Joani Reese

Khan Yunis: Sisters
 
a poem for Sama, Lama, Saja, Leen, Nada, Layan
 
And just today they mingled hands, a round of sister kisses, hugs. Sama, Saja, and Layan unrolled prayer rugs and spread them smooth beneath their knees. A day like every other day, six sisters bent their heads to pray, nothing unique. All lost in faith, no one aware  their world would end when men dispatched death on their heads, its carapace rent spaces through a clouded sky. Shrapnel embraced them as they prayed, demolished faces, blistered eyes. Did Nada cry for life unlived? Was gentle Saja first to die? Six daughters, six identities erased by faceless enemies, weapons provided happily by countries half a world away. Gaza’s become a place of ghosts and tombs, and drone dropped bombs and  masked platoons. Revenge has no integrity and cruelty trumps passivity. This split did not start yesterday, angers passed down to progeny,  grim fables born by ancestry and nurtured very carefully, assuring bloodshed tramples peace.  Six daughters left the world today. Six daughters who will never be doctors, teachers, peacemakers, friends, six candles snuffed before they  flamed with beauty, art, intelligence. Stone rubble blots out history, six girls have met death’s mystery as shadows shroud the land where they were born. Young lives were shorn like hair that’s torn from prisoners’ heads in Sde Teiman and cries of amputated  men in Megiddo, perhaps Ofer, or Tribe of Nova sufferers. No matter where torture occurs, each screaming  throat begs pity just the same. Today this house crushed on this street sheds shreds of thoughts six sisters dreamed --bright images of who they were and who someday their daughters might have been.
 
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The Belly of the Beast
 
I ask permission of the state to enter through this prison gate. Next, latex pats my outer thighs, an action I might criticize since I am sixty-two and haven’t packed my clothes with guns or knives. I pass through four electric fences, walk a white hall far too long that’s frightening to walk alone. Ceiling fluorescents wink and buzz, my footfall ricochets their noise against the blackened window, just ahead. The guard’s instructions flatten me with dread.
 
Transparent walls reveal my son. Plexiglas separates our hands, making a joke of family bonds. I grab a handset, smell perfume. The plastic’s scratches cannot match the slashes scabbed beneath his sleeves. Prison’s a fetter; cutting makes control less distant, begs release.
 
A lovely child when he was young, he flew before I knew he’d gone. Defiance lit bright tongues of ire and opposition drove him on. He cursed me as he lost his way, he spit-shined every clever lie. Around sixteen the boy he’d been just disappeared.
 
The wounds ballooned from baseboard kicks to broken phones to windshields scattered over ground. Police began to ring the bell, inquiring, “Is your son at home?” In bed at night, I’d cringe each time I heard a ringing telephone.
 
Denial became a stock response; his anger chipped his friends away. He plunged from cliffs to fall, not fly. My Icarus, my stubborn boy was sure his waxen wings would hold, his life a bold trajectory aimed straight toward Pyrrhic victory. He lost control to alcohol. Xanax and whiskey filled each hole, except those punched in bedroom walls.
 
His twenties passed, sometimes in jail. I bailed him out. After a while, I didn’t even find it odd when shame and anger outstripped mother love. At twenty-eight, we were estranged when he exchanged a local jail for federal.
 
My felon fell into the maw that loves its role as carnivore and never shuts its trolling jaws that feed the lawyers, judges, and bulls who stroll the system’s desperate halls.
 
He’s caged himself and must comply with rules worse than I ever made. A cell of steel, no open doors for criminals; his body’s now the property of jaded men in uniform. He’s learning fast that inside bars whatever choice he has is voiceless.
 
He’ll be the prey of alpha males who mean him existential harm. One bend, one grasp of thin white skin, he’ll be a nightfly on a chain, an amber trinket others wear. All fear unpacks to linger here. I smell it on the prison air, and when I ask, his answer is avoidance and a blind man’s stare.
 
I know he’s reached a stopping place, each felony assigned and weighed. No supplication serves him now, no Cheshiresmile, no blue-eyed wink. He learns each jailer’s rights and wrongs, where “walk,” and “stop,” or “do not talk” compose his swelling prison song. He hangs each verse on hooks of bone, examines them when he’s alone.
 
Outside the gate, cold rain a cape. Slick chunks of hail begin to pound; they scarify this prison ground. I reach the car, I take a breath and aim the wheel four hours north toward home. No matter how the tale begins, this denouement is how it ends. My boy in feathered armour falls. Sad Icarus, we’re human, after all.
 
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Father Poem, Cracked Prose
 
Most poets swear dad poems are much too twee; I respond to that genre differently. I write about my dad's dry martinis, try hard to chronicle myriad ways his alcohol consumption chased away those normal anchors that compose most lives. I can't ignore the rage that went awry, au contraire, fury's useful because strife creates poems in which truth is written slant. As long as rage does not move in to stay or make me write like a whiney baby, my violent inner-child-tales spice the mix, add in some grief--these babies write themselves. 

Break manacles that bind my stumbling thoughts. This word catharsis really can’t be beat. Sometimes a memory shared unsuitably sends reems of lifelong demons on their way. Like perfect drinks, poems should deliberately mix kind words with sharpened knives, acrimony. Toss in olives or cocktail onions, you can serve the truth straight up, ditch the vermouth. That's how my father drank martinis, dry--never dilute a drop, spilled vodka may ruin even the most auspicious day. 

A patriarchal drunk can be okay, or even rather useful in his way – comparing notes may alter family views, question kids' recollections of abuse from parents who glance dimly at the past, denying children’s negative reviews. Sometimes when anguished honesty's at play, exposing truth is healthy for a child. Although I'm 68, I have to say, I eat feelings like shrimp at a buffet. 
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Sometimes harm is extinguished in the play of language that uncomplicates the knots tied inch by inch, and tightened day by day. Perhaps, when polished, poems expose a truth while casualties remain unscathed, removed. Works may not even need overt display of art, just bring allusion into play. The irony of life is that this booze is like a dancer, spinning on repeat, entangling a child's running feet. That child grows up to recognize deep loss, mend every forfeit memory with words. Some evenings, when she can’t summon the muse, the poet dances in her father’s shoes.

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Joani Reese is a poet and flash fiction writer who lives and works in North Texas.  Her most recent book, Night Chorus, is a hybrid of flash and poetry.  Reese has won awards for her work and also curates the underground AWP off-site reading series, Hot Pillow, now in its 13th year.