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The Last House in Minneapolis
Go past the last house in Minneapolis, darling,
and that's where you'll find us. Driving up here
today, I saw through my rearview mirror
the ghost of my old boss,
the one who found my apartment for me,
in the driver's seat of the car behind.
She and I used to talk all day when I first started work.
Later we used to fight all day and then leave the office,
tailgating each other home to the same neighborhood.
God rest her soul. The last house in Minneapolis is a split-level ranch,
with blonde brick half-facade, completed by vertical clapboard,
painted pink. You1ll recognize it by the sign,
This is the last house in Minneapolis.
I didn't know I could be happy until I left my home,
my family, my Nebraska. The split-level's roof is flat,
but tilts toward the front, showing the home's high forehead.
The last house before the last house in Minneapolis
is a traditional Cape Cod, in white shingles.
The narrow black shutters, clearly impractical
for such clean windows, elegantly slough off
their paint in the smallest of curls. The first house after
the last house in Minneapolis is an apartment,
across from the touchless car wash that in summer
scents the neighborhood with pink detergent.
The bedroom window is covered by blinds now instead of curtains.
We had a lot of sex up there. Once, after a shower,
you dried yourself by standing in the bedroom
near the closet, jumping up and down.
I reached for my glasses on the nightstand.
I didn't know I could be who I am
until I left my hometown.
The house after the last house in Minneapolis
reminds me of the last bike path in Omaha.
Morgan and I walked it one midnight in junior high,
drinking a gallon jug of apple wine. We walked past
the flush irises, ebullient in their bloom,
fleshy, transparent white transubstantiating into
grape at the ruffled petal's end. The fenced-in
swimming pool glowed fifties aqua as he lied
about climbing the fence once, taking off all his clothes,
to swim there naked. By the end of the last bike path
in Omaha, I was so drunk Morgan had to take me home
to sleep in his room. When I woke up, I saw him
nude, standing by my bed. Back then, adolescent,
still drunk, I thought I would live forever.
But now I know better.
After the last house in Minneapolis,
the street runs into the park, green, dark, rich with sunlight glints
burnishing the occasional silhouette near the lake.
And we get tired, old. No matter what hangs in the bedroom window
of the house after the last house in Minneapolis,
you and I will always be inside, me watching you dance.
Todd the Worm
Below the sharp dart and feathered wind
of spastic hegemony
the worm is happy to have his hole.
An intricate warren of bifurcated paths,
gray light, dry dust shifting
to warm, fecund wet.
Down there, he can slip along
with other worms
who look so much like him
they may indeed be him.
a portion, front or back,
guillotined by blunt spade
or ragged hoe, regenerated,
all organs dispersed throughout the body
the brain merely an allotment of each cell,
so that his worm cells connect
with other units throughout his
topsoil labyrinth of decomposition,
and every worm is one worm.
No communication is needed,
or possible,
not by smell or touch or sound.
A worm may only know himself
best or safest in darkness and sameness.
Above ground there is just the full
pleasant swelling of membrane
in saturated soil, or the last terrible
grip of the trident, constricting tongue
The Graduate Assistants' Office
Six desks in a rectangular room. Lime green walls.
Two of us were in the office on the day
I spilled liquid paper all over myself,
my new shorts, my favorites.
Tim Wanamaker offered noncommittal advice
and I listened dispassionately
before I called my partner on the hall phone.
I was close to crying, with Tim in earshot.
My partner was skeptical. High, tinny voice.
Come home, he said, he would try something.
He knew a lot about fabrics. The day he got his job
as drapery workroom supervisor, I said,
It's curtains for you. I rode my bike
through green streets, clean warmth of summer.
His irises blooming by the back stoop,
me on the porch. He stood on the carpet of grass,
lamplight of summer across his shoulders.
He strained gasoline through the material,
rubbing it against itself.
Buffalo
We sat in his Impala, ready
for another driving lesson.
There were still many things
I did not know how to do.
I backed out of the driveway
and accelerated with assurance.
Have you been practicing, he asked.
We drove to Pioneers Park
and stopped, out of habit,
to look at the animals,
although now he could no longer
walk beside me. I took myself
to the buffalo, who was inches
from the fence in his vast enclosure.
I could hear the dull thud of his jaws
tearing grass from the sod.
The weight of him was heat
through the wire fence.
I felt the slow tear and give
of the grass.
Here and There
A square of the sky
deep rich blue in the middle
diluted near the edges
framed in white.
Two birds crossing the face of the sky
the way your hand pushes your blue-black hair
off your forehead
lifts it up when considering.
Your three photographs of my cat
crouched in a box
poking out of a sack
hiding behind you for warmth.
Your story of a small town's children
staring at you in a post office
your laughter in the telling.
The slowness of our speech.
A red Spirit, a driver's license
after three tries.
A photograph of you in the dark
the flash cracks through the night.
James Cihlar's poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The James White Review, and Briar Cliff Review, and in the anthology Aunties: 35 Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother, edited by Ingrid Sturgis and published by Ballantine.; his reviews and essays have appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Literary Magazine Review, and the Lincoln Journal-Star. He has worked in editing, art, and marketing at Redleaf Press, Coffee House Press, and New Rivers Press. In 2000 he won a Minnesota Arts Board Fellowship in Poetry. (December 2005)(October 2006).
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