House Arrest
Weeks of rain or snow or any long stretch of bad weather
make, of course, for cabin fever. And cabin fever breeds
all kinds of nostalgia, because most likely the warmth
we seek cannot be completely delivered by the down-
filled comforter or the lotion-lined boucle socks
bought at the drugstore post-Christmas sale. To fill
the canyon-like longing in the gut is a marathon endeavor,
requiring several box sets of movies and a matching hunger.
Not only do we want to eat everything in sight, but first
fry it in fat, then toss in some salt and sugar. We’ll want
bowls of starch: rice, mashed potato, mac and cheese, pierogis,
Shanghai style dumplings, hot dan-dan noodles, chili cheese fries
till snot runs down our faces. Then we’ll feel gross and fat
and rueful, anxious for the first sign of clearing skies,
for icicles to break off the eaves and stab with vigor
into the tofu-like wasteland that used to be a yard.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Not One or the Other but Other
I too dislike it— having it pointed out
that my books are nowhere in the Literature or Poetry section
of Barnes and Noble (if they were, they’d be somewhere
between Horace or Henry James and James Joyce)—
and perhaps it would be a good idea to let the purchasing
department know, except they would have to commit
to only a few copies; you know, because of the demographic
for this kind of readership, and the no
return policy for unsold copies—
And did I tell you about the time I received
a rejection letter saying “We’re sorry but your poems
just seem very (almost too?) American” (by which
I was made to understand there must have been
some confusion because wait with this kind of a surname
shouldn’t I have been writing instead about exile
and villages undressed by a hurricane, or dark-haired
mail order brides who wind up in the county morgue?
But I too thought I was writing about other, larger things
even when I slipped a river stone into a line, or a chorus
of frogs and the burnt smell of certain mornings—
And I had hoped to make art more than the taste of guilt
or reparation, more than the plea to take seriously
my fear of oblivion, here in the space between the margins
where white grows whiter and whiter, and dark is always darker.
— after Tony Hoagland’s “Write Whiter”
Milk and Honey
She offers a photograph of herself as a young war bride, smiling and holding on to the railing of the ship minutes before they disembarked. In the background, the rust-red pylons of the famous bridge. She’s never left home before this time, except to go into town for doctor visits, or to find a dress for her sister’s wedding. She is a farmer’s daughter, but she’s taught herself stenography, a little bookkeeping. She sews her own clothes, has learned a bit of tailoring. At this time, she has not yet learned the names of trees in this new world. And it is nearly winter, so their branches rattle along the avenue. This is her welcome parade: no flags of green, the wind from the bay whipping her cotton skirt around her knees; gulls fighting for scraps on the pier. She laughs at the memory of a phrase she’d heard: milk and honey, they’d said. The streets don’t run with it. And inside the brick houses with heavy drapes, women like her scrubbed the heart of the wood with vinegar and water, their accents falling on tile when no one was listening.
In response to Via Negativa: Armchair Activist.
Filigree
What to do on a day of snow with more on the way? I read and marked my papers, washed all the laundry that could be washed then put a pot to simmer on the stove; I gave the jasmine in the window bay its drink of water, turned all drawers inside out to clean and straighten, and closets too— And the floor was cold but I wanted to feel the grain of the wood smooth against my insteps. Outside, light wove its feeble nets and raised them higher above the trees. It was so quiet, and the glint of ice so bright and milky, pearling on the backs of deck chairs like crowns of baby teeth. I folded blankets and sorted scarves threaded with linen floss, lavish with vines and buds; and found cunning hoops of brass still in their folds of thinnest tissue. I held up what I’d kept or hoarded then found anew— I knew what I’d paid for, why I’d wanted the touch, the shimmer or shape of whatever it was that charmed and broke apart from its backdrop in that store window— A gift I’d bring to you in perfect time; its meaning, that I have not forsaken.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Authorship
Who owns the high-pitched whistle of waxwings
and the feathered cheques they serve to the air?
Who owns the sheets that ice the roads
to bring to a halt the commerce in towns?
Who owns the traps set in the wood
that snap at the sudden weight of snow?
And who owns the hands that labor all day
before they touch the pillow or the pen?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
[post hidden by author]
In response to Via Negativa: Self-criticism.
Storm Watch
All through the night: wind
gusts that rattled.
Agitation of limbs, leaves
that hinged and sifted.
Deck furniture that banged
against brine-soaked wood.
I could not sleep so I made myself
a sandwich, I heated water for a cup
of tea. With every knock
on the eaves I listened,
wondered at the strength holding
mitered corners. A window
banged; and up the street,
a gate blustered open. But I knew
it was really the clamor
in my heart for which I listened.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Luck
is like the Tour de France,
that blur cycling past at full
throttle while underfoot
in the square, the pigeons
peck at messages in the gravel:
Where and When? Quick, hurry
and cross the street, duck into
an open doorway or the train station
before it rains, before the downpour
carries us all away.
Sonnenizio with a line from Donne
Sweetest love, I do not go
anymore into dreams that are sweet with meadow,
where wind is sweetest tinged with salt from the sea
and sweeter, upland, where the dead sit wrapped in gauze
and prim as ladies passing sweets at afternoon tea.
And, sweetest love, this is why my exiled nights are spent
planning a sweet escape of my own, into the grass
where first you sweetly took me, then further afield—
the body that aches now not as supple, not even as sweet
as it used to be. What sweetened syllable could bring
the flush of coral back to the throat, sweet mottled shade
on the breast of the bird that sweetly sang and fledged
too early in the year? Sweet pang of sometimes rue: I knew delight
felt sweet and right; then woke, marked by the aftertaste of flight.