Archives of Tuesday Poem

I always forget who lives

in my city.

No comment on them —

my memory’s bad.

Or good

for certain things.

Like faces.

Or items

on a grocery list.

Or the precise feelings
 
a book produced

in me once,

although perhaps not

its phrases or ideas.

But people, you

lovely impenetrables,

too often I forget

you exist.

I don’t find it hard

to reach out to you

in moments —

to recognize

your flesh and flutter

as mine.

Still, the grocery

list lengthens.

Somewhere

a party commences.

It occurs to me

I store a vast reserve

of sympathy for myself

inside myself.

I don’t know whether

this is a triumph

of compassion or greed

but I guard it like passion

or grief.

It's funny how much we ate —

we couldn't stop.

First dinner, then desert,

then the plates and the table.
 
At the show, she ate the stage,

I swallowed the microphones.

Back at the room we ate the chairs

the shower and the television.

Naked, breasts poised like the dark mystery

at the center of faith, she devoured the bed —

nothing left.
Behind her, arms around her victorious stomach,

I knew what it would take to fill us up.

Nothing short of a falling chunk of sun,

something nuclear come to love us clean,

burn our shadow into the wall just like this. 

We can only recall the freak accidents:

              the lightning bolt hitting the right arm

at a right angle, the bees pouring

              from an overturned truck, the crocodile

that escaped on a lawn, sipping lemonade.

              This is all to say: we did not mean to let

the road break in half. We laid down layers

              of asphalt in the tradition of weavers.

The sun hardened our loom.

              We were led here to break bread

and this is not a metaphor. The dawn
 
              gnawed down around us. Full appetite.

In the early morning, we mistook snow

              for falling specks of paint, a construction

site for an amusement park. We climbed up

              the rafters and were tall. And here we are.

Tall. Our limbs stretched out enough

              to call out our slights, strike by strike.

I need bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Sweet grain, salted grain, I want so much

To swallow you whole. I'm a damn sinner
Who can only be saved by your fingers.

Hurry, place the sacred bread on my tongue

And consecrate breakfast, lunch, and dinner —
Or maybe not. I wish I were slimmer

And more disciplined — a secular monk!

But I lust, lust and lust. I'm a sinner
Who seeds, threshes, harvests, feasts, and shivers.

Forgive me. Condemn me. I need flesh and blood

And bread at each breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I know I want too much. I know what hinders

And troubles you. But join me in this flood.

Look at me. I'm your beloved sinner.
Sit with me. Please. Let's talk. Please. Linger.

Let's touch and eat everything that we touch.

Let us stay through breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Sweetheart, it's your turn to be the sinner.

She squishes through fish, salmon stacked up to the door,

boots tracking scales in the wheelhouse, on the galley floor,

down the companionway, and in the engine room.

By the end of the day, there are scales on the mast. Scales

on the deck winch, on the ladder and steps. Scales in her hair,

in her gloves, up her sleeves, behind her ears. Scales

like freckles. Scales like glitter. Like bindis, like dragon skin.

Scales in her eyes like contact lenses. Scales flaking

and scales sticking like glue. Scales flashing like diamond bling,

like glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, like fairy dust,

like silver dimes, like new shoes on the first day of school,

like piñata candy spilled into rust-colored mud. Scales

that taste like caviar, like salt, like sperm, the musty crush

of ocean and the stink of lust. These confetti-cake scales,

these sprinkles and bejewelers, these flat raindrops, these

dollar signs, these smashing dashing scales like a pint-size

helping of spice, you lucky bastard, you don’t even know,

but for each of these she scrubs and scrapes and cleans away,

she dreams your fingers drumming softly on her skin. In the shower,

she dreams your fingers into streams on her back, into stars

that see, into mist, into smoke, into fire that breathes.

Your fingers are whole notes on the bass clef or willows

sweeping windows in a warm breeze or cigarettes or

a fast bet you win in a hailstorm of desire. Fingers

that smell like diesel, like danger, like a damp, darling copy

of her body. Fingers that chart her scars like ocean trenches,

that flit like a seabird skims sky. Fingers that tap like a typist
 
but spell crave like a racecar takes curves. Fingers like buttons

on a birthday suit, like the wrong wrench, like the right wrench

and the screwdriver that turns everything loose. Fingers

like marching, like ants, like the crumbs they hunt,

and the sugar they love, like butter, like cream, like I scream

into a cornfield from a car full of flesh. She dreams

his fingers on fleece, on flannel, on denim, on copper,

on cotton, on nipples, on knees. How can I compare? I love her

the way a King’s black mouth gapes for air, the way

any salmon will taste the whole ocean and still turn for home.

On paper there is a woman and a heart. On

another, something is missing from a hand.

These are not metaphors. Weight becomes

a unit of measurement. Here. The point

of origin is here. Hands suspended

next to your skin is here. But that ends

here. Next to overturned boats and a drum

that can hold chemicals strong enough

to dissolve a body, but not dissolve itself.

moon’s waning crescent like

a grandmother’s toothless smile,

the man at the bar who’s having another,

a sailor writing love letters to a woman

he’s just said goodbye to.
the sky connects my father and me.

orion watches us watch him on a
 
september night, the smell of hay

reaches our nostrils, smelling something

so close and looking at something

very, very far away how the senses

bring worlds together how
we fill our houses with plants we

buy telescopes and microscopes to

feel closer to things we can never

touch. 
i can never touch you, you
 
are too hot for my delicate fingers.

[to be read very quickly, as if almost out of breath]

Panic blossom speaks passwords into the edge of the voice at the edge of the speech that listens.
 
 
The password for membrane is not squirrels. It is also not squirrels of intestinal magic. It is not

squirrels that ride the antlers of your skin.



Every sink will be shallow and the deer with eight legs will run faster but on a treadmill of paper.

There is a password for the membrane. To get out is different from to get in.

The password is glass

The password is glass in a volcano
 
The password is clear glass

The glass is cloth

The glass is a cloth of waterfalls

The waterfalls are not the password

The password is not glass

Squirrels are not the password but they carry the keys. They carry the keys that wilt in the locks. They are leaf keys and they are not passwords.

A squirrel in our story has fallen into a pond.

The water and the squirrel fight their failing.

The water taps the lungs. The ghost leaves a lotus.



I didn’t know the password. The password was not squirrels.

There was a key but it was waterfalls.

Let’s talk about something else.



I barely knew them, but they kissed me everywhere, the squirrels.

It wracked my nerves but gave me purchase

for the password. Here and there a leaf fell down my shirt.

The leaves that cannot open things panic in the lock.

The hinge hears the blossom panic in the door.

That is the key.

The sinks are shallow so no one will drown.

The deer is catching up.

Its eight legs in the corner are listening to the edge. At the edge is a boy under glass

who looks through sheets of water.

    343.

Eve of the new year. Bitter cold city. I sit by the café window, bring the soup bowl to my lips. Someone in the park across the street is swinging high on a swing-set in the dark.



    344.

At least one keyhole has been stuffed with tissue by a previous tenant. So there is no seeing through.




    345.

A very partial morning. The things I am trying constantly to re-make, alter, edit, adjust. Bring myself always back to the path, and the path is hard to find. I do not always want it.




    346.

The early morning young mothers’ parade. A child I cannot see, screaming, “I need it! Give me!” Complete anguish of wanting.




    347.

A soft rain is falling, so fine it looks like dust in the air all around us, and everyone holds their umbrellas like a gift.




    348.

The knives come back sharper than they had ever been—sharper than new. We arranged them in the kitchen like an arsenal. We were afraid to put them away.




    349.

“What is your favorite place?” I asked the tree.

The place where I am.

Suppose it is February and there are writers writing at picnic tables in the park. Suppose writing leads us to this park. 

Suppose the rhythm of the afternoon sky courses through you, igniting relief and terror. Suppose you are hungry and light-headed while hoping to retrieve the faintest mark.

Suppose a writer has planted a score inside her mouth. Suppose the wind morphs that score into something fizzy and warm. Suppose everyone puts pens down at the same time. Suppose each utterance is fatal. 

Suppose the wind upends food in boxes sitting on tables. Suppose the grooves inside picnic tables become embedded with crumbs. Suppose you study everyone’s furrowed brow. 

Suppose the writers are all writing about descent. Perhaps to bring Rene Char’s “ship closer to its longing,” you pin your sunken hearts to the ship’s mast in unison. Suppose the collective ache is relieving.

Suppose everyone lifted their palms from the page and pages inside their notebooks shuddered. Perhaps the times you’ve shuddered before, you felt an ancestor push through violently. Perhaps you tried to smooth it out and became very tired. 

Suppose you can’t fix anything at all. 

Suppose a bedazzled ax appears. Suppose the ax is offered to you first, since you’ve become impatient and you’ve been given permission to get to the light any way you can. 

Suppose you strike down as if you have really strong arms.
 

Suppose you deliciously strike a piñata, block of ice or vial of liquid. Suppose diffuse light. Suppose you stopped going over your old movies. Suppose everyone leaves their spot and takes turns with the ax. 

Suppose too much strength is not a good thing. 

Suppose that even when autumn is long gone glamorous winds appear like time-release golden capsules. Suppose the barren trees have long oozed your secrets. Suppose your favorite body of water is a shade of bruisy blue.

Suppose all poems are evacuation routes. Suppose the most jubilant landings are the most dangerous ones. Suppose the park has become littered with foreign liquids, depleted wind-up toys and ticket stubs. Suppose the poem has an obligation to graph each scent wafting through. 

Suppose teenagers strut through park in the dark. And that dancer you remember who wore a dress made of milk jugs. Suppose your phrases get caught in the jugs. 

Suppose the park’s activation points are invisible and you’ve limited yourself by staying in one place.  Suppose you give up and become giddy from reciting infinitives. Suppose you look up to find everyone’s eyes glowing in the dark.

Suppose brief-lived fevers are tossed back and forth. Suppose heads bow down and collapse into the spines of notebooks. Perhaps deceit is cooled inside this heat. Suppose your fever writes you back.
 

Suppose someone held your head, and their hand became a rhapsody. Suppose the dark is now the color of eggplant. Suppose eyes inside eggplant. Suppose the day’s pages shuffle before you like a child’s flipbook.
 

From the first day, the teacher wrote as she spoke. An inkwell was a hole

without words, on the desk, which was like a pasture, leaving me free to think.

I could not repair my cursive with my pen or with my breath on the window pane. 

The inkwells were filled from a large bottle of ink kept in the teacher’s closet.

My mother was disgusted by the inkwells, and by how I was forbidden to write

a letter to a friend. Was I the only one who found inkwells in the picture book?

The older boys sanded wood into serpents with claws, and filled the inkwells.

To my surprise, the words were more brown than black in my notebook.

Birds are called quills, when used. I could see the globe and the squares of Palmer
 
Method, encircling the room like wallpaper. The rustlings under my pen traveled far,
 
the faintest murmur. The word “recess” was next. In his lunch pail, the boy beside me

discovered a meal of cold potatoes. I felt the embarrassment of hooking the lunch pail
 
through my fingers. Weird tether. To make a ball, each of us brought some string
 
from home. We tried to dip the string into our inkwells. The teacher called out
 
positions to get into, such as a hawk. I saw my score. Woebegone, so much to do.

I positioned myself like a startled hare. Our desks sloped, and there was a groove

for our pencils and pens. The serpent of our script crawled off the page. 

disturbed bodies

(ours)

and on the other side

a moon

possibly…

watching



switching pens there

subtle hope

& your tired body

tired

breathing hard…

to exist


My minor violence

Toward the gazelle

Is unforgivable

Now making lists

Of the longing that will stay…

And the longing that

Will be fixed in images

Hatred splits us

But its necessity

Is like water

And love

You are not a machine, but a mechanic

tooling out from under skin. And in

my head, you might take flight, alight

with chandeliers of sand. A man said

one is the loneliest number, but this

doesn’t square. I swore I’d shaken

you out, but my hair parted, and there

you were. Part of me, do you smart

with the sting of the repressed? I’m blessed,

but some day you’ll depart, a fingerwave

to your avuncular host. Then I’ll be lost.


Yours,


Another 

Long shot prairie

Long shot wolf
Long shot girl

Long shot deer
Long shot dog

Close-up shot little monkey
My dear sweetheart,

Where does the North begin?
Wolfang, Fang, Flash and Flame
My darling cotton wooly hotel

A tiny house is expensive

At the edge of the sea
What is happiness, Love?
My dear sweetheart—

HUNGRY WOLVES SURROUND THE CAMP

This poem first appeared in LIT.

This time it is no dream. After twenty-three years away

I wake in a Spokane convent in my Black Watch

plaid pajamas — daybreak, the last

day of September 1996. I used to spring from bed

at the bell's first clang. Now there's

something wrong with the bedsprings

I cannot fix. 
                                Shyly, light enters, spills over

the floor of the room. Holy or not, I

feel more at home than in thirty-eight

years I lived here. Then let me admit the light,

endorse the mirror over my private

sink. Time to reopen the old account

stored in the memory bank. 
                                                                What was I running from

or into? The uneasy light of the senior

prom? Mother's dream of a child bride, supported by

pennies from heaven? Or was it the writing

life laid as a sacrifice to a jealous god

on the tomb of the woman

I'd hoped to become?
                                                      Whatever it was, it will soon

be over. I write this now to reclaim it. 
From Blue Dusk: New and Collected Poems, 1951-2001, originally published in Blue Dusk: New and Collected Poems, 1951-2001. Reprinted by gracious permission from Copper Canyon Press.

We're publishing poetry from Madeline DeFrees each Tuesday in December, to celebrate her life. Read more about this. 

Previously: Matinal, Phobias Incorporated, Grandmother Grant, In the locker room.

                                I surprise the women

dressed in their bodies: in breasts,

knees, eyebrows, pubic

hair. Excitable children appear

to accept them. Pitted and fat, dazzling

and golden, the women

drowse under the shower, a preview of

bodies the children try on

with their eyes. 
                                    At sixty-five, I am less than

a child, whose mother walked

fearfully clothed, afraid of the water.

My grip on the towel gives me away. I move

into the pool suitably over my head

past my mother's responsible

daughter. Later, wild to learn, I practice

standing alone — only my underpants on —

under the gun

of the hair dryer. 
                                        A queen-size woman

sweetly accosts me, recommends

more clothes. Someone has pointed out

a peekaboo crack in the men's

locker room. "What a shame," she intones,

"such a nice clean

club." I loiter in my underwear

worn out with surveillance.

What we don't know

won't hurt us.
                                    Oh, but it does deprive us!

These ravenous mermaids

stripped to their scales, swim from

the framed reproductions, pale and diaphanous

planes engineered for unmistakable

languor. Something has changed

in the changing room where we step out of

lingerie meant for the fainting couch

and bring on the body in person.
From Blue Dusk: New and Collected Poems, 1951-2001, originally published in Possible Sibyls, 1991. Reprinted by gracious permission from Copper Canyon Press.

We're publishing poetry from Madeline DeFrees each Tuesday in December, to celebrate her life. Read more about this.

Previously: Phobias Incorporated, Grandmother Grant.

Not the rejected lies of the New York Foundling

home, not the adoptive widow of two names,

one of devious spelling,

not the dog tag pinned to the plaid dress

for the train ride to Missouri, but the surname

work like a shoulder brand

on the skin of the natural mother,

Grandmother Grant. 
When I went in my black robes through the hot

streets of the city, a young nun

pale as the star I followed

led to the desk of a three-faced guardian. One

face called me Sister to my face. One was

motherly, "Oh my dear, I can't risk the wrong

information." One, older than the order, nervous,

bit the sentence off

on a fragment of Irish history. 
I couldn't get past the gate. I recognized

the road I was on

led to heaven or hell. Either was barred,

date too early for the name,

a Closed File. I should tell my mother to come.

Back home in Oregon, sixty-nine, wanting to know,

not wanting to know, she waited.

I crossed the continent angry, three thousand

miles of featureless plain. 
Mother, now that you're gone, I'm the same,

swaddled no more in the habit.

Whatever it is that drives us — bad blood,

the face in the unlighted window,

I'm bound to get it straight. If he knocked her down

in the stinking hold of a ship and raped her,

if she followed him out of the church

into the oldest garden under moonstone limbs

of the sycamore, it's too late

to cover her tracks. 
                                              Whoever she was, whatever ties,
 
here is my claim. I need to come into my own.
From Blue Dusk: New and Collected Poems, 1951-2001, originally published in Imaginary Ancestors, 1991. Reprinted by gracious permission from Copper Canyon Press.

We're publishing poetry from Madeline DeFrees each Tuesday in December, to celebrate her life. Read more about this.
 

Previously: Phobias Incorporated

Father Giuliano, the drama instructor, fainted

every time he saw blood.

When a nun in the class, newly acquainted

with stagecraft,

fed a hand to the band saw, Giuliano was the one

who had to be treated. My mother

applauded the hero.
                                              At the first clap of thunder,

she ran to the bureau for the rosary.

All through a stormy upbringing

under the kitchen sink after dark,

I repeated my lines. No wonder I link priest and parent,

twins in a Siamese startlement: Blood and Thunder,

Thunder and Blood. Pray for us…

at the hour of death.
                                              The real drama begins with

a thud — my sister — not claustrophobic, not

acrophobic, plunging from bed,

riding the nightmare bedrails. Her elevator shaft

endangered us all, marked women,

dumb waiters adrift on a sunken Titanic. Days

I rode up and down, wherever the tenants were going

for fun, not pushing the panic button.
 
I was afraid of cats. 
                                              It's a circular story

and that's where I leave it: the Siamese leap

sucking breath, old wives'

tales, the alley cats my sister brought home

sheltered from storm,

early death of a hero and always

the drawn blood informing

our several lives.
From Blue Dusk: New and Collected Poems, 1951-2001, originally published in Magpie on the Gallows, 1981. Reprinted by gracious permission from Copper Canyon Press.



We're publishing poetry from Madeline DeFrees each Tuesday in December, to celebrate her life. Read more about this. 

Four-thirty, morning. Unearthly time

by nuns' or any standard;

almost, this soggy May, monastic.

I close my door on sleep

for other sanctuary,

preceded by the birds

who long ago devised

their daylight saving.

Now, saving the daylight,

no other shape abroad

but the swinging step of rain

on rain-soaked turf.
Unbreakable as doom

five streetlamps watch me come

to keep my tryst.

Nailed each to a man-made cross,

usual as air,

we watch, mechanical,

dawn light dispelling glare;

hooding our early brightness in a cloud

tempers the shock

and orders lonely emanations

by a clock.
From Blue Dusk: New and Collected Poems, 1951-2001.  Reprinted by gracious permission from Copper Canyon Press.

A bee flew about the living room, then another, and more. They began to lodge in the African masks that hung on the walls. They clung to my lip. My house is infested, I thought, and opened the door to the outside. Bees covered the door’s lower half. I fled through it in fear, and in hope of finding help. In the living room, my father moved about with the bees, untroubled, unwilling to leave.