My process is live it and try to live to tell – Su Zi
MEMORY WINDOW
Neighbors: Ray n Kay
(with thanks to Laura Baker)
It is in the evening when empty houses are most lonely.There is no one to welcome to shelter.
There is only memory.
What of the life that was
these are what is seen in the shadow hours
the house next door is now haunted
Kay’s garden lights dutifully turn on at five, the ones at the gate on a blinking pattern
Over the midnight hours, their cells fade, except the green lantern shall burn all night.
And now, on a deep mist at dawn on the morning of the equinox, the empty house
clings to the gates
inside is gone
all the lovely things of home
gone
the windows witness the neighbor, but now the veils are affixed open
a raw emptiness
seen in the shifting shadows of the days and seasons since
Ray’s nursing home death
oh , Kay, ours was a sisterhood of watchfulness of a hammock
Sam Love said was cold
we were the ones who first found bones in in the garden.
you found me first digging cactus from a parceled field,
my shirt and hair an untidy twist
Back then I cursed much when working and have you ever spent a day with a
shovel digging up prickly pear cactus? It’s quite the meditation. The prickly pear cactus is edible in
multiple forms. It also has thorns. In consideration of livestock or food field use, it requires far
more thought than what it usually gets, as prickly pear cactus are a staple in the diet of the
majestically ancient gopher tortoise, which is threatened with genetic extinction. Their dwellings
tend to be subterrain in the sandy hammocks between the flow ways of former free fens routinely
called swamp.
Ya’ll came to the fence.
I was smoking and sweating and swearing and digging cactus into a wheelbarrow.
Hi neighbor. No, I don’t like hunters. I still don’t like hunters : strangers who show up, drink and
shoot guns, then come Monday here we are : the crows testing the new season with their local
note.
Then, of course, there were hurricanes.
During the five hurricanes, after a few days of no power, Kay invited us to come listen to the
battery radio. Ray was listening to the power crews working.
We dressed and went through the gate we never closed between us—
Then, there was a bull asleep under the back oak tree, gracious
me
hardly dressed in a vintage 50’s chiffon overdress,
one rhinestone missing
crossing the long Bahia is torn silk during
Hurricane Charlie
I got to see your collectibles: fancy toy cars and
see how you built your house because I had just built mine
with you choosing that white enamel tile from then
I got to see how your window framed me
Kay
your kitchen
your table,
your cupboard of waiting China
and that time the middle oak
lost a limb of the fence line
—back when there were calves in the field
The cutting of the limb was a study in
all our chainsaws and golf carts and suchlike tools.
The years of waving back and worth
The storms together,
each at quadrant on our hammock.
The storms of heat are different now : That was a hot spring in a drought
that had picnic areas and such on fire. Sunsets in cities glowed in strange colors.
You died the Fourth of July, Kay of brown curls, a tall girl,
you who had cared of Ray all those passing years unseen
It was a horrible Fourth of July, true:
The Thoroughbred stood trembling at the end of his rope and sedatives until 3am.
The kitchen thermometer stood hundred at midnight
Twas me hands at the last of my ears in a curl against the blasting caps
the decibels dropping tree limbs and blood clots
For a while, the brother stayed in the RV behind with his ham radio—
Then, came ambulances cuz you fell, Ray
right onto the white tile, but there have been subtle unhousing laws in the legislature that
allow the state to take your estate.
Then, came calls cuz you fell Ray
the sheet on your lift chair
the enemy of your weakening legs
seeing you again—who you were once was lost in all but
the curve of your nose
no more smiling leprechaun man neighbor and his slang
nice tools, no maintenance in the garage as we mask up
Absent are all the homilies
The kitchen is scrubbed dark,
China is dusty
Ray, you saw me come in, boots and mask and
knew me when I could barely know you
and I knew your years were watching me
In those months the veils on the house had shown a cleft of dark
gone was their grace against the roses
yet, still there was the house watching out at evening
watching horses come for water
watching the season shift
and then came news of your ultimate fall, Ray.
the news of your surgeries, Ray
of infection
of nursing homes and amputation
As now I shall watch your house
I shall watch your house in the evening,
as the light shifts seasons and
the horses come for fresh water.
The garden lights still blink at five
the green lantern burns all night
There are no more cows in the Bahia.
some of the fenceposts have withered
some of the wire frozen too many times for Florida
yet still history persists
in these desperately remembering and lost lights.
Su Zi @xsuzi00 is a poet/writer, artist and editor of Red Mare, a poetry chapbook series; reviews have recently appeared in Handy Uncapped Pen and Rockers For Life. Art offerings are on Etsy (etsy.com/shop/suzi00), which is the only online point of sale for Red Mare, and various other of my one of only work.
Robert Frede Kenter is the EIC / publisher of Ice Floe Press, with writing and art published widely. X: @frede_kenter, IG: r.f.k.vispocityshuffle, icefloe22
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