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A Kiss In The Dark In our community everything was kept quiet, behind closed doors. When dogs got stuck it was because one was hurt and the other was a friend, helping it home—just like a friend. Once Reverend Gibson ran from the church with a bucket of hot water, and when it separated them, they sang. That’s why it was such an event, a mistake equivalent to sin, when my parents left their bedroom light on, door open. Mistakes are what gave light to that tiny apartment darkness tried to conquer. And imagination, how there had to be more to it than the quick & crude. He put it in and he took it out. A naked bulb on the dresser next to where they made me made them celebrities, giants, myth. I watched their black shadows on the wall, half expecting fade-out and something romantic as the final scene of Love Crazy, my father a suave William Powell, my mother’s slender body a backwards C in the tight focus of his arms— close shot, oneiric dissolve and jump cut to years before their separation and the arrival of hot water. From THE MAVERICK ROOM (Graywolf Press, 2005)
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| Poetry Center Reading: | ||||
| Fall 2009 | ||||
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