Evidence of birth

This could be evidence of my sister's birth.

Grandma Chase

Smoker's daughter

In the indigo blue

Chevy Impala the window is not cracked.

Along the levee past the fried-oyster

restaurants there is no moist air, no scent of the river and the muddy lake.

Over the bridge where the small boats pull into the launches with baskets

of bluecrabs, on the skyway over the industrial canal, smooth

 eel of a road, past the Zephyr at Ponchartrain Beach,

onto Elysian Fields in the rain, it’s not cracked.

In this brocaded backseat, minnows

swim up uncracked windows. I’m breathing

my father’s breath.

Blue-red-blue streetlights flash as we pass,

blue seats glow purple. Smoke keeps rising

from the hand in the front, from the mouth

that may or may not be talking, may or may not be

smiling. The mouth below the nose, above

the stubbled chin, the mouth below blue

eyes that may or may not be bloodshot.

The lights pass in time with the wheels, rolling

over slabs of white pavement bound together with black

tar, streets edged in palmetto, crepe myrtle, magnolia

that may or may not be in bloom.

Spanish moss glows in oak trees, like the beard of ash that grows

on his cigarette, ash untapped till it reaches my father’s

calloused fingers, fingers bearing the scent of fish.

When the rain stops we crank windows wide. Smoke rolls

back as I hold my face to the air, long hair exploding,

filling my mouth and my eyes. The hand in the front, the left hand

on the left arm on the rim of the window, the hand with the fingers

that pinch the golden filter of the cigarette, the hand taps the drooping stem of ash,

and the ash peppers the air,

peppers his girl’s face behind,

peppers the whites of his daughter’s eyes,

peppers the reddening corners of my eyes.

Jake's name by him

Ranch & beach

things in the envelope from Dad

His last email

The bracelet I wore for him

I love you, mom

The letter to my grandmother

Jake's factory of evil

    

Factory of evil

Ria's scene

13 and beautiful (Ria third from left)

The weird camp shot (Lauren & Grace)

What is a box?

A house is a box

and a room.

I live in the box

in my head.

My voice begins

in a box. A box

is my camera,

my computer,

my car, my balcony,

my anatomy.

Ranch dogs

Cattle dogs for sale, card picked up in Strong City, Kansas

Me, Apache and a combine, circa 1993

The deMonsabert experience

Paperweight with shells and fish

A couple of my grandfather's books

My grandfather's most well known book

Frenchmen, Desire, Goodchildren jacket flap

Of Time and Chase cover

Of Time and Chase jacket

What it says inside my grandpa's book

Things I found in my husband's office

Family, horses, Kansas, etc.

Catholic iconography, etc., saved by my grandmother Chase

What my grandmother saved

She put it in a box

On the back of a holy card

St. Joseph, model of XYZ

My father

John Chase, Lake Ponchartrain, 1964

Images of home

Object 1: Saved flier from a show by Nick Quijano, Puerto Rican painter. The painting: La Siesta (1985)

La siesta

Shabby couch, cushions rolling

new slipcover slipping

little beagle snoring

all Sunday morning

reading glasses resting

cup of coffee cooling

saints approving

ancestors hover

on the ceiling.

Black house by Judy Jarrett of Indy