I.

they said it was painting the fence that did it.

the heat and the work and then maybe the rest, too.

it makes me think of Tom Sawyer.

I could never imagine that scene beyond a shallow depth.

sidewalk, boy, fence, and a backdrop of nothing

II.

your best friend’s wife stood up and told us

you came to her, you told her how angry you were. I believed her.

I still do. what a strange thing.

III.

one summer I found a translated copy of Franny & Zooey in the basement.

I never asked if it was yours, and I never read it, though I always wondered

what it would sound like

IV.

how funny that it all comes back to flight,

the controlled rise and fall

this time it was in August, this time in a plane.

all perfectly dramatic, like a mediocre Oscar contender

but it was real, and I was the last stop.

it's interesting what melts away.

just you and him and your words and your pace and a slow walk back towards life,

if you’re lucky and you strike the balance right.

it always comes back, hardening again like candle wax as it cools

the wick has moved though, sinking a little deeper.

V.

an experienced fresco painter knows how much surface can be painted in a day

the amount is the giornata. a day’s work.

In 1929, thirty-four women were arrested in the Hungarian region of Tiszazug under suspicion of poisoning their abusive husbands and other male relatives with arsenic. Several of the women cited Zsuzsanna Fazekas, a midwife in the town of Nagyrév, as the source of the arsenic, said to be extracted from boiled flypaper.

I.

they will take everything you offer,

claw away if they sense there is more

until you are known, a bored routine.

so guard it deeply. do not form it

into words.

II.

in my language, there is

pessimism, and there is survival. I do not

use it to speak, but it is in my blood, like

how to boil flypaper.

III.

it is a whispered knowledge,

passed down through matriarchs.

you refused to leave the house your hands built,

lime green walls and chickens long gone.

each time you kissed me, the hairs on your chin tickled me.

they became my feelers, imparting sensory information I'd never experienced

a temporary aphasia so the knowing can

sneak past language and take residence

in my spine, in the curve of my back,

aching.

IV.

when you were four,

you lost your voice. for a year you

did not speak. as he beat her, your

sound left you.

when you pull a loose thread and wrap it

around your finger, sometimes you

cannot break it. it grows until you can

find a blade to cut.

V.

Hello, tesék?

Mondjad.

Your words withered the men who called.

I felt fear for them, and turned away from your intensity.

But I was never scared of you.

I reminded you of your sister.

She was kind and drew flowers for children. But I want

to growl like you, leave ashes in my dust.

VI.

six of you with

heads down, hands

clasped, as if ashamed or

remorseful. I know better.

I see your pointed fingers,

defiant. they know they

are next.

I.

when I was in first or second grade

I fell off the top bunk.

I don’t even remember having bunk beds,

just looking up from the floor at the blue railing,

a few inches high, that betrayed me.

II.

we were flying into Chicago

a tiny Cessna headed toward Meigs Field.

I woke up as we were lifted up and down.

the white cotton inside of a cloud then a whole city of lights rising up from depthless black

my mom thought we were going to die—the flaps had frozen over during descent.

the violence of the air tossing us was lost on me. I found it beautiful.

III.

my sister wrote on Paterson.

she quoted Levertov.

Not

the bald image, but always—

undulant, elusive, beyond reach

of any dull

staring eye—lodged

among the words, beneath

the skin of image:

she drew plums until they moved.

if you search the Rauner catalogue, you can find it.

mine too—look under ‘unsignificantly’

they capitalized it, though I didn’t.

IV.

he asked me to draw Sisyphus, rolling his rock up

Breughel’s

mountain

it’s tattooed on his left arm

because one must

imagine

V.

your body can fly

thrown by choice or illness

like a paper airplane from a window

but it will be discarded

icarus knew this too

 I.

Your feast (your death-day) was yesterday.

You were thrown from the cliff or maybe pushed down in a wheelbarrow,

depending on your choice of story.

Patron saint of Budapest,

the city that made me love cities.

Dirt and grime and hot trash and stale sweat,

signs of life

II.

there was a tub of water, maybe five foot tall. it was tucked away

between the drained pool and the white tile shower no one used.

I always thought it might be off-limits, but we would climb the few-runged ladder and throw our

little bodies in

a game of endurance,

whose limbs would go numb first.

I wonder if you rolled all the way into the Danube. it must’ve been cold too.

III.

4-es metro, Gellért tér

brand new, but a 70s scifi dream. maybe this is what the future looks like—

concrete and Brutalist, like a Soviet panelház. I’m glad it kept the orange and yellow.