Ars Poetica with Passing Hailstorm
by Steven Espada Dawson
The ceiling is a woman buried upside down.
Let me start again—in Maywood, California there’s a library
that’s important to me. Its many ceiling lights: indifferent
glass breasts pointing down at their readers. Each nipple
a gathering of dead moths. At the hospital, I hear
a nurse call cancer the big casino
as in the house always wins. A house is a many-sided die
always rolling on its spine. I spent
my teenage years watching a good mother lose
her breasts, her hair. She screamed in the shower. She screamed
in the mirror. Each drain wreathed
with death’s jet-black wig. There was no Sesame Street episode
for this lesson: the first time you see a man’s hand
up Cookie Monster’s ass, your childhood dies a little. Every day
I wait under passing clouds, feverish and eager
to see a flash of skin. Something hairy and flesh-colored
to point my pitchfork at. After that last hailstorm
the front yard looked like a fancy party
where the guests lost all their pearls.
Watch me busy myself with finishing line,
string each bead of ice together. Let me start again--
this is a gift quickly melting in my hands.
Let me start again—in Maywood, California there’s a library
that’s important to me. Its many ceiling lights: indifferent
glass breasts pointing down at their readers. Each nipple
a gathering of dead moths. At the hospital, I hear
a nurse call cancer the big casino
as in the house always wins. A house is a many-sided die
always rolling on its spine. I spent
my teenage years watching a good mother lose
her breasts, her hair. She screamed in the shower. She screamed
in the mirror. Each drain wreathed
with death’s jet-black wig. There was no Sesame Street episode
for this lesson: the first time you see a man’s hand
up Cookie Monster’s ass, your childhood dies a little. Every day
I wait under passing clouds, feverish and eager
to see a flash of skin. Something hairy and flesh-colored
to point my pitchfork at. After that last hailstorm
the front yard looked like a fancy party
where the guests lost all their pearls.
Watch me busy myself with finishing line,
string each bead of ice together. Let me start again--
this is a gift quickly melting in my hands.
Steven Espada Dawson is from East Los Angeles. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he is a former Halls Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and Ruth Lilly Fellow at the Poetry Foundation. His work appears in Agni, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, and Poetry. His poems have been anthologized in Best New Poets, Pushcart Prize, and Sarabande’s Another Last Call.