The Fiddleback

Two Poems

Julie Marie Wade

Listen Here

from Subjunctive Fantasia (II)

                        *

If I had a son, I’d name him Zebediah
& call him “Z” for short. I’d buy him
a pair of denim overalls & iron
OH MY GOSH on the front pocket
in ransom-note lettering. “Z” would be,
no doubt, tall for his age & highly precocious,
so at sixteen he’d grow a mustache, &
I’d take him out to the bars. We’d play
pinball awhile, & I’d do some shots. Then,
Z’d smile at me over a Zima, his signature drink,
thank me for being so cool. “What?” I’d shrug,
my head shaved clean as a cue ball, Jose Cuervo
hot on my breath. “You know I need a
designated driver.”

                                    *

If I were a car, I’d be an el camino. (Is an
el camino even a car?) Well, anyway,
I don’t mind a car in a kind of identity crisis.
I don’t mind a truck that can’t make up its mind.
But if I were a vehicle of any sort, I’d be a sleek,
osprey-grey el camino, with a door handle
that jammed & another duct-taped shut & a load of tree bark
to be transported somewhere spread out in back
under a bright blue tarp. The destination
wouldn’t matter, see? I’d drive around
that way for hours: running stoplights,
taking corners too fast, flexing my last
good gears. And when a teenaged
cop on a bicycle flagged me down,
I’d shift into reverse, flash him my best,
pin-striped smile. “What’s the matter, son?”
I’d say, the diesel thick in my throat.
“You never heard of joy-riding?”

                                    *

If I were a television, I’d be turned up too loud.
They’d go looking for the mute button, but to
no avail. They’d try to change the channel, too,
though invariably I’d land on something bright &
burdened by nostalgia—Maxwell Smart gabbing
on his shoe phone, Mary Richards tossing her
black-&-blue tam.

I’d play old-time movies, on TCM & AMC,
all but Casablanca, which I never liked. I’d show
Katharine Hepburn in her high-waisted, Hollywood
pants, Jimmy Stewart leaning over a bridge, professing:
I’m not a praying man. And all the Doris Day-Rock
Hudson pics that any praying man could ever stand.
I’d be set to Pillow Talk & Send Me No Flowers,
delayed-fuck story lines & guys who wouldn’t know what
to do with the girls if they got ‘em.

But I would know. I would blink my Technicolor
eyes & never tell.

*

If I were dessert, I’d be one of the ones on fire.

Portrait of Sandra Bullock as the Last of the Movie Girlfriends

On my wedding day. A married woman to my right,
a single woman to my left. {Bracketed, braced.}
My would-be bridesmaids.

But this is a cinema, & not an orchard.
This a diversion, not an elopement.
These are, after all, the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

{Review: “a chick flick for all seasons”}

The woman to my right intuits {correctly}
that I have fallen in love with the woman to my left.
The last one left standing. The only one I couldn’t bear to lose.

Outside, my white dress in her back seat
melts like a cupcake, like meringue gone sour.
I keep the garter, for sentimental reasons.

{Tagline: “The secret is out.”}

I couldn’t care less about Rebecca Wells,
but her titles always seem to apply. For instance,
Little Altars Everywhere {why, oh why?}

Now Sandra Bullock stands in the kitchen, her pert clavicles
exposed, the palms of her hands pressing lightly on the counter.
For me, in my squeaky chair: a little shortness of breath, a little tremor.

{Keywords: “Personal History/Sentiment /Estrangement/”}

And I understand that she is posed—as we all are, one way
or another. But this other beside me, our wrists brushing in the air-
conditioned dark, heightens these apperceptions, quickens my {giddy/guilty} pulse.

No longer inured by obligation, expectation, I seem unable to stop blushing:
The Vanishing, The Thing Called Love, While You Were Sleeping…why had I
slowed them down that way—the pause & play, persistent freeze-frame
& relentless rewind?

{Genre: “Comedy/Drama”}

There was something, clearly, I had wanted to see, still more I was frightened
to believe. Everything looked different on the silver screen, all my senses keened,
winnowing to form that golden ring of light around the woman’s body.
But when I looked away,

when my eyes adjusted to that shadowed space, I was no less transfixed {& no less
altered} than the first time you cast the net of your name, & I became entangled,
listening. I knew on my wedding day: I would not see men again,

not in the same way.

--------
Julie Marie Wade is the author of two collections of poetry, Without (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Postage Due (White Pine Press, 2013) and two collections of prose, Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010) and Small Fires (Sarabande Books, 2011). Most recently, she has received an Al Smith Individual Artist Grant from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir. Visit her at juliemariewade.com

Photo by EasyQueenie