
Sit at my desk.
Line up supplies
in alphabetical order.
Erasers. Paper clips. Scissors.
Neat in a row.
But I freeze when I get to the stack of layouts.
The Freshman page on top.
April.
I leave the random order,
run back
for her.
THERE ARE NO STARS
Back past Jimmy, the elevator, the door,
not wanting to open it, knowing I have to . . .
How will I look at him. What will I say.
They are there. Huddled in the living room.
Dad, April, Mom. No James in sight. Family meeting.
Whatever that means.
Sit down next to April. Put my arm around her.
They don’t ask where I went.
Dad says he’s sorry for what I saw,
didn’t know I’d be home early.
Mom puts her hand on Dad’s knee.
Says she and Dad met in the sixties,
a time of exploration
(like this is a history lesson).
Then she says we have an open marriage.
Do we know what that means?
April shrugs. I nod slowly.
It means she knows Dad sleeps with James.
It means they both think it’s okay,
it’s something they’ve agreed to.
It means Mom has lovers too.
Maybe her studio is a place where she makes more than art.
Dad says they’ve arranged it this way, out of love.
For who?
Not for us.
Dad reaches his hand to me.
Trying to offer comfort.
His fingers look too long,
disfigured.
All of their friends, parties,
the disco lights, red, green, blue, spinning.
Wine glasses. Joints.
April and me. The balcony. Alone.
There are no stars.
Just people lost
wandering
in the dark.
ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDES
After the meeting, I say nothing to her, to him,
take April, pull her to my room.
She starts to ask me what I saw.
I shake my head, say let’s just play.
Mancala. All those bright jewels
in all those shallow holes. One. Plunk. Two.
Hear them talking outside the room:
Dad wants to come in,
Mom tells him to give us time.
We do homework.
Help April with hers,
try to do mine.
My Astronomy textbook defines
absolute magnitudes as:
a scale for measuring the actual brightness of a celestial object
without accounting for the distance of that object.
If you get too close,
you might find
the actual brightness of something
can make you go blind.
Sirens go off,
cars on the Henry Hudson never stop,
all those tiny people
in their tiny cars,
driving around their tiny lives.
Brown smog parading
as a night sky.
NOWHERE
If your past is a lie, what happens to your future?
Open my desk drawer,
rip the corners off my Columbia application.
Open my planner,
scratch out Yearbook task lists,
draw blue lines across my hands,
a road map leading nowhere,
decorate page after page
with punctuation.
BEFORE
Before, James was April’s Spanish tutor.
Before, James was my dad’s Teaching Assistant.
Before, James was the person who played chess with Dad for hours.
Before, James was from Michigan.
Before, James had a story for each of his tattoos.
Before, James was fifteen years younger than my father.
Before, James was a drummer for a punk band.
Before, James was the person Chloe thought the hottest.
Before, James would tell me good books to read.
Before, James lived in Greenwich Village.
Before, James was the person who made my dad laugh the hardest.
Before, James was my dad’s running partner.
He was my dad’s best friend.
AFTER
Now
he will never be anything other than this one thing to me:
my dad’s lover.
THEN
My dad was:
A teacher,
marked up my English papers, endless lectures on Mesoamerica.
A gourmet cook,
chicken mushroom alfredo, tomato basil salad.
A craftsman,
the one who made his