THE RADIUS OF HOME BY Dennis Etzel, Jr. Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master’s of Fine Arts. ____________________ Dr. Joseph Harrington—Chairperson Committee members* ____________________* Dr. Ken Irby ____________________* Dr. Hadara Bar-Nadav Date defended: April 16, 2010 ii The Thesis Committee for Dennis Etzel, Jr. certifies that this is the approved Version of the following thesis: THE RADIUS OF HOME Committee: ______________________ Dr. Joseph Harrington * Chairperson ______________________ Dr. Ken Irby ______________________ Dr. Hadara Bar-Nadav Date approved: ______________________ iii Table of Contents Title page i Acceptance page ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgements v Dedication page vi My sister and I climb the trunk to begin 1 In 1970, I was born in the middle of America 2 To help describe my actions 3 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is the déjà vu 4 There was no pool 5 It would take years for psychologists to define and describe 6 My father fought fires 7 you with that I 8 Children played war 9 My Transformers Optimus Prime can beat 10 RE: ATTN 11 in grade from page 13 With a cape, I was unseen to everyone 14 In 1982 on the day 15 I theory the bed 16 After a radioactive ninja bit me 17 The panels of my comic book contained the clutter 18 Each illustration had the potential for intensity 19 I was neither super nor hero 20 Curled over for the walk back home 21 I drew a circle 22 [panel one] 23 The April 1984 Ice Storm 24 when out comes to 25 RE: TWO MOTHERS 26 Imagine: lesbian sitcom meets soap opera 29 RE: TWO MOTHERS (continued) 30 fast job as to 32 The first thing I did was to slip it on 33 Potatoes, cows, chickens, fish 34 iv Table of Contents, continued As toasted buns report like young soldiers 35 I scrape the carbon off the flat grill 36 Drive-thru always yells the need 37 As punishment after being seen 38 Slang is slung side to side 39 Waste: how we label food after holding 40 Barbie or Hot Wheels? I asked the mother 41 The closing hour turns to cleaning 42 RE: Topeka 43 WINTER: 46 NOTES ON winter: 49 ERRATA: 50 I was told to be careful 53 after takes we from 54 Not only can communication be by letter or speech 55 I get confused between the telephone game and the silent treatment 56 I plot and pencil a comic book story about a son and father 57 There is always a victim that needs clarification 58 AFTERWORD: 59 Notes 60 v Acknowledgements With special thanks to these editors and their magazines, where the poems from the following pages appeared in some other form: Julia Cohen and Bin Ramke, Denver Quarterly, pages 23, 30, and 31 Brian Daldorph, Coal City Review, pages 38 and 42 Matt Porubsky, seveneightfive, pages 3, 9, 10, and 36 Leah Sewell, The Argo, page 14 vi Thank you Joe Harrington, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Ken Irby, Kevin Rabas, Margy Stewart, Matt Porubsky, and Brian Daldorph for your help and support! To my radius: Carrie & Asmund & my mothers, Susan & Sondra 1 My sister and I climb the trunk to begin with a tree for this world. I spread out leaves of paper. She says it is a maze, a labyrinth for us to follow, as each memory begins with a word, a bird migrating to join the flock’s flight we trace back. At night, we watch the neighborhood plummet. The poem underneath turns over as a boundary, a blank. I push my pen to plant lines but lose my footing. Mnemnosyne, my sister, please help. 2 In 1970, I am born in the middle of America in the middle of an American war. This is the time before I have a face for language, when the television does the talking. It takes time to understand the face of The Vietnam War outside the television. Inside our house. 3 To help describe my actions, please let me explain, the President says. And so, with the vague idea of conjunction and adverb, I start with nothing. There is a so-and-so on television, and the word and repeated over and over. Gertrude Stein says there is no repetition in writing, only insistence. Watch the whole thing previously recorded, not as a repeat, but for insistence, like when the man insists there are hidden WMDs. In America, you can start with nothing. 4 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is the déjà vu between forgetting and trying to forget. Mark and Rob refuse to talk about Iraq. My father refuses to talk about Vietnam. The lawn needs mowing again. Going back and forth across the field. You can’t tell who the enemy is until they fire upon you. It’s all coming back now. To stay. 5 There is no pool, no diving board for jumping away. Only feet-scuffles across grass, the sun stuck. I can not step out of bounds, the boundary of certain busy streets. A boy named Jack who lived a couple of blocks away is murdered. The news says it. The neighborhood parents say avoid cars, stay closer to home, my worst fear. Closer to ending up like Jack. My father continues to burn through streets. Block by block, the radius of home burns. 6 It takes years for psychologists to define and describe Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder, so they give it initials—a way to hide the wounds. I feel the after-effect of PTSD, call it post-PTSD. Blame the wars. Blame the need to speak. 7 My father fights fires with a force that knocks doors down. He is gone for days at a time. I panic at the sound of fire truck sirens. I check the house for flames, dump matches into the toilet. From under my sheets I listen for the sound of the front door crackling. 8 you with that I try words I play walls work turn dumb you do but with say not say your words shake don’t words you mouth say words do what you for not you will me said but you what through you verb you hands grab noun hold 9 Children play war in gardens of lilacs and daisies. There is often a picnic after a morning of plastic machine guns with rapid-fire spit. I place my hands over the ketchup spout to stop the bleeding. 10 My Transformers Optimus Prime can beat your Halo Master Chief. And my fantasy football Indianapolis Colts Payton Manning quarterback can beat your fantasy football Miami Dolphins Jason Taylor defensive lineman. And my American Idol first-season winner Kelly Clarkson can beat your American Idol fourth-season winner Carrie Underwood. And my Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven" can beat your Beatles "Hey Jude." And my Resident Evil Jill Valentine can beat your Tomb Raider Lara Croft. And my Risk Board Game of Global Domination green Army in North America can beat your Risk Board Game of Global Domination yellow Army anywhere in the world. And my noun can beat your verb. And my scissors can beat your paper. And my rock can beat you beat you. 11 RE: ATTN 1. The first-grade teacher says the child should be on Ritalin. 2. The mother and father refuse. 3. Slide the red paper aside. 4. When in trouble, open. 5. Your notebook and dictionary. Copy. 6. Include the phonics, written, not heard. 7. Trap a frog in a jar as an experiment. 8. Imagine a robin perched on a tree limb. 9. In the rain, orange heart beating. 10. The tree limb as a guarding hand. 11. Make the sun orange. 12. Make trees. 13. Make robin hearts beat the size of raindrops. 14. The mother says: 15. Let’s look to see what is on this page to color shades of orange. 16. We should explore the possibilities. 17. Behind what we think things are, what colors they should be. 18. The nightlight a constellation. 12 19. Pay attention. 20. Purples in the darkness. 21. Wait for Orion’s sword to fall. 22. To cut the thread. 23. Do not talk in class. 24. No movement of the mouth. 25. No recess. 26. Where no one sees. 27. The stars in detention shine. 28. An award for coloring the correct colors of animals. 29. Color a page of grey over green. 30. Use the sunlight coming through the classroom window. 31. Reflect its light in your wristwatch glass. 32. Make the ball of light dance on the wall like a star. 33. Make shining rescues. 13 in grade from page the words board as fifth leave to strict my me out scream mouth in though get sticks time you out say tongue just your speak your want own with teeth room voice no me white to sound makes sticks plaque from teeth stuck us 14 With a cape, I am unseen to everyone but three superheroes in fifth grade— girls inside their secret headquarters behind the playground's maple. They confide to me how they each have x-ray vision, could see supervillains in fathers, brothers, men down the block. I hug them with my mutant arms powerless to share my single cloak— 15 In 1982 on the day of the finalization of the divorce, my mother, sister, and I go home to sleep. On my thirteenth birthday, I turn to comic books and graphic novels. Two days later, my words turn inward. Fifty years before, glassmakers make the plates that fill my mother’s china cabinet. My finger presses the raised textures, the sudden drops. 16 I theory the bed example silence night covers trauma through shakes loose 17 After a radioactive ninja bites me, I develop superpowers of agility. My head buzzes with fear. I climb walls all night. 18 The panels of my comic book contain the clutter that hides me as I create the comic book in this way—out of hiding. By drawing a panel for my story, a box surrounds me. I use the box to recreate my bedroom. Scribbles represent my clutter. 19 Each illustration holds potential for intensity, for intensities that require several word balloons. They float away like thoughts. As a scholar of origin stories, I research each superhero I know. My origin is different, a story about someone I do not know. 20 I am neither super nor hero. I hope you fall in life, the teacher says in gym when I fall from the bars after five minutes without a chin-up. In comic books, the weak boy swallows a super-strength serum. For cover, he holds up his indestructible shield. I hold up my comic book. 21 Curled over for the walk back home through the blizzard, my pages touch the landscape until, hooked by the wind, they detach from my staples. My story is visible, if someone would reassemble us. 22 I draw a circle. I draw two dots with a flat line underneath. I see a face. 23 [panel one] With his comic book artwork, Bill Sienkiewicz saves the world every Friday. [panel two] My thoughts need rescue, stuck in a gutter between panels. [panel three] Smudged inside. [panel four] Somewhere, a penciler pencils an exploding wall. [panel five] An inker inks over the debris, adding details. [panel six] The colorist colors the center with red and yellow. [panel seven] I stare at the artwork until a flash of red and yellow hit. [last panel] The explosion knocks me. Free. 24 The April 1984 Ice Storm of my mother’s divorce snaps power lines the weight of drizzle strands our house except for the transistor describing Glenn Miller his plane disappeared without news of rescue his family gathered with my mother and sister huddled under blankets thick clouds Stardust cuts and scatters 25 when out comes to mother another with make comes mother arms family 26 RE: TWO MOTHERS 1. My mother comes out in 1984 Sondra moves in in 1985 her bookshelves hold gardens of philosophers hold healers, mystics, prophets, poets with a turntable and speakers her albums hold orchestras tragic clowns and a ring of gods female warriors on flying horses sweep down to claim my dead soldiers as I am among them 27 2. Two women— out—hang each double-cup in the breeze on two wide lines— their smiles at the neighbors who spy no sign of any man—no boxers, no briefs 28 3. When neighbors across the street yell at me you live with “dikes” they do not mean how my mothers hold back flood after flood 29 Imagine: lesbian sitcom meets soap opera. In the pilot, a boy sits on a living room sofa. Two women walk in the front door. The boy asks, Mother, isn’t that the closet? Cue laugh track. Set in a New York City neighborhood bar, a voluptuous woman publicly comes out on her show—the response by straight, adoring men: out of character and the meanest sitcom in years. The sitcom showed two women sharing a brownstone and raising two daughters in Greenwich Village before the show was cancelled. The newsman says, Avoid moving children immediately to a new neighborhood or school, as students of lesbian or gay parents are victims of harassment and bullying in every neighborhood not on television. 30 RE: TWO MOTHERS (continued) 4. years later the new neighbor asks how my aunt is feeling I stop how would she know my aunt we never see it is my other mother who is sick she questions, as if my mothers are sisters who live together raise children share a bed my mother not mother but mother 31 5. one mother is a nurse, the other is a counselor for therapy, down the middle one for the mind, the other for the body I help them sharpen, that double-edged axe for gardens, each work of resistance, against grindstones 32 fast job as to food as I’m saying restaurant start uncertain no 33 The first thing I do is slip it on— blue polyester with white highlights and tag. My name penciled in beside the arches. There is a photo of me on the front porch, on my first day of work. My visor pulled down, hiding my eyes. I wished not to be seen, out of fear of what men might shout. I wondered why I was going, why I even signed up. Alongside the veterans— the employees who do their time alone as I am—we each do the job well, knowing we don’t make a difference. 34 Potatoes, cows, chickens, fish—the list of the condemned will soon include you, how you are cut down and frozen at work in the kitchen, a deer caught in the flash of timers—the sign of failure— even when you follow the manual to the word, a devout employee. The manager brings down fryer baskets shaped like iron jails and ends illusions of meals named happy, and you feel like these things you load into wired cages— pushed, spliced, mangled, reshaped, lowered into the fryer that endlessly burns. 35 As toasted buns report like young soldiers onto the table, a timer of the mind begins—break the clinging parts apart and place each condiment on the tops before the burgers drop. I am taught uniform dressing procedures—one squeeze from the mustard and ketchup guns, a pickle with enough onions to fit the size of a quarter— but now I wish to do more, to throw grenades of extra pickles and cheese, give real happiness to the boy who wants a Happy Meal. But the order is in—keep my head down, do what I am told, and swallow, without question, everything. 36 I scrape the carbon off the flat grill, as the new team member from the kitchen is told by the manager to mop the back room before leaving. The grill scraper is sharp— shaves off the brown ashes. The manager jokes with me about something, as a way to let the new boy know he is not wanted. I push down hard to get the residue off the metal, wishing to see silver again. The manager turns his back on the young man he laughs at. I do my best— nod, smile, continue to scrape away— 37 Drive-thru always yells the need for a chef, side, garden or chicken. On the farm where the packaged lettuce grows, just by the barn’s north side, chickens roam free in the garden. A chef surveys the soil’s fertile texture. On afternoons at two, a man in red polyester sweeps everything into his arms— lettuce, garden, chickens. Loads a truck bound for a factory where each thing naturally falls asleep, passes away to a painless dicer or chopper. From conveyer belt into cardboard boxes, loaded onto a truck, and sent to this restaurant, this salad- making table of stainless steel under flickers of fluorescent, without a drop of red on either plastic-gloved hand. 38 As punishment after being seen as lazy, you are placed on the station for bagging French fries, knowing anyone can pick up the handle, place containers on the end, flip the wrist, and send scooped fries falling down off the pile. Think of how the sun shines outside as heat lamps shine their substitute rays. How the beach feels as salt gets stuck under your nails with the frying oil. The manager comes by to check you out, looking hot in your uniform. You glow from the fluorescent rays, with the power to make many servings at request. 39 Slang is slung side to side in the five-o’clock-in-the-morning manner after the outside door to the walk-in freezer opens. The cold rolls out as fog onto the truck’s back where we unload and open boxes, pulling out goodies like thieves. Greg was homeless when hired. He now takes empty boxes to his apartment. They are like the ones I wept in, he says. He follows with a comment about how stealing stereos is better than working fast food. I follow with how I feel my hours here stolen. 40 Waste: how we label food after holding past a certain time. Our food expires, we are told when hired, and we learn compound words like wastecount while we watch each sandwich thrown into wastebuckets, still warm, unwrapped. One time, Steve snagged seven cheeseburgers meant for waste and ate them in the break room to show he would survive. After close, everything becomes waste—even pies and salads. We sometimes include ranch dressing, knowing it will be gone from the dumpster by morning. 41 Barbie or Hot Wheels? I ask the mother when she orders a Happy Meal for her son. Many employees called the Barbies girl toys as Hot Wheels were for boys. I argued a boy might want a doll and a girl might dream of racing someday. The store manager allowed me to change the buttons, reprogram the registers that said BOY TOY and GIRL TOY. However, the customer yells at me, How dare you imply my son would want a Barbie toy. I stand looking just as confused, upset, holding the toys in each hand as if they could be balanced. 42 The closing hour turns to cleaning, turns to leaving at two in the morning, as night employees stretch out on the grass, beside their parked cars, as the automatic lights shut off. Each body turns to the stars, each wishing to find a way out. The hands that touched burgers, that wrapped wrappers and fixed cold drinks now smell of grease and French fries, now dig into dirt to bury these gross scents, fingers pushing deeper into the earth. 43 RE: Topeka 1. Sunflowers grow wild along the highway, but you can’t pick any other place to live. Nor can you pick any flowers from the rose garden at Gage Park. The mini-train leaves every half hour, tickets cost a dollar. The tour goes through a tunnel. You circle around, then back untouched. 44 2. “Topeka’s grand opening never happens.” Highway cuts through hills to allow people a trade route for their covered wagons, for their cars. This reveals the thousands of years of sedentary rock, fossils. “Bison wandered the unpalleted limestone” until the carved slices of flint embedded inside them. Came for a revival, then left for Texas. Settlers did not settle here. This is post-revival, the repetition of a lost city, mimicking a ghost town without ghosts. Here, old signs of promise. On the left are the parking lots moved all the way from White Lakes Mall. Gas is cheaper than rooms here so we drive these streets all night. 45 3. MapQuest doesn’t work, though I dream of travel, even to Kansas City. I need mapped out like a route without dead ends. Always clicking to the wrong streets, I want my dramatic monologue to be dramatic. I want my city to change, but it’s me who can’t use MapQuest right. In the sublime, you cozy close to death. Someday, Topeka could be sublime, but I know every death here. 46 WINTER: 1. Topeka takes a turn for me for the better part of the new millennium when disaster grows on the national level to reach my fill-to level I need Topeka with its decision of desegregation its capitol building dome in green oxidation another breath a change in the copper and lead during SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH TWO THOUSAND ONE yes that one day two days after the towers when Sondra falls under like how the swimming instructor held my head under and prepared me for my future my breath held until a count to ten my mother told the first of five different times Sondra will not survive the night 47 2. it is not what is not written but omitted in the records where words should be we receive white space an insider tells us anesthesia travelled the wrong way attacked the heart stopped the brain white-out conditions like a blizzard— 48 3. Please read me a poem she says, as she moves into the machine, her body scanned like a page. She knew the pain in her back was more than the pain doctors dismissed. Inside, she wants Sappho, broken lines, lost words. I said I prefer just to talk as space fills pages. The word winter brilliant in white lighting each of us. 49 NOTES ON winter: a: Let the snow be a metaphor for death. b: It happens during three winters, while snow falls. c: In the waiting room, we worry about Sondra’s dying. d: Not the death people refer to when they say, I literally died. e: Not the cliché death found in poetry. f: Not the death Ernest Hemingway says every story ends with. g: Frozen still, someone says. h: As the snow covers everything, surrounds us. i: Sondra pushes through the snow. 50 ERRATA: I’m a lesbian living inside a man’s body I say out loud on the bar’s terrace luckily my friends laugh, knowing I’m drunk describing how I was raised by two women I am the son of lesbians I tell Nooney when we first meet after I asked her why she said homosexual when she described her graphic arts project from her lesbian viewpoint and thought about how my thoughts were shaped by two completely different mothers as the Mai Tais I’ve had wrap my thoughts a girly drink someone said to me I count seven empty glasses two mothers and the times I can’t relate to most men like when one says that is so gay a second responds your mom is gay I turn to see if they’re talking about me while I’m confiding in my friends I would castrate myself to end the patriarchy but it is nonsense, nonsense that gender means sexuality when Jack Tripper from Three’s Company 51 can be both straight and gay like Kinsey said, we do the sexuality slide I order another Mai Tai trying to ignore them like the man who called me a fag because I would not support our troops by signing his petition or when the nurse outside of Sondra’s hospital room asks what relation we are, my mother says I am her partner as we walk past the nurse who can not stop us or the march to Topeka’s city council in support of the vote for non-discrimination based on orientation the opposition is from churches I’ve visited, friends I work with, their spouses their children even as I hold hands with the woman I love in public but my mothers can’t or when two women kiss outside of Best Buy I say yes aloud thinking Topeka has changed but they drive away with Oregon plates I am a reliable witness to an unreliable society 52 tonight I am drunk walk back with several friends, women to Nooney’s where she and her girlfriend let me sleep on their sofa, in peace 53 I was told to be careful of the fine print. My attention fixes upon details— the motion of birds, the design of doors. I was told not to trust what I hear, to get the words in writing. Now I listen. to build each word on paper. The more I write in small letters, the more spaces in between make nest after nest, room after room. 54 after takes we from the years hesitate past message what stars share 55 Not only can communication be by letter or speech, but by internet, satellite, and comic book. In spite of parental guidance and reality television, children hold the power of comics, using dialogue balloons with pointed ends like arrows—to point to the speaker like a camera microphone. Sometimes circles replace arrows—to show what one is thinking, their private feelings and thoughts. When I was young my dialogue balloons floated away. 56 I get confused between the telephone game and the silent treatment. When something is whispered and passed down from person to person within a group, the end sentence is a different punishment than the start. An example of this happens near my father’s house, how his dog on an extended leash runs into the busy street anyway and is hit by a car—silenced. I will leave the other details out of this sentence, for comfort. My sister calls to say any communication with him, even a letter, would not be good. I repeat this as a whisper into a can on a cut string. 57 I plot and pencil a comic book story about a son and father, but it lacks a coherent story that connects within the panels. A character uses a dialogue balloon to say they are guilty of victim talk. Psychologists can prove this because guilt is another sign of a victim mentality. I capture my victim mentality inside a dialogue balloon to watch it drift away. 58 There is always a victim that needs clarification in a story. Rock stars’ wives are shown on television, as survived. Dogs named after rock stars’ wives can be elegized and buried. I open the front door in the same manner survivors recover their comic book collections. I wave my arms to invite you in—release a thought balloon as a signal that all is clear. 59 AFTERWORD: You might read radius in different ways or all at once everything radiates radius is— us—home— 60 Notes 22: A riff from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics 30: A riff from Gertrude Stein’s “Patriarchal Poetry”: “a sister not sister but sister” 44: The quotes are from Ed Skoog’s poem "The Kansas River, Also Called Kaw" About THE RADIUS OF HOME: In the tradition of My Life by Lyn Hejinian, I, Afterlife, by Kristin Prevallet, and Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, The Radius of Home is a poetic adulthood-meets- childhood memoir of perception, language, and survival. From the PTSD-related trauma of a father who served in Vietnam, to a mother whose coming out is attacked by homophobic neighbors, this poetry collection, ranging from prose and matrix poems to lyrical free verse, explores how language can be an attack, shield, or epiphany. Comic books, fast food jobs, and dogs named after rock stars’ wives are all a part of this collection that seeks to redefine what makes a family a home.