#48: Two Poems by Diane Lockward

~This poem previously appeared in Folio (2001)

Feeding Habits

At Ecco-la, my husband orders a bottle

   of Louis Jadot chardonnay. While he studies

the menu, I glance across the room.   A young

  couple waits at the bar, drinking

beer. The guy leans over and kisses his girl,

   a short sweet kiss, like an hors d'oeuvre,

then a long kiss, their arms wrapped

   around  each other, his fingers  caught

in the strands of her hair. My husband and I

   debate appetizers and entrees. They feast

on each other. By the time the waiter returns

   to take our orders, I'm  practically starving.

Soon he sets before me a plate

   of scallops, shrimp, and arugula, tossed

in scampi sauce, and nestled on a bed

   of linguini. They're kissing again. She nestles

her head against  his chest. He strokes

   the skin of her arm. I pop a scallop

into my mouth, savor the succulent flesh, then fork

   a shrimp, pass it to my husband. He offers a bite

of portobello mushroom stuffed

   with king crab, seasoned with herbs and a hint

of lemon. We consume and consume.

   Across the room an ear is nibbled,

cheeks  and neck devoured. I beg my husband

   for dessert. He holds up his hand to say

he's had enough for one night. I seduce him

   into chocolate mousse pie with a layer

of meringue, order charlotte russe for myself.

   With the recklessness of Sybarites,

we fill our mouths with ladyfingers, whipped cream,

   and chocolate curls. Nothing, nothing ever tasted

this good. As the couple is led to their table,

   my husband and I head for home, still licking

our lips, our tongues searching for crumbs.

*****

#47: "All Souls' Day" by Barbara Crooker

~This poem previously appeared in West Branch (1990)

ALL SOULS' DAY

Say November woods.

Say the colors of earth:  ocher, sienna, umber,

a hearth where the fire's gone out.

Wind scours trees to their bones.

A chevron of geese cuts a wedge in the sky.

Imagine a hawk the color of winter.

On the day of the dead, he seeks a thermal

and soars.  The dead rise, too,

will-o-the-wisps of mist & haze,

tobacco smoke from Indian pipes,

the plumes of tall grasses.

They are always with us,

tangible as breath,

fill the interstices of then and now.

In the November woods, cold air

settles like a blanket.

The sky tucks itself in.

Everywhere, the silence of all the folded wings.

*****

#46: "Salvation" by Judith Cooper

~This story originally appeared in Whetstone (1993).

Put a telescope to your eye and the world is your oyster.  Nebulae descend, asteroids unravel, and the moon becomes your neighbor.  But look through a microscope and your luck might not run true.  Nematodes become the stuff of horror films.  The midge becomes mighty.  Glancing thoughts become obsessions.  Eons of continental drift become your own personal inability to walk a straight line.  Latitude and longitude are no longer harmless theoretical scratches, but your interior landscape that could satiate and surpass a lifetime of questions.

Nigel barely pondered questions of scale.  Caught in the Niagara of sensation, the Scylla and Charybdis of detail, he rode out the tide and thought little about consequences.

Living with Fiona and her three brats was a consequence.  The last time Nigel got better, he'd looked for new lodgings and ended up at Fiona's, where his position quickly matured from indifferent boarder to brother, and finally, to boyfriend.  He knew he had a certain intensity that women found briefly intriguing, although usually it ended up wearing them down, just as it did him.  When he’d first moved in, Fiona told him he had a mystique about him, the aura of the driven.  But the brief weightlessness of love was no match for the gravitational pull of drugs, doctors, and dementia.

Fiona's house was only a few blocks away from his studio, so the disadvantage of the children was outweighed by the savings in time and transportation.  He worked odd hours, but Fiona was a true-blue insomniac, so that frequently dawn found them huddled over beverages in the kitchen, the oatmeal for the babes simmering on the stove.  When the kiddies came down for breakfast, Nigel was usually on his way to bed.  Fiona cast off into another day of bombarding the children with love and admonitions, bamboozling the boarders into thinking this was the place of their dreams so she could use the full house to pay the mortgage for one more month, and trying to ward off the fatigue that always dogged her just until she gave in, when it persistently refused to translate into sleep.  So while Nigel worked himself into a frenzy, had a chat and a cup of tea, then stumbled off to bed, Fiona wallowed in hours of exhausted wakefulness, a bland balance struck between consciousness and death.

#45: "Pole Dancing on the Axis Mundi" by Jacqueline Dee Parker

~This poem previously appeared in The James Dickey Review (2011)

POLE DANCING ON THE AXIS MUNDI 

I.

Pole dancing on the axis mundi

Clad in air and a veil of hair, 

Kali is any one and everywhere

interrogating history, prophecy,

testimony and will, cracking abstracts--

from pressure of her inquiry,

fissures snake slivers in frozen

now gushing gunmetal waters.

She dips a skull cup and drinks.

She, too, could be a girl at the shoal,

Skipping stones, pressing a coconut cheek

And salty ear to hear woes

wafting from blankets—complaints

about Eros followed by platitudes, dates

for squash or a glass of merlot.

#44: "The Sigh of the Hard-Pressed Creature" by Sondra Spatt Olsen

~~This story previously appeared in The Yale Review (1990)

                                 

      They stand on the sidewalk in front of their apartment house, trying to decide how to get to Newark Airport.  Lief is carrying both suitcases because he doesn't trust his wife, son, or daughter to keep hold of them.  He's spent most of the morning making plane, train, and car-rental reservations, and he feels tense and not sure if he wants to go to his mother's funeral at all.  The last time he visited her, seven months ago, she only recognized him intermittently, confusing him with his cousin, Daniel, the last child she brought up.  She looked so frail he could hardly stand to look at her.  He much preferred the days when they quarreled.

            Lief feels pressed down by the small details of travel.  Perhaps it would be calming to walk over to the nearby PATH station at Fourteenth Street, and then just grab the shuttle bus from Newark.  He took this simple route on his last trip to Tennessee.  Everything worked out fine.

            But what's the headway on the shuttle, and is there even a regular schedule?  Among his many well-organized telephone calls, he's forgotten to check this one crucial point.  Or, they could go up to Forty-second Street to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and catch a bus directly to the airport.  

            "Whichever way you want," Ina says in a tired voice.  "We've got plenty of time.  But it's four dollars by bus just to get us all to the Port Authority.

     Lief hates taxis.  The cabdrivers unnerve him with their wild driving and strange routes.  He likes to know exactly where he's going.  He doesn't want any confrontations or terrors.  On the other hand, as they stand on the busy street corner, he notices that both Max's and Sophie's shoelaces are untied.  He feels so tense that he doesn't think he can make it several blocks to the PATH station without screaming at them as their laces, already frayed and grimy, drag on the filthy sidewalk.

      His bright, articulate children, nine and thirteen, aren't able to keep their shoelaces tied for more than ten minutes.  He's also noticed that Ina sometimes leaves her shoelaces untied.  It must be a genetic trait.  Although Leif is careful and orderly, he is not calm. Orderliness merely keeps at bay the chaos he feels breaking out all around him.

#43: "Dresstrees" by Kirsty Logan

~This story was previously published in lip magazine (2009)

     Every summer we decorate the orchard with dresses. On Friday we mix the dye in huge sheep-dip vats, as tall as me but wider. One blue, one purple, one pink, one red, one yellow. When leaves fall in we fish them out, their veins dripping colour. When insects fly in, we leave them be: once they’ve breathed in the chemicals, it’s too late. The dye smells sharp like fresh pepper, earthy like sprouting potatoes. Once I dipped in a finger, expecting it to taste like roasted vegetables. It was more like nail varnish; I didn’t try it again.

      On Saturday the vans arrive at the farm, spilling over with fabric. The drivers stack the boxes by our door, their talk and laughter making their cigarettes wiggle furiously. Their bellies hang over their belts, pushing out their t-shirts like balloons about to pop. They peer in the windows before roaring away. We pour out of the house and tear open the boxes. Piles of dresses, all the same beige-white like the underneath of a tabby cat. We sort them into piles: dresses to be reddened, pinked, purpled, yellowed, and blued.

      On Sunday we get up with the sun. We pile the dresses into the dye vats, swirling them around with broom handles. The dogs run infinity symbols between our legs, trailing leaves. The horse watches us intently, the colours reflected in her eyes. At midday we sit on the doorstep, eating chunks of bread and cheese dipped in soup. Our fingers dye the bread rainbow colours, so it looks like we’re eating iced cakes.

      On Sunday night the dresses hang in the trees, dripping multicoloured tears on the grass. My finger pads are dented from the beading, my knuckles ingrained with colour. The cat lurks in the doorstep; earlier she ventured out, then had to spend an hour licking her paws clean. The dogs sprint manically among the coloured drops, tongues lolling, tails swishing the hanging fabric.

      The sun slides behind the hill, lighting up the dresses in a blaze like fire. It sets, and the dresses fade to black.

*****

#42: "Do Not Call My Lord, The Lion" by Adrienne Wolfert

~This poem previously appeared in Poet Lore (1969)

DO NOT CALL MY LORD, THE LION

1.

Iam too mortal for Divine Loneliness.

I have seen the face of the Lion and I deny it.

I have known the chill of recognition and I say it;

The Lion is the King of Beasts.

Do not call my Lord, the Lion.

It is He who stands waiting on the rim of mortality.

He is perfect to Himself.  What need has He of my love?

Is He not terrible? distant? isolated on the hill?

Does He not promise Death?

He commands.  Nature obeys.  Man he has given to ponder.

In our dreams, sunk to dread, we fear Him.

Awake, our words shatter His image.

Before the twenty-one inch orb of our eye’s reflection,

We bow to the mindless violence.

The Lion on the hill is wordless. He needs no rationale for murder.

It is our mortal loneliness to know him King of Beasts.

I have seen the natural god, I have walked his temple.

The peacocks chewed by hyenas, spreads his fan in the dust.

The golden impala rears exquisitely impaled.

The enemy lurks everywhere, part of the natural habitat.

How can such Being know me more than I know this creature?

I am too mortal for Divine Loneliness.

I seek the god who died, the God who was my Father.

I am no longer child, and God was never my Father.

Neither did He love me so that I may know love,

Nor teach me as He promised.

Nor did He give me knowledge; this I must to acquire.

Nor clarify His justice where murder precedes the murderer.

He loves me no more than the stars do, nor can I convince him of goodness,

I have looked at the Lion, at the green orbs of his power.

Don not call my Lord Nature.  Nature is King of Relentless.

Do not call my Lord Father.  He neither accepts nor claims

Responsibility.