Marie Howe: The Boy

My older brother is walking down the sidewalk into the suburban
summer night:
white T-shirt, blue jeans— to the field at the end of the street.

Hangers Hideout the boys called it, an undeveloped plot, a pit
overgrown
with weeds, some old furniture thrown down there,

and some metal hangers clinking in the trees like wind chimes.
He’s running away from home because our father wants to cut his hair.

And in two more days our father will convince me to go to him— you know
where he is— and talk to him: No reprisals. He promised. A small parade
of kids

in feet pajamas will accompany me, their voices like the first peepers
in spring.
And my brother will walk ahead of us home, and my father

will shave his head bald, and my brother will not speak to anyone the next
month, not a word, not pass the milk, nothing.

What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk
down a sidewalk without looking back.

I was the girl. What happened taught me to follow him, whoever he was,
calling and calling his name.

Marie Howe: The Gate

I had no idea that the gate I would step through

to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

Marie Howe: Prayer

Every day I want to speak with you. 

And every day something more important

calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty 

products, the luggage
I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage 

trucks outside
already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

Marie Howe: After the Movie

My friend Michael and I are walking home arguing about the movie.
He says that he believes a person can love someone
and still be able to murder that person.

I say, No, that’s not love. That’s attachment.
Michael says, No, that’s love. You can love someone, then come to a day

when you’re forced to think “it’s him or me”
think “me” and kill him.

I say, Then it’s not love anymore.
Michael says, It was love up to then though.

I say, Maybe we mean different things by the same word.
Michael says, Humans are complicated: love can exist even in the
murderous heart.

I say that what he might mean by love is desire.
Love is not a feeling, I say. And Michael says, Then what is it?

We’re walking along West 16th Street—a clear unclouded night—and I hear my voice
repeating what I used to say to my husband: Love is action, I used to say
to him.

Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at
someone you want to eat and not eat them.

Janis Joplin says, take another little piece of my heart now baby.

Meister Eckhardt says that as long as we love images we are doomed to
live in purgatory.

Michael and I stand on the corner of 6th Avenue saying goodnight.
I can’t drink enough of the tangerine spritzer I’ve just bought—

again and again I bring the cold can to my mouth and suck the stuff from
the hole the flip top made.

What are you doing tomorrow? Michael says.
But what I think he’s saying is “You are too strict. You are
a nun.”

Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think these things
of me even if he’s not thinking them?

Above Manhattan, the moon wanes, and the sky turns clearer and colder.
Although the days, after the solstice, have started to lengthen,

we both know the winter has only begun.

Marie Howe: What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, 
some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, 
and the crusty dishes have piled up
 
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. 
This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, 
and the sunlight pours through
 
the open living-room windows because 
the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, 
the bag breaking,
 
I've been thinking: This is what the living do. 
And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, 
spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
 
I thought it again, and again later, 
when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. 
What you called that yearning.
 
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come 
and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—
we want more and more and then more of it.
 
But there are moments, walking, 
when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, 
and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
 
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat 

that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Marie Howe: Hurry

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store  
and the gas station and the green market and  
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,  
as she runs along two or three steps behind me  
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.  

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?  
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?  
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,  
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—  
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.  

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking  
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,  
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.