One New, One Old

Here are a couple more poems. The first one I wrote this year. I woke up in the middle of the night with that first line in my head and had to write it down. That happens a lot, but rarely does anything come of it. (And rarer still are the moments I can actually read the line.) The second is from ten years ago and it's one of my all time favorites of my own poems. The first line came about when at a reading by Jamaica Kincaid when her mic wasn't working. Adam Sol--very talented poet--went up to help her out and while he was fidgeting with it she said that. The whole poem wrote itself from there. It's nice when that happens. (There are italics in the second one but I don't know how to make them here online... please imagine them where you see fit.)


Virgin’s Lament

All night, Kraken, my parents
hear your whine from the sewer.
She says to him, Well, go down there
and do something about it.
All night he hesitated,
limp with doubt. During the party the dog
stole a mouthful of cake. Mother wept.
At first I did not understand the need
for this candle but am
glad of it. I expect you are not
so homely as they say. I hear
the first drum. And another. I expect
we will become fast friends. I like
how my new gown
fills the room with stars.

(2007)


Eve's Lament
--one of many

I am beginning to feel I am married to Adam
and miss the blossoming mud
and those mornings I'd lie on my back
thinking up names. Orchid. Raccoon.
Here, a new music that I love and I
am trying to accept the fact of death.
He said to me once, "it takes character
to endure the rigors of indolence," as if
paradise were a burden, as if we were
better off, turning my mistake with fruit
into something good. My mistake.
We were treated like children and
for a moment, I wasn't thinking, forgot
the distinction between apple and pear.
Before that, I wanted to tell Adam serpent
was better than the word he'd come up with,
that it sang in the voice the thing it was.

I know he tries not to blame me, but
this isn’t fun anymore. I miss
how he used to look at me, just awake,
lips parted, one of my legs between his,
hoping for a day spent in repose.
But now a hundred Mondays planting wheat
and studying roots and techniques
for skinning rabbits, their little furs enough
to warm one thigh. Soup. Bread. Candles.
We've grown accustomed to not touching.
I can't remember the last afternoon we passed
sitting in a stream, singing, washing each other's
backs, but my hair was long then
and smelled of poppies. I draped it
across his chest, my long hair he combed
his fingers into like a loom, as if he could
weave another past, another future,
one not filled with walking alone down a path
picking raspberries, bleeding from my fingers,
sobbing, sobbing at the sight of a lark.

(approx. 1997)



After I wrote Virgin's Lament I was going to do a whole series of Laments, a couple dozen. The problem is that I didn't wake again with anyone's voice in my head.