Terrible Blooms

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Terrible Blooms Page 4

by Melissa Stein

a vine wrapped around

  until it bowed the tree,

  there was a rock

  creekwater wore

  to slickest organ.

  I will carry this lust

  a thousand years.

  He will bend to it

  and stoop to it

  and never guess

  the magnet.

  we have grown nautical

  you left a souvenir

  on my thigh

  it had a mussel’s shape

  and the cast

  of the water’s

  weedy greens

  you made a fool of me

  I made you queen

  of this underwater

  forest I gave you pearls

  and lanternfish

  you gave me a black eye

  you said I’d thank you for

  later now

  it’s later and

  the water’s dark and still

  and still there’s so much

  teeming

  such cold blood

  tentacle and fin

  Lily of the valley

  In the lake bodies shift

  with the currents. Waterskaters

  traverse their tapestries. On the bank

  grow plants that no longer have names.

  Some have tongues to catch the feet

  of flying things. Two shoes lie

  on the bank as well. A child’s shoes.

  A girl’s. Can you see her, dirty dress,

  dirty soles? The arms that held her?

  In a convulsion of tenderness

  that wasn’t tenderness. In a fever

  that wasn’t fever. In this heat

  the lily of the valley exudes

  such sweetness a man can’t think.

  All you want to do is stop up

  those pealing mouths. Those white

  white skirts, unutterably clean.

  Lewis and Clark

  The air stung with velocity

  and need. All the lights veered,

  rafters heaved. I starved myself

  beyond doors and windows.

  I hollowed out seeds

  and sowed blank fistfuls

  along the wounded furrows.

  Balanced the shotgun on broken

  days. Made myself alone

  enough to frighten me.

  Almanac

  How many times

  can you plough

  the same field, the same soil

  until all that will grow

  are spined and banded things—

  a knob, a spike, a bulge, an eye

  split from the rind

  peering casually

  into an approaching thorn—

  a century may yield

  some gold or pink reprieve

  and all the rest is scar.

  Husband

  Even if you could dredge this river

  there’s nowhere to put the water.

  The land’s run out of hiding places—

  I’ve stuffed too many secrets there.

  My tumble with the farmhand, rustler,

  priest. Arsenic in the pie, sweet

  thief. The baby didn’t wake. Nor did

  the hound, rank snarl of fur. Solely

  by my grace do you sit down to morning

  rashers, jaundiced eyeballs

  on your plate. Husband, they see as I do

  the hour your use ends. I have meet help.

  The fields near plough themselves, gloved hands

  collect the dozens, the milk. I’ll soon have

  all I need. A truce of soil and rain,

  pest and feast. In such bounty

  shall my finest secret

  flush and swell. In such peace.

  driveway

  i.

  the car was up on blocks

  the driveway fresh and sleek

  and fragrant as new

  grief i took

  that engine where

  it belonged and punished it

  a little in the air

  that parted for its force—

  its guttural tugged my

  insides and the day

  collapsed and spread—

  ii.

  i could be dead

  and still want you

  is what he

  what he said

  iii.

  i’m grease

  beneath your knees

  i melt and shine

  and reek the car

  was up on blocks and i

  in it, racked, trussed

  like any meat, a cigarette

  tucked in the window crease—

  don’t tell me i’m biographical

  i’ve stained the seats my eyes are wet

  the grass is thick with wings

  and blood and i

  will not remember you

  Grisly variations

  i. Mercy

  That white disc drills a hole

  through another morning.

  Something’s fallen in the well.

  Bald lake spreads itself out like glitter

  in dried glue. Two spotted fawns

  leap silently, on springs.

  Wingless birds command the trees.

  All the trees are numbered.

  Through meadow iris, insect foam,

  pain walks by on stilts.

  My scream wakes up

  before I do.

  ii. Veer

  Clean muslin draped over a pie

  to keep the flies off. Sour

  cherry, say, or lemon rind. A dark spot

  on the X-ray. Magpies at the feeder,

  foiling the squirrel. Twenty more years

  to make a child. A beehive—

  all that life stuffed in the walls.

  I go down to the lake every morning

  to watch the mist rise. Nothing

  gets clearer. God a newborn

  foal, teetering in the barn. God

  in a pilot suit, covering his eyes.

  iii. Script

  Tarzan swung from limb to limb.

  Newspapers told the story

  of his capture. It was ugly.

  Such kneeling, such caprice,

  the net laid out, and silent.

  Then a commotion and grief.

  Top hats and cigars and flashbulbs.

  All the doors and windows

  numbered. They taught him to write

  in a fine Christian hand

  with fine polished fingernails.

  I don’t know what’s come over me.

  Eulalia

  All day fog sang

  its songs of burying.

  The world erased itself

  and drew itself back in.

  A girl once stood

  out on the road

  and offered herself

  to the wind. The wind

  a name for anything

  that wasn’t home. A grin,

  a beer, a joint, backseat

  exchange. Another state

  or state of being. In cutoff

  shorts and cutoff shirt

  and cut off everything. Midsummer

  and the air is tar and sweetest

  garbage, ozone,

  watered hay. The air itself

  is offering. Maybe

  she’s still waiting.

  Maybe long and far away

  and blossoming.

  Maybe she’s in the ground

  dismantled to root and bone

  and quaking grass and memory.

  Each foot of ground

  its own gone story.

  Quarry

  That absence filled with water, and we swam:

  kept to the surface, above rusted beams

  and weeds and car or body parts, above

  sequins of glass, or rutted signs, or cans

  crushed to bright coins, or hypodermics.

  The water covering that rich debris

  was clear and pure and cold an
d so were we,

  diving, careening, all body, all gasps

  of bubbled air. Cast off on clefts of rock:

  our clothes, and school, and family. Too soon

  behind the quarry wall, hauling away

  the day’s last heat, the sun ducked, mosquitoes

  clamored for sweet new blood. Leaving, we’d drag

  our feet. But we were lighter for the floating.

  Little fugue

  i. Vertigo

  I captained a ship

  its name was confusion

  gullsong accompanied it

  on the quivering seas

  I sowed seeds of evergreen

  laurel, wild thyme

  they took root in the whitecaps

  they took root in the brine

  I steered through this forest

  I steered by the stars

  which were eyes fixed on stalks

  of a plant I didn’t know

  ii. Low

  I cast my faith out on the waters

  I sank into the brine

  all the fishes swam to me

  their o-mouths like rings

  marrying me

  to their kingdom

  and then I knew

  cure has so many forms

  the key is merely

  to stay alive

  Dear columbine, dear engine

  Mere water will force a flower

  open. Then with a touch

  the beautiful intact collapses

  into color filament and powder.

  It’s all my fault. All hands on deck

  to help collect what’s spilled.

  That could be me beneath

  a bridge. Torn up beside the road,

  a bloat of skin and fur.

  Afloat in bathtub, clean,

  blue-lipped, forgiven. Facedown

  in the snow. Why do you

  imagine these terrible things?

  asks my mother, or her

  ghost. Because the paper’s

  crisp and white. Because

  no slate’s unwritten.

  Because the ant that scaled

  this flower head

  has nowhere else to go.

  Dead things

  Last night the moon

  lit up a squashed frog

  so gleamily. I saw a bird

  I can’t even describe. And the bat

  squealing in my glove—

  dark courier, I set it free

  but come morning

  there was one out on the balcony

  rotting in the blanket of its own fur.

  All the dead things hurt too much.

  Even the bright things breathing.

  What sound

  Soon the wet will dry,

  hiding emerge. Until then,

  this swelling and speaking

  of silent things. This is

  what a fern sounds like.

  Wild mint. The fence and wire

  and rock wall and the moss

  cushioning it. The ground.

  The air itself. The dark.

  Everything has a voice

  and remarkably the same,

  in this pummeling.

  Mouth

  There was a night in summer

  I was a white candle

  I made such a mess

  in the dark

  you made a mess

  of me

  I ate it up like air

  the bugs and earth and grass

  my hair a nest

  dirt built a home in

  you called me dirty girl

  I ate that up too

  my mouth was full

  of mouths

  there was

  no end to it

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Melissa Stein is the author of the poetry collection Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Harvard Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and many other journals and anthologies. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. She is a freelance editor in San Francisco.

  ALSO BY MELISSA STEIN

  Rough Honey (winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to the editors of the publications in which the following poems first appeared, some in slightly different form:

  The American Poetry Review: “Racetrack,” “Safehouse”

  Beloit Poetry Journal: “Playhouse”

  The Cincinnati Review: “Vertical”

  Copper Nickel: “Blue ring,” “Husband”

  Four Way Review: “How I”

  Harvard Review: “Milk”

  The Literary Review: “Lily of the valley,” “Lion,” “Zero”

  The Los Angeles Review: “Ardor,” “Vows”

  Mead: The Magazine of Literature & Libations: “Hive”

  Memorious: “Lung,” “Semaphore”

  Narrative: “Beast,” “blessings,” “Harder,” “Heir,” “Mouth”

  New England Review: “Portrait of my family as a pack of cigarettes”

  The Normal School: “Rapture”

  Painted Bride Quarterly: “Bind,” “Lewis and Clark”

  Poem-a-Day: “Anthem,” “Dear columbine, dear engine,” “Ring”

  Poetry Northwest: “Jigsaw”

  Redivider (Beacon Street Prize): “Vitrine”

  River Styx: “Eulalia”

  32 Poems: “Flower,” “Never said,” “Quarry (As you slept)”

  Tin House: “Quarry (A girl is swimming naked),” “Slap,” “Wormhole”

  Washington Square Review: “Birthstone”

  The Yale Review: “Seven Minutes in Heaven”

  §

  “Anthem” is an ode to Philly in the ’80s and ’90s. In “Vows,” I owe the phrase regret machine to a Matthew Zapruder poem title. The Montgomery Inn was a restaurant and event space in Montgomeryville, PA, way back when. At the beginning of “Wormhole,” I play fast and loose with geography for the sake of verbal simplicity. The first line of “Clerestory” is from Sylvia Plath’s “The Hanging Man.” The opening of the poem “Masochist” refers to Frightened Rabbit’s song “The Modern Leper.”

  §

  I’m extraordinarily grateful to Michael Wiegers and the entire Copper Canyon crew—you’re the poetry family I’ve always dreamed of.

  For fellowships and awards that supported the writing of these poems, my immense thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Norton Island Residency Program.

  Much appreciation to my Thirteen Ways writing group comrades for helping me hone these poems, especially Idris Anderson and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet. And a special thanks to my dearest Robert Thomas, whose generosity, forbearance in the face of my neuroses, and keen insight are formidable.

  Warm thanks to Heather Stein, Carol and Barry Stein, and Debbi LaPorte as well as to Ron Baron, Arielynn Cheng, RC, Ed Falco, Rebecca Foust, Ian Goldstein, Marisa Handler, Erika Meitner, Dean Rader, Kathy Rose, Dominic Santiago, Steve Shochet, Phil Yarnall, and so many others who made this book possible in their own ways.

  My gratitude to Mark Doty for setting me on this journey by plucking out Rough Honey; Jason Hill for sweet dreams, swimming holes, and research; Lucy Kirchner for design smarts and solidarity in quirkiness; Marie-Elizabeth Mali for support and selfies; Emily McLeod for steady kindness and pho; David Monington for whiskey, beats, smoldering, and extremity; Tomás Q. Morín, poetry buddy and therapist; John Poch for fierceness and feedback; and David Wolfgang-Kimball, gateway drug extraordinaire.

  And of course to all the tacos and desert peeps, and the adventure buddies and collaborators who shall remain nameless: may we ever party in the dark.

  Copyright 2018 by Melis
sa Stein

  All rights reserved

  Cover photograph: Arielynn Cheng

  ISBN: 978-1-55659-529-5

  eISBN: 978-1-61932-186-1

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