Two Poems by Tarn Wilson
TO THE ART MUSEUM GUARD
I never see you walking up the stairs.
You appear in rooms as if you were always there.
You are in a monk’s cell. At the end of the day,
do you collapse like empty clothes? In an office,
they teach you how to sit and how to hold
your wrists. Did anyone teach you how to stand
and what to do with boredom? When I was eighteen,
I wanted to be a field biologist so I could lie
motionless in the dark, waiting for the animals.
I volunteered to be an artists’ model so I could
practice being still. I let go my thoughts, quieted
self-consciousness, until the instructor mistook
my willingness to be bare for other kinds
of willingness. That summer, I worked in a factory:
pushed a button on a machine, waited two minutes
for that day’s plastic tool or toy to fall into a bucket
where I would sort it into toss or keep. Repeat. The
pause was excruciating. I wrote poems in my mind,
traced them on my thigh in hopes I might remember,
but they could not keep, disappeared into the ether.
I chose to become a teacher. For decades my mind
never had a moment’s rest. That job has ended.
I don’t know yet how to be still enough to hear
where the poems went. I’d apply for your job,
but my body will no longer stand for such
standing and now, against my will, resists rules
and too much trying. What do you answer when
people ask you what you do? At the end of the day,
do you feel quiet, clean, and empty? Or just weary?
Is art the best of us or have we been betrayed?
HOW TO TEACH
That summer I cared for you,
we were strangers to each other.
You were seven. I was fourteen.
I was all your father could afford.
He was newly sober and religious,
sad and silent after separation
from your mother. This, your
first summer alone together.
I biked to your trailer park.
He left for work in his plaid shirt.
The trailer was worn, bare, and neat.
You were a little Barbie in cheap
pink, hair so blonde, it was almost
white. I imagined your mother
in another state, sad and pretty
as you. Your father claimed you
only ate Velveeta cheese. I cut hunks,
heated them in the microwave.
With my first pay, I bought you
apples, peanut butter, and wheat
bread you wouldn’t touch. My
bike wobbled with bags of books
you wouldn’t read. I hauled tape,
scissors, magazine and for a bit,
we cut horses, kittens, and shiny
girls for your bedroom wall.
Then you were through. You
had roller skates that scared you;
I had skates I hadn’t worn in years.
For weeks, we looped your park.
Gravel seized our wheels. Our skin
crisped. We turned dark brown.
The air smelled of sage and dust
and our heating hair. We were
the only moving things, we
and tumbleweeds. I taught you
how to break, how to fall. You
picked up strength and speed.
The sky was plastic-blue and
swallowed sound, except the
whup whup of speed bumps.
For lunch, we sat on the stoop
eating Velveeta, that melted
sunshine. You, careful Barbie girl,
had a scab on your knee. You
were my first lesson in how
to teach: what to let go, where
to meet. I no longer remember
your father’s name, your name.
I remember yellow. Dry grass.
Your flaxen hair. Our shared
loneliness, a yellow love.
Tarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and a craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts. Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Assay, Brevity, Gulf Stream, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Pedestal, Potomac Review, River Teeth, Ruminate, Sweet Lit, and The Sun. She earned her MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and is an educator in the San Francisco Bay Area.
