tana jean welch
Jesus Wet the Bed Like You
So your father interrupted your mother’s plan
to become a dowager
when he sold the house in secret,
gathered his bones and nails and sailed
out of town via the drawbridge exit.
A series of relocations fell onto your mother’s brow—
seaport to seaport, aunt to uncle—
and she was forced to battle
your sudden insecurity with a rubber bed sheet
and a sweet singing budgerigar.
You named the bird after your father
and never once thought
about how your mother felt
when the signalman’s light moved
from the lighthouse, flooding her bedroom window.
Now, at the bird-father’s funeral, I’m watching you
stand clear-eyed and angry,
and the proper hour has come
to ask you to consider the shifting nature of gloom,
to think of all the good that can come from an enema—
and quarantine—so please remember,
next time it hurts, the skin
of an orange must be peeled to reach
the pulp—and when you need me,
I’ll be there to cradle your sad, but handsome testicles.
The Four Jean Maries
Jean Marie Lavender is the granddaughter of her mother’s father,
the man who gave her deep, black coffee eyes, the man who carved
her fresh, Fresno peaches slice by slice with his pocket knife.
Jean Marie Bailey is the daughter of her mother’s first husband,
a thick man the color of onion skin, a man who watched her head,
mouth, and hands like a peregrine falcon carrying a bomb
in it’s belly. If her grandfather helped her climb the ladder
onto his rough shingled roof to watch the setting sun bloom
into a pink bouquet, this new man loomed over her like a tsunami
wave waiting in the wing while hot oil sparked in her eye.
Oil popping from an everywhere anger, or from the heavy pan
on the stove as Jean Marie bent corn tortillas into taco shells.
All men give their women at least one gift, including this placebo
father who passed down his Vietnam survival skills of lying and quiet
tip-toe. He taught her to fear loud noises and fry food with hatred,
so Jean Marie Glass married a man who resembled a small turtle,
a man who gave her already twice-calibrated heart instruction
on the methods of malt liquor drinking, manipulation,
and the breaking of windows. And because she falsely believed
her grandfather was easily disappointed, Jean Marie stayed
good as long as she could, as long as anything can hold on
to the spirit of another before it dives off the building;
and because her father never knew that, while cooking, then
and forever after, she kept the algae-filled fiberglass pool,
the object of her mother’s suburban desire,
in the back of her mind as a symbol of prison and failure;
and because glass, a silicate substance, is almost always salvageable
once broken—all it takes is glue or fire and a vase becomes a bowl
becomes a cup becomes a mosaic until the last product looks deep
into the white abyss of the morning glory flower and sees
a forgiving ocean filled with sailboats and pelicans—
because of this, Jean Marie Thomas is the wife of Daniel Thomas,
a man as tall as the loblolly pines, a man who kisses her knees
and feeds her soda crackers and knows she is every one and none
of these four Jean Maries. She rubs hot oil on his back and he sees
his wife, like any woman, is only a girl carrying men between her toes.
