Jennifer Dixey's Shared Poems

"Millions of unsold
games and consoles were buried
in a New Mexico landfill
in 1983."
-- NY Times article,
January 29, 2012

Imagine an expedition:
intrepid souls, bent on
recapturing our childhoods.
Ten of us, or twelve, Atari hunters.

We dig and dig.
There are layers to get through
that go back thirty years,
maybe more.

The 2000's layers are littered
with anti-Iraq war posters,
plastic bags from gluten-free bread,
political bumper stickers. Hope. Change.

From the 90s, stacked high,
bulky beige computers,
heavy and square, tied together
with tangles of wires and cords.

We know we've hit the 80s
when we reach a trove of shoulder pads
removed from women's business suits
that would no longer sell.

Then, under all that, finally,
the familiar brown and tan console,
black controller sticks, white cartridges
like 8-track tapes, little silver switches.

Buried beneath that layer,
I find myself sitting on the floor
in a living room in San Diego, warm
summer 1979 afternoon dissolving
into warm summer evening
and still-warm summer night
without my noticing it,
eyes locked on the family TV set
as I sit in the dark, legs crossed,
five feet away from that glowing screen,
staring up, my dog curled up sleeping
next to my leg, and then the Atari,
the only other being
occupying that small expanse
of goldenrod shag carpet, watching
intently as a square of light bounces
from one side of the screen to the other,
yawning, unable to go to sleep yet,

trying just to catch it
one more time.

Backseat demon, that little
chill up my spine as I drive
the dark roads from my parents' house.
Driving through the ill-named Sudden Valley,
with its tinge of mildly unpleasant surprise
I find myself locking the doors reflexively
turning on the brights
shaking off the shivers
by trying to recite
a prayer from memory,
and when that doesn't work,
a poem.

Finally, frustrated, no prayer, no
poem coming to mind,
I turn on the radio, hit the seek button,
run into the soothing cadences
of a BBC news reader.

He is talking of Syria.
How many people have died in the last few days.
Then the former leader of Yemen,
who is visiting our country for medical care.
It is not clear if he will return.
His countrymen do not want him.
He has killed too many of them.

I wonder
how many and what kind
of prayers or poems
got the Syrian people,
the Yemeni people,
through their very real fears
these last few months.

My imaginary backseat demon
has fled. Their suffering renders my
fears childish, silly, meaningless.

"Through a glass darkly."

Yes, that's it.

on radio waves
a dark voice singing to me:
shakuhachi notes

brush in deep
red acrylic paint,
no, better, oil,
a natural substance,
then, slapping the canvas,
marking, defacing, violent.

light strokes and dark,
ink in a pen,
no, better, a well,
the nib dipping and rising
then, pen touching paper,
delicate, quick, deft.

heating sugar, butter, cacao,
on an electric,
no, a gas stove, a flame
growing and dancing,
it licks the pot's copper edges,
sluicing, tempering, sweet
brittle stuff. he
and she. they jostle
one another, laugh now
and then, don't talk
about their work.

breathe in deep,
smile, sigh. here,
they meet.

my husband can be found
of an evening, these days
playing the harmonica
for an hour or so.
tonight he said "I've decided
I will play every night. For practice."
such a thing
has never occurred before in our house:
the practicing of an instrument
every day.
it's something I used to do
when I was a teenager,
sitting down at the piano
every after-school afternoon.
it was joy, independence,
freedom. mine alone.
the piano.

now, in our home,
we have a keyboard
but I rarely use it.
I still like playing
but the joy has given way
to a kind of bewilderment,
because I don't know where
the passion to play went.
I fantasize sometimes
that we will make room
for a real, upright piano,
wooden, with tall keys that travel
and feel like real piano keys
because they are.

yet also when I was a teenager
I used to write poems
on a long sheet of paper
in a spiral notebook
with a pen,
and that was joy;
now I write poems
on an electronic keyboard
and that is joy, too.
but the daily habit
was long gone.
now you can find me
of an evening, these days
writing poems.
for practice.
for the joy of it.