PROLOGUE
Once
upon a time a daughter
walked
her darling mother
up
and down the hall
for
she’d taken too many tiny pills.
Her
husband gone years at a time
on
voyages in other women’s panties.
The
daughter cried
Don’t
leave me alone, Mommy!
One
day you can live with me in a big house in the
suburbs.
You
can pick out wallpaper for your room.
FUCK
YOU cried the mother. LET ME DIE.
But
it’s hard to let one’s mother die.
To
die if you’re a mother.
They
paced the upstairs hall together
all
night long.
Her
mother’s arm slumped on her shoulder
like
a dead fish on the table.
A
few hours after being caught
but
just before filleting.
Miraculously
she lived!
The
mother lived.
Her
heart broke in thirty-seven pieces(*) but beat
on.
Long
vines of bitter melon grew from
krazy-glued
cracks.
The
daughter was very beautiful.
Her
heart was made of cloisonné.
She
chose her life wisely.
She
married for love and also for money.
She
brought her mother wallpaper samples
that
were never quite good enough.
Life
was perfect or nearly so.
Then
the daughter had her own daughter
who
lived out the oracle of worry.
She’d
a wild eye that looked where it ought not
look.
A
pinecone for a clitoris.
This
is where our story begins.
Catherine
Barnett
Curtis
Bauer
Theresa
Burns
MARRIAGE
ENCOUNTER
So
indifferent did I take that kiss you gave him
each
morning, and the one, identical,
when
he returned each evening, lasting only a parched second,
that
I didn't at first comprehend
the
words in the notebook I found in your closet
from
that weekend. But I read them.
And
when it became clear, when I understood
that
I shouldn't, read them faster.
The
question: What do you love about him?
and
your answer, which went on for six pages,
made
my throat dry, my heart knock around in my
chest
like
a pinball slowly pulled back and let fly.
After
ten minutes I was too dizzy to continue.
And
it's true, when I stumbled
downstairs,
a different woman worked the stove,
luminous
in the dust-filled light, making the casserole we liked,
and
the blood pulsing through the hand
that
rested on your waist was different,
and
your waist
was
different, your hair,
the
man hurrying from the train station
on
his elegant legs, a different man.
Sue
Carnahan
LAST FURIOUS
WILL
The
first snake of the season—a lined garter—
is
dead, torn by a car, curl of verse stiffening
into
spring steel like I’d seen you use to ferret
wires
up
through a wall or jimmy a car door.
Remember
that woman who called you to pop
the
lock on her Cavalier? She didn’t
know
what she had. When she balked at paying,
you
shut it again, button down.
Worth
twenty-five bucks, you said, to tell the
story.
I
tell it every chance I get.
And
the man who banged the door at six a.m.
for
a serpentine belt? Shop opens at nine, you
shouted,
twice,
then greeted him naked, with your gun.
He
didn’t even shimmy the fence going back over.
Skip
came by later to say he’d busted the guy
for
no insurance. We laughed deep in the belly.
Those
were good times. Within a year,
I’d
left and your door rusted through,
the
ulcer ripping you up like buckshot into a
grille.
Your
sister thought I should have stayed
but
who is she to say what ripples the grass
or
causes hair to grace one temple over another?
Faced
now with this thin snake, this twisted capital
letter,
I’m
trying to weave what’s left of you—photos,
notes,
your last furious will—into words,
keep
it from wicking away before this ink,
well
of all our sweet and bitterness, dries.
Julia
Cole
YOU
WROTE TO SAY I LOOK HAPPY
I
can see us in the moment
of
the bar, arms linked,
hips
touching as we walked,
my
head thrown back
laughing.
Even I am jealous
of
the me you caught.
Whenever
I think of you
I’ll
think of you thinking
that
I have something
you
want. If anyone asks,
you’ll
tell them how I am.
Jim
Elledge
KATHERINE IN HER HAPPY
DRESS
Katherine Dean, 1905-2001
If
a lamb,
a
shepherd; if a shepherd,
a
lamb—
standing
there, framed
by
the door in the House
of
Bread. She wears her
happy
dress. Grape vines
in
the arbor nearby
sag
with their fruit.
A
stream braids by.
Sun
shines from every
direction
at once:
not
a single shadow
anywhere.
A faint
scent
of hyacinth feather
the
air and glazes the tongue.
Honey
bees hum.
In
the distance, a bell
clangs,
one so far away we
swear
it’s not music but a word
the
sky repeats over
and
over: Amen,
amen….
With
a hand to his ear,
someone
says: “It could
be
rain’s patter approaching.”
“But
that’s impossible!”
someone
else replies,
looking
all around the sky.
“Rain?
In all this light?”
Charles
Flowers
MY
FATHER’S PLAYBOYS
A
boy always knows they are there—hidden,
scattered among secret things.
My
father kept his Playboys in a bedside drawer,
tucked between fishing journals &
roadmaps,
ballpoint
pens, football schedules, & a measuring tape.
How
I found them remains lost—
an
empty house, a dusk of transgression.
There
was only one or two,
not
a year’s worth, no subscription of lust,
but
the rare, random purchase: July 1974, March
1977.
I
was amazed by what I found inside, each mouth
open, their eyes so clear, their curves
a
stand of bleachers, the hood of a car.
The
women were everything my mother was not—blonde, naked,
silent.
Those
centerfolds were my first lesson
in
the heart’s most difficult trick:
You
can want what you do not love;
You can love what you do not want.
Kenneth
Hart
THIS
RELIGION
I
don't know if I envy or hate those people
who
accept loss and death with the balance and
calm
of
a stick of burning incense wafting up the Buddha's
nostrils,
with
steady breathing, and a vision of Universal
Beauty.
I
used to be a New-Age person myself, though I
never
liked
the term. I mean, the only thing "new" about
Zen
is
that it landed in California, where it became more
flexible
than
a yogi's spine. But, as for me, for the past five
days
I've
been crying, enraged, depressed, to the point of
sickness.
And
nothing helps. All those books with rainbow
jackets
on
my shelf, all those tapes with "Truth" and "Love" in their
titles—
I'm
going to stuff them all into a 55-gallon drum
and
have the biggest barrel fire this place has ever
seen.
So
big the sparks will fly up through the trees, and
people
across
town will see the smoke and smell the burning
plastic
and
think it just another chemical fire here in New
Jersey.
I'll
want to crawl into that fire myself, but
instead
I'm
going to stand in front of it and drink beer,
smashing
each
green bottle as it goes down, and when all the beer is
gone,
I'll
grab the big clear bottle of the harder stuff off the cabinet
shelf
and
spit into the flames saying your name over and over,
till
I have no soul left to save. That's what I'm going to do.
That's
got to be older than religion itself.
Melissa
Hotchkiss
“Avalanche in Alaska responsible
for one highway worker’s death.”
CNBC News, February 4, 2000
RESPONSIBLE
AVALANCHE
My
body is made of snow
And
I am responsible.
What
ticked me off a few years back
Ticked
me off again, I am responsible.
It
wasn’t earth warming below me
But
how it warmed, slowly, and how more
Snow
above joined the already large body
I
eventually became
I
wasn’t born a twister, a tropical storm or a quiet
flurry
I
was born a responsible avalanche
On
such a steep hill, a highway below me
Tempting
traffic, hope journeys by
Aahh,
but I drift toward the sentimental about a day
One
person was in my way
No
matter how loud those men began my name
I
knew they weren’t calling me, only yelling
Like
someone screaming “FIRE”
As
if you could ever tire something down
Kasey
Jueds
Joy
Katz
MY LIFE
None
of the tools were in decent condition.
I
had no letters of introduction
nor
any passion for grand untested opportunity
and
the tailors kept insisting
one
dress couldn’t work in desert, glacier, and deep-sea
milieus.
That
was the most influential miscalculation in
history.
I
traveled all over the place in little carts:
no
one commanded a more mutinous crew.
For
a long time—despite agriculture, despite the peasantry—
I
resisted alien desires.
Naturally
I found it difficult to make my career at
court.
I
retained my dogmatic purity, but was accessible to
Frenchmen
although
I had no formal training in “horse latitudes.”
Eventually
I put forth a treasury of facts and tediously gathered
specimens.
For
this I was condemned as godless.
Ominous
flashes of lightning, flying dragons, bitter
famine—
I
brushed off their sycophancy.
I
was guided by hints and cautions
and
a big storm from the citadel of truth.
Only a deft mastery of
bells kept me going.
I
was the first to accept payment for my poems—
other
people in other places had tried this before—
and
I was welcomed in the salons of certain
experts.
Eventually
I found every place no one had yet been:
not
one was the country I had come in search of.
I
looked around for a place to plant the flag
I
had designed, woven, and spun the silk for.
Three
Mormons and an Indian
seining
for fish in the shallows
looked
up for a second and went back to their
nets.
Judy
Katz
MY EROTIC
DOUBLE
title from John Ashbery
She
has my eyes
but
the tightness in the jaw
is
gone
and
there’s no trace
of
my mother.
She
stands in front of the mirror
like
she’s the only one
in
the room
and
when she calls to her husband,
washing
dishes
in
the kitchen,
her
voice is soft
and
she means it.
She
goes to him,
slides
a flat palm
up
the back of his shirt,
rests
it
on
his shoulder blade.
She
could write the sex poem.
And
it wouldn’t even be
the
sex poem.
It
would be the poem
where
they just happen to fuck
before
leaving the apartment
and
on their way out
the
phone would ring
and
she’d go back,
maybe
for a scarf,
and
not pick up.
Maud
Lindsay
HANSEL AND GRETEL AND THE BREAD
CRUMBS
What
if, instead of the lost children
I
had identified with the breadcrumbs
or
the oven
or
the witch.
And
if I wasn’t so worried about the three little
pigs
I
might have thought it fun to huff and puff like a hungry
wolf.
Oh,
I do delight in eating.
Something
I think a pig might understand.
How
to choose --
the
poison apple
or
the pumpkin coach, a glass slipper,
an
evil step sister or the broom.
Ah,
the broom, is it still sweeping coal?
Who
would I be now
If
back then I’d seen myself:
Out
of the oven, a speck from the larger loaf
fallen
from hands or mouth
gathered
with others and scattered
in
dusty dirt
a
miscast marker for home
eaten
by bird
returned
to my original purpose,
food.
Kaye
McDonough
THE
METROPOLITAN
The Vermeers
He
painted women
trapped
in rooms,
but
he furnished them
with
windows and a map.
Here,
he’s given
one
a lover,
one
a lute
and
all a light
about
each torso plays.
The Horse Fair
by Rosa Bonheur
All
the feel
of
an afternoon
dappled
on
the rear end
of
a horse.
Suzanne
Parker
EVE’S STORY
I
knew her as the reckless sister, a role model
or
sort-of cousin to my girlhood friend Christine
who
tramped through life with dirty knees,
cracking
gum at the back of the class and boys'
heads
during lunch. Eve's was the story I
browsed
at
CCD. Naked and adult, her body full with potential
like
the garden bursting its walls around her,
she
was a novice fleshed out with hips and lips
and
searching for adventure as if she needed
the
snake to tempt her-- why not simply the jasmine
of
the air and the way the sun caressed the apples
that
hung above her as if fondling a child's cheek
or
lover's thigh as dappled in green light
she
saw them sway, spin, learned that wind
can
wake, move that which seemed fixed
and
she noticed there are rules-- leaves
float
downwards, the day always darkens,
the
bees prefer nectar to sap and an unseen breath
can
shake loose an apple to thump on the ground
beside
her, bruised and dented from the fall,
leaking
juice from a tiny slit where she slides
her
tongue to see if breaking the rules tastes sweet
only
to later find, like my friend Christine who
aged
to
a faded weary blond with tracks marking
all
her soft places, that the men grew bigger,
stronger,
and could muscle her down,
spread
and silenced beneath them.
Peg
Peoples
Fall
Once More
Lately,
I've got down on my knees, scrubbed the floors
until
they've hummed like love. Friends
have
called it a season's silence,
but
I know it's prayer, the cleaning up
of
the hungry voices hanging
in
the air. Sometimes,
I
try to distinguish them—the boy who stole
into
my neighbor's kitchen,
the
Salvation army man with his tambourine
and
quick smile. I don't know where
they
lie, or how they rise filling the air with
their
steady
omnipresence.
That
there be sorrows we cannot name.
That
there be names that could have been ours—
that
each year they rise,
a
constellation above our lives.
On
days like this,
I
scrub the soft curves—my father's heart
broken
in all the wrong places,
the
dolphin whales recently beached
along
the Cape, or the cramped narrow streets
dirtier
than the large glossy avenues.
This
week the earth's been gearing up
for
a freeze: petunias pushing out
their
last scarlet blooms, marigolds dropping off
into
fitful sleep. How easy
I
thought it all was: perennials
crowding
out of the soil, rain beating down
like
so much argument. And how much
I've
let them resemble one another—her, with her
brown
paper
bag, him sloshing
across
the street. Even this morning
the
young maple by the door cringed as the wind
stripped
its leaves from its branches.
That
there be skies emptied of houses.
That
there be houses lived down
to
their stems and grasses. That each night
