Spitting Image (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

POEM ON THE VERGE OF INTERRUPTION

Things keep happening. I keep sewing
the seam of the ripped shirt, the needle

sawing back and forth, its slow way
of binding. The cardinal flying,

the sound of traffic on the avenue,
drivers muted in their cars, safe

behind glass. And you in the kitchen
at the big basin washing potatoes,

the brush back and forth until they're clean,
until they hardly have skin at all. Things

keep happening. No one stops anyone else
on the street, no one notices small signs:

the light bulb stuttering out, a flash of red
blowing across the sidewalk, the subtle,

unnoticeable coming of silence, easily,
like the movement into sleep. My palm

working, the silver needle. The raw potatoes
glistening in the basin, clean and white as eyes.


SONNET WITH A WISHBONE IN THE THROAT

I trussed the hen and cut the breast
clean, pliable, soft with cartilage.
I thought my mouth could swallow it
whole, but the bone went brittle, broke
through the skin of my neck like two
thorns. Its prongs scissored out above
my clavicle. Windpipe split in a perfect Y.
When I speak, each phrase kaleidoscopes,
modifies, a duet of whispers I lip into air.
I sound sweet when I want to be bitter. I bite
back my anger's flare. My voice box grows
into an echo chamber, buzzes double-alive.
Forgive me, I must say everything twice:
once to punish, once to entice.


PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER AS THE VIRGIN QUEEN

Above all, what I have feared is love.
I have been afraid of my body, of its weakness,
its need that feels like a pail filling slowly
with milk. I have watched kids at the teat,

how their mouths are formed to pull
every sweetness toward them, to suck
the body tired, the nipple raw and jewel-like.
Who would choose such a bitter ornament?

Who could understand a creature that gladly
admits anything that arrives at its gates?
I have put my hand to the soft stomach
of a doe, and I have heard her throat

bleating in the labor. I prefer to let the rod
do my speaking. I prefer to let them call my name.


THE DOUBLES

In the dressing room at Macy's,
I run into all my old bodies.
We are reunited when I hear them
shuffling in the walls, sense them
beneath the dirty carpet. Their hips
lurching out of drywall. Their breasts
swelling against the concrete floor.
I congratulate one on her thin legs.
We commiserate about side-boob.
We try on dresses from the junior's section
and laugh. Relive our proms, our red-haired
date who cried the whole night
about that other girl. We kiss. Arm-wrestle.
Bitch-slap. Wish we were never born.
When we part we look at each other longingly,
doe-eyed. The way two mirrors,
when you put them opposite, reflect
each other forever and ever.