movement memory
BY PERRY JANES
I’m thinking about glow sticks
underwater, a girl I loved swimming
in the pool, her body like a dark lamp
over neon coral. I’m dancing
and thinking at the same time
which results in weird wavelike gestures,
freeze-frame contortions. The DJ thinks
I’m hopeless, but who cares?
Memories are like cravings
that can’t be filled, and because
all memories beg
to be replayed—I really get into it.
I cut through the air faster and faster
in pursuit of a dark room
where I coolly untie our swimsuits
to lick chlorine from her neck-
line, working up to the light switch
I can’t seem to find because
she didn’t undress and that’s why
the room is dark. She never left the pool.
There’s nothing to remember.
Shame is the movie of my life
where nothing happens. There are no
swiped wine coolers
in the Coney Island’s well-worn lot. No dogs
chained in backyard grottos, boys
on skateboards threatening chase.
And when, years later, the mother of a friend
I haven’t spoken to since boyhood
calls to say that he had finally—
that’s how she put it, finally—stepped over
the threshold of his own life
with a pocketful of rocks
or a tumbler of bullets—the truth is
I can’t remember which—
I don’t call her back.
I don’t tell her
the lime tree outside
my apartment is, in fact, a lemon tree
that only recently decided to flower.
That, for months, its fruit remained
stubbornly green, pinched,
and I juiced more than one
leathered pouch into an off-kilter
batch of guacamole.
On the call I never place
between California and Michigan
I don’t say that, once, at a party,
I scaled a condo stairwell to hang
my adolescent torso across a rooftop’s ledge
and considered letting go
until a girl offered to pull me
from the alcohol buzz of my sadness
to splash across a pool’s neon floor, and lie
in the lawn, and wake still wet and well
past curfew, and even in the face of this
small kindness, I—being young and frightened—refused.
I don‘t, I don‘t.
What a moving picture
my life could have cut together.
Instead: I stroll along a street. I stand
against a wall. My friends in the audience
ask: When does this thing start?
In the dance hall, the DJ’s record
skips, each spun note swung
square at my breastbone.
There are spotlights in the rafters,
watery coronas
I can’t escape.
There’s a disco ball
coming straight at me.
All I can do is dance.
j
j
detroit doo-wop
BY PERRY JANES
after Lynda Hull
i.
How to say this? A pearl-
handled cleaver pulled
from its block, a stone-whetted
blade laid on the throat. I remember
this was what we woke to: his father
shouting good got-damn and crazy bitch,
his mother crooning hat in hand and get on out.
Barely double digits, we drowned
their blazing howls with poorly dubbed
kung-fu. Its audio—all vowels:
Aah! Eeh! Ooh!
When we took to streets, we grooved
beneath the flattop net’s webbed mesh
to boom-bap beats of Spalding
bounced on cracked concrete. We cradled
stereo to cheek. Why not? We lived
inside that noise: bass-shook, carpet
trembling. What were we, but boys?
ii.
His father left. His mother shrunk. We grew
into anoraks and boots. With keys in hand,
we took to streets in slick cars finning fast.
This was Detroit. Here we crooned
our Motown tracks with trembling
vibrato. How we loved the bass’s
howl, leather seats that whispered
Ooh. Ooh. Ooh.
When his mother hit him, we sang. Good
got-damn! We didn’t know the lyrics
for snow and blood in hair.
It was always winter. I wasn’t
always there. His mother laughed
like a blade. She was well practiced
and steady. She knew how to cut
kielbasa and grits. This was Detroit.
She knew her men. Said get on out.
And so we drove. The windows down,
we’d bounce and groove
and shout.
iii.
Bom-bom-bom shang-a-lang
pop
We can’t stop don’t stop won’t stop
pop
Bom-bom-bom shang-a-lang
pop
We can’t stop don’t stop won’t stop
pop
Doo-doo-doo shush-shush
shush
iv.
Of all this, nothing’s left. Gone: apartment
doorsills steamed with rain, spaghetti-scorched
lasagna pans, laughter breaking on the pane.
This is Detroit. Sing it. Good got-damn—
and here the tune begins to change.
Only half this song is true.
Each boy needs his boogaloo. Wait.
I’m trying to speak in some manner of fact.
When all that’s left is a sweat-stained key palmed
in my pocket, a cleaver gleaming in its sheath,
I won’t forget. Brother. How
to say this? It’s all vowels, now.
I I I
J____. I never meant to leave you
in that place. The slick cars
finning past, the concrete
trembling with bass.
