Free Verse Read online

“I know, baby.”

  With my eyes closed, here in the dark, I’m able to say a little more than usual. “There’s my mom and my dad and . . . and Michael . . .” It’s still hard to say his name out loud and have him not answer, knowing he’ll never answer again. I remember the radio crackling at his funeral, how they called him three times but he never responded. I swallow and keep talking. “And then Mikey’s mom and all this new stuff—there’s just . . . it’s too much, Phyllis!”

  “I know, baby,” she repeats. She sounds different this time, her voice low and thick.

  Right before I fall asleep there on the porch boards, Phyllis says, “I put your money back in your suitcase.” There’s a silence that sounds like she wants to ask a question, but she doesn’t.

  • • •

  I can’t find the words to describe how strange it is to see Anthony Tucker in poetry club.

  “He always comes,” Jaina whispers when she sees me looking. “But if you tell anybody you saw him here, he will punch you.”

  “Naw, I won’t, not if you’re a girl,” Anthony says.

  “Yes huh, you told me you’d deck me if I told on you to Will and Jason.”

  Anthony shoves her playfully with his fingertips. “You ain’t no girl!” She makes an ugly face at him and scoots out of his reach, but she doesn’t seem truly bothered by his teasing. I don’t understand how she’s already so friendly with him, and Will and Jason, too. Jaina’s new at this school, and she’s already making friends. Me, I’ve gone to school with these people forever, and the only person who’s even a little bit like a friend is Jaina.

  Miss Jacks is at her desk, juggling two red pens and a highlighter. She misses one and suddenly all three clatter to the desk. Only half the kids spare her a glance, and nobody but me seems surprised at her behavior.

  “Sorry,” she says when she catches me looking. “I want to learn to juggle. It seems like an important job skill.”

  I have no idea whether she’s joking, so I don’t say anything. Miss Jacks retrieves one of her red pens and starts marking things on the paper in front of her. “It’s been a long day,” she mutters out from under her hair.

  “Hey, guys, listen up!” Anthony bosses, as if he’s in charge or something. Which, I discover in the next several minutes, he actually is. Anthony Tucker isn’t just in poetry club. He’s the person who started the whole club back in September. “We’ve got three weeks until the deadline for county, and I want to see at least one entry from every person in this room.” He glances at the teacher. “Except Miss Jacks. Because she’s old.”

  “And grading your vocab quiz right now, Mr. Tucker . . .”

  “And by old I mean wise and beautiful,” Anthony rushes to add. “For those of you who are new at all this”—he looks at me—“winners of the county contest will go on to the state competition, and the prize at state is a crap-ton of money.”

  A girl named Lisa who rides the Cary Fork bus raises her hand. Her voice is as proper as her clean polo shirt. I’ve seen her in the halls, red hair and straight teeth, surrounded by friends. “A five-thousand-dollar scholarship, plus two hundred fifty dollars of spending money.”

  “Which you won’t win if you use words like crap-ton,” Miss Jacks advises.

  “Deadline is the end of June, and the only rules are that it has to be a poem and it has to be written by somebody who, well, you know, goes to school in the county.”

  A quiet girl in the far corner raises her hand. There is something weird about a kid raising her hand for another kid to call on, but I’m the only one who seems bothered by it.

  “Is there a length limit?” she asks. Three or four other kids giggle at her question.

  “You always ask if there’s a length limit, Angie,” says a girl whose name I don’t know, “and then you write twenty lines. Exactly twenty lines, every time. So what does it matter, unless the limit is nineteen lines, or it has to be over twenty-one?”

  Angie shrugs. “I might do haiku this time, Mel.”

  “If you do something that short, I’d do three poems,” Miss Jacks offers from her spot in the corner. She hasn’t looked up from her papers in a while, but at least she hasn’t started juggling again, either. “I’d be happy to proofread any entries you feel may need a once-over with a red pen.”

  “Which is all the entries,” Anthony says. “I’m serious, people! Let’s not be so last-minute this time, huh? I’m sick of getting our butts kicked at this thing! There’s no reason why one of us can’t win a stupid scholarship this year. You don’t even have to get first place; you just have to be in the top three! Come on, guys!”

  “Don’t you have to, like, go get up in front of people if you win?” This is one of the few other boys in the room. I can’t remember his name, but he’s in my math class. He hardly ever says anything out loud.

  “I don’t know,” Anthony says. “You know why? ’Cause we’ve never won.”

  “We will this year,” Miss Jacks says. The conversation has finally pulled her gaze from the papers she’s grading. “Right, folks? And yes, Scott, you have to get up in front of people if you win. The winners from every county get to go to a workshop in Charleston, and the top finalists perform their works before the winners are announced. They always have several published authors there to present workshops. It’s an amazing opportunity.” She looks at Anthony with a raised eyebrow. “Plus, they feed you.”

  “Why is she looking at me on that one?”

  “’Cause from what I hear, the entire reason you started poetry club is because Miss Jacks said there’d be food,” Jaina points out. “Which reminds me, where’s the food?”

  Miss Jacks opens her desk drawer and takes out a bag of popcorn. She chucks it into the circle of chairs, where Anthony and Scott fight to gain control of it.

  “Guys,” Miss Jacks points out, “we’re fifteen minutes in, and nobody’s learned anything yet. Anybody got some wisdom to impart?”

  “I do!” Lisa volunteers. “I’m going to teach you how to write a cinquain. There are a few different types. This one is the kind where the first line is one word, and then you put two words on the second line, three on the third, four on the fourth, and one on the fifth. The first line is a noun, the second is adjectives, the third is verbs, the fourth is emotions, and the fifth one is a synonym for the first one.” She beams with self-confidence and eye shadow.

  I raise my hand. “Huh?”

  “Let me read,” Lisa says, a little bit pushy. “You’ll hear what I mean. I’ll illustrate for you what a cinquain sounds like.” So I do listen, but I’m flustered because she was so pushy, and I still don’t understand the pattern.

  “Will you read it again?” I immediately ask.

  Lisa fluffs herself and preens. “Of course.”

  She reads:

  “Mountains.

  Pretty, beautiful.

  Rising very high.

  Breath taking, awe inspiring.

  Appalachia.”

  The group claps, an awkward smattering. Anthony has a coughing fit so long and loud that I worry he’s choking on a piece of popcorn.

  Lisa reads her poem a third time without being asked.

  “Mountains. That’s my one noun.

  Pretty, beautiful. That’s my two adjectives.

  Rising very high. That’s my three words that are a verb.

  Breath taking, awe inspiring. That’s my four emotion words.

  Appalachia. That’s my synonym. Because we are in the Appalachian Mountains.”

  Then she claps for herself.

  I raise my hand again. “Is breathtaking two words?”

  “In poetry, you can spell things different,” Lisa snaps. “Right, Miss Jacks?”

  “Many poets take artistic liberties in their poetry,” Miss Jacks allows. When we all keep staring at her, she adds, “Guys, it’s af
ter hours. I hope you’re not waiting on guidance from me. You all are going to need to keep this rolling without my help. Lisa just taught you how to write a cinquain. Have at it.” She waves a hand at the stack of loose paper and the stubs of pencils on the table.

  We start shuffling and squinting and doodling. A minute turns into twenty. Cinquain is not as easy as haiku. There are occasional whispers and giggles from the nine kids spread out around the room, and crunching as the popcorn bag gets passed around, and the sounds of scribbling and erasing.

  I write:

  Phyllis.

  Pretty, beautiful.

  Patient hands prepare

  four a.m. egg salad.

  Kindness.

  I don’t show it to anyone, though. I don’t know how to explain how four a.m. egg salad is an emotion.

  Anthony looks at me for a long minute before sharing his cinquain. I’m pretty sure the look he gives me is meant to communicate how certain my death will be if I ever mention poetry club outside of poetry club. Not that anyone would ever believe me. And who would I tell, anyway, besides Jaina, who’s sitting right here? Anthony’s got pants that sag to show off his boxers and a plaid button-up over his muscle shirt. He’s got a permanent case of hat hair from wearing a beanie at lunch and outside the building and whenever he can get away with it. He does not look “poetry club” to me. If I weren’t looking at him right now, I wouldn’t believe it.

  He reads:

  “Math.

  Topsy-turvy.

  Snarling, pencil-tapping.

  Paper-ripping frustrated—oh!

  Solved.”

  I can’t help myself. “That’s good!” I tell him. I’m relieved that cinquains can sound better than Lisa’s mountain poem, and surprised through and through that Anthony can write.

  “You don’t have to tell me.” But his grin says he’s only teasing. I’ve never seen Anthony’s face look nice before, but right at this moment, it does.

  • • •

  All weekend, I work on cinquains. I start early and work late. By next poetry club, I want to have the perfect cinquain to share with the group. I gaze out the window and off the porch for inspiration. I lie on my back under the trees with their new May leaves in Phyllis’s backyard. I wrestle with Chip and Stella when I get bored.

  I watch Mikey sit quietly on his porch. I wonder how long his grounding will go on.

  I write:

  Porch.

  Worn boards.

  Sit, wait, pace—

  lonely, pointless time-wasting.

  Creak.

  I write:

  Caboose.

  Too late,

  people pile flowers,

  sweet and lonely, there.

  Heartbreak.

  I write:

  Box,

  secret, dangerous,

  taped loosely closed,

  falls open and hurts.

  Mistake.

  I hum my mother’s favorite song and I write:

  Birds,

  feather-quiet,

  slice between maples,

  calm despite the branches.

  Bravery.

  • • •

  Monday, I sneak my cinquains onto Miss Jacks’s desk. Thursday is too far away, and the poetry is burning a hole in my pocket.

  She sneaks them back onto my desk before the last bell. The bird poem is circled in red.

  Oh! she has written in the margin. Oh, please enter this one, Sasha.

  14

  We’re sitting at the table, me and Mikey. He is still grounded and is not supposed to be here.

  “One of you needs to grease the pan,” Phyllis says.

  “We do that for pizza, too?” I ask.

  “You don’t want your pizza to stick any more than you want your muffins to.”

  Mikey doesn’t move, so I grease the pan, since I know how now.

  “Mikey, how are you with a can opener?” Phyllis slides him the can of sauce. He tries three times to get the can opener to hook onto the top of the can correctly. He slides the unopened can at me and takes the pan to finish greasing. I open the sauce. Phyllis has put herself in charge of rolling out the dough, since, as she puts it, we are determined not to keep our hands clean. I’ve been to the sink three times already to wash, at her demand.

  “Y’all are some of the gloomiest pizza bakers I ever laid eyes on,” Phyllis says to fill the silence.

  “I’m sure we’ll be more cheerful once the pizza comes out of the oven,” I reason.

  Once the pizza comes out of the oven, Mikey and I gloomily sit on the front porch, picking off the toppings. Mikey has chosen pepperoni, pepperoni, and more pepperoni, and that seems to be the only part he wants to eat. Mine is mostly cheese with some mushrooms and tomatoes. I eat the mushrooms plain so I can taste them best.

  “So what happened?” I ask. I know he knows I’m asking how much trouble he got in for the window.

  “I have to see Mr. Powell again. And Shirley, she’s real mad. She doesn’t like when I act . . .” He wiggles back and forth till he can reach his toes down to the dirt. “She’s just mad.”

  “My Mr. Powell?” I’ve got a mouthful of mushrooms, and I forget to swallow them.

  “Gross. Chew your food. I don’t know. He’s really old and he wears blazers.”

  “That’s my Mr. Powell. I didn’t know you saw him, too.”

  He picks at his pepperoni and shrugs with one shoulder.

  I make up a cinquain about Mr. Powell and read it aloud:

  “Counselor.

  Tweed frown.

  Always talking down.

  Boring, boring, boring, boring.

  Cured.”

  Mikey smiles for maybe the first time since the lid came off the box last week.

  • • •

  Hubert calls me over for a job in the evening. I’m glad, because GUI-tars at the pawnshop have been selling. Two this week. Something about the spring in the air and the warmth of the sun. People want to sit outside and sing so they have an excuse to sit outside or an excuse to sing.

  This time Hubert works alongside me. He says it’s because it’s a big job and he has to do the organizing, but I know it’s really because he doesn’t want me to read anything else. We go back to the outbuilding, which is still cluttered high with boxes of things. Hubert hands me a trash bag.

  “Anything that’s wet, toss.” I look from the trash bag to the window. It drizzled all night, and dampness has seeped in around the edges of the trash bag Hubert tacked up over the window. The papers we didn’t get around to boxing sit in squishy clumps on the shelves.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “It was my son, not you.”

  “I was the grown-up,” I say, and Hubert smiles a little.

  “I’m all the way growed,” he confides, “and most of the time I can’t tell what Mikey’s about to do, either.”

  “He doesn’t mean any . . . he doesn’t mean nothing by it.”

  Hubert takes boxes off a shelf. Without a word, he empties my dustpan of glass into a box and puts the box in the trash bag. He hands me the dustpan.

  “He didn’t like what he seen,” I tell Hubert.

  Hubert dusts off the top of a box and moves it to another shelf. “I didn’t like what he seen, neither.”

  • • •

  Mikey doesn’t sleep. He sits at his window and stares at the yard. And I don’t sleep. I sit on the opposite side of the glass. Mikey’s just a little kid. I don’t know how somebody his size could possibly hold all the things I know we’re both feeling. I’m afraid if I walk away from the window, when I come back, Mikey won’t be there anymore. I don’t know where I think he’s going to go. I just know that he and I are a lot alike, and that sometimes, when I’m feeling too many things to stand, I run
.

  When we can’t stand sitting still anymore, I take Mikey to Town Center. We sit on a bench. We look at scattered flowers that are getting brown from sun and black from rain.

  It’s a beautiful night. The only lights are right here in Town Center, and there are only two of those, one at each end. Still, the sky isn’t completely dark. There’s enough moonlight to see where the sky ends and the mountains begin. I can hear wind off in the trees, so thick it sounds like running water. I take a deep breath in and smell the wet mud and new leaves of spring.

  We don’t talk. Mikey and I have a hard enough time talking to each other on a good day. But there are words filling me up, and I need to get rid of them somehow. I sneak loose paper from my backpack. I write:

  Sad things do happen,

  even to little cousins

  who ought to be safe.

  I write:

  This town shrinks and shrinks.

  Moms like to sneak out at night

  and never come back.

  I write:

  We were all born here,

  but we don’t have to die here.

  There is a whole world.

  I write:

  I like the wind, though,

  singing like it’s been sad, but

  things are better now.

  • • •

  I remember the way I felt the night I swore off poetry—the way the words bubbling up through my heart felt overwhelming, like maybe I could drown in them. Tonight, the words are welcome. I remember being unable to speak after Michael died. I remember not being able to find the words even to describe my own thoughts. It was the reason I kept losing chunks of time and waking up to realize what I’d broken, like the streetlight in Cary Fork, or Phyllis’s GUI-tar. Whatever else poetry may do—make me remember, make me think about things—it gives me back the words that I can’t always find.

  • • •

  “What did I do?” I ask Mr. Powell the following week. I don’t like the sound of a conference, but that’s what he’s saying we have to have. The more I have to visit Mr. Powell, the more convinced I am that I really do have “friggin’ issues.” Nobody else in my class sees him, not that I know of. Nobody in poetry club, either. The only other people I know who see him are the kid with no socks and Mikey. And Mikey has “friggin’ issues.”