Ally Malinenko- Three Poems

Birthday Presents as Red as Thread

When I wrap and pack

the birthday presents that I will

then take to the post office,

I’m struck

with the fact that you are soon to be thirteen.

And I stop to remember myself then too,

back through time,

unraveling the years,

like shedding clothes

as one walks through their house

and it all comes undone this way.

And for a moment I can see myself

as I once was

holding the necklace that your mother

now dead

gave to me.

I imaging giving it to you.

The sentiment. The power.

Entrusting you with the only thing I have of hers.

It would be a sort of un-doing. Severing the lingering red thread.

I cannot think of love as a constant.

It must, for me, wax and wane,

the way a wave comes to the shore but is still always part of the deep.

I have to think of it this way – as something I can touch

once or twice but not hold. Otherwise

I can feel my fingers locking

and I know I will choke it to death.

What’s It Worth To Ya?

What’s it worth to ya?

He asks, his Scottish accent heavy.

He’s older, squinting in the violent

San Francisco sun

the same sun I’ve been baking under

for 8 miles of walking.

What’s it worth to ya?

and I laugh

because I don’t know how to bargain.

See,

we walked from North Beach down to the Golden Gate Bridge

and the whole time,

my husband kept saying

that bridge,

and then he’d sigh, that bridge

and I’m thinking

Yeah it’s beautiful,

look at us baby, walking over the Golden Gate bridge

And he sighs again and says,

That bridge, goddamnit

it just isn’t getting any closer is it?

And he’s right because we’ve been walking

for miles

following older women in yoga pants

who seem like the type

of spry ladies who walk this bridge all the time, just for fun.

But after the first 5 miles,

they got into their cars, laughing

we knew we were on our own.

And still that red rust goliath is just swinging out there in the bay taunting us.

I walk five miles a day back in Brooklyn

but we’ve got clouds back there and here, over San Francisco

it’s just so much open sky, so much blazing sun

you could go dizzy staring into all that blue

So that by the time we got to Sausalito and realized,

there was no way back but to turn around and do those 8 miles all over again,

I said

No,

I can’t

not in these shoes

not after driving the pacific coast highway

not now.

No way.

And walked right up to the old guy sitting on the brick wall

next to the parked sightseeing trolley

and said, pointing to the thing, is this yours?

Aye.

How much to get a lift back over the bridge?

The company charges $35 a piece.

Steep, I say.

And he nods. Steep, he says.

What’s it worth to ya? he asks

and I laugh

because, I’m not good at this.

But we settle on 15 for both of us, and my husband hands him the money

and we slip down into those hard wooden seats

that held so many fat lady asses

so many old men with their bum knees

and Chinese tourists with ipads

and he drives us over the bridge

and I think to myself,

my god, there isn’t a prettier city in America

than San Francisco.

Look at her shine

from this wooden seat

the wind blowing my hair crazy

and the ocean

just laying out

waiting for you

like a beautiful woman

lying in your bed,

and right now,

I’m as golden as the coast

I’m driving over

thanks to this wooden trolley

and my Scottish hero

pulling her home.

Drive

I have to drive

I have my reasons

even with this Dodge Charger

and its big front end sticking

out that seems to go on forever.

 

It’s white

not orange

and there’s no 01 on the side

and I can’t imagine this damn thing

jumping over anything

because with my hands on the wheel

it feels like steering an elephant.

You want me to drive, he asks,

as we pull out of the motel

in Long Beach.

No I got it,

I tell him.

I tease him about his driving,

about how uncomfortable he gets

how nervous

when other cars

come too close to our lane

and besides Highway 1

is a long windy haul and I know it

because I picked it

from Long Beach to Monterrey

and then maybe from Monterrey

to San Francisco

 

We don’t know yet

because we don’t have an atlas

another thing we left at home.

It’s just one road he tells me,

how hard can it be?

So here I am in the cool California

morning with the mist rising off the road

driving

because I have to drive

because I have my reasons

just like when we traveled

the country

and I drove

through the long

lonely stretches of Texas

looking for bighorns

and stopping at the Cadillac Ranch

after we left the sweet heat of New Orleans.

We argued, tired from putting

half the country under those wheels

and ate lunch in the car in silence.

You drove in Utah

through the Basin

and I tried to sleep then

in the passenger seat

of our little Rocinante

as we called the Ford Escort

named after Steinbeck’s truck

that took us from New York City

to the west coast

and back again

But that was six years ago

and right now we’re quiet

older,

and a little sleepy

and you put Bruce on the radio

and he’s singing softly

along with the rumble of the road

under these tires

and I joke that I would have to be Neal

in this story

as you snap pictures of the mountains

rising out of the sea

like monsters

and I glance in the rear view

which is filled

with everything I drove away from

and the faces of the people I left behind

ghostly and golden in the early

California sunrise.

It’s everything that’s going to be waiting

for me when that

goddamn plane touches down

and I know it but

right now,

I have to drive.

I have my reasons,

dear.

Bio:

Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press), the children's novel Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books). Her novel This is Sarah is forthcoming from BookFish Books in June. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.