And there are a million other things I don’t know about my intellectual capacities.
Let’s leave emotional ones alone tonite—they’re in worse shape.
I want so much—to be versatile, charming, warm, deep, intelligent, accomplishing something, loving,
fooling around, giving instead of getting, cheery not driven, sure not uncertain, possessing not anticipating,
answers not questions.
I’m seething lately
—but it too shall pass.
FIRST PHOTOS
The only photo of Jane
I saw while growing up
hung in my parents’
bedroom. She was wearing
a long raincoat and
standing on a stair,
against a tacky interior
of bronze chevrons.
Later I will find out
that Jane was wearing
a long raincoat the night
she was killed. What if
it were the same coat
as in the picture, the one
I looked at all those years?
I arrive at the New York Public Library
with my two dates, the bare brackets
of a life. I ask a librarian
where I might find information
about an old murder. Was it
a famous murder? she queries.
Not really, I say. It was in the family.
My answer embarrasses me.
She gives me little slips of paper
which I fill out and roll up
then shove into silver tubes
as long as pinkies. After
dropping them down a hatch
I wait for the invisible staff
to send up dark blue spools
of the Detroit News from below.
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, the spools
rocket across the lighted screen.
Ike Fights Heart Setback. Blacks
End Long Strike at College. Old Foes
Truman and Nixon Hold
a Sentimental Visit. “We’ll Be
on the Moon by July!” Then
on March 22, 1969, Jane’s face
suddenly fills the screen.
Her youth an aura like a
new haircut—just blatant,
raw, crushing. A headband
keeps her brown hair back;
her lips are parted slightly.
How she wants. How she
penetrates, her eyes set back
in her brow like my mother’s,
like their father’s: dark,
obedient, devouring.
My face stares into hers,
our thoughts frozen together
on the cusp of a wave
just starting to go white-cold, curl
and fall back into the spitting green.
When I started looking at Jane,
she was much older than me.
How strange her face seems now
enlarged on this grainy screen,
now that she will always be
only twenty-three.
SPIRIT
The spirit of Jane
lives on in you,
my mother says
trying to describe
who I am. I feel like the girl
in the late-night movie
who gazes up in horror
at the portrait of
her freaky ancestor
as she realizes
they wear the same
gaudy pendant
round their necks.
For as long as I can
remember, my grandfather
has made the same slip:
he sits in his kitchen,
his gelatinous blue eyes
fixed on me. Well Jane,
he says, I think I’ll have
another cup of coffee.
TWO LETTERS FROM SWEDISH ANCESTORS, MUSKEGON, MICHIGAN (1910)
1. How the journey was (Marie)
I will let you know that I have come to a new land.
I will tell you now how the journey was.
Dear you can imagine it was terrible.
There was a war boat that drove into us
so there was a big hole in the boat
and our trunks stood in water.
We thought we were gone.
But we were not so far out.
Then we went with a smaller boat called St. Louis,
a little terrible boat.
We were real glad when we came to land.
We were in Muskegon Tuesday, October 3rd, at night.
They were nice people that Nels lives with.
Just young people.
He was so glad when he saw his little Svea.
You can’t imagine how fat he is. He thrives good here.
I have only my man and little Svea
and it is of course at first I feel alone.
I don’t think we will ever come to like America
as good as Sweden.
I wonder how it is with you. Well,
you are probably busy with the harvesting.
Is it a nice fall there at home?
Here it is changeable.
One day it rains,
the next day the sun shines.
2. A hearty greeting (Nels)