Parkinson's Disease: Autumn

by Andrès Cerpa When I woke for school the next day the sky was uniform & less than     infinite with the confusion of autumn & my father as he became distant with disease the way a boy falls beneath the ice,    before the men that cannot save him- the cold like a forever on his lips. Soon, he was never up before us & we'd jump on the bed,    wake up, wake up, & my sister's hair was still in curls then, & my favorite photograph still     hung: my father's back to us, leading a bicycle uphill. At the top, the roads vanish & turn- the leaves leant yellow in a frozen sprint of light, & there, the forward    motion. The nights I laid in the crutch of my parents' doorway & dreamt awake,  listened like a field of snow, I heard no answer. Then sleepless slept in my own arms beneath    the window to the teacher's blank & lull- Mrs. Belmont's lesson on Eden that year. Autumn: dusk:  my bicycle beside me in the withered & yet-to-be leaves, & my eyes closed fast beneath the mystery of migration, the flock's     rippled wake:

Walking

by Tone Skrjanec
translated by Matthew Rohrer & Ana Pepelnik

such a sticky day today.
coins clang in my pocket as i walk.
piles of ducklings are squatting in the shade of a tree
which could, at a quick glance, be a willow.
two women with legs bare to the knees are laughing
and gesticulating blessedly while crossing the street
that winds around the lake. walking is important.
thinking while walking. bodies while walking.
three cyclists on the top of the stairs are from another world.
covered with science-fiction helmets,
all red and flushed. looking like aliens.
while you walk you meet many almost divine creatures,
i.e. ducks, which i have already mentioned,
or this one here, sitting all by itself by the lake
and, seemingly without purpose, widely opening its beak,
so its long and slender neck is beautifully tightening.
such a sticky day, and yet
such a nice evening's silence.
just cars, birds, and oars
from afar hitting the lake,
and it seems that we animals are mostly satisfied.

Laura Kasische - Bicycle Poems

I had no familiarity with Laura Kasischke's poetry until reading one of her poems in the Poem-A-Day feed. I checked out Where Now: New and Selected Poems from Copper Canyon Press and am more than halfway through it. It's overdue at the library and can't be renewed but this one is worth the fine. Below are four poems in which bicycles are prominent, including one that may be the only poem ever written to include TWO of my favorite things in the world, a bicycle and Old Faithful geyser. She can be forgiven for calling a bison a buffalo; it's common among tourists and more poetic, as William Cody would surely agree.

For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike

I'll tell you up front: She was fine - although

she left in an ambulance because

I called 9-1-1

and what else can you do

when they've come for you

with their siren and lights

and you're young and polite

except get into their ambulance

and pretend to smile?

"Thanks" she said to me

before they closed her up. (They

even tucked 

her bike in there. Not

one bent spoke on either tire.) But I

was shaking and sobbing too hard to say goodbye.

I imagine her telling her friends later, "It

hardly grazed me, but

this lady who saw it went crazy..."

I did. I was

molecular, while

even the driver who hit her did

little more than roll his eyes, while

a trucker stuck at the intersection, wolfing

down a swan

sandwich behind the wheel, sighed. Some-

one touched me on the shoulder

and asked, "Are you all right?"

(Over

in ten seconds. She

stood, all

blond, shook

her wings like a little cough.)

"Are you

okay?" someone else asked me. Uneasily, as if

overhearing my heartbeat

and embarrasses for me

that I was made

of such gushing meat

in the middle of the day

on a quiet street.

"They should have put her 

in the ambulance, not me."

Laughter.

Shit happens.

To be young.

To shrug it off:

But, ah sweet

thing, take

pity. One

day you too may be

an accumulation

of regrets, catastrophes.

A clay animation

of Psalm 73 (but

as for me, my feet...). No. It will be

Psalm 48: They

saw it,

and so they marveled; they

were troubled, and hasted away. Today

you don't remember the way

you called my name, so

desperately, a thousand times, tearing

your hair, and your clothes on the floor, and

the nurse who denied your morphne

so that you had to die that morning

under a single sheet

without me, in

agony, but

this time I was beside you.

I waited, and I saved you.

I was there.

Buffalo

I had the baby in my arms, he was asleep.

We were waiting for Old Faithful, who was late.

The tourists smelled like flowers, or

like shafts of perfume moving

from bench to bench, from

gift shop to port-o-pot. The sun

was a fluid smear in the sky. Like

white hair in water. The women

were as beautiful as the men, who

were so beautiful they never needed

to see their wives or children again.

It happened then.

Something underground. The hush of sound.

I remembered 

once pretending

to have eaten a butterfly.

My mother held my arms hard until

I told her it was a lie

and then I sighed. I've

loved every minute of my life!

The day I learned to ride a bike

without training wheels, I

might as well have been riding a bike

with no wheels at all! If

at any time I'd

had to agree to bear

twenty-seven sorrows

for a single one of these joys...

If the agreement were that I

had to love it all so much

just, in the end, to die...

Still, I can taste those wings I didn't eat, the sweet

and tender lavender of them. One

tourist covered her mouth

with a hand

and seemed to cry. How

could I have doubted her?

There were real tears in her eyes! The daisies

fell from her dress, and if

at that moment

she'd cracked an egg in a bowl,

the bowl would have filled with light. If

there is a God, why not

this violent froth, this

huge chiffon scarf

of pressure under water under her

white sandals in July?

The baby was asleep, still sucking, in my arms, a lazy

wand of sun moved

back and forth across his brow. I heard a girl's laughter

in the parking lot, soft

and wild as

the last note of "Jacob's Ladder"

played by the children's handbell choir.

I turned around.

It had been watching me. Or him. Or both of us.

Good beast, I whispered to it

facetiously under my breath.

It took, in our direction,

one

slow and shaggy step.

Bike Ride with Older Boys

The one I didn't go on.

I was thirteen,

and they were older.

I'd met them at the public pool. I must

have given them my number. I'm sure

I'd given them my number,

knowing the girl I was...

It was summer. My afternoons

were made of time and vinyl.

My mother worked,

but I had a bike. They wanted

to go for a ride.

Just me and them. I said

okay fine, I'd

meet them at the Stop-N-Go

at four o'clock.

And then I didn't show.

I have been given a little gift - 

something sweet

and inexpensive, something

I never worked or asked or said

thank you for, most

days not aware

of what I have been given, or what I missed - 

because it's that, too, isn't it?

I never saw those boys again.

I'm not as dumb 

as they think I am

but neither am I wise. Perhaps

it is the best

afternoon of my life. Two

cute and older bys

pedaling beside me - respectful, awed. When we

turn down my street, the other girls see me...

Everything as I imagined it would be.

Or, I am in a vacant field. When I

stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel

ground into my knees.

I will never love myself again.

Who knew then

that someday I would be

thirty-seven, wiping

crumbs off the kitchen table with a sponge, remembering

them, thinking

of this - 

those boys still waiting

outside the Stop-N-Go, smoking

cigarettes, growing older.

Green Bicycle

There it is on the horizon, wavering.

There it goes, disappearing, into space.

My father hears sounds in the basement.

He goes downstairs in his underwear, a seventy-

year-old man in the static of night and rain.

The wall's caved in. He turns

and climbs the stairs again.

No trouble, no illumination.

I guess God likes it that way.

But the foundation of my father's 

house has collapsed

and the insurance company won't pay

and here we stand this afternoon

stupefied in our wet shoes.

No enemies, no friends.

Without the middle, no beginning or end.

If the phone doesn't ring, if the thing never breaks...

The world says, Give me

more of yourself than you can spare

and I'll take you to a strange

city, drop you off downtown, come

to pick you up a little later, greatly changed.

Once, an old man

sat down beside me on a park bench.

He said he was from Ireland.

There were thistles

in the wastefield beside the pond, pre-

historic in their silence, their

shapes, their faith. My bike

was green, and new, and mine. I owned

the most beautiful bike I'd ever seen, and

rode it, watching

myself ride it

like a prepubescent ghost

with long soft hair

into the supermarket's plate-glass window.

It had gotten me to the place

I was, which was, perhaps, farther

than I ever should have been.

He put his hand on my hand, leaned

over and tried to kiss me on the lips.

Oh, no, I said - got up, ran, never looked back. But

Today I would ask that old man, What about all that?

The turtles were paddleing on the pond's smooth murk,

poking up their faces for a better look.

The thistles made their hushes

in the breezes. Tell me, kiss me, Old One. This

time it'll be

our little secret.

Although, that time, thrilled with my

first horror, riding my bike home

I stopped

over and over to tell this story

to everyone I knew,

and my father, a very young man,

came down there looking for you.