Kelvinator Fruit cocktail suspended in bright Jello. Thompson Honor Dairy glass bottles. Shake before the pour. Do you, even now, shake before you pour? Eggs from the nameless Egg Man, A squat, dark-suited fellow in a porkpie hat Who sold my mother his spent hens During wartime rationing— Yes, that long ago. Mornings, my father ate one egg Fried in grease of two bacon strips (the proverbial he brought home), Coffee black, A Chesterfield crushed out On egg smear While studying the Daily Racing Form. He was a studier, my father. It was bacon Margaret Jackson toted— My father’s word—she who came to us By crosstown bus, Pushed my brother higher, higher. Her own son, he stayed home. One snapshot in the catch-all box: Gray uniform, white scalloped apron, Arms stretched out having set my brother On his Rockin’ Rider hobby horse In his Christmas cowboy suit, Leather fringe and silver six-gun, Wide-brimmed cowboy hat Jaunty on his curly hair. Closure made a satisfying smack, Our Kelvinator’s lever Clicking into latch, Jiggling the three large jars That sat on top: three fetuses Translucent as jellyfish Floating in three stages Of development— Big on education, my father— Just as he brought home a hairball He had that day surgically removed, Held it out for all to see. Tennis-ball-sized with two teeth Two, for sure, maybe more— Hard to tell in all that thick dark hair.
Dear Balouchi Weaver of the Afghan Mountains, I return the greeting of Your gold-flecked cloth strip Tied to rug fringe. The rug wears well, Dyed with root and nut and indigo, Set with the urine of your sheep. It took me the time it took you To knot the patterns of your daily life To see past the beauty of your geometries Into the bombs, and tanks, and towers. On my knees, as you had meant for prayer, My fingers traced the AK-47s. I hope you are alive. Safe in your mountains. Still have your ewes. If your fingers work, And if you still weave, May your unicorns stay unicorns, Your fruits and flowers nothing more. Your greeting’s in my desk, Its keyhole drawer.
Driving to the Early Service A doe’s head, just her head, Midways in the county road. Raccoons. Possums. Squirrels. Whole deer But never a severed head. Jeanette came back to tell Of bodies, some of whom she knew, One man just spoken to, As she trudged the main road from the capital. I stop the car. Walk over. Squat. Not doe but buck absent his rack. Red scars for ears. When rebels took the city, Caught the president to torture, videoed it all, Before hacking off his hands, Before testicles stuffed his mouth A man named Prince in the manner of a barber Nightmare stroked off both ears. I set the buck’s head Upright on its neck And back a bit, safe from traffic. Two days it sits Profiled to the back road come and go, Its lips gone slack, blue-glazed eyes— He left this world wide-eyed— Until the third day When the space displaced is gone. How many “freedom fighters” (they called themselves) in dresses, Wigs, jewelry, and AK-47s Kept torture tokens as that man— It was a man—took rack and ears? (The Japanese rifle From Leyte Gulf or Peleliu notched IIII Propped behind my father’s suits.) One rebel’s taffeta cocktail dress: Jeanette described its peach shimmer, Plunging neckline, big bow in back, Said she would have worn herself In another place and time.
The Day Begins --after Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love The day begins A little thing, ball on string No bigger than a hazelnut, But bigger, rounder than a sheep-burr Deep in dog hair, Optimistic As a mustard seed About the warming season. A poem on its way to being If you trust enough, If you can get out of its way And let it be What will Cover the page in words Cover the body in clothes Cover the flesh in skin Bones in flesh Heart in its cage All set to order An eye of understanding Sometimes more Sometimes less of a glimpse Through the door left ajar. How you dreaded Now you relish Morning after all night Snow, winter trees full of forks All underlining snow Reaching out and up Clotho, spin your spindle.
Meet for Lunch She talks of private workshops, eager students. How she’s done with adjunct work. We gossip some. What we’ve read. Our kids’ lives. The soup’s delicious. Her hand reaches out midway on our bistro table. Three days a week he goes in to town. Her taut, curved fingers tap three, four times. I don’t know what he does in there. I look up from her fingers. Her eyes meet mine. He says he goes to the gym. We lift eyebrows, compress our lips, shrug.
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Photography Credit: Matthew Klein
Author’s Note: By way of background, I came to poetry late in life and earned an MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers in 2005, many years after college. Publications include three chapbooks, Mother Tongue (2001), The Spinal Sequence (2013) and Sequel (2019) plus three full collections, The Luck of Being (2008) and White Bird (2017) a sequence about my husband’s battle with cancer, and Stride for Stride: A Country Life (2020). A fourth collection After Ward is scheduled for publication June 2022.
I live on a grass farm in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. My work draws on a rural lifestyle where the weather means more than what clothes to wear, and the first meaning of AI is Artificial Insemination.
