Kate & Sonia (in the months before our second daughter’s birth) by Dan Thomas-Glass by Little Red Leaves Textile Series

KATE & SONIA (IN THE MONTHS BE FOR E O U R SECOND DAUGHT E R’ S BIRT H)

KATE & S O N I A (IN THE MON T H S BEFORE O U R SECON D DAU G H T E R ’ S BIRTH)

Kate & Sonia

(

Kate & Sonia

)

in the months before our second daughter’s birth

Dan Thomas-Glass

(

Kate & Sonia

)

in the months before our second daughter’s birth

Dan Thomas-Glass

(

)

in the months before our second daughter’s birth

Dan Thomas-Glass

little red leaves textile series www.textileseries.com

In front of the fence pushing Sonia on the swing wants

to transfix a moment as it swirls swirl in my head. Tress stretch up in front of garden plots to monuments of our brevity.

We could get on a list. We should plant something.

Sonia insists on swinging higher then twists to see Kate turning toward the trees toward us behind the fence looking upâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there are clouds, in that sky.

Sonia screams against the order days insist on packing into the stretch: minor impossibilities like toes

arched up to generate space straining to switch the switch. This possible world

Sonia screams against. I glance at Kate—where are our options? To lift or light? Shushing by ref lex my arm motions toward quiet.

Kate, Sonia I wanted to write a poem for you that a mother would write

an umbilical poem joining us to us—

head against our neck as tears dry.

Kate, Sonia the day gets so long—

here where I am not there with you. Not

breath to breath or infant body tucked

below our chin.

There was never incandescent in this

poem no Sonia spinning knee crooked to Charlotte Dada never heated bright as Kate’s laugh there remembering there was never hot like what made you Sonia in a poem though it pirouettes it beams it burns.

In the Tupperware inside the closet the Tupperware I took from an empty kitchen (now it’s in the closet inside our bedroom upstairs) to pour a cup of my mom’s ashes from official plastic urn to Tupperware—inside that Tupperware is a cup of my mom’s ashes. We know that. The burp that lets out the inside. Or keeps it in maybe. But that inside the closet up the stairs inside the apartment that inside the Tupperware is my mom’s burnt body & she was born in 1950 so of course she had a body. Sonia there

was a world before plastic— crazy, I know! like before air or something—& in those bodies before plastic my mom was a body & I was a body & you were there too in Kate’s mom was Kate & in Kate was you before plastic inside the inside we have been letting out in cups & burps, us burnt too & here.

Kate, Sonia I have six minutes left before class ends & these twelveyear-olds stop writing their two-page memoirs about horses & grandparents.

Kate, Sonia I was talking to Jesse in the kitchen as Sonia took her bath upstairs around seven last night about memory.

There is a moment I will insist on this is Sonia: aquaform silhouette cobra poses in bathwater in mock protest this is isâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;against Kate joining her the liquid shadow that once was a whole now is memory, is this this.

Sonia screams against the order Target presses into the press: buttons for up light up as we prep to ascend.

Pick the plastic & place it in the plastic basket—one with whistles— this molded world

Sonia screams against. It’s from China, Kate, like breathing.

Half of the plastic produced, Sonia, is used only once before being discarded. Think packaging: shampoo bottles, disposable razors, yogurt cups. Sonia you prefer vanilla in your plastic cups. It sounds like banilla. How many times will you or your sister use the plastic doll heads? It f loats through us, Kateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; 250 million tons each year, 4.7 million tons into the seas, bobbing on the greens & blues & grays & twisting & then mired in the dimmed tides of what we recall.

10.

Mostly, Sonia, Kate, the plastic soup consists of tiny fragments, some the size of a fingernail (of your fingernail?), some much smaller, f loating on or below the surface across thousands of kilometers.

After a birthday party in a plastic banana you got a tiny plastic bottle of nail polish, some shiny polymer. When you look for it you say you want your painting nails things. It sounds like shings.

The gunk cannot be seen via satellite making it hard for scientists to measure or track the problem. It is clearly visible from up close. It’s kind of like chunky dust, hovering in the water. You can see the change in the texture of the water. The samples taken from the sea in the middle of these gyres are a glutinous-looking mess.

11.

There is not. It is quiet. In the room the plastic house is orange, glowing orange. Sonia says, “Daddy this pillow is not cold enough.” It sounds like enush. Daddy there is not. In the quiet. In the room the plastic iPhone is blue, glowing blue. Kate I feel guilty that as I watch our daughter fall asleep I am thinking about tomorrow. Kate I think Kenny & Erica in Bolinas have it right: the wood stove, the loom. Kate I am in the room & the orange & the blue; a widening dark. Sonia I am sorry for all this moment’s failures.

EPILOGUE

I should sing from heights: Daughters of your century what months & then what weeks & then what days & then what hours & minutes will you count the closest to your hearts? Which will mold your pouring mettle? Our modular hopes spark. Let us wish: for the beachiest Sundays before burnt skin draws us under, in the shadow of redwood trees a respite we conspire to hold tight, in the shadow of vowel shifts as language invaded language on islands in undifferentiated moments called history then particular for individuals living it—Oh I guess we are no different, if you ask sweet, little larks who

our planet—this I that speaks will see only some small part of those long years. My dears I sing to wish for you—may you remember your mother Kate’s eyes as she stared out at the ocean—green against green. May you remember that whatever way it is it was not always so—& need not remain. On the islands our memories sift for us: noises become words or melody become the sounds you make falling to dreams. Language spares us only bits: darting note to notes as birds lilt then settle dusted by the passing light. Oh I suppose the days meander back & forth like the long sights the stars cast at our

fl it from branch to branch as evening deepens. Daughters of your century what sunsets, what current patterns, what tides, what plastic dust, what firsts, what finals, what fires, what birds turning sharp into the purple & the early stars so eager to be remembered? What wars, what economies? My daughters—Sonia, your sister whose name we don’t know yet—I suck inward at the thought I might not be there to help. My daughters: I suck inward at the thought I might not be there to see. Daughters of your century I will know only part. I that should sing from some tall peaks, this I that stares now at industrial carpets in one of the richest counties on

heads on those rare nights when, still waking, we slim our tomorrows into lists. I suppose it is so, daughters of your century, & this I I suppose I am seeks means to touch minds as wonder overtakes, that wonder of thought gone memory or how you will reach words we left behind in scripted hours, misusing the now I suspect of forcing a self on now— a self I suspect isn’t all that I might be, though daughters of your century I accept this I as an I I am, as I said, & part of the now & also part of each of you, in your eyes & gestures & in these words as they fall to memory, our beasts & bodies singing faintly lit.

Dan Thomas-Glass wrote these poems in the spring and summer of 2011. He lives in Albany, CA with his wife Kate and their daughters Sonia and Alma (born 9/21/11). He is the editor of With + Stand and the author of 880 (Deep Oakland Editions), Seaming (Furniture Press), and The Great American Beatjack Volume I, which will be published by Dana Ward in 2012.

This LRL textile edition was lovingly sewn with recycled bedsheets and fancy paper.