Peg
Peoples
STILL
LIFE WITH WATER
They
sat on the porch, he keeping score, while she shuffled
and
cut the deck. They were crossing time—
a
boat skimming over water, the hurry and delay
taken
out of the way, so they could see
how
the body was used up, how it settled into
form—
a
sigh heaved on air. They knew too
that
this would change, that soon he'd rise
(having
won or lost) and edge back to the marginal
truth
where their lives ran forwards
then
backwards. You know what it looks like:
a
room with its splash of flowers, a favorite chair, the
couple
moving
from one foreground to another—as if this
were
how the plot were made. Later,
there'd
be a dinner, a movie with too much acting—
lipstick
reddening on the screen
until
there was fire, then water, the whole night
a
black canvas draped behind them. And some days,
they'd
drive to the lake, spread a blanket and play cards there,
while
birds dove in, then out of the scene.
It
was better for her though when they were in the
water—
the
shore an old thought she held onto
with
little reason, save that it gave her a place to go
when
too many perspectives flew in between.
Cheek
by cheek, she'd trust her face to the cold wet sky going
nowhere,
then to the stillness where she was growing
more
or less into the distortion she'd remain.
One
stroke after another . .
. Breathe . . . breathe
. . . .
He
too, following along side, saying, “Yes, this is good, this is
fine.”
EASTER
Empty
for six months, my mother’s house
straddles a yard untended all winter,
the
driveway carpeted with pine needles,
her flowerbeds unlovely with weed.
My
sister and I focus on the work to be done:
the painted trim mottled like skin,
the
endless debris of the garage, the stale & unused
linens.
We open every window to the April chill,
then
move through the house without speaking,
as if the rooms will whisper &
answer.
We
cannot imagine giving anything away,
yet we know the choices will come:
Who
will take the piano neither of us can play?
No need to empty the house
until
a buyer is found, yet we cannot resist
packing specific emblems of her:
a
ceramic bowl she made to match a bedspread,
an inscribed bowling ball she won
at
an amateur tournament with my father in the 60s,
her yellowing bowling shoes
tucked
into the carrying case.
Outside, we’ve hired
Darryl, the boy who mowed the lawn
after
my father’s passing, who speaks softly of my mother,
who flirted with him, teasing him
about
his new belly of the newly married,
as she stood in the yard watering
her
daylilies. We stay
inside & begin
our silent industry of grief:
we
are the orphaned who work late & alone
into the soft Georgia
night,
each
with our separate tasks & memories.
In every surface I dust I see my mother’s
face,
my
own brown eyes, hear her laugh rising
above the roaring vacuum
as
my sister roams the house tireless & afraid
to slow down, to catch her face
in
my mother’s mirrors.
Kneeling, we wonder
at the miracle of Clorox
which
removes, as promised, the brown stain
of blood from the bathroom carpet,
where
our mother had fallen & remained
until my uncle entered the still house
to
find her, collapsed, her blood
strewn across the room like petals.
On
the third day, it is finished:
a FOR SALE sign beckons
any
and all to the swept front steps.
As we drive to the airport,
my
sister confesses she wants a child.
In our last moments before my flight,
we
embrace in the presence of strangers. And we
weep
for our bodies & for the small mystery
of
a child unfurling its tight bud within her.
And I am amazed by the violence of
grief,
how
some days are sheared by memory,
a mother’s face transfigured by rage &
vodka,
the
same face, stoic & darkened by tinted
glass,
a solitary figure in a boarding lounge,
watching
my plane withdraw,
long after she has lost my face
to
the row of windows, yet I can still see her,
face wet from tears, inconsolable &
risen.
Kaye
McDonough
I
have gone mad with love, love, mad
Your
stories have filled me up like a room.
I
trip over your grandparents,
fall
against a cousin, a wife.
Your
losses hit me on the head,
hurt
me with remembering.
Yesterday,
I saw the boy you must have been
sitting
quietly with his hands folded
at
the kitchen table.
Today,
I see you crossing every street
but
I walk around alone, love,
looking
up my feelings in bookstores,
half-drunk,
beneath a half-eaten moon
that
hangs across my day like a heart.
—from
Beatitude magazine
She
is swift with a knife each
chicken
quartered and boned When
she
swings
—precise
—the butcher’s
blade
from ear to chopping block
the
kitchen’s floorboards tremble
—still
The
first crack: gunshot sharp The ones
that
follow—a down-
beat:
coxswain steady
The
sweet convection
of
soy sauce vinegar garlic a pot of rice
on
low flame
You
wouldn’t think this woman needs
comfort
Even if you were her son
lounged
on the couch
the
fourth-quarter
no-huddle
offense won’t rouse you out
of
your drowse
Even
if you were someone else
you
might mistake the clank of plate
and
forks for music
How
would you know
She
won’t tell you
her
kidneys are shrunk to peanuts and
her
husband’s somewhere learning
to
kiss another woman
She
sleeps
with
rosary tangled in her fingers
In
a year
this
is how they’ll bury her
and
every night till then she counts
each
bead Her hands
the
only things good
at
killing time
EVERYWHERE
LITTLE SHOCKS
Everywhere
little shocks
door frames
kitchen
counter
wood-grain
etched into chairs
pencil-marks curdling paper to shadows
The
day aloof hangs like a veil
or
buttons itself up
to
the collar
I
slip through ribs
her
voice a stranglehold that looks like wings
a
decoy the body wants
cores
me to fistfuls
splits
over seeds and stars
cradles
in soft cargo
until
I’m just my hunger
Suzanne Parker
SHELTER
To fit a house into a car, live lightly.
How many pairs of jeans are needed?
The mole people build homes from garbage.
Trash houses rats. The backs of rats
harbor lice. We anchor where situation
drops us and sleep can be its own room
to settle in trusting the door's latch
will hold. In Cannes, I crash on the grass
in a park, wake to rankness as a bum
spoons me, his hand between my legs
poking, trying to burrow. Such
an intimate violation. The sour wine
of his breath washes my cheek. His knees
shelter behind mine, startle when I kick away.
We all seek our own protection, huddling
against the back of the cave when the flame
flickers out. I sleep with my city windows open,
a knife beneath the pillow. Every now and then,
morning shows scratches on my arm,
the thinnest traces of red and I feel safe.
HOUSE MEMORY #25449
The house where
I saw my first dead person,
wedding, where I sipped wine, looked
up a woman’s skirt,
thought about Eve
walking around naked
in the garden,
about my own sins
catching up with me
every time someone asked me a question.
I launched paper airplanes from the choir,
lied, wept, suffered, slept, regretted, mumbled
about all of it & God,
thought about whether to use
gender specific pronouns,
what it would mean to call God It.
I questioned Him Her It
but for my trouble I got more,
like the wine thing Christ did.
No, I guess it would have been the fish
and bread and feeding the masses,
but there was always more
of what I brought to the table,
a miracle of sorts
I was ready to be rid of,
and so I left it finally at the door.
HIS FATHER’S HOUSE
from “The Effect of Buildings”
Though Jack called to his father from the entryway, he didn’t wait for a
response. Conrad would be sitting in the parlor as he always was, in the light of
a single gas lamp that barely pierced the gloom.
They exchanged greetings and lapsed into silence. Conrad stared at the
fireplace, and Jack stared at him. His father had been so formidable in his day.
Now he sat, in his slippers and an old smoking jacket, entirely becalmed. Jack
looked across the mantel at the daguerreotype of his mother, the china
figurines, the wood-carving of the German brauhaus in its three-legged stand.
Everything on that mantel had been there for as long as he could remember,
gathering dust.
The change between the world Conrad had lived in and Jack’s own was
even bigger than Jack could have imagined. In Conrad’s world, if you’d had any
means at all, you did just as Conrad had–you staked out a plot of land and you
built something up–something a size you could get your arms around,
something that was yours alone. Even the clerks, back then, had a chance.
They were one-on-one with the owners–everything was shared, everything was
known, and when they had enough under their belts, they could, if they wanted
to, strike out on their own.
But not now. The clerks themselves were gathering dust, replaced by
machinery operated by women like Jack’s sister–floors and ever higher floors
full of them–who, whatever hopes they’d had when they started out, would do
nothing better all their working lives. He thought of the Manhattan Building and
all the others that were coming up, remaking Chicago from fire-scorched rubble
to block after block of majestic towers. He thought of the miles of railroad track
that ribboned through the city; the vast tracts of land given over to the
slaughter of beef and pork; the rivers of grain poured into ships that lumbered in
like bison from the plains. The scale of it was too grand to comprehend, let
alone be master of–except for a chosen few with luck and money on their side.
“Well.” Jack stood to go. “Guess I’d best be heading home. Annalise
will wonder where I’ve got to.”
There should be more to say, some homely bit of news to report, but he
couldn’t think of any.
“Give Annalise my regards, will you?”
Jack nodded and said good-bye. When he reached the street, he
stopped and looked back at his father’s house, where Conrad still sat in the wan
light of the parlor, as he would for the rest of his life.
42nd STREET
Quick! a last poem before I go
off my rocker....
- Frank O’Hara
Rushing people, straight lines never match up
Much confusion, frantic desire for calm
Hurry through the turnstile, venture down stairs
Wait for the clicking, connected, cars
Drag me south for a quiet evening I deserve
But only after I float down the escalator
Tap on a lady’s shoulder, saying:
“You have a green leaf in your hair”
She says I can remove it, which I do
And when I have seen enough for one day
There is a man begging in the cars with quarters flat inside his ears -
Four stops until Astor Place, where a loud jazz band blaring
underground sounds ugly
I notice the rain still rains, the only thing
Not out of place
BAY RIDGE
after 9/11
The air that came in from the back door
that day, the breeze that came in
from the yard you were mowing
in November, I believe,
and sailed clear to the front of the house--
through the parlor, as they called it,
the old people, who seemed old
even when we were young,
and reached the sun porch, where I sat fingering
the brittle grammars, my father’s Latin dictionary--
it carried the smell of that grass, sweet,
sweet, even after you’d stopped
and were gathering it up in bags.
And the silence after, the shock of its disappearance
almost woke the baby,
whom we’d left outside in the apron
of front yard, because you could here,
because we were miles
from the city, and what was still burning there
didn’t have a name yet, or a number.
Joy Katz
THEN
He never saw me in the parking lot,
or if he did he never
acknowledged me,
and why would he have? I wasn't different,
yet, at least not in a way anyone would believe
in a town where men
didn't love men or anything
more than God and God
help anyone who did.
I knew I wanted to touch him,
or rather my body
knew, but could never risk tipping the school
into seeing me.
Of course, there was a tragedy, the way
the beautiful are given back
to the stories that made them, quick
and perfect like a flash of his hair in the wind. And it's stupid,
predictable—the car, the drunk star athlete
dead, leaving
his exhausted mother
to wander the house at night calling
