Lane Falcon

He stands in my bedroom doorway and goes on about how this is it then, I won’t see him again, and I sit in my antique chair and cradle her while she sucks out the last ounce of her bottle, and he shivers a little in that threshold—don’t try and call me, nothing. When my daughter’s older, I’ll tell her the truth—and the silence turns pink in my mouth, then orange, then blue.

•

At five, he romped

barefoot in a pigpen

in the Dominican Republic,

his aunt would sterilize

a needle and pick whipworms

from the bottoms of his feet.

He, with a matching pair

of sneakers for every outfit,

whose rubber soles jut

just over the edge of my bed,

my incredulity matched

by wonder. In my dream,

the worm’s pointed head

pricks through the skin

of my index finger. Tweezers

finally grip the exposed

eighteenth of an inch,

and it stretches,

stretches, its length

lodged in my flesh,

til the tweezers slip

and the worm, still one,

snaps back into

position.

The Descent

Why do they ignore me?

My sister and mother, who don’t

look themselves but svelte, decorous

in frosted lipstick.

The voice says you died.

Me? The ghost of this house

where I found what I stole? A broken

VHS and the diary

of the gastroenterologist I dated.

On the mantelpiece,

a picture of me at The Gala leans

without frame. How blithe I was

with my chipped nail polish

and glitter wallet, how little I cared

my hair clung to the fringe

of the circular rug . . .

Dream Feed

The infant hatches from sleep,

a hiccup, chirp and gasp

reel me from bed

to the edge of her crib. Her eyes

jerk upward.

In minutes, they’ll latch onto mine

as I push the latex nipple

between her lips, hurry

to quell her rage.

She bats the anime toy clipped

to the car seat where I’ve placed her

while I mix Similac and nursery water,

my panic, a current an inch below the coos

One second Baby.

Hold on Honey,

I’m here—

My Father Fixes My Portable A/C

If it would only grip, he says, just a little,

the plastic hose clamped between his bent

knee and elbow, as he tries to screw the open

end into the “duct.” I now know the name

for it—the part I circled with painters tape

from when I moved in six years ago (adhering

to itself, it twisted thin as twine as I brought it

round the hose, then patched it, again and again,

when chutes of humid air pushed through,

arrows of sun piercing clouds). Even the word

“grip” fits, what neither part will do as he seals

their tenuous kiss with aluminum tape, welding

the last few grooves of the hose to the duct’s

ridge.

Lane Falcon’s poems have been published in The Cortland Review, Rhino, Brain, Child Magazine, Pank, Word Riot, 2 River View and more. In 2012, she was awarded the Rona Jaffe Fellowship from The Vermont Studio Center. She lives in New York City.