Some Poems by Robert Luka
Alisha, Everyone Said
Had helium on her breath
At the eighth-grade dance.
Tongued wintergreen teeth,
Thought they would find a way
Through the beard I grew too early.
Wanted to lick me like a puppy –
told me so in notes folded
into combination locks
she demanded be kept
in a consecrated shoe box.
She bought me a cassette.
I put it on repeat.
It’s been looping ever since.
What seemed so stupid then
Seems just as stupid now.
I placed one foot west.
Another more west.
And a third even further.
I looked out over her skyline
To the drive-in of our impotent
Discontent. It was covered
In calx, all movie blue
And backseat serious.
I looked out and saw
Her in flashlight,
In stadium light hovering
Like a constellation of moths
Overwintered
And just risen from the milkweed.
Sated by instinct.
Kickstand
I wrecked my bicycle in the driveway
And fell palms down; in the sun-softened
Blacktop were tiny holes where my fingertips
Had been, unwitting wells from years
Of crashing on kickstands and hands
With scars like coal veins
Along the life-line, pits in the skin
Of false adventure.
I left my bicycle in the driveway one night
For my grandmother to back over
With her car.
Her cataracts fogged up the rear view,
Her nitro-patch glistened streetlight
Off her withered arm –
Years had numbed her heart.
Safety pins kept her bones
In their joints, kickstands held up
Her legs –
She was careless and brittle.
But I was recklessly young,
Shaking off the guilt tacked to my back,
Its sore corners collapsing to the common
Ground between the garage and the house
Where cars from colorful families
Would sometimes park
To form a tunnel interrupted by safety glass,
Lined up like dresser drawers that hide
The things children never want
Their parents to see.