some sonnets

David Hadbawnik

I pass by a smudge on the ground that may
have been blood or spilled beans or somebody’s
baby you hear about such things left there
because mom was in a hurry I keep
going after all I’m in a hurry
too but that smudge sticks with me seems to call
to me I circle back I can’t
remember exactly where I’d seen it
the light heavy by now with evening
I ask a man if he’s seen it describe
the smudge as purplish resembling the face
of a small child the man points that way
I run anxious to find my baby I’m
sure it was mine someone must’ve seen it

How hard it was to slow down and enter
the world of the mollusk as it opened
a door to let me in the walls gray-red
wet and oozing like breath it took getting
used to the way the floor zigzagged under
my feet there was a guttural rhythmic
music so we danced the mollusk’s dance
is green and moves the way waves move at low
tide barely kissing the shore gentle soft
as a foamy tongue then it was time for
dinner we sat quite formally I was served
such delicacies shark-fin surprise puffs
of anemone canapes shaped like sand
dollars crumbling softly on the tongue

I couldn’t be reached for comment when screams
ripped apart the night nor could the owls as
they had decamped to a separate dark
not accessible to our instruments
their eyes turned completely inward the bees
had plenty to say but their spokesperson
was stopped at the border there was a snake
everyone looked to for particularly
wise remarks but all we found was a raw
slither of skin in the deep everglades
so we turned to the sky alas the clouds
had frozen in abnegation perhaps
the sea we surmised but it had sucked up
into itself we stood bereft in the wet sand

Two men in a hurry talking about
themselves on a crowded street while a girl
plays nearby. The relationships unclear
at first just a breath of fresh air is that
your daughter oh how lovely nothing on
the brain. The brain an organ that often
takes flight though it can also take root.
The little girl punches holes in the day
with her memory. Someone hails the men
from a long way off, well one of the men.
Well what the hell. What the hell were you trying
to say? Something along those lines, tender
and pure, the girl will remember it years
later, a pure line going from here to there.

As I stood on the corner I realized
how rarely I’d actually stood on
a streetcorner minding my business
waiting for something to happen in my
elbow my mother had often told me
something would happen if only I’d wait
I remember my father holding his
elbow in the palm of his hand as he
lied on the couch with the shades drawn moaning
one afternoon so perhaps she had a point
I saw a bird trapped in the window of
a store the bird kept flying into
and there I felt a sharp twang in my elbow
as I bent to pick it out of the broken glass

Objects in the house as flotsam and jetsam
in the mind. Gold rings shoved into drawers
in the bathroom. Utensils sleeping in
kitchen, knives and forks, peelers and plastic
straws. Are all of the doors bolted and locked?
The knob on the front door loose in the hand
as it’s pulled shut. Cards arrayed on mantel.
Furnace rumbles to life. Water in kettle.
I take back what I said, didn’t mean it.
I’d give anything not to have to look
for that rolled-up tarp on a shelf somewhere
in the garage. Water’s boiling, timer’s
been set. Each says what the other’s thinking,
the mind blurs forward, a long, tangled cord.

Yesterday snow on the branches of the
tree outside the front window and snow on
the windshield of the car but it melts
pretty quickly under the warm spring sun
I look out my office window hoping
to see kids at play on the hill beside
the playground they are not there but I do see
turkeys as I drive down the road to school
or was it only the memory of
having seen them a palimpsest of all
the times I’ve come off the road onto
the curve around the field into the lot
finding them pecking away on the grass
mama papa the whole turkey family

There’s nothing to do but feel liberated
try to express gratitude as best we
can I’ll dance a jig on the last breath of
music before it winks out you follow
the hieroglyphs etched by the bunnies
hopping on the last patch of snow as it
melts in the yard maybe we can both sing
in unison to work up some of that
liberated spirit I sit outside
the liquor store for maybe an hour and
tell myself it’s coming the feeling is
coming nothing can hold it back I think
about going inside reluctantly
though I start my car and drive home