Sometimes on Cool Nights
Even now, as I open windows, I am conducting
Carmina Burana, my right hand pendulating
the church’s lawn mower, the constant whistle
my neighbor’s six-year-old blows, authorizing
sounds to seep through the screening’s holes, to build
crescendo. I’m not used to this living, these windows,
since I grew up closed by South Florida heat, only rare
December nights louvering the jalousies, so my fingers,
between the glass layers, could palpate the intercoastal
breeze swaying palm frowns, and I could insufflate
the remnant Everglades’ smoke, kumquats ripening
our front yard. I argued for more open time, the outside
seeming idyllic, its canned, chirping birds reminding me
of tv shows, backgrounding sounds when pleasant-faced
children awoke by unfolding their arms, then sliding
into slippers, neither of which I ever did. The year
I was nine, right before Christmas, my window opened
me to sleep, our neighbors’ holiday decorations my night
light, my mother and Jean often sharing evening wine
over the low, concrete wall dividing our lots. This one
night, I awoke to Jean’s screaming, her shrieks so unlike
her usual voice I missed the air conditioning’s white noise,
its window-unit rattle, something synthetic. I kind of knew I
shouldn’t hear her I can’t believe you got yourself a whore
and wanted to run to my parents’ bed, the way I did when
lightning cracked outside my shut window, or maybe they
heard, too, and soon would be calling, It’s okay, almost over,
as they descended the three, short steps between our rooms,
I imagined their bodies outlined by slatted, lighted streaks until
landing atop my Peter Maxx comforter, their soft fingers stroking
my ear to turn off my mind, to send me back to sleep. But
alone and too scared the outside voices would know I heard,
I stayed as still as possible, pulling the fluffy cover just under
my nostrils, and started picturing colored Peanuts cartoons
I had memorized from the Snoopy Festival I got last Christmas,
how I loved the storyline of Snoopy finding Lila, his doggy
girlfriend, during the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm riot, her soft paws
all he needed to recognize her in a smoky crowd. I guess that
and outside quiet worked because I remember awakening to
diagonals yellowing the shag carpet and closet door, the light rolling
me toward my paneled wall, my arm a rising beanstalk growing
out of the window slats, my fingers stretching and fisting the heavy air.
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Amy Lerman, by way of Florida, Illinois, England, and Kansas, lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press) won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest, she has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passengers Journal, Atticus Review, Muleskinner, The Madison Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, and other publications.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 