The Needle

We saved the coupons for ice cream. Do not let poverty be the needle you live by, she used to say. So, we rode our bikes to town, got off at the Venezia pop-up truck. My tongue was set on pistachio & something orange — mango, or persimmon? This memory parades through my mind:

My father tells me to guard the bench while the rest waits in line. His tiger eyes, a hazel growl. Two women sit down, & I remain breathless. My father returns with my cone. I turn up the trumpets. His fit is brass band & some. Today, when I eat ice cream, I still hear the clanging. The women won’t budge. All eyes on us. My mother nods at us to follow her to the other side of the canal. Across the water, I see my father dump his cone with a splash.

We leave him there: upside down, his pockets emptied by the ground.

ξ

Pills & Holes

after Mary Ruefle’s “Merengue”

Let’s face it, pathology is a religion.

Does the Devil have a pharmacist?

What does she prescribe?

Can it be taken with a glass of wine?

Who does the dishes in your house: the father or the mother?

Do they first rinse off the leftovers & then wash?

Or do they use soap from the start?

Does the father come home for supper?

Does the father wake at noon?

Does the mother mend holes?

Or does she just throw out the broken jeans?

Does she knit? Does she keep the rifts together?

Does the Devil enter through the cracks?

Or does he walk in through the door?

Is that a knock? Is that the debt collector?

Why does the father open the windows?

Why does the father count & count?

Is the mother baking scones?

Or is something burning in the kitchen?

Does the smoke rise up to heaven?

Or is it the Devil’s crooked fire?

How do you kindle fruit when it’s out of season?

Does a fig taste of despair?

How many degrees of unraveling?

Why does the father count & count?

What pills would you prescribe to keep it all together?

What pills for this merry house?

And if they refuse to swallow — what then?

ξ

Geula Geurts is a Dutch-born poet and essayist living in Jerusalem. Her lyric essay, “The Beginnings of Fire,” was published by CutBank Books (Summer 2021). Her manuscript, Tiny Bones Glowing, was selected as a finalist for the 2021 Wisconsin Poetry Series and was the first runner-up in the 2020 Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award. A Best of the Net nominee, her work has recently appeared in Spoon River, Indianapolis Review, Pleiades, Salamander, Radar and EcoTheo. She works as a literary agent at the Deborah Harris Agency.