Jenny Hanover and a Thousand Lives

In another life I am a terrible alcoholic and a cruise ship magician 

I wear platinum rings and leather bracelets 

And go down on barbacks and line cooks below deck.

In another life I am a rodeo clown

I smudge grease paint on my face

and bake banana bread for a mariachi band

I hand flyers to pretty faces on their way to revivals.

In another life I am a thirty-year-old counselor at a sleepaway camp

I watch teenagers sneak behind fallen-down sheds

and come back with swollen lips

I get in a Saturn and go back to my mother’s house at the end of the summer to work at the Radio Shack.

In another life I am a mail carrier on Santa Anna street

and my mother lives in London, Ontario

I write letters to my childhood best friend under a false name

and run my lips over the seal before I drop them in her uncle’s mailbox.

In another life, I am a teenage boy who is sniffing model glue

and getting ready to piss under the bleachers of my little brother’s football game

Looking for nickels in my jeans pockets

to throw at my neighbor’s bicycle spokes .

In another life, I am an insurance saleswoman who cheats at cards

my husband digs graves at St. Mary Therese

he dug one for my brother once

then another time, again.

In another life, I will always find myself

in every life, there I am

I don’t know what it is, what thread I’m woven out of

Something garish, something cruel or maybe unforgiving

spun to find pleasure, spun to open doors for girls in sundresses

spun to walk on my knees across a gravel pool deck

In another life, there I am.