Like Vines We climbed out the windows to reach the sun, Pushed our fingers Into mortar, dug down and found No substance there. We wriggled our toes between bricks And they crumbled, Dust on the heads of the people passing Far below. We stretched ourselves towards that heat And burning light Until the world flared white before Our eyes, And something wet began to flow Across our skin, And from our blisters, something new Began to sprout
Category: Poems
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Like Vines
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The Basket Woman
The Basket Woman She wanders slowly along the streets In a blue flowered housedress. At every Mass and funeral, she appears, Her mouth moving soundlessly as a ghost. She presses a picnic basket to her side, Large and plain and secret, but we know. The basket is for babies and for children. Who has disappeared? Who has “moved away?” We peer out from behind fences, Afraid to catch a glimpse of her. In church, we whisper, trying so hard Not to turn around. If she sees… So we go on playing four square and jumprope, Hoping she’ll take Charlie, who called us fat, And she stands on the corner, clutching her basket, Whispering to it too softly for us to hear.
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In the Dark
In the Dark In the dark, they are indistinguishable, So, in the dark, they are all her. On a good night, when she makes it To a street light or a bus stop, He can make out the flash of red hair. She wears it differently now. She wears it differently every time. It says, I’m not yours anymore, What I was for you I will never be again. And it gets tiresome, her constant Walking away, false busyness, And he’s tired of playing cat and mouse, Hard-to-get, chase me, chase me, Close enough to hear the thump-thump rhythm Of her shoes, and then To feel her soft and pliant hair.
My notes: back at the summer Peninsula Writers conference at Glen Lake, we had a presenter who, if I remember correctly (it was so long ago now!) posited that a writer couldn’t (or couldn’t successfully, maybe) write about a character that they didn’t have any sympathy for. So I wrote this poem as a sort of exercise in that direction – as a poem where I don’t sympathize with the person whose eyes we are looking through. It’s very interesting to try to put yourself in that position, to understand without sympathizing? I don’t know how well it worked, but this was the result.
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Nighttime Reverie
Nighttime Reverie When you look up, it seems the trees Have been filled with dark birds, Twitching their tails, bobbing up And down in silence; across the scene Glides a figure from some old story, The kind told on nights just such as this, Where a man is sent far away, farther Than letters reach; where a woman waits For him, patiently, impatiently; Her family sits around their table, their faces Flickering in candlelight, voices hushed; She’s gone again, sitting underneath A certain tree, collecting the black feathers The birds pluck out and drop to her. It takes ten thousand feathers, what she is making, Which is either a dress or wings or maybe A new body. But when she tries to count How many feathers she’s been given, it seems They fade into the night itself.
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Girl Without Wings
Girl Without Wings She runs along the side of the road, Her arms outstretched, fingers fluttering, And she knows that she can fly. What is holding her back is not gravity, Which can’t be all that great; she remembers watching, With her family, as a man leapt across the moon. It can’t be fear, either, because she dreams Of swooping down to trail her fingers in the lake, And when she wakes up, she is happy. It must be, after all, the length of her legs, Flashing white between wool socks and wool skirt, Too short to lift her into the currents of air, To propel her fast enough into the wind to rise. But she promises herself that it’s okay, really, Because one day, very soon, you’ll look up and she’ll be gone.
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In The Portrait Gallery
In The Portrait Gallery They stare at me, unblinking, their cracked eyes sometimes calm, sometimes crazed. They are always facing me, or turning towards me; they have been waiting for me, it’s true, and it seems so cruel that when we finally meet they have nothing for me, that their eyes don’t light up at long last, they don’t complete that turn or stand up from that bow or finally, finally let their cracked lips turn into a smile, open a little as if to speak, even frown or grimace and draw their eyebrows down as though what we did mattered, just a little, and we would know whether to be proud of our buildings and our bombs, the rising murder rate in Baltimore or the latest Pulitzer-Prize-winning author or even the fact that, for the first time in my entire life, the Tigers have made it to the World Series. What better brother or sister are they waiting for, then? Don’t they know that they, too, are slowly fading, their colors dimming, their skin flaking away? In a few months, they will be taken away, covered in shrouds and stacked in dark rooms. In their place will be great silent spaces, photographs of mountains in black and white, strange angles of telephone wires against clear skies, things that are expected to say nothing.
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Twelve Months Without Rain
Twelve Months Without Rain Only in feeling, of course. Really, it had only been one, And not so unusual for summer. But still, she felt it. Looking out the window, The car was getting dirty. And on the television, A couple parted in the rain. She only heard it. Sunday, Pastor Morgan spoke Of the forty days and forty nights. She wished she could be so wicked.
Originally published in Dunes Review, V. 12 Iss. 2 (Winter 2007/8)
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Monkey See
Monkey See I’ve heard some learned people take the view A thousand monkeys at a thousand keys, With time and food and nothing else to do, Could hammer out to be or not to be. And what would you do if you had the time? Break down and buy that typewriter you saw And hammer out the rhythm and the rhyme To tell the world of what you hold in awe? And each time, just a word or letter wrong, The sound not right, the rhythm slightly false— Or someone else already wrote the song, And your small tune was his most famous waltz. If all the world has heard it all before, Then tell me who you write your verses for?
My notes: I very rarely write formal poetry, so it’s probably not a surprise that this was for a class. If my memory is right, it was one of my MFA classes on formal poetry, but… I don’t remember much more than that! It’s a sonnet, quite traditional, and although I don’t think formal poetry is my strength, I’m a bit fond of the ones I wrote in that class. It can be fun, to paraphrase Robert Frost, to put the net up every once in a while when you’re playing tennis.
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Chaos Theory, or, The Earthquake
Chaos Theory, or, The Earthquake The whole house shuddered when she left. For weeks, she couldn’t be avoided: Echoes, aftershocks, the windows Trembling in their frames. Is there a point Where all movement stops? Or do the ripples Move back and forth Forever? Exactly one month After she walked out the door The floors cracked, walls fractured, Roof beams sagged and buckled. Next door, the neighbors didn’t even wake; If it hadn’t been for the news, They wouldn’t have believed him. Surveying the ruins, his neighbor smiled. Once in a lifetime, he said, And you were around to see it.
My notes: This is another very old one. Believe it or not, we do every once in a while get an earthquake in the midwest! To get a sense of them, though – the biggest and most recent one in Michigan was 4.2 on the Richter scale and happened back in 2015; they are not exactly what you think of when you hear “earthquake” in the news.
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Home
Over the fireplace, a painting,
A round-faced woman, smiling,
Hands folded in her lap,
Her dress stiff with lace
And her husband on her left,
A fine brown jacket, a bright gray vest.
On the mantel, a misshapen mug
Of blue clay, with no handle,
Baked perpetually half-melting
And a Christmas card three years old
With dancing penguins and old news.
Trinkets, too, gifts of pinecones,
Wooden apples and a pewter Sphinx.
Even the pieces of a broken Easter egg,
Promise you’ll never throw it out!
Solid blue and dancing with stick lions and giraffes.
It’s impossible now to tell which were which,
The heads and bodies, lines all mingled,
Pressed up against each other,
Refusing to be alone.Here’s another old one – I can’t remember now whether it was in college or graduate school that I wrote it.
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Metaphors
Metaphors I’m beginning to think that they’ve all been used before. The fireworks of the neurons that fire in your brain, the hands that flutter like wings and crack like bark, even the stars that shine in your eyes. Everything new is ridiculous. Should I say, your hands are flapping like carp drowning when someone reaches down to pull them into the air? That the fine lines on them are like tin foil that, once used, can never be smoothed out again? Maybe these metaphors work, somehow, maybe they’re just nonsense: your eyes are like the power indicator on my tv antenna. Controlled by a little plastic dial? Bright and surrounded by darkness? Keeping me awake at night? It all falls apart. There’s nothing else to say but this: There is a man. He looks sad. I saw him, lying in his white bed. When I saw his eyes, I thought, he must know something awful. But after all, I am no closer to it, I will never be any closer to him, than this.
Originally published in Ruminate magazine, Spring 2014
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The Statue Garden
The Statue Garden The storks are shaking the dust from their wings They were stuck so long, preening, Their stiff necks bent towards the sky And cracks run up the sides of the lion As its limbs grind against its body Until the stone falls away in chunks That litter the soft grass And are ground again into the dirt Like a city disappears into the desert While the deer jump suddenly from the fountain While the lion leaps into a hedge-shadow And the storks hop and flap and are gone
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The Tricks She Played On Her Biographers
The Tricks She Played On Her Biographers Sitting up late at night, She writes letters to herself - How well her old friends are doing! And how the petunias might look Outside her window The Colonel tells her how fit she looked And what wonderful turkey she made; They must do it again next year… Although her sister has never been fond of him, And tells her so She folds them up into thirds and quarters And seals them with strange signatures, Draws flowers on the back of one From Nellie’s little daughter Sue Who cannot spell her name She puts them in little boxes in her closet, Behind the dresses that no longer fit, And smiles to think someone will find them - How strange it will seem to them She had a life
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Woman Washing Dishes
Woman Washing Dishes Her hair has come loose from its elastic, A curl spilling down from her left ear. In the living room, their daughter stands On her father’s feet, her hands in his, Swinging wildly to the blaring radio And their laughter as, laughing, he looks up And through the open doorway to the kitchen Where she stands, scrubbing; the curl Spilling over her left ear, bobbing In time with their music, her shoulders moving Back and forth, like laughter, up and down.
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Your First Assignment
Your First Assignment My roommate says I talk With line breaks in. Is this the beginning Of the end Of communication? I read in the newspaper That poets die young, Younger even than other artists. My roommate says, “You could be cryogenically frozen Until they find a cure.” We used to argue about The continuity of time. How many times Can you break a second in half Before you have the primal unit? Do we jerk through life Like dancers under a strobe light? Could you slow the strobe light down? Watch a whole life in two hours? You must pick one snapshot For every year. In fact, They will be chosen for you. Your assignment Is to make a scrapbook. Blow each picture up To the size of a page. Beware of triteness, cliché, The ease of slipping Into sentimentality. Walk the sharp white edge. Leap from blue to blue line. Yes, children. This will be on the test.
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Mercy
Mercy When you face the doctor And see, behind him, months Or years of tests and charts, Being slid in and out of tubes And sliced and sectioned, Sent away in pieces, and still The slow decline, inescapable Fencing against Death Who dances around you, striking First this part, and then that, Touché, your wife will drive you Or, perhaps, you will go nowhere Further than the railing of the front porch, Touché, the contractors will come And install the metal bars, horizontal, That lead you through the house Like a scared animal, clinging to walls. Then, think of the zebra. Not the proud horsy beast That thunders in herds across the Serengeti, But that one, behind, Who feels his heart twitching in his chest And has no time to think Of stents or balloons, only time To feel the sharp bite Of teeth into flesh, stumbling Wild-eyed, rolling with the lion, And one last kick, connecting With the air, before the snap And sudden disentanglement Of beast and beast. Do you see it? That is nature’s mercy, The zebra’s white unseeing eyes Turned towards God.
My notes: A poem I wrote in college. It’s still one I’m very fond of… this is a complicated topic, I think. Death and how we deal with it… and how our intelligence and advances have let us deal with it without, at the very end of things, a different outcome. And believe me, I am not one who believes that we will figure out eternal life, nor does that fact make me all that sad, as much as I miss those who have gone before.
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Mandy Loves John Forever Go Bucks!
Mandy Loves John Forever Go Bucks! Driving under the overpass, his hands tighten on the wheel— he can’t remember her. No face or hands, no hair. Just that name next to his. That name— wasn’t it that name? But even that feels wrong now. Who was she, telling the world she would love him forever when he couldn’t see her face? All the way home, it nagged. When had he met her? Where was she, who loved him forever, who painted it brightly for every passing car to see? But when he got home, his daughter only gave him worried looks and medicine— he slept through the night and failed to dream of her.
My notes: This is a really old one originally – it’s actually from my thesis at Simon’s Rock. I always liked it, but the original draft wasn’t clear enough that the title was some graffiti that the driver, an old man, had seen, and that he has probably some sort of dementia; the graffiti doesn’t actually have anything to do with him, but because his name is John, suddenly it feels to him like it’s addressed to him. I’m hoping that comes through now; it shouldn’t take a note at the bottom like this to make a poem clear! But I did revise it this very day, so I’m putting that as the date on the poem, and hopefully the revisions have helped with the clarity a bit.
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Greyhound Is Closing Down This Route
The bus is nearly empty,
Just an old couple up front
Holding hands in silence
And, behind her, two rows back,
A man in a gray jacket
Memorizing her brown hair
So like his first wife’s
That he had forgotten.
She has not forgotten these fields,
Even the cows look the same
As on her first trip down this line
Twelve years ago, sitting beside her mother
Who sat with yarn in her lap.
Going home was easy then,
Holding her mother’s hand
She couldn’t get lost
Even in the crowded station
In Des Moines.
The bus was crowded then,
Although she’s forgotten all the faces.
Even her mother looks hazy
Reflected in the window,
Staring down into her work
As the cows pass by outside.
She can see her now.
No longer bent over her knitting,
But staring out the window
At the endless fields of corn.Here’s another old one of mine. I don’t always like explaining my poems – if what I was going for didn’t come across in the first place, then that was my failure as a writer. But the image in this that is central to me and sticks with me is looking out the window of the bus, seeing your reflection, and realizing how it has become the same as the mother’s reflection from the past. I’ve taken the bus a lot in the past couple of years, for better and for worse. And times are changing as well, for better and for worse (worse being people watching entire videos on loud speakerphone or having weird personal conversations on speakerphone, of course!)
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Father Thomas
Father Thomas If you sit in the first row, There’s something in his eyes, His manner of speaking, like Uncle Sean, who’d say, After each trip north, Oh, you should have seen it. Clear water, cold as ice, And not another man for miles, Just you and the fish, Bigger than any you’ll ever see. Sure, he brought some back, Packed in ice, scales dull, Gold becoming orange, silver Turning to grey, ready to be Stripped, gutted, and eaten. But the look in his eyes When he told the story Of the one that got away, Snapped the line, disappeared A silver fish in a silver stream, That’s what you remember now, Looking up at Father Thomas, Clutching the sides of the pulpit Like he might, at any moment, Be washed away.
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She
She I. She tells him he cares more about fish than he cares about her. He calls her the Queen of Fish. He says she has fishy lips; she remembers reading somewhere that lipstick is made from fish scales. He says she is frigid, right out of the river in spring. She says she hates the river, she hates the town, she hates fish, she hates him. She says she wants to be in New York. She says she could have been a doctor, she dropped out of medical school to marry him. He reminds her that she hated medical school, that she wasn't even going to classes anymore when they met. She says she is going back to school, she is getting her degree. He says she is too old, they don't have enough money. She says her family will pay for it. She says they will be pleased she has left. She says they never liked him anyway. He says they are snobs, nobody would be good enough for them, and what's wrong with banking anyways? She says he's worse than an accountant. He says he never talked about his job with her anyways. She says he never talked about anything with her anyways. II. The women from the church volunteer group tell her she should work things out. She says she doesn't think it will work. She doesn't say the only reason she even volunteers there is because she is so bored. Her friend at the salon tells her to leave him if she's unhappy. She says she doesn't know if she can. Her friend tells her she can do better. She says she doesn't want to do better. She says she is fed up with men. Her friend tells her to go back to her family. She says her family is angry with her. Her friend says they will forgive her. She knows her friend is only being supportive. Her friend never disliked her husband before this. Her friend doesn't know her family. The woman at the ice cream shop tells her to follow her dreams. The woman tells her to go back to school. She says maybe she could do it. She doesn't say she doesn't want to be a doctor anymore. She doesn't say that he was right, that she never wanted to be a doctor. The woman looks happy. She wonders if the woman dreamed of being an ice cream woman. III. The stranger on the flight to New York asks her what she is doing. She tells him her story. She doesn't know why. She tells him about the divorce. The stranger is silent. The stranger looks into her eyes. The stranger says life is all about experiences. The stranger says this, too, will pass. The stranger says he wishes there was something he could say to help her. She says thanks. She says she's okay. He asks her if she wants to get some coffee at the airport. She says no thanks. She says she has someplace to be. The stranger gives her his phone number anyways. The stranger says she should call if she ever needs anything; he says it's a big city. In the taxi from the airport to her hotel, she writes his name and number on a piece of paper and sticks it in her purse. She picks up the phone in her room to call her family. She dials his number instead.
