Poems

Outwalking the Shadow

^ to top

Daguerrologue

n. An imaginary conversation with an old photo of yourself.
~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

When Mother made you pose
in your Annie Oakley outfit,
her anxiety—does it fit right,
do you like it?—is caught
in your half smile, clasped hands.

What held you back from your desire
to please her, but also to be free
to out-shoot a man at full gallop?
When the camera clicked, did you sense
the difference between the actual you
and the one you imagined?

Each passing year a fine silt drifted
over you, over us: others’ expectations
or their lack of imagination:
Be a teacher, nurse or secretary,
marry and raise children—
so many small ways to give yourself away.

I resisted sometimes but in such a quiet,
stubborn way perhaps you did not notice.
Did I disappoint you?
Maybe that innate core of you, of us,
never had enough wildness,
the fierce loneliness it takes to be that woman
riding westward across the prairie,
waving her hat, never growing old.

The last time my mother

spoke words I heard
I saw her see me in a flash:
You’re my daughter!
We walked the hall,
a circumference
around the single rooms.
Round and round.
Each time we passed the common room
she’d point to the Christmas lights.

On her bed lay a book
of her wedding photos.
I named the names, some small comfort.
I sang “Jacob’s Ladder”
and she smiled in that puzzled way.

I meant to rub lotion on her legs—
her skin dry, tissue-paper thin—
but they were calling her
for supper. Time to go.
I kissed her cheek.
She kissed my hand,
did not want to let it go.

I hoped we’d see a few sparrows
out her window, but
dark coming early, I saw only
our ghostly selves reflected there.

After Yogi Berra and Robert Frost

If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
We made too many wrong mistakes.
We’ve cut, burned, poisoned, left a legacy
of marauding. Every day the earth quakes.

We made too many wrong mistakes.
But if I list the harm we’ve done, are doing now—
marauders still making the earth shake—
these lines would only be a weary plowing

of the harm we’ve done, are doing now.
I’d rather write to see what I didn’t know I knew.
Lines that wearily plow old ground
surprise neither writer me nor reader you:

I’d rather find out what I didn’t know I knew.
That’s Frost. Yogi said, You can observe a lot
by watching. To surprise myself and you
I should try to transcribe a mockingbird’s song.

Life goes on: that’s Frost, weary. Yogi observed
life askew, off the cuff, as jester, wise guy, sage.
If I could transcribe a mockingbird’s song
I’d leave something new, delightful on the page.

We need more jesters, wise guys, sages.
Though I can’t rewrite the marauders’ legacy,
I’d like to leave some delight on this page.
If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.

God Shattered

^ to top

In the Museum of Lost Love

The sign reads, we treasure your heartbreak
stories. Donate your own memento.
All objects displayed anonymously.

Here are handwritten letters never sent:
my misplaced love, his empty soul,
I never gave up, our twisted romance!

A bulletin board holds snapshots of what
once was a couple, now torn in half,
invites you to pin up your own.

Here is a snaky ankle bracelet,
a stiletto shoe, a wedding dress stuffed in a jar,
a print of Millais’s drowned Ophelia

scrawled across in heavy marker
Do I fucking care? From the ceiling hang
fur-covered handcuffs, two ceramic hearts

fired on the beach at Pensacola,
hundreds of origami cranes flying
to our last sunrise. In an alcove sits

a wedding toaster (I took it. That’ll show you!),
a shelf with three sand-strewn volumes
of Proust, a magnifying glass (she always said

she felt small around me). Encased in glass,
a well-worn axe: every day after she left
I chopped up one piece of her furniture.

Docents carry tissues in their pockets.
If you taste an old bitterness,
take a mint from the copper bowl.

The mezzanine is candlelit. You
can sit in silence or listen in a sound booth
to any song that still splinters your heart.

To Be Emma Bovary

Madame Bovary, c’est moi.
~ Gustave Flaubert

Read novels that addle you.
Stamp your pretty foot.
Regarde soi-même dans le miroir.

Dress in a chemisette
with three gold buttons
between the challis lapels of the bodice.

Call your husband a fool, a boor.
Pine, yawn, shop, purr.
Flirt with the no-account viscount.

Mistake lust for love,
a lover for a savior,
a vulture for a hawk.

Go riding with your seducer,
feel the lathered withers
under your thighs.

Lie sated in the forest,
feel the leaf-filtered sun light
your half-closed eyes.

Find his letter
bidding you adieu
in a basket of delicate apricots.

Place your gloved hand
on your debtor’s knee.
Implore, weep in desperation.

Toss your last coin
to a blind beggar.
Admire the aptness of this gesture.

Lament your fate: being
agonist in the wrong story.
Eat arsenic. Die unlovely in agony.

Manitoulin Morning, July

How easy it is to be happy here,
where the indigo bunting

sings high in a cedar,
each song ending in kiss kiss kiss,

where goldfinches pick at thistle down,
ravens glide and tilt so slowly

I feel I am dreaming,
a world without strife,

no sirens, no engines, no news,
nothing even human

except me on the porch,
you at the dock casting, reeling in.

A wasp wafts, carried by
the scent of milkweed blossoms,

grasshoppers scratch
in the barley and brome.

The sky a saturated blue,
the moon transparent, fleeting.

Delicate Thefts

^ to top

The Winter We Moved from West Second to North Fourth

Snow frothed, kept falling.
A six-block move
from our neat framed house
with its porch swing, elm tree, pansies,
to this rough-scrabble duplex,
the tired eyes of our neighbors’
darkened windows.

My sister raced me
down the slick, cracked sidewalk
while uncles hoisted beds, dressers,
the old piano,
aunts put dishes away,
our mother clutched a coffee mug.
No one said your dad.

Steeped in Grimm, I knew words
like hunger, abandoned,
saved. I half-believed
he would come for us,
we’d live in the new
split-level she dreamed about.

Against my heart
the locket I stole from a friend.
I’d torn out her picture.
I liked it empty,
a chilly reminder
of what gets taken,
what remains.

How Dreamy They Are, and Beautiful

These teenagers crossing the street.
It is June, school is out,
and if they have a destination
they do not hurry to it.
One boy drapes his arm
over his girl’s slim neck.
She bears the weight lightly.
Another boy and a girl swing
their hands, a small hammock.
A third boy, tossing a ball
from one hand to the other,
orbits around them.
They move as in a bubble,
creating their own climate,
oblivious to the mimosa’s pink tutus.
How can I help but follow
the planet of their heavenly bodies,
the breeze of their easiness,
the music of their murmurings?

This Delicate Theft

Fresh from the Colombian School of Seven Chimes
(where, for her final, she swiped items
from a jacket rigged with tiny bells),
she appraises the party of conventioneers,
homing in on the harried, the lonely, the dim,
the one who’s had a few too many.

She gets her mark

and like a salsa dancer she presses
his wrist, cross-body leads him,
steps, swirls into the arc.
They’re shoulder to shoulder,
her face lit innocence,
shadowed eyes downcast.

She touches his elbow,

speaks low so he’ll lean in to her perfume.
Slipping her other hand into his breast pocket,
she bypasses his heart,
smiles her almost loving smile,
then melts into the murmuring.
So bittersweet, this parting—

The Next Moment

^ to top

The Rushing Way I Went

As if each day were the same river
         with variations—
one day tires, shingles,
         a doll bobbing past,
the next, a heron, hunched
         and studious on the bank.
I’d wake up, put in (yes,
         I had then delusions of steering),
and set in motion this sequence:
         make coffee, feed the kids,
get them to school on time,
         on to my job, the turnpike commute,
yada yada yada.
         Evenings, upwind, rewind.
Where were you?
         In those short remaining hours,
your inevitable flights
         took away the best parts of us.
All so long ago.
         Now I wash dishes
to the tunes of smoky angels
         and doves calling from the deep
down of their soft, gray breasts.

We’re Never Ready

Here we gather,
motley, at the wake.

This one hasn’t had her roots
touched up. That one’s stuffed

into his best suit coat.
One has black grease under his fingernails.

Another teeters on too-high heels
saying Jesus, Jesus—

half-prayer, half-curse.
We gather brassy,

shabby, befuddled,
to witness this body—

yellow rose on blue lapel,
fresh haircut, no necktie—

his body without his laugh,
his breath, the pain.

Autumnal Equinox

Sugar maples blaze at sunset;
leaves swoop and skirt
the chilling wind like chimney swifts.

A boy leaps into leaves,
calls to a neighbor’s Irish red,
as light falls, a cat’s white shadow,

on his grandmother’s lap.
Her hands rest there,
her grandmother’s hands,

the same boniness of wrist and knuckle,
dry fingers nearly flammable in the smoky air.
She smells ripe pears

and feels her body drawn
toward the darkness that rolls in
earlier each day.

Heat and light retreat,
and evening covers everything
except the boy, whose hair shines

silky silver light
as he tosses armfuls of color
upward, like sparks.

A Certain Light

^ to top

Poison

Name your poison, he said.
The bottle glinted in his hand.
He squinted past me at my sister Lee
brushing her heavy hair.
She was 14 maybe and secretly smoking.
I was practiced at going unnoticed.
We each took a Coke and thanked him,
her best friend’s father–a man, they said,
who ate supper in his underwear,
who told his wife in front of everyone
to shut the hell up.
His daughter came downstairs.
She called him Daddy.
He gave her money,
then drove us to the opening
of A Hard Day’s Night.
I didn’t like his Jade East-whiskey smell
or the way he tried to joke,
eyeing my sister in the rearview.
In the ladies room,
in the three-way mirror,
we looked at ourselves from different angles.
See how many of me there are!
Lee laughed in a shrill way
and did a little shimmy.
This marked the beginning
of the time she became unhappy
and with narrowed eyes and a cruel pen
I observed her every move.

French I

Ou est la bibliotheque? Voila la bibliotheque.
Quel temps fait-il? Il fait froid aujourd’jui.
I chanted French phrases in bed like prayers,

pleased with the way the language shaped
my mouth, ma bouche: lips puckered for tu
as if playing the flute, then softened like a kiss for je.

English words sounded like hammering on wood,
but translated en francais they lilted and fell
like music or small birds.

Fermez la porte means shut the door,
petit dejeuner is breakfast,
de tout mon coeur, with all my heart.

Et alors…Jean-Pierre lifted my hair,
murmured into my neck, “You’re too good.”
And for the rest of that year I didn’t know where

the library was or whether the temperature
was froid ou chaud. As the class recited
je vais, tu vas, il va…, I could see myself

in a silk slip on a picnic, tipsy with champagne,
kissing, we’d be kissing the way the French do.
What I longed for then was beyond

language as I knew it, it was pure image,
or impure, mon Dieu! and my future?
My future was present, present perfect.

The Roy Rogers Show

Dale was casual with a spatula,
but when there was trouble
she’d tear off her apron
and ride flat out.
She’d get down in the dirt
and fight the bad woman fair.
She and Roy sipped coffee afterwards,
waving away the sheriff’s thanks.

At the end they sang
Happy trails to you until we meet again,
sang it so sad, but smiling, as if
they knew you were trapped in black and white
with your parents who ate in gritty silence
and returned to their separate rooms.

They looked past your bitten nails,
didn’t mind that you couldn’t finish a sentence,
understood why you pinched your brother so hard.
They looked deep into you
and saw that white coal,
the small glow of you you knew was good.

They’d come back every Saturday
so you had to keep believing
in their faces, honest as the desert sky;
you’d have to remember
how their voices singing
braided together like good, strong rope.

Still Life Burning

^ to top

Mina Speaks

        Others’ small dramas surround me like so much damp air. As mail mistress I’d read between lines, but I kept my observations to myself. No one knew about my engagement until my mother broke it off. She made me take the train home, my heart beating dull, dull, as the train clattered past the stiff, somber rows of fall corn. I never saw him again, Stephen, who had lovely manners and played the violin.

        I had to quit my job to tend Mother. I bore that woman in silence fifty-three years, listened to her complain of arthritis, rubbed her shoulders when she nagged me. I developed a technique, a way of absenting myself, while keeping to the routines of Mother’s tea at ten, lunch at noon, sewing at three, and so on.

        When she died I didn’t celebrate. Or cry. The house so quiet I heard the icebox click on. Outside the cicadas shimmied like taffeta. That night I went to bed as usual. The man in the curtains was there in my room. When he speaks he sounds just like Father–that tall and shadowy. What sin this time? I wondered. I considered Mary: she stayed somehow virginal and forgave as much as Jesus. More–Mary had to forgive her son for turning away from her, for having choices, for thinking a pallet in the sand would do for a home. Jesus knew a mother’s love is tough and gnarled, ingrown and unyielding like old grapevines.

       That long July night I told the spirit in the curtains, I am giving you up and my rosaries. And you must take Mary, too.

Dialogue Concerning a Blue Convertible

What night?
         The night the moon fell
I don’t know what
          Blue convertible
You must have dreamt it
          You wore a white scarf
Well I might have
          It trailed behind you
Years ago that
          Whose voice was it
You would have been just
          Who was that man Ma
I wasn’t even
          Peepers singing a cold pond
My early twenties
          Something sank there
But you were sleeping
          Air so sullen
Do you remember
          A field of larkspur
You couldn’t have been more
          Where was Daddy
than three years old then
          Who was that man
He was somebody
          Pulled dimes from my hair
I met him somewhere
          I wasn’t laughing
A smooth dancer
          He undid your
It must have been when
          He ignored me,
The man could whistle
          He undid your
like Mel Torme any tune
          I wasn’t sleeping
That was long ago
          Why did you bring me
I repented
          You looked so different
I smoked Camels
          Deep red lipstick
“Mack the Knife” kept
          The scarf fluttered
Repented all that
          around your shoulders
Why stir up old
          Did you tell Daddy
What good does it do
          You forgot me
You want to punish
          You repented
Yes yes long ago
          You turned into
I couldn’t help it
          The clouds thinned and
Some things are better
          floated up like
left alone
          scarves let loose
So why mention
          in high wind
So why ask me
          I had to remember
You’re not going
          I can’t help it
to write about me
          Yes I’m going to
Well try to show some
          The whippoorwill kept
There are the fine points
          Don’t give me whitened
All I mean is
          I see it all now
a good writer
          I could forgive you
always shows her
          You were gorgeous
characters
          and I thought then
a bit of sympathy
          almost free

Family of Strangers

^ to top

No Jazz in the Cornfields

Mama’s brother couldn’t stand it
that the Germans who laid out this land

liked clear views and direct routes.
He despaired that the trunk room

revealed no mysteries; not a drop
of gypsy blood could be traced.

At age seventeen he headed
for the black Atlantic,

where egrets cry like saxophones,
sand resettles in silence,

and the ocean flows in arpeggiated chords.
Music is transmutation, man, he wrote.

Grandma said he’d always been an odd bird.
He came home between love affairs,

looking, Mama said, like a refugee,
desperate and thin. Into how many lives

of how many women did he drift?
He brought back espresso, croissants, cognac,

records by Paul and Carlay Bley.
He even wore a black beret!

He laughed at my engagement
to Jimmy Schumann, said he thought

I had more sense than that.
The night before he left

the sky swarmed violet, violent;
he watched me hurry in the cows

before it hailed. The sky enacts
the only drama here, he said.

He took the 8:12 from Chicago to Manhattan,
whistled, I remember, as he packed his bags.

Love and Tornadoes

By the time I meet up with Michael Lee
I’ve read Madame Bovary three times,
know passion is the only way

to leave behind
the endless rows of corn,
monotonous as gossips.

Mike smokes Camels
in a sullen Brando style.
He’s heading for Chicago

as soon as his mother dies;
his Mustang’s tuned, running smooth.
The wind rushes at us,

lifting dust on Angus Lane;
lightning shocks the chartreuse sky.
Still the cicadas sustain their drone.

Mike says he likes the smell
of wet-hay nights, my hair,
this dizzying whiskey that we sip.

Clouds churn in the distance;
the corn rustles its silks.
Mike rustles mine,

and in our unbridled frenzy
I am as sultry and guilty
as Emma Bovary.

We drive back the long way,
languid and liquorish;
the air has stilled itself

to a warning calm.
As we lean against each other
in my parents’ open porch,

the winds catch up to us!
The elm loses its last good branch
and stands now armless and sick

as justice. A window bangs
above our heads; the screen door chatters.
Now here comes my father,

in all his stentorian glory,
to flood our clouded souls
with his heavy, searching light.

Today My Body Is Mine

As it was at age thirteen
so lean I was almost airborne
running
wheat stalks chafed my legs
crows scattered up
from the chaff
running
that moment I now call zen
was then just me
blending into wheat
into wind
the ragged wing of crow

Moon Mirror Whiskey Wind

^ to top

A Marriage

In his stories
he was always
the hero; she
the damsel in hers.
This is how families
are born. And endure.

The hard d‘s of Dad
with its short a so brassy,
         the soft yum of Mom,
         her scent of cinnamon.

He said buckshot, slipknot,
topnotch, crackpot.
         Steam, gleam, beam, redeem
         the words she prayed.

Mow the lawn
         floating swan
cut your nails
         wedding veil
scrub that makeup off
         buttercup

His crewcut, her creamy hands,
his steely eyes; her mind
drifting away to some airy
kind of heaven where
she glided beside Jesus
and above them sang thrushes,
where she was no one’s wife
or mother, where she was prized
(o rosary, poetry, reverie!)
for her pure soul self.

To a Barbie

She dresses you in evening gowns,
pushes shoes onto your
achingly arched feet,
bends you at the waist,
and forces you into Ken’s car,
Ken’s boat, Ken always
whisking you away.
She moves your arms:
wave hello; better wear your windbreaker.
How tiring to have a pink
smile painted on
over a smear of white teeth,
your eyes, the blue of a chlorine pool,
always open.
Would you be happier alone
in the kitchen with your miniature
stove and tiny, unbreakable cups?
Mmm, this coffee sure tastes good,
she says for you, then strips
you again, rakes the comb
through your coarse, bleached hair,
then drops you in hot sand
under a killer sun;
grit gets in your cracks
while she eats an ice cream cone.
Naked, you wait–pert, expectant–
fated never to be loved for yourself,
but only as the plaything
of this moody little girl
now coming at you
with scissors in her hand.

Destiny and Johnny

She was a reader
of fashion magazines.
He was a leader
of reckless young men.
Impossible her name
should be Destiny.
He’d be called Johnny,
forever. Her mother said,
marry, him, why not,
a wedding, a home, sure, that’s life.
Her father said neither
one thing nor another.
She draped herself
in layers of scarves,
followed the make-up tips of stars.
The mirror, her friend, winked:
one day you could be one of them.
Johnny wanted only her body,
which she gave as a blessing,
saving her true self for the future,
which stretched beyond this hick state
of corn and beans, corn and beans
and the smell of shit and terror and rage
that blew in from the hog farms
south of town. To board a bus
and head–where?
All she needed was a godmother
who’d say, First thing, kid,
go, and go now; second, know it will be hard;
third, I have a friend in the city
who can help you.