Trespass

THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES

The
National Poetry Series
was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation; Stephen Graham; Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation; Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds; The Poetry Foundation; and Olafur Olafsson.

2013 COMPETITION WINNERS

Ampersand Revisited
, by Simeon Berry of Somerville, MA
Chosen by Ariana Reines,
to be published by Fence Books

Bone Map
, by Sara Eliza Johnson of Salt Lake City, UT
Chosen by Martha Collins,
to be published by Milkweed Editions

Its Day Being Gone
, by Rose McLarney of Tulsa, OK
Chosen by Robert Wrigley,
to be published by Penguin Books

What Ridiculous Things We Could Ask of Each Other
,
by Jeffrey Schultz of Los Angeles, CA
Chosen by Kevin Young,
to be published by University of Georgia Press

Trespass
, by Thomas Dooley of New York, NY
Chosen by Charlie Smith,
to be published by HarperCollins Publishers

D
EDICATION

For my mother and my father

C
ONTENTS

Dedication

Cherry Tree

PART ONE

Ingalls Avenue

Eastern Red Cedars

Cedar Closet, 1955

My Father as a Boy

Late Bloomer

Hunger

Ordinary Time

Maybe in an Atlas

First Love

I Saw You Once

A Body Glows Bronze

Late Bloomer

Brunch

Snapshot

Screenshot

Transference

In That Light

Sperm Donor

Away

Guest Room

PART TWO

Separation

I
       
I want to say something

II
    
What hurts

III
    
The sun on the avenue

IV
    
I want to solder

V
      
I try to forget you every day

VI
    
I see you as a boy

VII
   
You say you need

VIII
  
Chestnuts harden in spiky

IX
     
It's been five weeks

X
      
Fridays are the hardest.

XI
     
If I forget, remind me

XII
   
Our first time back together

XIII
  
here take a universe

XIV
 
On the radio, bombast

XV
   
this morning water broke

PART THREE

Father

Phone Call

Aunt Peggy

Picnic, 1988

Warinanco Park

Selling the House: Ingalls Avenue

At Windward and Shore Roads

Winter Burial

Elegy

Dying Family

I
    
At the church door

II
   
Did you see

III
  
My father's niece crosses to me

Never

Memory

Mary and Bobby

St. Gertrude's

Freshman Theology

Trespass

Near

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

C
HERRY
T
REE

       
My father

       
mows tight squares

       
around her, she

       
rains pink on him

       
a rock

       
cracks inside the blades

       
she beats down

       
flurries

       
I've grown

       
too lush

       
don't leave me

       
with him

PART ONE

I
NGALLS
A
VENUE

       
the house lit of blue television of snow

       
the house where my father got tall

       
house of sturdy pipes house a home

       
for his sisters house of winter

       
boots and calico and wooden

       
spoons house of my grandfather

       
his girls grandkids house of quiet

       
sheer things of vinyl shingles

       
the padding around the house

       
the house of bins of old clothes and moon

       
light open windows of gulping

       
curtains the house of dusty aster

       
the house of women once girls a house

       
of kisses this is a house of rooms

       
a house of small closets and

       
smaller closets a closet for lemon

       
candy tucked back a closet

       
of cedar panels of tongue

       
and groove of bulbs a closet for small

       
things for tall things a closet for slumped

       
tall things and small things this

       
is a closet for tall and small things

E
ASTERN
R
ED
C
EDARS

       
I walk by your fragrant bodies

       
thinned by winter,     your young ones

       
are burlapped in nurseries, some are planked,

       
chipped-up

                    
seamed for chests & trunks:

       
inside a cedar closet, my father at sixteen

                    
one bulb setting

       
your rose panels aflame, his lit face

       
the white heart, his narrow body, wick,

       
his niece, four years old

                    
his head knocks the light     his hand

                    
steadies the wild

                    
string

       
the light

       
eclipsed, then bright

C
EDAR
C
LOSET
, 1955

       
He is sixteen and takes her

       
inside, jars

       
the unquiet hinge

       
she waits

       
forty years to name

       
him, Aunt Peggy says

       
you might as well be dead
.

       
And now

       
it's spring. My father's hair

       
thins, dull moth-gray, the last

       
clouds sink like sacks, the trees

       
are wet, sweat

       
on a body, damp wool.

M
Y
F
ATHER AS A
B
OY

       
his arm is the smallest to snake

       
the toilet's trapway, at night

       
a body can vanish

       
in the dark house, under covers I see

       
his smallness, a sharp elbow, remember

       
my smallness as he gathered my body in bed

       
he wakes to his sister

       
and father at the foot of the bed

       
his father kissing her neck

       
hands running up her night blouse

       
fingertips treading to a clasp

       
sliding a hook from its eye

L
ATE
B
LOOMER

       
at sixteen

       
my father stood

       
at the full-length

       
mirror naked and

       
touched

       
his chest

       
his hairless

       
legs touched

       
between them

       
he told me once

       
he thought his body

       
was small

       
and quiet

       
like a girl's

H
UNGER

       
We sat scissor-legged on the carpet

       
popped open the suitcase, a storm of tulle

       
she pulled Barbie

       
from the waves

       
caftan made from a pocket square

       
she showed me to drag

       
blond hair through

       
dryer sheets to tame the wisps

       
she stopped my hand

       
stuck on the brush stuck in knots

       
here the spray for tangles

       
I crossed the hallway

       
to her brother's room

       
he took off

       
my corduroy shorts, took off

       
his wildlife tee

       
against a polar sky

       
the airbrushed wolves

O
RDINARY
T
IME

       
In the sacristy my father

       
rinsed cruets smothered wicks

       
the monsignor pulled off

       
a chasuble of emerald silk

       
moved his hands

       
down my father

       
the choir shook

       
handbells from the loft

       
what my father did

       
when he moved

       
to her body when he lifted

       
her green dress

M
AYBE IN AN
A
TLAS

       
Maybe another New Jersey