Current Issue: Spring/Summer 2011

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Michael Homolka

once your mother lay face down on the carpet
shirt off while you rubbed her back after a hard day

I showed up early to go swimming
and when I came in through the open door
you both said no

neither of you gathering yourselves

you had that game too
the one where you’d sit in an armchair
pretending to read the paper

your mother would start to vacuum too close
and you’d lift your legs in synch with her strokes

*

in the deep end I liked to choke you from behind
to test what you’d learned in tae kwan do
I remember you’d let me hold you for a while

kicking upward to see how much you could endure

your hands would grip my forearm
as it pulled back on your neck

but you’d make no move to get away

neither of us certain what the contact meant
slick chest against slick back
water growing choppy with our treading

even if we never see each other again
I’ll remember you

that was what you kept saying our last semester
and I believed you

and we never do
see each other

*

each decade I know I misunderstand you
more than the one before

how you sensed what I was about to say
from my expression alone

or how you stayed
so even-keeled in spite of moving from city to city
as your mother followed the clinics

it must have felt natural to you
that we’d have to settle for abiding
solely in each other’s thoughts

and it must have felt natural to you
the way we rolled around on the floor wrestling

exploring the sensations of each other’s physiques
muscles flexing till we couldn’t tell whose were whose

*

at the end of the night with the pool’s chlorine
wafting off our skin you’d slice
kiwis oranges and bananas

then drop in the ginseng (which your mother praised
for stabilizing the emotions)

I’d pretend to help but only delay the process
with my imaginary un-slicer

elbow jamming into your gut and flapping
like a chicken wing between you and the cutting board
till finally we’d drink the thick batter-like smoothie
one after the other straight out of the blender

on the backs of your hands as you cleaned
those loose orange gratings never bothered you
the way they bothered me

I wanted to flick them away as I watched you

wondering what it was about the smell of the rind on your skin the sound of the sink going

your hands rubbing back and forth then one over the other

 

Michael Homolka's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, minnesota review, Notre Dame Review, and West Branch. His book-length manuscript has been a semi-finalist in the Crab Orchard, Sarabande, and Zone 3 contests. He lives and works in New York City.