Homeless Suite
Across the street, a woman stops
at piled garbage in open plastic barrels
on the street for pickup, fishing in
to pick out three paper shopping bags
dumping their contents back into the barrel
carefully refolding the bags and walking
away with them under her arm—
like she’s arresting them/protecting
and cuddling them/like she’s going
to store her dreams in them/I hope
they don’t smell too bad. The dreams.
*
I’m not saying she’s homeless or not.
Not for me to say, I know. Today
on the river trail, I saw two men
tying up tarps on their new encampment
having been booted out from the old
encampment downtown yesterday.
The city made a show of helping them
dismantle, scribbling notes for the cameras
but at the end of the day most were left
to their own soiled devices. Some lay
in sleeping bags in the rain this morning.
Rain, the one thing we share. It’s not for me
to say very much these days. I got a new
lock on my door yesterday, one of those
keyless electronic ones, and yet
I can’t remove the old key from my ring.
*
The city is tiny-talking about building
tiny houses. Jesus is a write-in candidate
for mayor. Where do the homeless vote?
I’m asking for a friend. The new tents
go up beneath a bridge with all the joy-
less drudge of soldiers tired of battle.
I don’t know much first-hand. Even less
second hand. I need to put the electric
stim on my back to keep me from
spasming out on the floor. Or perhaps
simply to wake me up. Homelessness.
Two esses trailing off into a hiss.
Boo. Hiss. Homeless. Encampment.
One of the new guys says hello.
I give him a wave, the equivalent
of a slap across the face? See,
that’s where they’re at, in one long
present-tense saga. In the table
of contents, a series of asterisks
covering their faces when they talk.
Along the river last month
someone had let an unwanted
guinea pig loose. After spottings,
photos, on-line attestations,
the animal community lost its shit
trying to capture and save it.
To capture and save. To contract
or to contradict. A neighbor
walks down the street picking up
blown garbage from trashcans.
I saw an exterminator emerge
from his house this morning
with his spray gun. The neighbor
held his child in his arms.
The boy was waving.
*
We’ve all got delete buttons now.
Things have been trickling down
like the dye from Ronald Reagan’s
hair for over forty years and it still
hasn’t reached them—the homeless
less…That poor guinea pig.
We all can use a few paper grocery bags.
You can draw faces on them and cut out
holes for your eyes and mouth. Or
put groceries in them. I have no more
idea than the mayor. My own dreams
have a distinct odor, as if something
has turned. All I know is that we all
live in tiny houses. God help us.
Mom’s Meals
the name of a company that delivers meals
to senior citizens like my parents
who now live in their old dining room
a hospital bed and a single bed
a stairway rising now into the nowhere
of their past, unvisited, unremembered.
They complain about the meals they chose
that pile up in the fridge uneaten
something to be mad and obsessive about
as their bodies and minds abandon them.
Or they just forget about them. The TV
shakes paint off the walls. Exaggeration’s
an artform here, the Toe, the Bruise,
the Misplaced Checkbook. They’re cashing
all their checks earned with earlier kindness.
The remote control, the center of this universe,
mysterious rock or genie’s bottle. That’s
the beauty and horror. Those two words share
no letters. She has the names of her brother’s
five wives memorized to show she’s not all
gone. Go ahead, ask her. He stores his pills
in the pocket of the bib he wears. Whatever
works until it doesn’t. Me, I’m sitting on
the couch, turning down the beer I’m offered
since I stopped drinking fifteen years ago.
Should I repeat myself? I could. Thing is, I will.
I wonder if a Mom invented Mom’s meals
or whether a child invented meals for Mom
or if there’s a God out there who could make
them laugh again as I fail in my one simple
assignment. Is eldercare an opera without
translation, or am I grasping for the straws
they drink with? I’m going to tell Mom
you’re not eating her meals. Not funny.
Mom’s meals arrive on the porch every
two weeks packed in enough Styrofoam
to insulate an igloo. They worry about
the waste. All that Styrofoam. We’ve
made up a story about recycling it
and we’re sticking to that story
so I throw it in the trunk and take it
with us to go in our garbage. Some
times we throw a few old meals
in there too. Sometimes I feel
like we’re miming our eldercare.
The remote needs a new battery.
I slap it against my palm
like it’s a stubborn pet that refuses
to obey. Or maybe we’re mouthers
in the choir who’ve been told not
to sing. Or maybe it’s one big game
of charades. The car in their garage
idles in wait for its disposal.
Today, I’m vacuuming our trunk
out at the car wash, all those tiny
pieces of Styrofoam. Or most
of them. Styrofoam lasts forever
I’m doing my best, Mom.
JIM DANIELS’ latest fiction book, The Luck of the Fall, was published by Michigan State University Press. His most recent poetry collections include The Human Engine at Dawn, Wolfson Press, Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press, and Comment Card, Carnegie Mellon University Press. His first book of nonfiction, An Ignorance of Trees, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. A native of Detroit, he currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
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