Poetry

Susan Wicks Photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

From a Hammock Between Aroma-Trees

Lie back and the air holds you
strung between shore and tideline,
your head towards the mountain,
your feet going before you
to the island. You rock unseen;
aromas spread their green feathers
over your woven boat. No sudden light,
no leaving, only the steady gleam
of sky on water. This is your body,
this the space it swings in. Look,
the sun rolls between your bare toes
like an orange. A firefly's spark.
            --Susan Wicks

Coral

I came down for this,
to hang flat as a shadow
over their subtle landscape,

their ferns of coral parting
to let me in, my thighs
grazing their mock fungus.

When they see me, they scatter
like hail or seed,
changing direction quickly,

their little panic glinting
bright blue. A black angel
trails its shred of fin.

They swim round and under me,
lead me to deeper places,
starfish joined like blue fingers.

I can crush thousands
of soft bodies, close my hand,
snap off their brittle histories.

The blackened antlers pierce me
through my soles
as blood leeches out of me,

leaves its rusty smoke
across their sky.
They know where to find me.
            --Susan Wicks

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Jessica R. Greenbaum Photo by Avigail Schimmel

Just Home from Those Streets

your feet also walked

where errands spring up
as women approach

reseeding themselves
once accomplished.

Towards home I cursed myself
for forgetting mayo, crackers

and... something else...
and searching the sky

above rank-and-file
brownstones, above their curbside

sycamores
tilted like muskets

looking skyward as we do
for vengeance, remorse

just plain feeling lost
that's when your new

death passed over me
as a lacy cloud

that's when I knew rain
announcing sidewalks

would always refresh
my grief.

We are simply
forgetful opportunists

jays pinching
foil and ribbons

in the crosswalk
between present and possible

for instance
beside your cloud

a newly spied penthouse garden
amused me

and--as though eating
in front of the starving--

I considered the simultaneous
taste for home and streets

how the walker craves
the terrace's fitted spruce and daisies

while its hidden resident
perks up hearing sandals

tap concrete
in the open world below.

Forget forgetting. I reminded myself
not to regret loose ends

and thought of someone
absentmindedly touching the fringes

of a prayer shawl--we traffic
in loose ends--

so I walked on remembering
a stroll here with my waist-high

daughter--soft hand
dark eyes, light voice--

bent next to her
like the safe cracker

while buses huff
and seagulls spiral down

it seems, a squeaking wire
to Brooklyn lamp posts

(what could they need in
Park Slope yet of all our imports

they make us feel most worldly)
losing part of my daughter's story

to the city, as you did yours
the neighborhood's overture

the accrued tracks
of our spoken details lifted

between mouth and ear
and still floating.

That dusk when I
spread the white tablecloth

(a motion I recognized
in the rippling of a sting

ray at the aquarium)
it settled like sky cover

so my heart broke to keep
our gestures, our imperial

connections
our tables set and cleared.
            --Jessica R. Greenbaum

Lost, So We Come Here

The page, as to a lake covered in mist
And cast our lines, fishing for the gone
Through white cover thinking
What, that experience goes under
Then sends ripples from the fathoms
Like script to the end of the margins...

Or sometimes we plant our feet here
As at the margins of the sea. The tide's
Crusted outline offers itself like breath
On glass, but we dare not write there
As one son did in September 12 dust:
Dad I came looking for you -Matt
            --Jessica R. Greenbaum

 

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Carole Simmons Oles Photo by Jan Simmons

Photo of a Girl 14: Merrill, Wisconsin 1925

Spring wind blows her scarf
but her gaze is unruffled,
a moody look renowned
as adolescence. She poses
against a telephone pole,
weight on her left leg
her right bent at the knee.
Hands in overalls pockets,
wool sweater underneath,
scarf the attention of a girl
who knows how to dress.
The overalls are much too long--
maybe one of her brother's?--
but she makes the 4-inch cuff
seem the new rage from Paree.
Her flair shows from head to toe:
the cloche hat with pleats,
the two-toned leather, pointy shoes.
She's a farm girl who wants
to split for the city.
Who could blame her?
--the bare, muddy yards, gray
clumps in the narrow road.
And not a leaf yet on those two trees
outside the plain white house;
those sheds out back with planks
leaning drunk against the walls.
She's the only one here
except the photographer, she's
the most interesting sight for miles.
Her brunette hair matches
the dark seeds of her eyes.
One side of it behaves, the other tries
to escape in a curl like a question.
Ah and her left strap has fallen,
as if she's already begun to shed
overalls for something more chic.
How can she know what flight holds?--
the 3-room apartment a block from the el,
kitchen full of scrubbed longjohns dangling
from the ceiling like a row of hanged men,
dumbwaiter raised up from the basement,
the husband's shot glass,
the ration stamps, miscarriages, lost boy--
what flight holds in that lifetime
fourteen full years later, wherein
she'll bear down, expel me.
            --Carole Simmons Oles

The Moment

                    for Stephen, who caught it

Packed in snug as stones in the wall behind them
mortared by costume, twelve Irish schoolgirls
wait for a Dublin bus. They're an unstable mass,
grey jumpers, pink shirts can't contain them.
Red cardigans deconstruct into laprobes and cushions.
Running shoes are favored for getaway,
grey knee socks rolled or falling down.
One cranes her neck to see outside
the shelter. One leans toward a friend
showing the path through jet curls.
One looks away, stroking her chin like a dad.
Half part their lips in a Gaelic rendition of cheese.
One spits a stray lock off her mouth,
one wonders who is this man with the camera?
In shades, the Hollywood starlet pouts for his lens.
Their feet touch pavement, climb
each other, hover, go en point, twist on edge.
No Rockettes, these twelve nervy schoolgirls
each kicking her way out of orbit.
            --Carole Simmons Oles

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My Mother's Chair

Coming home late, I'd let myself in
with my key, tiptoe up the stairs,
and there she was, in the family room,
one lamp burning, reading her newspaper
in her velvet-and-chrome swivel chair,

as though it were perfectly natural
to be wide awake at two am,
feet propped on the matching
ottoman, her orthopedic shoes
underneath, two empty turtle shells.

On the table beside her,
like a mummy equipped for the afterlife,
she'd have her ashtray and Kents handy,
her hand-mirror and tweezers, eyeglass case,
her crossword puzzle dictionary.

Glancing me up and down, she never
appeared to be frisking me, even when,
just seconds before, coming home
from a date, at the front door,
I'd stuck my tongue into a boy's mouth.

I'd sit on the sofa, and bum her cigarettes;
and as the room filled up with smoke,
melding our opposite temperaments,
we'd talk deep into the night, like diplomats
agreeing to a kind of peace.

I'd feign indifference--so did she--
about what I was doing out so late.
Later, when I became a mother myself,
my mother was still the sentry at the gate,
waiting up, guarding the bedrooms.

After her funeral, her chair sat empty.
My father, sister, husband, and I
couldn't bring ourselves to occupy it.
Only my daughter climbed up its base
and spun herself round and round.

In the two years my father lived alone
in the apartment over their store,
I wonder, did he ever once sit down
on that throne, wheel hub
around which our family had revolved.

But after my father died,
the night before I left the place for good,
the building sold, the papers signed,
before the moving vans drove away,
dividing the cartons and the furniture

between my sister's house and mine,
a thousand miles apart,
I sat on the sofa--my usual spot--
and stared at the blank TV, the empty chair;
then I rose, and walked a few steps across the room,

and sank into her ragged cushions,
put my feet up on her ottoman,
rested my elbows on the scuffed armrests,
stroked the brown velvet like fur.
My God, it still smelled like her!

Swiveling the chair to face the sofa,
I looked at things from her point of view:
What do you need it for?
So I left it behind, along with the blinds,
the meat grinder, the pressure cooker.
            --Jane Shore

Ode to Utensils
                    after Charlie Smith

Opening the drawer, I like the old-fashioned egg beater best,
green painted handle so worn and flaked
the blanched wood underneath shows through.
I like to see the evidence of another hand
beneath my own. I like how the twin rotors spin
in tandem, whipping up ghost breaths across my face.
I like the old apple corer and potato masher,
the ones you find in flea markets or farmhouses,
and the hinged egg slicer that, when opened,
is like the miniature lyre I used to pluck
in the windowed corner of my mother's kitchen,
its perfect slices of cooked egg like cross sections
of boiled sun. I like the church key's one tooth
biting tin lids so that cans sigh with pleasure.
Strainers, funnels, slotted spoons, spatulas, ladles, tea balls
excite me. At night in bed, I swoon over catalogues of cookery,
and imagine my life as it will never be.
Utensils that sift flour, rice potatoes, plane cheese,
knives that are specialists, with blades
that pare and bone, fillet and carve--
gizmos that zest lemons, curl butter, strip an ear of corn of its kernels,
unravel its strands of silk--
cherry pitter, pepper mill, mortar and pestle, hand-cranked
grinder gnashing down chunks of raw meat and shitting them out
in one long continuous sentence--
peeler undressing the modest carrot, meat thermometer
stuck in the turkey's breast, barely grazing the wishbone--
O utensils, I like your tangs and tines and tongs and prongs.
Unlike me, you work without complaint.
When I close your drawer on you huddling in the dark,
do you pray to your ancestors, those ancient scoops
made of horn and shell, joint bone and knuckle,
while I recline, cleaning my teeth with thorns?
            --Jane Shore

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Paula Bonnell Photo by Jean Wolfe

We Did

I got lost and ended up taking
somebody else's trip to Maine
There was the dancefloor
where she learned to dance --
it was raked (and had linoleum tiles)
There were the Mexican jumping beans
stuck between the pp. of a book
There was the livercolored spaniel,
the painting of the summerhouse
across the bay, the hot springs
in the cold river (in Maine?)
and the industrial park
where the locals trysted
And I mustn't forget
the reunion where she sat
between two people who where
terrified to see each other again
And the room where we pushed
the twin beds together, she and I
            --Paula Bonnell

Dog Left at a Strange Place

Is this my new life?

The rooms all garble
Everything smelling so loud
No place to put my smells
Their smells nowhere to be found
Where are the eyes to look into?

Am I waiting?

And what of the new ones
who watch me eat my food
without my food place
to be safe in?
Is this the dish
that used to be
always the same dish?

It is all startle startle
my nose and ears can't stop --
it - them - light - it - food
dish - them - cold floor - screen door -
snuffle dust - it - it - ringing -
them - door - it -
behind me and all moving --

The song of the chicken bone
secret in the garbage
might as well not be
in the uproar -
I avoid it just as though
it didn't get through to me
All hitting me hitting me
what is about
to start?
            --Paula Bonnell

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Karen Head

Indian Reservation
1971

Great great-grandmother Hester could dance
a saucer of water on her head
the price of not having a price
having been stolen by a God-fearing
Scots Irish Georgia mountain man
whose sons would march with Lee
always someone having to march
having to trail behind history and fear.

I have her Cherokee cheekbones.
When I was only four
I even had a single feather headband
I wore over long dark braids.
My brother would shoot at me
with his Lone Ranger cape pistol
march me around the yard
until naptime, when I dreamed of dancing.
            --Karen Head

Hester Speaks

         1.
Listen child,
to what you imagine I know
to memories you do not have--
me lying beside Settindown Creek
before the cotton mill's wheel
began churning the water
before the white man
stole me from the past
and built the covered bridge
before I was old enough
to know my Cherokee name
formed from dancing spirits
that call me on the wind.

         2.
Even without memory,
I knew I should never
cut my hair--
so I grew it past the hips
that birthed a line to you
kept it in two tight braids
I would tie together
across my waist
the ends hanging loose
between my legs
thickly woven, separate lives

         3.
I do not remember
how I learned
to dance
a cup and saucer
filled with well-water
balanced on my head
how I managed
not to spill anything
why I did it the first time
why I continued

         4.
My Christian name
was a mistake
a misspelling of Esther,
another foreign bride.
She knew her real name--
Hadassah was careful
about revealing herself
but had memories, choices--
I did not marry a king
could not save my people

         5.
When you dance, child,
do you feel me?
I've watched you
spin wildly
unafraid
unashamed
unaware
it is me you hear,
my cup tipping over,
whispering a new name
for the rhythms
you cannot resist.
            --Karen Head

 

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Kathleen Aguero Photo by Debi Milligan

To Nancy Drew on Her 50th Birthday

What secret does the old clock hold now?
Where does the hidden staircase lead?
It's time to mount the 99 steps,
accept the secret in the old attic.
The clues have been there all along
in your diary, in the old album,
in the velvet mask you struggle
to remove. You need to answer the invitation
to the golden pavilion, read the mysterious letter
of your own blood, lean against
the crumbling wall and listen
to the mystery of the tolling bell.
Although you wish you'd never started on this quest
for the missing map, now you have
it in your hand, you must follow it
to the message in the hollow oak, cross
the haunted bridge to face the wooden lady
and the statue whispering what you do not
want to hear.
            --Kathleen Aguero

Where do you live?

And how long have you lived there?
Do you have any children?
This is my mother speaking
to me in a room where her grandchildren's
photos cover the walls. You look tall,
she says, and your hair is so curly.
You still don't comb it. I know
who you are. I just wasn't expecting
someone so young.
            --Kathleen Aguero

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Ice Skating

Our daughter is gone now,
forever, a tragedy,
so we skate way far over in the distance,
remotely visible,
two pitiable lurchers,
where the surface is wafery thin
and the light is bad,
where no one would choose to skate
had God not pointed an icy,
peremptory finger
and said, "There."

But you, you,
and your family,
with your bulky knitted sweaters
and whimsical peaked caps,
you are right in the center
where the ice is thick,
and safe,
and your daughter laughs hard,
two bright pink spots
high on her cheeks,
as she skates backwards,
exhaling her breathy love for you.
            --Kathleen Sheeder

Tea Time

Losing your daughter,
losing your daughter to murder,
requires adjustment.

Like, say,
you are sipping tea
and someone
reaches over and
fantastically yanks
your heart from your chest

And it clatters, pumping,
onto the table
and there it is,
there is the matter,
your whole heart,
that brilliant engine,

that tuber,
vulgar, purple,
red

and you simply don't die,
you see,
you blanche,
and your brain beats on,
and then, and then,

invariably,
you reach down
to straighten a spoon.
            --Kathleen Sheeder

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We asked Robin Becker, who has served as the Women's Review's poetry editor since 1986, to contribute some of her own recent work to complete this special section.

Island of Daily Life

This one is for Sandy
         who loves poems about ordinary things.
                   For her, I'll keep my abstractions

          to a minimum and praise
the open carpentry of the summer cabins
         for their impromptu shelves

                   where every ledge invites a wildflower bouquet
         or a drawing from a child at camp
or a special stone plucked from the lake,

and I praise the lake
         with its dappled beach and sloping light,
                   the comforting iterations

         of rowboat, bathing cap, splash,
where lakefront trees and small docks
         flare in the late afternoon, and a neighbor

                   calls softly to her daughter it's time
         to go, don't forget your things…
This poem gets up early for the Saturday

yard sale and celebrates the evening
         walk across the mowing with Leslie
                   through low-bush blueberries

         in the shadow of Monadnock
to Miriam's for dinner
         on the screened-in porch.

                    Sometimes guests from the city.
         Always the dog in his summer
haircut announcing his arrival.

This poem honors the poached fish and the beans,
         the goat cheese and the wine,
                   the poems read aloud after dinner

         for their attention
to the quiddities, to aspects
         of our communal selves,

                   sheared of the theoretical.
         This poem celebrates the passing
of the dish and the return of the bowl,

the full moon now high
         above October lakes, shining
                   on a thousand forgotten beach books.

            --Robin Becker
         (in memory of Sandra Kanter, 1944-2004)

Late Butch/Femme

Long accustomed to playing the butch
I saw you for the femme I thought you were--
long-waisted, well-bred, the hostess who knew
to fold the napkin in the wineglass. But I had not
watched you square your shoulders before the arborist,
determined to take down the holly to save the oak.

No, you said, the pin oak goes, the holly stays.
The gutter man who wants his check will have
to repair the drain he botched. Please have your son
call me, you say, your fingers ready for another call.
In the cellar, among the foraged dressers,
you measure and sand and strip. O handy lover,
come in for the lunch I made with your retractable blade,
your small drill, your paint brushes bristling.
            --Robin Becker

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