Poetry by Elisabeth Harrahy

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The Day I Grew Up


“Holy crap. No. I don’t remember
that one,” I say to my cousin Danny
as we sit in some dark bar in Jersey City
downing shots of vodka.

Danny is my artist/writer/former abandoned child
cousin who came to stay with us
the summer I was 12 and he was 17,
the year my father dragged us from Massachusetts to Florida
to pursue his latest dream
of owning a bar 

Apparently, 
one foggy morning
during that summer
when my father was cheating on my mother
with one (or maybe two) of the barmaids
and there was so much tension in the air,
my father loaded up the car with my younger brother and sister
my cousin my mother and me 
to drive to the beach.

“And then,” Danny says (after his third shot),
“something happened, and your father
slammed on the brakes, slid onto the shoulder
and screamed, ‘Get out of the damn car! All of you!’”

Hearing this story,
I down another shot myself
and suddenly I can smell that salt water marsh,
that amalgam of rotten egg and salt and sour-fresh air.
And I can hear those seagulls squawking overhead, 
drowned out every other second
by a car whizzing by on the highway.

And I think of what we must have looked like
to the people in those cars--
some woman
three kids in bathing suits
a lanky young man 
standing in sparse prickly grass
looking bewildered, afraid, and maybe
relieved all at once.

But what Danny tells me
is that after running a few steps in the direction
of my father and yelling, “Daddy!” as he roared away
in that station wagon with the fake
wood on the side, I paused
then turned and walked back.
Looking up at my mother and him, I said 
something like, “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. 
You all just stay here 
while I walk up to the next exit
and get help.” 

“And that,” says Danny, 
giving me a sideways glance from his empty shot glass,
“was that.” 





Because Cockroaches Are Not Very Poetic


I try to focus instead
on the framed photo 
of my daughters and me 
beside my dad’s bed
and on the cardboard box
of his third wife's ashes 
resting on the bureau 
beside her porcelain angel 
just exactly as he’d described 
during our last
long-distance phone call

I ignore the stacks of beer cans
and the full kitty litter box 
but note the fridge is empty
and there is a frying pan
still in its wrapper in the oven
looking like a fire hazard
for this trailer park cabin with
paper strewn about like kindling

I search for important documents
find them sandwiched
between layers of old bills
state maps and photos

Inside one of the maps
is the invitation to my graduation
he did not attend 

When I see his handwriting 
on the back of an envelope
that looks just as it did when I was a kid
it makes my heart sink

So I move for a moment 
to the bathroom doorway
to stare down at the floor
where he’d been found--
cold and covered in bites--
half expecting to see his ghost

But what rattles me most
is the sheer number of notes
scribbled to himself
that all say the same thing:
“Miles to Liz in Wisconsin”--
“1,750” on a Vegas restaurant napkin
“1,025” on a New Orleans casino notepad
“880” on an Atlanta barroom matchbook
to name a few--
and that I never knew
wherever he was
he was pouring over road maps
tracing the way with pointed finger
and counting  

I make a pile of these mileage notes
on the empty seat of his chair
try to conjure his face
at my door 
and for a moment
I can see him standing there
with his hazel eyes
all lit up at my joy and surprise 
of him showing up
out of the blue--
but then a cockroach
creeps up my shoe
so I stomp my feet
and storm outside
leaving the door wide open
behind me
and finding myself surrounded by trailers
and people I do not know
I look up to the sky
as though he could still 
just show up 
out of that blue

and I yell, “How many miles now,
Dad?” 

​



The Real Reason I Kept My Name


My colleagues think because I had already
published scientific papers, poems.
Friends, because I was older
and had been on my own. Why bother?
While my siblings saw a feminist who sent
Ken dolls packing, placed Barbie 
alone in the dream house.

How could they know
about that night long ago
when I cowered in the corner
on my floor in the dark, 
while my stalker ex-boyfriend
peeked into my windows,
his hand like a visor--

How I held myself, and even 
my breath, as he lingered 
long and I waited for the sound
of his shoes to turn in the lawn,
afraid to move once they did?

How in that moment, I slowly lifted
one hand, felt around the shelf above 
for the telephone and called
my father, who was 1500 miles away,
and never one to count on.
“Daddy?” I whispered,
Too choked to say anything
about the man in the shadows
or my desire to drive into the side 
of the mountain. Just,
“Oh, Daddy.”

How my father threw a lifeline
of words into the silence between,
as only he could. “Look,” he said,
his voice gruff with drink, 
“I don't know what's going on
with you, so I'll just say one thing.
You are a Harrahy. And Harrahys 
don’t take shit from anyone.
You remember that.”

And I did.

​


​
Elisabeth Harrahy is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, but in her spare time she likes to drive her 1967 Plymouth Satellite, search for stoneflies in cold-water streams, and pull all-nighters writing poems and short stories. Her work has appeared in Zone 3, I-70 Review, Paterson Literary Review, Passengers Journal, Ghost City Review, Sky Island Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Naugatuck River Review and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best of the Net.