A Found Poem Inspired by Eileen Tabios’ MDR
 
I forgot my father is not Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania. 

I forgot the borders of a kingdom my six-year-old eyes could not see. 

I forgot a house, solid and stolid as a boulder on a ground 
ever-shifting from nature’s tantrums, gentle but persistent rain . . . 

I forgot the years I wore a dress of softened wool 
shaped by hand, lined by  beige.

I forgot the spine bent willingly into a buckled belt.

I forgot the John Donne dream, the one in which he reminds me, 
“Every man’s death diminishes me.” 

I forgot paintings completed by the shadow of gawkers.  

I forgot muscle will grow to form a heart.
                        

A poem that begins “another shark day” 
and I think everyone out of the water, now!  
but I don’t know if Susan is the shark or the water
or the woman screaming.
I barely remember the gray fin closing in. 
I catch myself clenching, imagining Susan safe 
at home in her apartment. She was not safe. 
She was alone, and her heart gave out. 
My memory of her is a shipwreck, no treasure in this deep, 
no hard place for echo. 
I sleep less now and flat on my back, as if expecting a leap.  
I should have invited her up. 
I should have sucker-punched her fierce empty. 

Bring me a trumpet.
Bring me Lake Michigan, Chicago. 
Forget I can’t read music. I will split my lips and play her 
back to life like a sweet jazz showcase, 
a live wire, a fluorescent light. 
This fog doesn’t have to be our map of what happened. 
This doesn’t have to be Susan, gone. 
This isn’t me, disappearing next. 
                        

—After Andrea Potos 

When during a January dusk brilliant 
with horizon, you can sit 
on a Divi tree on a beach in Aruba, 
in a sky blue skirt and gauzy white blouse, 
his hand on your hand on the trunk between.
This could be the credits rolling 
on the cheesiest Lifetime movie, 
where the couple is pummeled for 90 minutes:
his brother dead by suicide, her best friend 
a brain tumor, their devotion pushed 
to the limits of shout or worse, exhaustion, 
and even a sick cat they tend until he 
convinces her to let it end, and she almost 
ends, her will a crushed lotus flower caught 
in the undertow and him unable to swim 
but jumping in anyway to save her.  
But here, now, as the last of the sun winks out, 
a silence between us, for we have only 
an ordinary life, nothing so heart-shattering.
Just this, with you: lovely, lovely you.