wrinkles in the palm of my hand

a poetry and prose chapbook, 1996
by janet kuypers

wedding lost And she sees herself in the passenger seat at night, her fiance beside her, and the lights seem all too bright, and the rain seems all too loud, like the thunder of soldiers running across a field to war, swept with the drunken feeling of patriotism, charging toward their unknown enemy. And so it happened that night, the lights got brighter, the car started to spin, and then she started to dream. And she sees herself at the end of the church, the bridesmaids have just walked down the aisle, the music changes for her. She feels swept with the euphoria of love, and she begins to walk, but she falls, the bouquet falling from her hand. And in slow motion, white roses and lilies scatter along the aisle. And she looks up, and the groom is gone, and the ground is the ashes of the house they bought together after they were married. She sits up, and she’s at the desk at the bank, trying to get the loan for the house. His job is secure, we’re young, nothing could go wrong. Good thing he wore the blue tie to the bank, and not the red one. And she sees herself waking up from sleep, the oxygen pipe still under her nose, her husband there, tie in hand, asking if she’d like to hold their baby. But she could have sworn she heard the baby stop crying. And she panics. And then she wakes up, her head is bobbing, but now she’s back, back at the hospital, looking at the tubes running out of her fiance’s arm.

children, churches, and daddies And the little girl said to me, “I thought only daddys drank beer.” And I found myself trying to make excuses for the can in my hand. I remember being in the church, a guest at a wedding of two people I didn’t know. My date pointed out two little boys walking to their seats in front of us. In little suits and cowboy boots, this is what is central Illinois. And my date said he was sure those boys would grow up to be gay. And the worst part was their father was the coach of the high school football team. I think I laughed, but I hesitated. I remember being in the church, it was Christmas Eve, my date’s family went up for communion, and all I could think was that singing the hymns was hard enough, I don’t know the words, what am I doing here, what am I supposed to do? And I stayed seated, and everyone else slowly walked to the front of the church. Little soldiers in a little line, the little children in their little dresses walking behind their mommies and daddies. And the little girl said, “I thought only daddys drank beer.” And I found myself trying to make excuses.

coquinas 1 I can’t imagine the number of times I’ve been there visiting Florida, Christmas with my parents a plastic tree decorated with sand dollars and red ribbons eating Christmas dinner listening to Johnny Mathis and after the Irish coffee, father with his brandy snifter in hand mother and the other girls putting away the dishes the carolers would come, walking in front of our home singing “We wish you a merry Christmas” over and over again we would walk outside and the cool breeze almost felt like Christmas after the hot humid days and we would stand on our driveway smile and nod you could see down the road all the candles in paper bags lining the street and for a few lights the bag burned 2 and we would take boat rides off the coast my parents and their friends to a tiny island dad drinking beer sometimes steering the boat control the women sitting together in the shade worrying about their hair i would sit at the front sunglasses, swimsuit and sunburn feeling the wind slapping me in the face and turning my head away from the boat into the wind away from them continued to face it again docking at a shoreline everyone jumping out little bags in their hands the women go looking for shells the men go barbecue after an hour or two the sandwiches, potato chips eaten the soda and beer almost gone we turn around and head back we have conquered 3 and I remember the coquinas the little shells you could find them alive on the beaches north of the pier in Naples going to the beach I would look for a spot to find them they were all my own they burrowed their way into the sand to avoid the light worming their way away from me I unearthed a group of cocquinas once, fascinated with their color of their shells, the way they moved before they could hide I collected them in a jar, took them home with me what did you teach me what have you taught me to do is this it is this what it has become is this what has become of me of you of us and I took them home I added salt water and sand but I couldn’t feed them I realized soon that they would die so I let them

the cycle It all came to her like this: she remembered when she was a child coloring eggs for Easter, wire spoons dipping into the cup; colors of spring and happiness left to dry on a newspaper. And she would always steal some away to eat before Sunday. And she would hide the pastel shell in the trash, the evidence, and she’d hide the yolk, too. She only liked the white of it. And then she remembers the onion skins, boiling eggs wrapped in layers of skin dyed them beautiful shades of brown, like the amber beads in mother’s jewelry chest, the variations of color, trapped by nature, captured by ourselves. And she remembers as a child listening to the McKinleys, an older pair with stories of Panama, Mexico. They had so many foreign stories to tell: continued once they gave her an egg for Christmas, a carnival egg, with the inside blown out, filled with confetti, covered in colorful crepe paper. She made her own, relished in cracking them over people’s heads. But she saved theirs. And now she stands in the kitchen, scrambling them for morning meal, yellow and white, the colors in the nursery for the child still inside of her. She can feel the kicking now. And she wants to know if she can give the color, the stories, bring the cycle of life around for her little one. And she puts breakfast once again on the plate.

farmer And just north of his corn field there is a college, the university has bought up the property right to the edge of his land. And at that university there is a man studying plant biology, he wants to do research in food genetics, create the perfect ear of corn. And the farmer knows this. was to be able to make a living, maybe save up enough so his kid could walk over to campus every morning, maybe meet some new kids. The government assistance has run out, the state wants to push the school south an extra mile, put up a research lab, another dormitory. The drought has done nothing good for his field anyway. And the doctors say the lump under his shoulder is from the sun. All of these years he would wake up early Sundays to work, and he would find tire tracks from souped up cars digging in his property edge. Kids leaving beer cans, junk food wrappers, condoms. And he would pick up what he could. In the upcoming years, would his little boy do this to someone else? And this was his labor: he had sewn the seeds; the plants running, hurdling the rolling hills, sprinters uniform in a marathon. And all the way to the street at the edge of his property, the green sign reading “1800 S”, all the way to the end is his life, his little earth, in straight rows, like the peas on his son’s plate when he plays with his food. And now the rows of corn are less straight, as if in recent years he didn’t care. This year it’s the worst yet, he didn’t bother with the right chemicals, and there are weeds in between the rows. The grass next to his house is almost up to his waist. And he’s awake now, it’s four in the morning, and he’s wandering out in it all, and he’s almost crazy. The grass waves, almost staggers, like him. And he thinks: let the weeds grow.

the flashback Everyone at work wondered why she looked so down that day, and occasionally someone would ask her. ”What’s the matter?" And she’d say it was just a bad day. And she went through the motions, she did her work, she ate her lunch, even though the lettuce tasted bad, and then she had to run an errand for the boss. And she was in her car, it was snowing, but not the pretty kind of snow, not the kind you expect to see on Christmas day. It was like the snow was already dirty and gray before it hit the ground. And she was driving, and she didn’t even realize she was going under the speed limit. She was in a daze, lost, not because of depression, but because there was noting she cared to think about. And so she drove. And she dropped off the crate of flyers and the mailing list for the boss, and she drove back, but the whole way she was thinking that she should drive slower, so she wouldn’t be back at work so fast. And so she drove slowly, coasting now, watching the dirty snow touch her windshield. And she looked over to her left, and there was an old man, lowering his car from the jack it was on. A flat tire. And then she had a flashback. And it was no longer winter, and she was no longer driving - she was outside, while he was trying to fix the flat on his rusty white car. They were driving back from a park, it was summer in Monticello, it must have been ninety degrees, and there she was, sitting on a dirty beige carpet scrap from the floor of the car. She had taken the scrap and moved off the dirt road, about ten feet into the field. And she just sat there, watching him, shirtless, fixing the car so they could drive home. And she wanted to remember it, just like that. Then the light turned green, she followed the procession of cars through the graying snowflakes. And she began to forget it was a bad day, and she didn’t mind her daze.

in the air Part One Over Las Vegas with my family, my sister and myself in one row, my parents in the other across the way. We’re nearing the end of our flight; mother tells me to sit in her seat and look out the window as we fly over the Hoover dam. Sitting next to father, I watch him lean out the window saying, just think of all that concrete. I look over his shoulder, the dam no larger than a thumbnail, the water, like cracks in a sidewalk, like the wrinkles in the palm of my hand. Over Phoenix, preparing for another descent at 8:50 p.m., but it’s usually fifteen minutes late, as it is now, I’m getting used to the schedule now. The mountains look like the little mountains you see on topographically correct globes, little ridges, as if they’re made of sand, if you just lean your head down a little bit, your exhaling can make them all blow away in the breeze. And I know that what I’m looking for is out there, somewhere, I think this is where it is, I better not be wrong, I just have to search a little harder and find it. I love the city lights from above at night. Have you ever thought of how much power it takes to light all those buildings? All that energy. And every time I look, look out that little window with rounded corners, i see a string of yellow Italian Christmas lights strung across the ground. And little Champaign, Illinois, and those little airplanes that 25 people fit in. The airport there is really nice, actually, it’s made for a bigger city, a city of dreams and tall buildings, that’s what I think. The roar of the planes are so loud, though, not like those 747’s where you can sleep during the flight. But they fly low enough so that I can see the building I live in from the sky. And where I work. There’s the store. Neil Street. Assembly Hall. The bars. Over Fort Myers, the city always looks different from any other place, all those palm trees, the marshes. Like you’ve just landed somewhere foreign, and pretty soon the big tour will begin. You can feel the heat, the humidity sticking your shirt to your back between your shoulder blades, and your neck, sticking to your neck too, from inside your cabin, before you even land. Chicago looks grand from the sky with this huge expanse of lake next to it, like civilization crept up as far as it could but finally had to stop. The power of nature stopping the power of man kind, for once. And I cannot decide which one looks more evil. The lake does, looks evil i mean, at least at night, at night it looks like two spheres: a string of lights and a huge void. Daylight, and the snow on the ground looks dirty, too many cars have splashed mud on it as they drove by. And the sky always matches the shade of grey of the snow: fitting for the city of the Blues. Maybe the snow is already that color, that perfect shade of grey, when it falls from the sky in this city. Part Two Have you ever noticed that the air isn’t normal air in an airplane? I mean, I know they have to pump in the air, and pressurize it and all in order to keep us alive up there, but there’s just something about the air in the cabin that’s different. It’s got a smell to it, that’s the only way I can describe it. A smell of all these people, going places, running to something, or running away from it. When I go on vacation and I promise people I’ll write, I usually write from the plane, just so I don’t have to worry about it for the rest of my trip. And I write their letter on an airsick bag. It’s more interesting than paper. I like the window seat, I like to look out the window. Clouds look like cotton balls when you’re above them, and when you’re landing cars look like little ants, on a mission, bringing food back to their hill. Little soldiers, back and forth, back and forth. And the streets look like veins, capillaries in some massive, monstrous body. And the farmland looks like little squares of colors. I wonder why each plot of land is a different color, what’s growing there that makes them different. Or maybe it’s that some of them are turning shades of red and brown because some of them dying. Once I was bumped from my flight, but on the next available flight they gave me first class. And I sat there, feeling underdressed. And afraid to order a drink. And it always seems that you’re stuck sitting next to someone that is either too wide for their seat, or is a businessman with his newspaper stretched out and his lap top computer on his little fold out table. Once, when I was on a flight back from D. C., a flight attendant walked by, stack of magazines in her hand, Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, and I stopped her, asking what magazines she had. And she replied, “Oh, these magazines are for men.” This is a true story. And I asked her again what she had. I had already read Time, so I took Newsweek.

the fourteenth grade school, lace and construction paper cut outs - mimicking our hearts with school glue, a sixty-four pack of crayons, a doily, perhaps, and a child’s scribblings, “Be My Valentine.” The beginning of every cold February the classes of children are taught to make enough little hearts for everyone, so that no one may be disappointed, so that everyone can be your Valentine. Nonetheless, one little child’s construction paper mailbox come February fourteenth always had less than everyone else’s. And then it gets easier as the years go on mommies buy little packs of Valentine cards for their children to sign and give away to all the little children at school. Saves them from having to make all those cards, the glue and the glitter and the cut-outs are messy. Every fourteenth, second month when I was little I remember daddy bringing heart-shaped boxes home for all the girls - myself, my sister, my mother. I can remember mother now, her candy box on her ironing board, thanking him once again for the lovely gift. And so it goes. And the card shops get fuller this time every year husbands saying “my wife will kill me if I don’t get her a card” or young women complaining “my boss told me to get a card for his wife” And the flowers seem the same, don’t they? Carnations arranged in a big ball atop a little basket. Red, yellow, pink, white. Lovely. All the adornments of the holiday. Don’t stop short of the best. A girlfriend said to me once she’s sure boyfriends break up with you by the beginning of February so they don’t have to buy you anything. So they don’t have to say they love you. Last year I spent Valentine’s Day taking those chalky hearts with messages on them and scribbling my own on the back. “Screw You”, “Go Away”, “Leave Me Alone.” I never liked the taste of those candies. And the Valentine’s Day party, where all the single people were thinking, “Please give me someone to go home with. Don’t let me be alone tonight.” And the women getting lonely and the married couples arguing and the suicide rate going up And the woman looking at the carnations on her dining room table holding the card in her hand that says “love, Jake” wondering why it doesn’t feel good yet

slate and marrow I No one could understand, it was like every morning I couldn’t find a reason to wake up. The world felt cold, like slate, like the marble tiles in the front hallway of my parent’s house, that floor was always cold, oh, how I’d like to feel the cold against my feet now. But there I was, in some eleven by twelve apartment, room, running from my past, my present. Every morning I would wake up, and I would wake up from that night again - when he came uninvited, or did I invite him? The haze of the drunken nights from then on, wearing the dress, knowing the faceless faces couldn’t care less, as long as they could have their way with me later that night. What would my parents think of me now? I’m no longer their little girl. I could feel myself getting older by the minute, I could feel my skin wrinkling, my joints getting stiff. I could feel my bones, the marrow drying up, my bones crumbling away. And every morning I still put on my clothes, got my work together, headed out the door. Could I ever get out of this cycle? And it was if I had never realized that all this time I was looking for a purpose. And it was you. II When I strolled up to the street singer, I stopped because I saw your face. Why on earth did you think you could tell me your secrets when we only met fifteen minutes before? And just being in your presence made me break down, made me hate everything , made me love everything , made me want change. I’d hit you in rage, I’d lean on you, my slate, and you let me. And it was as if the marrow was back. I could just lay in bed at night and feel the blood running through my body, I could feel the oxygen as I inhaled hitting my bloodstream. I could even feel the marrow, all the cells in my body moving faster and faster. My skin would tingle. I suddenly had power - I could make blood move to any part of my body, I could make a pain go away, I could turn myself into stone, not so I was cold and unfeeling, but so I was strong, immovable. And I did it for me, but don’t you dare think for a minute that I didn’t do it for you.

the page to inspiration and you would still appear, appear in the paper I held in my hand, rippling waves in the pages before me, a dorsal fin of a shark circling my head, watching its prey. I could touch the page and still feel the rose I threw over the mahogany box in the November cold, the grass covered with ice, cracking every time I took a step toward you. I could feel the pain in the paper, and I could still feel the cold marble, freezing my fingers. And the etched message on the stone could still took hold of me the way you did. All I had to do was look at your writing and feel the blood rush, feel your breath on my neck, feel the fist jumping out from the page and hitting me in the face. I could feel it. I could feel a thousand wars fought and won on your page, in your words. I could feel your hot breath pushing up against my neck, I could feel your hands taking my shoulders, throwing me back in the chair. I would look at your paper and see out the window the masses rising, rioting in the streets. I can feel the tide rising from your thoughts. What do you possess? What have you been through, to give you such a gift? I look back at the page, and I begin to feel your hand from under the page, from in the desk, razor in hand, shoving up through the fiber, slicing at the air, trying desperately to get to me. And I get up from my chair, walk over to the bathroom, almost like memorization. I feel nothing but the drive you felt. In the mirror, there are cuts on my face.

the muse, the messiah I I can see you now hunched over, pouring yourself into your work, scattered papers, dim lights flooding white over the glaring screen, in your otherwise darkened corner of the world. And I know you can feel me now, feel me rushing in through the window that you leave only slightly open at night, rushing in with a faint whistle, circling around your neck, curling up around your jaw, opening your mouth so slightly. You can feel my rush chilling your teeth. You tilt your head back, closing your tired eyes from your problems, from your future in front of you, on those pages, on that screen, under that white light. You let me open your mouth more and more, you feel me swirling around your tongue, down your throat, into your lungs, like smoke from a clove cigarette when you hold your breath to feel the high, feel the ecstacy just a little longer, or like steam rushing down your throat when you take a deep breath the summer morning after a heavy fog. You open your eyes. You lick your lips. I make you do that, I make you forget your world. You can feel me there, you can’t escape me. I’m there. I’m your muse. II And I’m sitting in my apartment, and when I reach out my arm shadows of my hand stretch across the wall. There is no music, but I begin to move my hands, like a ceremony, as if to a drummed out rhythm, like the pant of a mistress as she walks down the hotel steps into her car after seeing her savior, like waves at the sea slowly crashing at the shoreline. The phases of the moon are changing, and the waves are crashing with more and more intensity, with more and more power, faster and faster. And at this very moment you walk down a street somewhere, it is daylight, and you see the white moon peering toward you from the sky. The moon was looking for you. It wanted to watch you. You divert your eyes, step off the curb, and for no reason walk in the middle of the street. There is no traffic. You are safe. And the moon watches the stride of your step, and the moon watches my hand, and the moon hears the rhythmic pant of intensity, and the moon rises the water. We feel the drumming beat. The phases of the moon are changing. There is no reason why you should question this. You can feel me. I will keep you safe. I will keep you alive. I’m your messiah.

one summer 1. Kevin. You went off to work, I was alone in your apartment, an apartment on a street corner in Washington D.C., my first trip alone. You gave me your key, said you’d be home after work. And so I left, closing the iron gate door I was so fascinated with behind me. I walked through campus, stretched out in the sun. I tucked the map in my pocket, walked through M street, took the correct turns. I remember someone on the street complimented my shirt. I was almost sure I had been in this town before. And then I met this felllow, tall, unlike you, and we went out, and I knew I didn’t have a care in the world, all my ties were almost broken, I was almost free. And I’d never see this man again. Maybe I’d let him kiss me. And as I walked down the street that night with him, I skipped. And he liked me that much more. 2. Sheri. The heat of Arizona smelled like burning flesh. I met your roommate, your friends, drank at the Coffee Plantation, iced mocha coffees. And I met you-know-who, I still don’t want to say his name. He kept me occupied, no, he made me feel alive, alive to someone who had never lived before, alive those long five days. I could still mark the day on my calendar, the day my life was supposed to change, the day I was supposed to be free. But it was supposed to be something good, I was supposed to start caring for myself. Then why continued does a part of me regret it? He bought me a rose the day I left. And you took pictures of us. I thought that morning that it would be justice to never hear from him again. To leave it at that. But then I had to call him from the airplane on the trip home. Why? 3. Joe. You had to be cruel to me, just this once. I thought we had been through enough, went through our own little hells already because of each other. I know we had our differences, but I was looking forward to seeing you, to seeing southern California, the stores, the glamour, the beaches, the commercialism. And you, you had to cart me away with your religious troops to the wilderness, leaving me at the campsite while you went off to church. And I sat there for days, watching us, watching us become bloodthirsty, we were trying to hurt each other, we were like animals, you starting your life with me in tow. And I saw the redwood forests. 4. Douglas. I never imagined how beautiful the east coast could be, rolling hills curling one state into another. We’d drive up a hill in your truck and I would lift my head, my chin as high as I could in anticipation to try to see the other side, the sloping down of those hills. I remember walking along the beach in Maine, restored buildings lining the rocky shore, the fog so thick you couldn’t see fifty feet in front of you. And people continued were suntanning. And I photographed the lighthouse - how do they work in the fog like this? It’s so thick, thick like the cigarette smoke coming from the inside of your truck when we would drive to antique shoppes in New Hampshire. Thick, like a powerful force overcoming someone, that holds you there, that doesn’t let go. Like us. 5. A week before the smoke and the hills I was in the Midwest and my father was screaming at me, two weeks before I was thousands of miles away dreaming of someone else. And it wasn’t a month ago when I was skipping past the old Kennedy house, where movies were made, where this all began. And now, in this truck with you, I lean back, watching the scenery travelling past me streamline into blurred lines of color, and I think of marriage. Maybe with you, if time wears on, but probably not, I just think of marriage, to someone. Marriage, streamlining life into a blur. Settling down. Settling. It’s funny how your surroundings change you. And soon, I know, I will go back home, carrying my possessions in a tweed bag with duct tape on the handle, to get back to something. Driving through the plains to go back to life, it will all be the same again.

Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.

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