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.
Tag: poem
-
Woman Washing Dishes
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!)
-
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.
-
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.
-
Children of the World Paint Jerusalem
Children of the World Paint Jerusalem1 Jerusalem is a circus. The streets are a wild celebration. There is a parade, a green truck Carrying flowers and an angel With a trumpet the size of a child, And a little yellow car Stuffed with clowns, their red suits Pressing against every window. Then a procession of animals, A purple ostrich, a pink giraffe, A golden lion with a green head And a bright blue mane. On the sidewalks, people dance, Skipping in circles like wedding reels. On a corner, Moses stands With his tablets lifted over his head, glaring At the Mexican boy with the fiddle. A man with one eye throws knives Outlining the flowing burqa Of his lovely assistant. A red and white plane flies overhead. From the air, Jerusalem looks like a heart, The six roads threading in and out like veins Or the legs of a beetle. In the plane, someone gasps. My uncle Pavia! As light as a cloud! Do you see? And someone opens a cage on the roof of a church And sends a flock of white angels soaring into Heaven.
1 Bantam Books, 1978, “110 extraordinary paintings of Jerusalem from school children around the world”.
