By Lexi Ruditsky

MEMORIAL DAY

The facts were another thing:
your friend in the backseat
pretending to sleep
while we fought up front.

And over what?
It seems I misinterpreted
your dream. That is,
I presumed to know you.

A single lane of traffic
stretched all the way to the bridge:
everyone wanted out.
But there I went, interpreting again.

Your friend in the backseat
trying to tell a joke.
There must have been
something to laugh about.

I recall the sea was navy,
the sand white.
And we held hands at least
partway down the beach.

In your dream
there was no delete key.
Letters pelted you like pebbles
branding messages on your skin.

I did not even ask
what the letters spelled.
That was what enraged you:
I did not need to ask.

PRUDENCE ISLAND

Sliding a knife inside, you paused
before opening the shell
as if it were an envelope
addressed to someone else.

I had never tried an oyster.
I poked it with a fork.
Even after chewing,
the interior kept its form.

What would it take to know you?
you asked, shucking another.
Your expert hands could
wedge apart a locked jaw.

I grit my teeth and swallow.

THE CLOISTERS

Impatient with images of suffering
that adorned the sunless chambers,
you led me into the garden

where a patch of purple phlox
burst forth from the frozen ground
like ruptured blood vessels.

Any bench would do. Hair streaked
with white, you loomed before me—
a snow-capped mountain in spring.

Children circling on training wheels
dispersed; black squirrels
gnawing on trash scampered off;

and there was only your hand
hovering above my heart,
as a tern surveys the heaving sea.

DEEPEST REMAINS

What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
—Walt Whitman, The Wound-Dresser

1.
In my early years, I spoke in many languages.
Then I grew quiet.

(This is not an obituary.)

Some of my dreams faded,
if they could count as dreams.

I was a good friend,
though I mostly called
when there was no one else.

I was a poet,
though I only wrote
when there was nothing else.
(That was often enough.)

2.
I was truly in love once, at least as I remember it.

A boy from another country said,
I intend to go alone,
which was not what I intended.

I learned to sleep in a hammock,
my body sagging to the floor.

I bathed in the river fully clothed:
the cotton clung, translucent.
(A man waited on the outer banks.)

I spent the night on an ancient pyramid,
monkeys shrieking through trees.

I bribed a guard to leave me alone,
and there was no one left to tell.

3.
A young man skipped ahead on the trail.
I must have said, Wait.
(Years passed.)
How could I say goodbye?

I sealed leftovers in ziplock bags;
I wore a flowered bathrobe.

I began to listen to books on tape,
especially biography.

(This is not an obituary.)

Evening had set in, and the last
strands of dirty-blond light
filtered through the thickening leaves.

Lexi Ruditsky received her Masters in Fine Arts from Columbia University and is the author of a volume of poetry entitled "A Doorless Knocking into Night," to be published his year by Mid-List Press.