Carlos Reyes

Pillow Talk
Summer Evening at Emmons Beach
The Room


Pillow Talk

My pillow is too hard
Are you sure you don't have mine?

I didn't know we each had
individual pillows...

We could trade but I wouldn't want
you to get my dreams

That's very interesting
me getting your dreams

...The notion that dreams
are contagious is rather appealing...

I said I didn't want to trade
because you might catch my germs

I don't care what you said...
Give me your pillow, give me your dreams!

---

Summer Evening at Emmons Beach
--for DW

...Whole back of the house gone.
Mosquitoes flying in and out in the dead air
bit our bare ankles as we sipped lukewarm coffee.

We sat there late into the summer
evening, at the table our lowered voices
matched the quiet waters of The Georgia
Strait at our backs in the darkness,

Rubbing the itch of bites, insects
wanting only a droplet of our blood
so insignificant at the time...

All our talk was future, plans,
time, tomatoes about to ripen,
cucumbers green in the cultivation
carved out of the old growth woods...

Could any one of us drown in blood
as easily as in the water washing this shore?

You were already harvesting the crop
plowing your way through blizzards
to Mexico's beaches in winter's death
your promise unkept to stop and see me

II

Your tightly closed eyes now
a grimace and a question

...that the beating heart - the throb
of a diesel on a boat like The Prince
of Denmark - could slowly stop

...that a fisherman
could drown ashore
in a white sea of sheets
away from the fathomless waters
outside the town.

While the moon in the alley
behind the hospital watched
a thief waiting to come in
the small window and leave,

as we turned away
in disbelief.

---

The Room
-for Rachel

She scratches
initials and date
in the fresh cement.

With chalk line
we mark off and
begin to build

the bedroom
in the basement.
I show her how,

much the way
my father taught me
when I was her age,

to grip the hammer,
drive sixteen penny nails,
construct the stud wall.

* * *

Each time I return there
I worry around on cool, darkening concrete;
inspect the square penciled "closet",
where boxes list, unopened;
where my pride and hers,
the blue and yellow birdfeeder

she made herself
from shingles,fills slowly
with flaking whitewash.

A fading blue double line,
bare studs, rib cage
around the dusty air;

the room
unfinished

Carlos Reyes is the bard of Cloonanaha (County Clare, Irleand) and a poet in Portland. His latest book of poems is A Suitcase Full of Crows, a finalist in the Oregon Book Awards. Forthcoming in 2000 from Salmon in Ireland "Oilean Agus Oilean Eile" (Two Islands) poems in English about Ireland. He teaches poetry writing in the Artist-in-Schools program.
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