Irrelevant News

My hair is now red (ish). 

Maybe this will make me a better poet/more creative/cooler? 

Hmmm...doubt it. 

Elegy for My Father

Even before you decided to die

something inside you dried up.

I'm sorry I failed

was all you could say,

and not even in person.

I need to see you

someone called to me, beckoning me

down the hallway of my grade school

to my mother waiting

to tell me

what you did.

It wasn't small.

Where are you, John?

your answering machine cried.

I still can't locate you.

I'm still sifting through

all these dishes and sweaters, aching

to make you into something,

to make this into something

I can give you, something

your smallness can hold. 

Sketch of My Father

I think he smelled like leather, something rich

and warm, like the hands he trailed up

and down my back when I was five

and angry that he was leaving me

with only the swing set he's built by the house

he'd no longer live in.

Or maybe that smell

came later when he bought a car with black

leather seats and started listening to country,

though we knew he really loved the blues

and a good trumpet solo to wail out the truth

that mistakes happen and that he couldn't go back

to happiness just by putting his car in reverse.

He kept it in the garage. One day he shut the door

and played those blues until the gas ran out.  

Faithless

Lying beside him, she confesses she's always been afraid

of jellyfish: You just can't trust a body you can see through.

In aquariums, they paint the walls of the tank bright blue

and shine neon orange spotlights on the swarms

so onlookers don't stare straight through them, 

so they get their money's worth. They look

like balled-up Kleenexes with snot hanging down,

like the bitter aftermath of an argument between lovers,

but better snotty than invisible, because unseen

things aren't worth five dollars, unless it's a magician

who wears a suit with red satin lining and disappears,

only to come back and bow for the cheering crowd

of old ladies who probably paid fifty dollars just to see him,

then not see him. They could have just walked out

of the theater to do that, but the magician's way is flashier

and eerie, like a tank full of jellyfish ready to sting.

She wouldn't trust that man either, though she might

not fear him like the depths of the ocean. 

A Severing

Our hands intertwined

with the warmth of water and Dawn.

I scrubbed with a dull rag

until the water became murky 

with settled scraps of dinner. He dried

lazily and stacked his grandmother's plates,

eroded with time, like the splintery cottage cabinets.

As he waited for more work,

his square piano hands played

around my waist and his breath

hit the back of my neck, singing

Tupelo Honey. And when I caught

his eyes, I saw the boy that was

and the grandfather

that might be in there, someday.

And I though, this is something steady,

trying on this old married life

to see if the hemlines hit the right places.

I think we are ready, poised

on the edge of our life. But the edge

of a knife struck me first,

melting into the pad of my thumb.

In my confusion he disappeared. And I don't know

if he continued to dry as I bled—it was his mother

who came and cooed over me, bandaged my wound.

And I sat like a child in the window seat

trying to hold back fear and willing

my blood to clot faster.

My Sister's Map

I used to sleep beside my sister

when a stuffed bear wasn't enough

to protect me from monsters. 

And I stared at the map 

across from her bed,

looking sideways at Russia,

making lizards and dogs

out of North America

until I fell into dream 

adventures in Indian jungles

and treks along China's curves.

Now, when dreams of penguin colonies

warming each other in the vast freeze

won't come, I feel my way along the wall

into her empty room, and I find

my sister on her map,

place my finger on her

heart in the ochre-colored

country at the tip of Africa.

I once envisioned only

elephants and giraffes there,

but my sister dreamed of children

with beads braided in their hair.

To Virginia Woolf

If I could sit by anyone

on this train, it'd be you

and we'd wonder quietly how

the compartments don't run out

of air, how we keep on 

breathing and thinking each other

into existence—thinking that old 

man with the tweed hat on his lap

into existence, thinking that young

girl with her forehead to the glass

into existence—while the stones 

in our pockets sing a frigid

river where we will hold 

ourselves under; except 

I can't, because I'm afraid

of choking and the infinite black

at the bottom of things, but you,

you are brave as you lean across

the space between us to ask

me where we are going and why

it doesn't stop.

 

Ars Poetica

(FYI, an "Ars Poetica" is a poem about writing poetry. We're a little obsessed with our own process.)

I. 

Every essay I've ever read about Virginia Woolf

is full of one word: transgress.

It seems she's always violating the laws

of time and breaking into that sacred space 

between people. Always

lurking there, uninvited,

in the unspoken.

II.

Once, a poem crept up behind me and struck

me in the ear: What the hell is wrong with you?

It apologized later, of course,

and we went out for coffee as if nothing

was ever between us.

III.

I want to slip into small spaces,

hushed and ready to explore.

I don't really want to steal these

inner parts of you, just remember 

seeing them, and keep that.

IV.

Some days, I want to write 

without asking permission.

Some days, the words

punish me for this.

V.

We come together. We fall apart.

I call out to you, not sure

if the answer will be

a rocky echo or your faint song,

lingering in the air like the light pull

of a bow over cello strings.

The distance between us may be

too vast to transgress with words.

Still, I call. I chant. I sing.  

Hi Mommy

So...I get bugged a lot (especially by my Mommy) to share my poems/writing with people. Therefore, I'm starting up a blog (which I will hopefully keep up on) to post my poetry, so you no longer have to harass me about it. 

I love you Mommy. <3>

Liz