rearranging the landscape
I spoke to my American family in July and
again at Christmas
overseas telephone calls were stupid-expensive,
we wrote letters
on onionskin paper, so thin you could see
through it and cheaper to mail
winter Fridays were my long days
the dawn so late that I rode to school in the dark
and by the time I unchained my bike
in the afternoon for the trip home
the sun had again fallen into the sea
as Christmas approached we slaughtered
and processed
the ducks that Mor raised every year to pay for
presents
I was a semi-vegetarian when I left the USA
I got over it in a hurry living on the farm
Scandinavians understand winter, they respect
the long dark
we decorated the Christmas tree with paper stars
and tiny candles
on Christmas Eve, Far carefully lit the wicks
and we all held hands,
dance-walking around the glowing, flickering tree
we sang carols
in a moment light-frozen for all time
I stopped thinking in English somewhen
in that winter
Danish filled my sleep and my waking, cascading
from my mouth like a strong river
victorious after destroying a dam
om foråret / in the spring
come spring, we helped in the fields, burning
off crop stubble and picking the head-sized stones
heaved up through the dirt.
Far frowned at the weather,
consulted his journals, and finally planted,
then frowned at the ground until the green
leapt out
The Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside
Harrisburg, PA malfunctioned
and melted a little in late March,
for a while the experts thought it would blow up
we saw a map on the news that showed
the potential radioactive plume
reaching all the way to Central New York
to kill my family
Mor hugged me as I sobbed, but a few days later,
the plant’s meltdown was under control
and the danger passed
then my grandfather died
my bone-ache returned with a vengeance
his death allowed for the third and final
phone call home, I cried
with my father, who was crying thousands
of miles away.
Grandpa wanted all of us grandchildren to see
him in his coffin to learn that death
is to be accepted,
not feared
but if I went back for the funeral,
we couldn’t afford the ticket
that would return me to Denmark
for my last three months
so Daddy told me to stay
He sent me photos of his dead father,
bedded in a white funeral box
Grandpa looked surprised,
like when an always-late bus arrives early
after we cleared the stones from the field
that spring
I took to riding my bike down new roads
wandering far
rødgrød med fløde på
Danish reminds me of gargling
with mashed potatoes
forty different vowel sounds
and consonants that melt like soft cheese
a sentence in Danish can sound
like an aimless hum
but the curse words roll like thunder
our neighbors, massive farmers
with granite hands and red faces
liked to tease me by asking me to say rødgrød
med fløde på
which translates to “berry porridge with cream”
if you say it right, it sounds like you’re choking
on a furball
I said it wrong for months
other words were easier to pronounce,
but took longer to understand
hygge (now making its way into English)
translates as “cozy”
but is much, much more; hygge
is sitting on a dark winter’s night
with friends or family, the room candlelit,
sipping coffee or beer, eating pastry or smørrebrød
talking, talking, listening, talking, enjoying
the pleasure of kindred spirits with the winds
howling outside
tak means “thanks,” but that’s like saying
Mount Everest is a hill
Danes express gratitude sincerely,
reflexively, constantly
thanking their parents for every meal,
thanking teachers for help, friends
for last night’s party,
the butcher for a good cut of meat
tusind tak / “a thousand thanks” is the variation
that I like most
it comes closest to expressing my boundless
gratitude to min danske familie
When summer breezed back in, I finally
conquered rødgrød med fløde på
to the farmers’ delight, they shared the phrase’s
deeper meaning, rooted
when they were boys carved of bone and sinew,
simmering with rage
because Denmark was occupied by Hitler’s army
those farmer boys fought back, sabotaging and
harassing the Nazis
the Germans tried to infiltrate their resistance
when someone was suspected of being a German
spy, the farmer boys
asked him to say rødgrød med fløde på
if he didn’t pronounce it right, it was the last thing
he ever said.
In Denmark, in Scandinavia, across Europe
memories of World War II ache like a scar
does when the weather changes or a storm
draws near
old countries are riddled with battle wounds
that split open, bleed, and cause new pain
if not cared for,
just like us
scars may look stronger than unwounded skin,
but they’re not
once broken, we’re easily hurt again, or worse
the temptation is to hide behind shields,
play defense, drown ourselves in sorrow
or drug our way to haunted oblivion
until death erases hope
My home in Denmark taught me how to speak
again, how to reinterpret darkness and light,
strength and softness
it offered me the chance to reorient my compass
redefine my true north
and start over
bridging
to go straight from our Danish homes
back to our families of origin
would have screwed everybody up
we needed a breather
a break
they sent us to Lejre,
half an hour from Copenhagen
to an Iron Age archaeological center
where researchers were puzzling out
how ancient Danes
crossed bogs and swamps
three thousand years earlier
they needed young, strong bodies not afraid of work
we thirty-nine half-growns from all over the world
had to build a bridge
we
used axes to hew logs for the frame
tied fat bundles of saplings and green branches
for the foundation, dumped them in the water
like offerings to the bog
we ate meat roasted over the open fire
devoured bread, yogurt, and cheese
slept on a thin layer of straw in a giant tent
all of us together, drifting deep and dreamless
waking achy, grabbing our tools
chopping, carving, cursing
wrangling, working, wearing
ourselves out of our skins
and into the harnessed spirit
of samarbejde/cooperation
in which the melding of individual energies
far exceeds the sum of the parts
eventually we fed the hungry bog enough wood
that our bridge broke the water’s surface
like the back of a rising horse
we shoveled dirt to fill the interstitial spaces
formed a line to pass big rocks
hand to hand
body to body
building upon our foundation with weight, sweat,
and strength
added more dirt to make the walking easy
the researchers led an oxen team across our bridge
to test our work
and declared our bridge worthy
we raised our glasses and axes in salute
feasted
showered in cold water
and prepared for our next crossing
commence reentry sequence
space capsule
screaming through the atmosphere
heat shield melting, parachutes out,
I landed back in the USA
after thirteen lifetimes,
I mean, months
away
English didn’t fit right in my mouth
det var meget nemmere at tale dansk,
mere behagelig
jeg glemte oversættninger, hvordan man siger
agurker/cucumbers eller erindringer/memories
men da jeg genfornede
med min americanske familie
the important words finally came back
after much hugging and happy tears
we sat close together on the couch, my mother
constantly tucking a stubborn lock of hair
behind my ear
my father’s heavy hand patting my shoulder
my sister sitting on the floor,
leaning against my knee
you don’t get many perfect moments in life
our reunion was one of them
next morning, I rode my bike
to the high school, July-flying through the miles
didn’t have to stand on the pedals
up the long, steep hill
my thighs steel-reinforced
after a year of riding overseas
Summer-break school mostly empty,
the halls smelled the same
goose-bumpy
in the main office I explained
my mission and the secretary
opened a drawer, pulled the file
with my name on it
my permanent record
removed my diploma and almost
gave it to me, but paused
to add the grave pomp
called for by the circumstance,
she shook my hand
“Congratulations,” she said, formally.
“You have graduated.”
And so began the next chapter
in a familiar place where everything was different
a well-cloaked alien, I heard my old world
filtered through Nordsøens vand / North Sea water
and saw it in the light of dansk solskin /
Danish sunshine
separation—AWOL 1
While I was somewhere-the-hell in Denmark,
my American family had moved again
this time to a small house rented
from a guy who made it clear
that if my mother slept with him,
he’d cut us a deal.
(Instead she worked overtime.)
I came home stronger
taller
wounds tended and scarred over
But my parents had started drinking
every morning by eight, instead of waiting
for the sunset,
Daddy drank to blur
the steel edge of his failures.
Mommy drank to keep
from killing him. She went to work
after gargling and spitting.
Daddy worked a little,
walked a lot on the towpath
crowded with ghosts. Wrote poetry,
cried, contemplating suicide
trying to ride out the tide of despair
and keep breathing.
One day I came home
to the sound of a hammer
on metal. My mother
roared all the curse words
she’d once scrubbed out of my mouth
with a bar of Ivory soap.
I crept to the door of my parents’
bedroom, afraid of the bloody body
certain to be staining the floor.
Mommy was alone, beating
the piss out of their bed frame
with a sixteen-ounce hammer.
She looked up,
narrowed her eyes
“Time for separate beds,” she snarled,
dragon smoke curling out of her mouth.
“He’s gone to Boston for a while.”
WHAM! She beat a bolt on the bed frame.
“A long while.” WHAM, WHAM!
“Hamburger Helper for dinner,” she added.
“Start browning the meat.”
reunion—AWOL 2
Dad came home nine months
later. He looked better, didn’t drink
until four p.m., and only screamed
in his sleep a couple nights a week.
I’m still convinced he ran off
with a woman, but whatever.
Mom let him back in the door.
The Church did, too. The Church
that had cast him out, her broken son,
gave back his dignity, his calling
and his God after six years in the wilderness
We moved again after his prodigal return
this time to a rural church filled
with farmers, teachers, and nurses.
I slept that first winter on the floor
under the dining room table
because my bedroom didn’t have heat
or insulation. A glass of water left there
overnight was ice come morning,
from Thanksgiving till after Easter.
I found work milking cows.
Dad found some peace mending hearts.
Our mother found a tumor in her left breast.
She never put their beds back together.
hitchhiking with my father
Driving with Daddy was risky,
cuz he drove
with one foot on the accelerator
and the other on the brake, confident
of his superior reflexes
and the power of his smile.
When I was two, he drove us
all the way to Florida, me roaming
in the back of the station wagon untethered,
waving to horrified strangers
for fifteen hundred fraught miles.
We survived that trip unscathed.
Others, not so much; he’d crash into a ditch
or park on a highway late at night
traffic thundering inches away
while my parents fought
about who should take the wheel.
I loved my dad,
but he was a shitty driver
and the booze sure didn’t help.
After high school, we stopped talking, it hurt
so much to love my father that I prayed
for a heart of stone,
like God gave Pharaoh.
The years of praying for him to be healed
hadn’t worked; he kept messing up,
breaking down, throwing our lives out of orbit,
but I still thought of God
as a kind of Cranky Dad who might
consider my plea if I asked politely.
One afternoon, my father found me in tears—
I’d missed the bus and was going to be fired.
I needed that job cuz no college
would have me back then.
Daddy’s face softened, for a moment
he was the father who’d take us out of school
on a whim to go mountain climbing
or buy ice cream for every kid on the block.
“You’re too young
to hitchhike alone,” he said.
“I’ll go with you, make sure you’re safe.”
strawberry-blonde fairy tales
My mother, my sister, and I got up at five
on that July morning,
three women with nothing in common
save blood, disappointment, and the inherited,
trauma-fed ability
to stay silent in every situation,
we united in the need for a televised dream
live, from London
A multigenerational fantasy, the about-to-be-
princess,
sewn into confectionary silk taffeta, rode
in a glass bubble pulled by white horses,
a virgin paraded for the masses, Madonna
of diamonds and luck. Ten thousand pearls hung
from the dress, the fruit of relentless
irritation, the day’s slippery portent of doom
though, in the manner of crowds, no one noticed.
Lady Diana Spencer was three months older
than me,