Only As the Day Is Long

by Dorianne Laux

  Fall

  I’m tired of stories about the body,

  how important it is, how unimportant,

  how you’re either a body

  hauling a wrinkled brain around

  or a brain trailing a stunned sheen

  of flesh. Or those other questions

  like Would you rather love or be loved?

  If you could come back as the opposite sex,

  what would you do first? As if. As if.

  Yes the body is lonely, especially at twilight.

  Yes Baptists would rather you not have a body at all,

  especially not breasts, suspended in their hooked bras

  like loose prayers, like ticking bombs, like two

  Hallelujahs, the choir frozen in their onyx gowns

  like a row of flashy Cadillacs, their plush upholstery

  hidden behind tinted windows, Jesus swinging

  from the rearview mirror by a chain.

  And certainly not the body in the autumn

  of its life, humming along in a wheelchair,

  legs withered beneath the metallic shine

  of thinning skin. No one wants to let

  that body in. Especially not the breasts again.

  Your mother’s are strangers to you now, your sister’s

  were always bigger and clung to her blouse,

  your lover’s breasts, deep under the ground,

  you weep beside the little mounds of earth

  lightly shoveled over them.

  Emily Said

  Emily said she heard a fly buzz

  when she died, heard it whizz

  over her head, troubling her frizzed

  hair. What will I hear? Showbiz

  tunes on the radio, the megahertz

  fuzz when the station picks up Yaz,

  not the Hall-of-Famer or the Pez

  of contraceptives, but the jazzy

  flash-in-the-pan 80’s techo-pop star, peach fuzz

  on her rouged cheeks singing Pul-ease

  Don’t Go through a kazoo. Will my old love spritz

  the air with the perfume of old roses,

  buy me the white satin Mercedes-Benz

  of pillows, string a rainbow blitz

  of crystals in the window—quartz, topaz—

  or will I die wheezing, listening to a quiz

  show: What year is this? Who was the 44th Prez

  of the United States? Where is the Suez

  Canal? Are you too hot? Cold? Freezing.

  The Secret of Backs

  Heels of the shoes worn down, each

  in its own way, sending signals to the spine.

  The back of the knee as it folds and unfolds.

  In winter the creases of American-made jeans:

  blue denim seams worried to white thread.

  And in summer, in spring, beneath the hems

  of skirts, Bermudas, old bathing suit elastic,

  the pleating and un-pleating of parchment skin.

  And the dear, dear rears. Such variety! Such

  choice in how to cover or reveal: belts looped high

  or slung so low you can’t help but think of plumbers.

  And the small of the back: dimpled or taut, spiny or not,

  tattooed, butterflied, rosed, winged, whorled. Maybe

  still pink from the needle and ink. And shoulders,

  broad or rolled, poking through braids, dreads, frothy

  waterfalls of uncut hair, exposed to rain, snow, white

  stars of dandruff, unbrushed flecks on a blue-black coat.

  And the spiral near the top of the back of the head—

  peek of scalp, exquisite galaxy—as if the first breach

  had swirled each filament away from that startled center.

  Ah, but the best are the bald or neatly shorn, revealing

  the flanged, sun-flared, flamboyant backs of ears: secret

  as the undersides of leaves, the flipside of flower petals.

  And oh, the oh my nape of the neck. The up-swept oh my

  nape of the neck. I could walk behind anyone and fall in love.

  Don’t stop. Don’t turn around.

  ONLY AS THE DAY IS LONG: NEW POEMS

  Lapse

  I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer. I

  see the leaves turning on their stems. I am

  not oblivious to the sun as it lowers on its stem, not

  fooled by the clock holding off, not deceived

  by the weight of its tired hands holding forth. I

  do not think my dead will return. They will not do

  what I ask of them. Even if I plead on my knees. Not

  even if I kiss their photographs or think

  of them as I touch the things they left me. It

  isn’t possible to raise them from their beds, is

  it? Even if I push the dirt away with my bare hands? Still-

  ness, unearth their faces. Bring me the last dahlias of summer.

  Before Surgery

  In another life you might hear the song

  of your neighbor clipping the hedges, a sound

  oddly pleasant, three coarse dull snips,

  three thin branches thumping softly as death

  onto the closed doors of the mown lawn.

  You might get your every dark wish: damson plums

  for breakfast, mud swelling up between your toes

  as you brush the green scum from the face of a pond

  with a stick, gold carp flying like flocks of finches

  through the azurite blue, a copperhead with a minnow

  struggling in its mouth winding away from you.

  In that hush you might hear the gods

  mutter your name, diamonds of salt

  melting on your tongue. You could lie there

  molten and glowing as a blade hammered to silver

  by the four-billion-year-old middle-aged sun.

  In another life you might slip under canal after canal

  in a coracle boat, look up to see river light

  scribbling hieroglyphs on the curved undersides

  of each stone arch. You might hear

  an echo, the devil’s fiddle

  strummed just for you, and you might sing, too,

  unbuckle your voice. You can’t speak

  the meaning of being. The nurses can’t help you.

  Beautiful as you are with your plasma eyes,

  beautiful as they are in their mesh-blue protective booties,

  their sugary-white dresses, so starched, so pressed.

  Your deepest bones might ache with longing,

  your skeleton draped in its finest flesh

  like the lush velvet curtains that open slowly

  before the opera begins.

  Death of the Mother

  At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow

  Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise . . .

  —JOHN DONNE

  At day’s end: last sight, sound, smell and touch, blow

  your final breath into the hospital’s disinfected air, rise

  from your bed, mother of eight, the blue scars of infinity

  lacing your belly, your fractious hair and bony knees, and go

  where we can never find you, where we can never overthrow

  your lust for order, your love of chaos, your tyrannies

  of despair, your can of beer. Cast down your nightshade eyes

  and float through the quiet, your nightgown wrapped like woe

  around your shredded soul, your cavernous heart, that space

  you left us like a gift, brittle staircase of ifs we are bound

  to climb too often and too late. Unleash us, let your grace

  breathe over us in silence, when we can bear it, ground

  as we are into our loss. You taught us how to glean the good

  from anything, pardon anyone, even you, awash as we are in your blood.

  Under Stars

  When m
y mother died

  I was as far away

  as I could be, on an arm of land

  floating in the Atlantic

  where boys walk shirtless

  down the avenue

  holding hands, and gulls sleep

  on the battered pilings,

  their bright beaks hidden

  beneath one white wing.

  Maricopa, Arizona. Mea culpa.

  I did not fly to see your body

  and instead stepped out

  on a balcony in my slip

  to watch the stars turn

  on their grinding wheel.

  Early August, the ocean,

  a salt-tinged breeze.

  Botanists use the word

  serotinous to describe

  late-blossoming, serotinal

  for the season of late summer.

  I did not write your obituary

  as my sister requested, could

  not compose such final lines:

  I closed the piano

  to keep the music in. Instead

  I stood with you

  on what now seems

  like the ancient deck

  of a great ship, our nightgowns

  flaring, the smell of dying lilacs

  drifting up from someone’s

  untended yard, and we

  listened to the stars hiss

  into the bent horizon, blossoms

  the sea gathered tenderly, each

  shattered and singular one

  long dead, but even so, incandescent,

  making a singed sound, singing

  as they went.

  Changeable Weather

  My mother might launch her thumb

  into the air and say Get the hell

  out of here or she might tell

  us a parable about the quick and the dumb

  pulling a splinter from a finger.

  She’d linger at the back door

  humming notes to a score

  she was struggling to learn. Bring

  me a cigarette she would shout

  over her nightgowned shoulder.

  The weather could change without

  warning: clear morning, mountains

  of cloud by noon. When you’re older

  she would snap, turning off the TV

  or snatching a book from our hands,

  then scuff across the rug, a phantom

  in her blue robe and slippers. We

  lost her daily, then found her, devout

  over a bowl of cherries, turning

  to spit the seeds over our upturned

  faces, us flinching in unison when she hit

  the wall, her red lips shaped in a kiss.

  We never knew which way to run:

  into her arms or away from her sharp eyes.

  We loved her most when she was gone,

  and when, after long absence, she arrived.

  Only as the Day Is Long

  Soon she will be no more than a passing thought,

  a pang, a timpani of wind in the chimes, bent spoons

  hung from the eaves on a first night in a new house

  on a block where no dog sings, no cat visits

  a neighbor cat in the middle of the street, winding

  and rubbing fur against fur, throwing sparks.

  Her atoms are out there, circling the earth, minus

  her happiness, minus her grief, only her body’s

  water atoms, her hair and bone and teeth atoms,

  her fleshy atoms, her boozy atoms, her saltines

  and cheese and tea, but not her piano concerto

  atoms, her atoms of laughter and cruelty, her atoms

  of lies and lilies along the driveway and her slippers,

  Lord her slippers, where are they now?

  Piano with Children

  Think of the leaning note: a dissonance

  released by a consonance. Think

  of the crushed tone or tone clusters, notes

  piling up around the legs of a piano bench

  like one-winged blackbirds,

  all eye and beak, fallen letters of the alphabet

  spelling out what’s missing. Think of purple bells

  of delphinium in a window box, their stained light,

  coarse granite slab chinked

  into the semblance of a face, think of fate,

  how it embraces the ghost gowns of the past,

  the span of a hand, a clutch of keys,

  a stick dragged along fence slats, the custom

  of taking off one’s hat in church, scrap of lace

  draped over a child’s still soft skull.

  There are those for whom music is a staunch

  against an open wound, the piano a tomb

  into which the sparrows of sorrow tumble:

  Clair de Lune perishes the terror of time,

  and rivers run through, scumbling up the rocks.

  Think of all that’s left behind, whatever leaves

  trails as it trembles: horse tail, fish fan, feathers, flutes,

  whispers like vespers in another room.

  We did not question the hours’ rhythms,

  the adagio of her hands, each a pale veined reckoning,

  the day gleaned of its moments, embroidered berries

  in the gathers of her dress, her scent unleashed

  in a square of sun, one minute tilting into the next,

  our house a battered ship on which we tossed

  as she steered us through the afternoons.

  My Mother’s Colander

  Holes in the shape of stars

  punched in gray tin, dented,

  cheap, beaten by each

  of her children with a wooden spoon.

  Noodle catcher, spaghetti stopper,

  pouring cloudy rain into the sink,

  swirling counter clockwise

  down the drain, starch slime

  on the backside, caught

  in the piercings.

  Scrubbed for sixty years, packed

  and unpacked, the baby’s

  helmet during the cold war,

  a sinking ship in the bathtub,

  little boat of holes.

  Dirt scooped in with a plastic

  shovel, sifted to make cakes

  and castles. Wrestled

  from each other’s hands,

  its tin feet bent and re-bent.

  Bowl daylight fell through

  onto freckled faces, noon stars

  on the pavement, the universe

  we circled aiming jagged stones,

  rung bells it caught and held.

  Ant Farm

  We saved our money and sent away for it,

  red plastic frame, clear plastic maze,

  packaged sand siphoned into a slot, then freed

  the ants into their new lives, little machines

  of desire, watched them carry the white

  bread crumbs late into the night

  beneath a table lamp. Sweet dynasty.

  We bent our queenly ten-year-old heads

  over their busy industry in 1962, Uncle Milton’s

  personal note of thanks unfolded on the floor,

  while underground the first nuclear warhead

  was being released from the Polaris submarine,

  and Christmas Island shook, shrouded in a fine

  radioactive mist. And our mother sang

  her apocalyptic gospel to anyone who’d listen,

  the navy housing’s gravel lots shimmering

  with each sonic boom, began a savings account

  for a fall-out shelter she said she knew we couldn’t

  possibly afford. The poor will die, she told us,

  Who cares about us peasants? To them

  we’re only workers: dependable, expendable,

  and then thrust her middle finger up

  into the oniony kitchen air. The ants died

  soon after, one by shriveled one, then in clumps; />
  they looked like spiders with all their legs

  and antennae sticking crookedly out

  from a pea-sized knot of ruined bodies.

  She was reading Fail Safe between loads

  of laundry and we were reading Uncle Milton’s

  cheerful instructions. Some questions have

  no answers. That night we listened to the silence

  occupy our room. We slept together in one bed,

  heel to heel, head to head. We tunneled deep

  beneath the covers and waited for the light.

  Heart of Thorns

  The two young women in the house across the way

  are singing old-world songs, ballads dredged up

  from our muddy history, tragic myths of peril,

  betrayal. Harmonies slip across the paint-flaked sills

  of the open window like vapor, drift up

  into the unfolding cones of the surrounding pines

  where the scarlet tanager, flame of spring,

  his blood-red body and jet-black wings, answers

  with his territorial chick-burr, chick-burr, as the girls

  trill through a series of Appalachian blue notes

  and sliding tones, one strumming the African banjo,

  the other plucking a classical viola.

  They seem unreal, though I can see the fact

  of them through the glass, their tumblers

  of iced tea, their heads thrown back,

  the sudden laughter. I like to think

  they’ve always been this happy, though I know

  they must have felt alone, the last of one

  they love burning out like an ember, a distant star—