Jacqueline Berger is the author of three previous books: The Mythologies of Danger, winner of the Bluestem Poetry Prize, Things That Burn, winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and The Gift That Arrives Broken, which won the Autumn House Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac. Her latest book, The Day You Miss Your Exit, is from Broadstone Books. She is a professor of English and directs the graduate program at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, CA. A native of Los Angeles, Jacqueline lives in San Francisco with her husband.

Did My Father Work on Bombs?

We cheered, he told me, 

when they were dropped

because it meant the war was over.

Home on a G.I. Bill, a Jewish boy 

with a brain for math, 

the field offered stable, secure,

professional employment.

Every year, an Einstein wall calendar, 

physicist on a bicycle,

World War IV will be fought 

with sticks and stones,

the torment of genius 

my father understood.

If he were still alive, 

would I ask again? 

He already told us he would never.

Where he drew the line,

the century buckling around him.

Business trips to Oak Ridge, 

Hanford. Plutonium 

could not be smelled or tasted,

seen or heard or felt,

back when we still believed

its clean science

would keep us safe. 

Concrete lined in steel, 

fully contained casks

to withstand—but the century

is over, and Eisenhower’s

Atoms for Peace long gone.

My father wanted

his body turned to ash.

Briefly I held the sealed

box in my hands

before we buried it in earth.

The Day You Miss Your Exit

Keep driving until the highway 

dissolves into the hills. 

Stop in a small town for lunch 

or the rest of your life, 

who would you be here? 

Someone not afraid to close down

the bar, tossing back shots 

with a cowboy, your tee shirt 

knotted under your breasts,

the plane of your stomach exposed, 

so what if everyone knows what you came for.

When he leads you to the dance floor,

follow, then face him, one hand

loose on his shoulder, the other

keeping its options open. 

Your body isn’t the glass bauble

in a velvet box you’ve always thought

it was your job to protect.

Without a friend to drive her home,

a woman drinking gets into a truck.

Drop the bad and it’s just things happen.

There’s a house for rent on the edge of town.

From the window, distance 

and sky without end.

But the body is tethered to its shadow,

black dog that leads or follows,

there’s no slipping the knot of ourselves.

Lunch over, you leave

enough on the table for a tip,

look back though you’re already walking

in the direction of your car 

then steering it onto the road,

the dog riding shotgun, a snoutful

of evening air up his nose 

from the open window 

and the closer you get to home—

he smells it from miles away—

the happier he gets. 

Without

Could you do without your title,

your office, its little window; 

could you do without paper clips, the parking permit?

Could you do without eco mode, 

the spin cycle? Without cast iron,

the dutch oven, without olive oil, 

green garlic? Could you do without

apples, the blender, the toaster, do without the timer

on the microwave you use for so many purposes;

could you do without time 

broken into fifteen minutes, into eight, 

do without the clock, the calendar—

ten years ago or twenty?

Could you do without your dead,

do without dragging them back

from wherever it is they’ve gone? 

Do without the nightgown, the robe, the pillow? 

Without the medicine cabinet, the vials and tablets?

Could you forgo the glass of water on the night table?

Could you go without night, without its minutes

in the dark before sleep, without the one

who lies next to you, without whom 

you would wander the seas,

lost vessel looking for home? Could you 

do without home, its pitched roof, 

its hill, its sign that says Hill; do without the dog

in the window, without his barking

when a stranger approaches? 

Could you do without the stranger 

bearing witness or asking for money?

Could you do without money, the twenties

folded into your wallet, the money in the bank

you never see, the system of money, the spinning 

of its wheels, its engines like air?

Could you do without engines, 

without clockworks, combustion,

without the revving to start,

the humming inside as they run?

A Deficit Life

For years you never had enough, 

that’s how it felt, then later did 

but worried how much 

to spend on the pleasures 

and comforts of the surface. 

Lament at the end 

that you were never really stylish,

that your timing was off, your entrance askew.

How close or far you were

from who you thought you should have been

is almost over. 

At what point does the failing heart 

start a countdown of its dwindling beats?

The gathered scatter your powder of stars

and say their goodbyes. 

That’s you in next year’s peaches and tomatoes.

You in the wind that carries voices

and you in the smell of the wine-soaked barrels,

in the rind of cheese, the dry leaves that exhale

a mustardy air into the stillness 

of the garden at dusk

when the heat is a loose dress

and the wicker table is set,

the glasses are filled, and twilight

presses its ear to listen.

From the Middle

More a sense than a feeling,

or even a scent, unidentified 

weed that smells like curry and grows 

on the mountain where we take the dog, 

and grew in the Hollywood Hills

where I went to camp. Nostalgia’s 

a bad shorthand but it’s something.

Or maybe it’s like lowering into a hot bath, 

the almost sorrow that rises with the steam,

though tenderness is even worse than nostalgia.

I’m off to a bad start, but let’s go with curry

in dry September. What I’m getting at

is how these days and for some time

I feel a pulling away even in the midst.

Driving to work, I’m already done 

with the calendar of busyness. 

Even as I’m pulling into the parking lot, 

finding a spot, hanging my employee placard 

from the rearview, I’m long into 

the drifting of its after,

wet sand of soft mornings,

luxury and loneliness of Monday

and nowhere to be.

Early evening walks up the mountain,

past the shellmound, past Owl Canyon,

on to Acres before looping back to the car, 

the dog is gone and I miss him

who at this moment is only 

blocked from view, burrowing in brush, 

scratching against its rough.

In the distance, death’s 

fluorescent hum in place of the low chant

all life if you listen carefully emits.

Will we get another dog, weighing

our modes of escape against the pinning down

of daily walks, burrs pulled from the tail?

And you too are gone, even in the middle 

of our lives, even as you drive us home,

the dog in the back seat sleeping like the child

we never had. Why do you die first?

How else to keep telling the story?

I’m alone and not young, then old,

the scent of burning leaves or rubbish,

acrid and sweet, spit thickening

in the corners of my mouth.

I won’t call this state anxiety, depression,

will call it the open window,

the train’s thin whistle bending into the curve.

Lament or the physics of sound?

Will call it here and also gone,

it will answer to both

like a dog with a previous owner

who learned himself by one name and then another.

Will call and call but there is no answer,

and that will be the answer, 

the doesn’t matter of its either way.

From The Day You Miss Your Exit © Copyright Jacqueline Berger. 

All Rights Reserved.