So often in poetry workshops, a prompt is to draw a map of the place that shaped you most, your brightest or darkest place. I’ve drawn my grandmother’s house in East Nashville, the eye in the gathering storm of my childhood, rooms that held me as an oak holds shade, though stale with bacon fat and cigarettes, my grandfather’s empty beer bottles. Just as often, I’ve drawn the apartment over the Esso station my stepfather managed. The metal-grate steps where we entered at the back, bald tires stacked like lifesavers. Through the floors the ding-ding of cars rolling in below, blast of pneumatic drills, the jostle and crude jokes of men at work. A gauntlet I passed for a Co-Cola from the icy chest and Tom’s peanuts—men with greasy hands who nodded as one when my stepfather called, Hey, lardass, haven’t you eat enough?
We were not to incite the workers, my mother and I. She was not to wear slacks or go out much. Though I slipped out to climb the Indian cigar tree that lorded over the finely tuned underworld. Mama was to care for baby Joey, who I loved. I sang along, I see the moon and the moon sees me, when she swept the wide heavens, saying he could go anywhere, do anything in this man’s world. The moony Esso sign called to me, buzzed electric out my window, a tango of blues and reds pouring over my bedspread. More buzzed electric than not, above and below. My mother and her third husband who lorded over our coming and going.
One Sunday both buzzed with beer, naked from something electric passing between them, she hisses in his ear as he shaves. The incitement is hers alone. They pour into the hallway, tango as if only the moon watches—her head bashed to the wall, his fists to her cheeks and eyes, sway and punch, down to the bedroom. Joey in his crib, wide-eyed as the heavens. How many times do I dodge the dance to get to him? How many ways can I draw it? How many stars exploding blue to black to violet? Bloodied skin splits open, maps all I can trace. This tight-wound gauntlet I walk yet in dreams of the underworld, not enough coins in my pocket to cross over.
