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Joelle L. Renstrom: Three Poems
THE PROCEDURES OF PETER DE WOLF
The kids at school had
minds for words like
hydrocephalic
and abbreviations
like ADD, hurling
them like grenades at
Peter on the playground.
And me, I kept my guns
to myself. I pretended
that I didn't know Peter
that my mother wasn't
friends with his mother
that he didn't live
two houses down from me.
Pretended that my mother never
made me be his friend
never drew me aside and whispered
about a special favor, never flattened
my irises with that lookthe other kids
were so mean to Peter, and I was better
than them,
wasn't I?
So Peter found me standing
on his porch one day,
hands in my pockets, shy fish.
He knew tricks.
Split up his crayons
into little bits
and stuffed them up
his nose, waited for
the inevitable sneeze
of spring allergies
and became a techni-
colored rifle.
Me, I was scared.
Not of crayola shrapnel
but of being banished
to the bin of lefty scissors,
of people calling Peter
my boyfriend. I pretended
he was as dumb as they said,
Peter Watermelonhead.
This is what I kept silent:
afternoons tending
disassembled
lawnmowers spread in the grass
like body parts. His fingers
searching for
a greasy spark plug to rub
like a rabbit's foot. I assisted
him with the blender motor
transplant, that windmill
of knives just above his skin,
he never
flinched an inch.
Then there was John Johnson,
hunkering hunk of a boy, one
hundred seventy-nine pounds
of Real Friend. They'd spend
afternoons tossing sticks
into the spokes of children's bikes.
Reminds me of the time
we made a snowman
with Paulie, another
boy on the street.
Peter hit me over
the head with a
snowshovel.
I don't think he
ever said quite why.
Years blended,
as years do,
into the image of a solitary
afternoon, say four o'clock,
shadows starting to fall more
grey than black,
smell of people home from work,
and Peter, coasting up and down
the street on a riding lawnmower,
end of that snowshovel
attached to the front.
Peter the rockpusher,
the gravelclearer
moved stones and twigs,
helicopter seeds that dropped
in spring. Compacting it all
into neat little piles
like a compulsive janitor.
He'd do driveways for free.
And those afternoons
pushing rocks blur
once more, turning
over like
a wicked hourglass:
I hear he's in prison now.
I don't know what he did,
but rumor has it
it involved a little girl.
MAYBE I'M MANIC (and other supermarket thoughts)
Circle the lot if you've never taken a handicapped spot. You know
what that means.
Seventy-five dollar fine and what's more, you ought to be ashamed.
Learn freedom by pushing the cart like an expert, make sure the front
wheel doesn't stick.
See angel hair yield, olive oil virginizing, rotini curling like your fingers
around the bar. Navigate like a genius rat in a maze, remember the tofu
is near the chiles now.
Bagging vegetables is what the sociopaths like best. Twist the bag around
and around, like the broken neck of a begging bird. Don't forget the tie,
you can never be too safe
when suffocating cucumbers and mangoes. Examine edges of ginger,
think of the time your mother found a root of it in your freezer and thought
it was a frozen penis.
Imagine what she thought of you then. Boycott bread until they sort everything
out. It's chaos in aisle three, honey wheat and whole wheat and wheat germ
and Wheaties and before
you can create order from this grocery entropy you've spun into the cereals,
where every box cover is childhood. Remember watching the Smurfs and eating
Captain Crunch, try not to think
about how the only cereals you can afford now are
generic brands in plastic bags
with names like "Chocolate Balls" and "Flakes with Corn." Even though the freezer
section produces goosebumps
all you really want is ice cream. It's what we all want. And those Lean Cuisine diet
meals right next to the microwave pizzasknow just how diabolical the world of supermarketing is. The worst
is the feminine hygiene section. Blush even if you
don't buy, even if you walk right
past them or only glance casually in their direction. People are looking at you, mostly
men. Nice men who
might like you if they hadn't first seen you perusing pantiliner boxes and weighing
the benefits of deodorant tampons. Eggs next. Why that order? Maybe it's biological.
Then check out.
It's like holding your bladder, you want to go there at first urge, halfway through
aisle one, you want to cut items from your list, forget about the Parmesan cheese,
you don't really need
shampoo. But you have to wait, collect everything slowly, then let yourself dash
to the shortest line. Careful to have that separator on the belt, lay down toiletries
first, then non-perishables,
then the refrigerated food. Don't look at that man behind you, he's buying two
TV dinners. Turkey. He's clutching coupons with one hand and the counter
with the other, so old
and unsteady and the way he's gripping those thirty-cent saves makes you want
to sob. Instead, read that Kathie Lee Gifford was born in a watermelon, learn that
the cashier doesn't know
ginger root either, learn to bag your own groceries when it's crowded. Return
your cart to the corral, feeling plum in your heart and cod in your stomach
and grits in your head.
Eat skins, rinds, stems, shells and cores. Eat leftovers. Waste nothing.
STEAKS AND YARDS
Old newspaper jars the man from undead sleep. Marmaduke runs away from a picnic table with a chicken leg,
Tess Truehart perches on a typewriter and waits for a kiss. He trails his hand over the bench, a boat across a
lake trolling a line in the water.
Bocky dozes under the bench. Her balloon body is shrinking and fading, a sun bubble on her left ear. He thinks
of clowns and her birth from a breath: a clown blowing into thin, colored balloons, giving one to him. Balloon
silvery with moon and tinkling with healing. A blue hot dog dog, nose glistening with mischievous wetness.
Bocky.
The man dreams of a house. Bocky dreams of a yard. The man dreams of a steak. Bocky dreams of the T-bone.
The man remembers animals sprouting from the clown's mouth like asters pushing through dirt. He begins the
untying, twists the tail, undoes the legs, uncoils the neck. A withering blue egg in his hand. Draws in a great
clown breath and blows. Ties it up, twists its middle, torques its top, but there are no paws, no tail. He considers
drawing a face with whiskers. The man stares at the shape in his lap. She has stopped dreaming of steaks and
yards.
