One Fascinating Poem by Lenore Weiss

 

Video Game

“The only way to get it together…is together.”

--Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

 

Maggie stared at the tattoo on her ankle
a tree spreading its limbs
the same moment

a boy with a baseball cap hoists her on his skateboard.

 

Her breasts are buttoned to his back.

Together they speed past cars.

 

She looks down.

The tattoo --

                But where is it?

       Gone    and so is he.

 

She wants an officer to file a report.

Get someone to draw a character sketch.

Post pictures on the Internet.

 

Instead, an off-duty angel slides

a skateboard beneath her feet
golden wheels confiscated from the street.

 

He tells her to handle the board 

like a certificate of completion 

and to find the thief.

 

Now she is inside a video game,

hands clammy with a thin coat of luck.

 

On her left, 

she sees a mountain as sharp as a swear word,

sails her carpet to its peak.

 

Robbed, bare, uncertain,

Maggie is the last link in a line of women

missing her mark. This is her task.

 

She hears an echo.

 

Your eyes are open like a cow on a hillside, hillside.

 

All she can see is a slope pimpled with rocks.

What a mish-mosh.

 

Yoo-hoo! Girlie!

What's the big rush like you've got a date or something?

 

In case you're wondering,

I'm the voice of the graveyard,

alive, but not in your 1-2-3. Capice?

 

So much for introductions.

So much for this and that.

 

Let's get real and nail the coffin.

You're Maggie of the Misfit Foot.

 

Here's what to do:

 

Under the lidless eyeball of the sun,

keep riding until you find Section P. 

 

When you hear a kid playing music,

ask him to help you find Granny.

 

That was it? Really?

 

Somewhere she hears a railroad car screech.

Or a dog barking?

 

Maggie rolls the skateboard beneath her head

and dreams voices:

 

      Crumbs require little water to grow.

 

At an airport security checkpoint:

      Everyone must remove all belts and empty pockets.

 

A host asks during a game show:

      What do most people want to see before they die?

 

There is a light above her head.

She never asked to be here,

alone as the tongue inside her mouth.

 

    Oh, God.

 

 

Chewing on words like camp, railroad, gold teeth, she hears:

 

Little snot go wipe your nose

or Mr. Potato Head will plant a carrot between your toes.

 

She wakes up to a day that is half night, sun blackened,

morning throws off its purple covers.

Birch branches point like arthritic fingers.

 

Hungry. She combs her hair with two fingers,

jumps on the skateboard.

 

Mountains breathe an ancient cold in her face,

makes her think of dollar-sized pancakes.

 

She steers down an aisle and hopes to find a food court,

bends her knees and waves her hands, a thrasher

 

who leans toward a clearing with white tents

surrounded by grave markers and peacocks.

 

Her golden wheels screech to a halt: sees a woman,

flesh hangs from her arms in pasty lumps.

 

Maggie throws caution through a window,

asks for food.

 

Hungry Girl got any money?

 

Maggie is only a poor girl without an allowance.

 

And why is hunger, she asks herself, 

not its own winning argument?

 

She knows her fingers will find only lint,

but digs inside her pocket anyway,

her hand strikes an empty seam bed.

 

Not so fast, says the Pasty Lump Lady.

Not so Lackawanna Railroad.

 

If Maggie removes a skateboard wheel from its axle, she says,

and gives it to the Pasty Lump Lady,

breakfast will be served. They agree.

 

Lump Lady feeds her pancakes, eggs, syrup,

wraps sunlight around the wheel 

and hides it her apron.

 

Facing west, there are gravestones,

cottonwood trees blaze yellow.

 

A little pisher peacock sweeps the ground with his tail.

Hi-ho, he says, and flutters his fanny.

 

Maggie thinks this is a 3-D animation

or maybe the Pasty Lump Lady with more tricks.

 

I'm lost, she tells the peacock.

 

The peacock plucks a feather from his tail.

He speaks with a southern accent.

 

Gua-ron-teed to take you where you need to go.

He closes his fan of feathers, disappears

into the cottonwoods.

 

She taps the ground with her foot, hopes for magic.

Nothing doing.

 

Maggie wants to return to square one,

to pop-up from the middle of the street

like a seed from a plum.

 

But the Pasty Lump Lady has stolen her hunger.

Now what?

At Sections I and M,

the sun escapes from the Pasty Lump Lady’s apron.
 

She sees a boy playing a fiddle.

His fingerboard has a ketchup label.

 

He’s tall. The boy sees the feather and speaks:

His name is Sal, short for Salamander.

She introduces herself.

 

My name is Maggie of the Misfit Foot.

 

 

She wants him to join her,

offers in payment what’s left of the skateboard.

 

Like a man about to buy a new car, he considers--

Solid wood. Gold rims. No financing. Sweet.

 

Sal raises his face from the chin rest,

says she must first find Section P,

points the way with his bow and keeps playing his part.

 

Maggie walks along a rock wall covered with moss.

Down a circle of steps, her skin the color of moonlight.

 

In shopping aisles of the dead, a woman says,

waving her fingers at a swarm of fruit flies,

 

some of us get marked up and some of us get marked down.

We all get buried in the same storehouse.

Now that’s what I call a bargain.

 

Grandmother?

 

Maggie?

 

The woman’s silver hair is pinned back with stingers from bees.

 

Life is a seasoning that tenderizes us.

Breaks down our rough edges so we can bend.

Tell me, dear, how have you been?

 

Maggie tells her about her loss.

 

Does grandma fill up like a water balloon and burst? 

 

Grandma explains how during the war,

she buried herself beneath a haystack.

There were tattooed numbers above her wrist.

 

Until a messenger boy, some mench,

exchanged them for others.

 

Two sets of numbers joined each other

and shared bloodlines.

 

Where each number began and the other one stopped,

they stuck like teeth to candy and formed something new.

 

Grandma scoops something from the dirt,

Fixes it above Maggie’s ankle.

 

It’s one world, Grandma said.

 

There on her ankle, a glowing orb, a single planet.

No countries, boundaries.

 

Go back and tell them.

 

 

Game Begin Again

Lenore Weiss grew up in New York City with whistle stops along the way in Chicago, Illinois, and Sterlington, Louisiana. Her home is in Oakland, California. Books include Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Isand (West End Press, 2012), Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hadassa Word Press, 2018). Her children's book, The Glimmerine, is an urban environmental fantasy for middle-schoolers.