Self-Portrait with Flashbacks in the Purple Bathroom of the Lavender Farm in Milton, Delaware

I remember the days of
cigarettes and whippets
a pack of Marlboro Reds
in a box you’d buy
after you pulled the
whipped cream can from
the store shelf when no
one was looking suck
the nitrous out of it put
it back down slide the
glass door shut then
go to the counter with
your cigarettes trying
not to laugh while you
paid then letting it loose
like dropping a handful
of spare change once you
got out the door and laughing
at the night sky walking back
to your neighborhood fast
or slow like a glass door
with smudges or the arrival
of the Queen of Sheba it
was hard to tell sometimes.
Some people did the hard
stuff but you were always
sensible about this and
measured it almost with
precision and a clear eye
on the future except one
time a friend said his heart
stopped from too much nitrous
but he/they/someone got it
going again and he’s living
in Canada now or Wisconsin
being some kind of life coach
or whatever they call that
professional self-help situation
when there’s someone with
a certificate doing the
unwieldy lifting for you.
And me I’m living the calm
life now in small town
conservative America thinking
beautiful socialist thoughts like
wild mist coming off dry ice
in the late Pleistocene or in
the evening quiet of the living
room loving both my family
and the way the rug ends
and the wood floor begins
when I walk toward the hall
on my way to the stairs when
its time to go to bed thinking
how every molecule within me
that has survived and is alive
moves in exquisite time like
an orchestra of oboes, bassoons,
horns, trumpets, timpani, strings,
and takes up space like brass in
pocket on a day coming out
of a store all shiny when there
really was nothing I needed to buy.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

A Routine Evaluation of My Accomplishments at a Late Stage in the Middle Part of My Career

Because of a mix tape I played for what
must have been a couple of decades, I can’t
hear Prince’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover”
without expecting to hear T.S. Monk’s
“Bon Bon Vie (Gimme the Good Life)”
right after it. There were train rides when
I was so weary I’d fall asleep in minutes,
days when I was so sad flowers lacked
both scent and color. Meanwhile, weeks
were lost like socks with holes in them
and days recalled like harmful products
except there was no store where I could
take them back, no class action lawsuit
for squandered opportunities and essential
connections missed. These years of love
have sustained me far beyond anything
I ever could have imagined; a dusting to
an inch of snow overnight on cold asphalt
resulting in a two hour delay is all part
of the good life. A red light long enough
for me to take a picture of blue sky over
grey pavement is like a shot glass from
a roadside gift shop, another memory that
never diminishes. I admit I didn’t always
know this, just as I understand that there
are gaps in my resume that will never be
explained, and disturbances in my sleep
which, like having to go to the bathroom
at 4am, only briefly interrupt the dream.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

That Point Where the Rivers Meet and All Our Noble Angry Efforts

We were half a mile away from Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, descending Route 340 into those lower depths where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac, when my seven year old son Julien asked from the back seat, “Is Donald Trump a douchebag?” It was one of those questions to which an average parent might respond by scolding or, at the very least, by recommending a change in diction. Heather and I, however, aren’t those parents. Which isn’t to say we didn’t answer swiftly and firmly.

“Yes,” we said right away. And then, in case Julien needed further affirmation, we said it again: “Yes.” And, “he is a douchebag.” Not that we thought Julien wasn’t clear about it, but sometimes, for the sake of what’s good in the world, one will repeat things. Like Molly Bloom, at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses, repeatedly saying “Yes.” There is, of course, a measure of poetry in this.

As it was, this was a nice change from the previous day when, driving to pick up our daughter Maggie and Julien from school, I noticed a bumper sticker on the car ahead of me. On it were the words, “Real Men Aren’t Afraid to Show It,” and what these words were printed above was the Confederate Flag. The first thoughts that came to mind were, “How can you even begin to have a discussion with someone who expresses this so proudly and so publicly?” And then came the usual string of imprecations directed toward the driver of the vehicle bearing this sentiment. The imprecations are, certainly, a different kind of poetry. But they are poetry nonetheless.

That afternoon, we continued past Harper’s Ferry on up to the outskirts of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Heather’s parents’ house. We stepped in for a while, then Heather and I left Maggie and Julien with Heather’s mom and her sister Kara, and took Heather’s dad Gary with us. We drove into town where the writer George Saunders was doing a reading at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. In this photograph, taken at the bookstore that evening, the look on George Saunders’s face is the same look I had on my face when I saw the “Real Men Aren’t Afraid to Show It”/Confederate Flag bumper sticker—the difference between George Saunders and me being that while he was about to tell a funny, illuminating story, I was about to shout obscenities toward the driver of the car in front of me. I gather that this isn’t the only area where George Saunders comes out way ahead of me, but it’s a start.

After the reading, we went back to Heather’s parents’ house. Julien got to spend some time playing with his two year old cousin Lochlan, while Maggie spent half the time hanging out with her grandmother and the other half of the time reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I was more than halfway through college when I read Crime and Punishment, while Maggie is just fourteen years old. Which means that, like George Saunders, she’s way ahead of me—but that’s fine with me. In fact, that she’s ahead of where I was at her age pleases me to a level higher than Elon Musk could ever imagine. That because of this she has opportunities I never had pleases me even more.

The other night, Julien said “newspaper, newspaper” in his sleep. I wondered what it was he was dreaming about. Just as I wonder about the spinning of the earth, and the ways we might measure our movements against those of the universe and all those objects that are faster, stronger, bolder than we are. And, I wonder about the ways I might illuminate the smallest details to the point where everything is significant and nothing can ever be lost.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua