Lures
My little sister has just turned sixteen—
her letter says she's placed an onion
under her bed, hoping to draw that perfect love.
“Honestly,” she writes, “sometimes
you don't know how lucky you are,”
as if he was the twist of an apple's stem
in my sweaty palm, three cherries rising
to the clink of coins.
At sixteen boys were leaves caught
in outstretched palms, all heat and skin
and smoke in throats, as if everything
depended on fall's blaze-red of sumac,
the sky's impossible shades of October blue.
My grandmother used to say a girl
would be lucky in love if she drank
well water from a tin bucket in which three
stones were placed. I remember one day
at the lake, watching him on the other shore
in his purple t-shirt, bending
to pick up stones and throw them
out to where two men bobbed in a rowboat,
plunk of lures and voices on surface
were the muted blue tones of beach glass.
I remember thinking, “I know exactly how
he will hold those stones,” each cup and ease
of his hands, fingers rubbing speckled skin.
There was such knowing in those hands—
they were the push of a screen door, my body
blowing through, that tin taste in my throat
of water coming to surface, his eyes
the flat blue-gray of wet stones from the lake.
SHAWN M. DURRETT
Waiting on Elvis, 1956
This place up in Charlotte called Chuck's where I
used to waitress and who came in one night
but Elvis and some of his friends before his concert
at the Arena, I was twenty-six married but still
waiting tables and we got to joking around like you
do, and he was fingering the lace edge of my slip
where it showed below my hemline and I hadn't even
seen it and I slapped at him a little saying, You
sure are the one aren't you feeling my face burn but
he was the kind of boy even meanness turned sweet in
his mouth.
Smiled at me and said, Yeah honey I guess I sure am.
JOYCE CAROL ONTES
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
ROBERT HAYDEN
She Does Not Remember
She was an evil stepmother.
In her old age she is slowly dying
in an empty hovel.
She shudders
like a clutch of burnt paper.
She does not remember that she was evil.
But she knows
that she feels cold.
ANNA SWIR
(Trans. Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan)
The Dogs
After you and I were separated
My terror came back. My irritation
And my anger and my boredom—
All of them connected, I thought,
To you—were still there.
Like dogs I was keeping for you
Anytime anyone approached
They thought it was you
And either got away from me or tried to.
So when we were reunited
I thought well finally someone else
Can look after these dogs. You said,
You like your dogs better than you do me,
Looking through your address book
For someone to call. I said,
They're always so good when you're here.
You have no idea
What it's like trying to walk them
And they chew up everything in the apartment.
They're your dogs.You said,
They're not my dogs. I hate dogs.
You ought to put them in the car,
Drive them way out in the country somewhere,
And leave them,
If you don't enjoy them.
They were barking and fighting,
Knocking things over,
Not ten minutes after we separated again,
For the last time.
Boy this is great I thought.
And if I get bored with them
There's always my terror.
JOHNNY COLEY
The Layers Between Me
My dust knows I will come for it
to glide my dampened cloth over
cluttered table, straight back chairs
and book lined shelves.
Careful not to persuade a wind
I linger through each room,
wiping new the summer souvenirs
of distant lands and rubbing clear
the framed smiles of cherished friends.
With twisted and tired rag I finish
my way toward a bedroom mirror,
which waits more patiently,
untouched now for several seasons.
Here the many layers have
softened my reflection and
I have grown fond of this
subtle deception.
But today I pause to run
my finger through the days.
I trace my oval face, circle eyes,
smudge line for narrow lips
then draw a halo
above my head and smile.
Slowly,
I wipe the lie away
to let my dust begin again.
KIM KONOPKA
Purple Bathing Suit
I like watching you garden
with your back to me in your purple bathing suit:
your back is my favorite part of you,
the part furthest away from your mouth.
You might give some thought to that mouth.
Also to the way you weed, breaking
the grass off at ground level
when you should pull it up by the roots.
How many times do I have to tell you
how the grass spreads, your little
pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which
by smoothing over the surface you have finally
fully obscured? Watching you
stare into space in the tidy
rows of the vegetable garden, ostensibly
working hard while actually
doing the worst job possible, I think
you are a small irritating purple thing
and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth
because you are all that's wrong with my life
and I need you and I claim you.
LOUISE GLÜCK
Excerpt from
Paradise Lost
In either hand the hastning Angel caught
Our lingring Parents, and to th’ Eastern Gate
Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer'd.
They looking back, all th’ Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd
, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
JOHN MILTON
Healing
WHEN YOU
FIND YOURSELF
Hallelujah, you're headed for Healing. You are done with being eaten alive by anger and bitterness (Hurting), shutting yourself off from both joy and sorrow (Hiding), acting wildly on every self-destructive impulse (Reeling), and facing up to your unhappiness (Dealing). You've earned your shot at a little joy, a chance to try your newfound confidence and hope. And so you are ready to begin again, to rediscover your true self and your true direction.
This time around, you know you aren't setting yourself up for disappointment. You understand that, for all its pleasures, the world is imperfect—friends may leave, lovers will sometimes betray you, and, well, you're a little imperfect yourself. You may forever be ten pounds overweight, and sometimes you are too swamped at work or too tired to be the ideal friend yourself. But you are determined to be as loving and faithful a friend as is possible, to do work in the world that matters, and to respect and love yourself—because that's where it all begins.
So the poems in this section are about new beginnings. “After a long wet season the rain's let up,” says Marie Ponsot in “Better.” Yes, things are not absolutely fabulous, you haven't found the man or job of your dreams, but in a small, measured way, things are better. It may not be a perfect day, but at least it's not raining and you have found “a figured stillness where no nightmares slide.” You are ready to breach the world's barriers on your own terms, to “come, eyes wide, outside.”
If you're not quite ready to sing a song of absolute joy, if you need a quick jump start back into the world, well then, says the speaker in Linda Pastan's “Petit Dejeuner,” you can “trick” yourself back into the rush of life. This time it's no sad parlor trick; in fact, it's more like a magician's delicious sleight of hand. The wily French do it every day—they reel themselves up into morning with a crisp, buttery croissant, a sweet little mouthful of air and light. Neither starving nor stuffing yourself, you are now wise enough to know how to savor life. So you bite into the just-right croissant and welcome once again the “sweet ceremony” of the world. Great trick, we say, and a good beginning.
And you might want to stop and hold here for a moment while you contemplate your first tentative move—to relish your very own “morning of buttered toast/of coffee, sweetened, with milk,” to notice the flurry of chickadees. In “Not-Yet,” Jane Hirshfield reminds us of the risks that come with venturing back into the world. Even though we have “turned [our] blessings” into the light and are grateful for what we have, we are also fully aware that the world can rip us apart again, that we can become lost, dead, shattered, fractured, and silenced. So we might want to hang back with the “single cardinal” on the empty branch for just another instant of “not-yet-now” before we launch fully into Healing.
But claiming our place in the world again doesn't have to be so scary, especially if we start by perfecting the art of the kiss-off. Instead of worrying about what we're afraid of losing, we can focus instead on what we no longer need. We did that hard internal work in Dealing, figuring out what to keep and what to leave behind. Now it's time to put it all into action. So it's goodbye to insecurity; so long, pretense; see ya to everything and everyone keeping you from being who you are. You're not angry about the past any longer, just eager to start fresh. When you free yourself like this, you find yourself—that's the beauty of the kind and careful kiss-off.
We think Galway Kinnell's “The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students” is the perfect example of a loving kiss-off. He's had it, this poor teacher—with his students, the Miami Beach urologist, the West Coast brassiere manufacturer, and the San Quentin Nazi, and their terrible poems. But he doesn't hate them—in fact, he did care, he did read every poem, and most important, he did say what he thought was the truth. But they were smothering him, and in the end, he feels only pity, which is no basis for a relationship. He must say goodbye because he is finally ready to write his own poems, to live his own life.
What's surprising is how little you will miss the things you'll kiss off in Healing—and how much you'll appreciate what you find in yourself. The speaker in Langston Hughes's “Homecoming” loses his girlfriend but finds he's left with a whole lot of room—and that's not such a bad thing because it means that he is still whole. He can stretch out on that bed and figure out what he's going to do with that all room, and how he'll make it his own again.
This is where finding yourself becomes fun. You're discovering what you're capable of. You're lightened and lifted, no longer burdened by self-pity, anger, or grief. Anyone can scream “fuck off!” the way you did back in Hurting, but it takes patience and craft to achieve a sweet but firm kiss-off. And the more you practice saying goodbye to unrealistic expectations and conventions, the better you feel about yourself. You stop cursing the couples who don't invite single you to their dinner parties and throw your own party instead. You stop making fun of your idiot boss and start looking for more meaningful work. You dump the grapefruit diet, the wrinkle cure, the friends who only call you when their significant others are busy, and the low-rise jeans you can't wear sitting down.
In Healing we joyfully begin the real business of fulfilling our purpose and promise. What was fake and plastic in us becomes real and powerful—like the doll turned naval officer in Lyn Lifshin's “Navy Barbie.” Barbie has traded in her cameo choker, grating garters, and high-heeled platform shoes for a crisp white uniform and natural hair. She's joined the Navy! She reads! She smiles because she reads! And for the first time, Barbie is authentic, her true self. Who would have guessed—the real Barbie ranks.
If Barbie can do it, we can do it—discover who we really are and earn our right to rank. If we reject the stereotype of who we're supposed to be—the workaholic, the desperate single woman, the good daughter—we learn to become who we want to be. The more we exert our independence, the more we develop our individuality. And even if others continue to expect only the stereo-type, even if they get angry at us for changing, we will stay true to ourselves, like the speaker in Lucille Clifton's “why some people be mad at me sometimes.” We are finally able to face the world on our terms, and we're proud of our new strength.
In Healing, we're ourselves again, only ten times better (like the Grinch after his heart grew). We finally give ourselves over to our real passions, lose ourselves in the purity of our desires, savor the moments where every point in the universe converges to create a sweet spot of perfection (not a perfect life—there is no such thing—but a perfect moment). In Wallace Stevens's “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” the simple act of reading a book becomes “perfection of thought.” You know how it is when you can't put down a book, when the room and its noise disappear and the characters come alive in your head. This is what you experience once you've truly found yourself. You become like the reader in the quiet house on the perfect summer night—calm and absorbed, leaning into the truth of the moment.
Or you become the happy loner in William Carlos Williams's “Danse Russe,” who celebrates being not a husband, not a father, but just himself, in all his gleeful, grotesque nakedness. Who hasn't pranced before the mirror or sung badly in the shower when no one else is around? When you're comfortable with who you are, self-consciousness falls away, and you're free to enjoy your own glorious independence. Who wouldn't dance around in joy when they discover that being alone doesn't have to mean being lonely?
String a few of these moments together and the next thing you know, you are (gasp!) HAPPY. In Jane Kenyon's poem “The Suitor,” the speaker is simply lying in bed when she notices the tree outside the window and how the leaves turn all at once “like a school of fish.” In this light,
shimmery moment, she suddenly understands that she is happy, that for months this feeling has been coming closer and closer—like a timid suitor. And even though we know in Healing that loss and pain and grief will surely call again, we have discovered how to recognize and hold on to these moments of joy.
The final step of Healing becomes easy. We are no longer just better. We don't have to trick ourselves into feeling alive. Of course croissants are delicious, but an occasional oatmeal morning is just fine. Our eyes are wide open and our wounds are barely scars. We have found our true strength, and we're excited to be in the world.
Better
After a long wet season the rain's let up.
The list my life was on was critical;
reproach soaked it and infected my ears.
I hid, deaf and blind, my skin my hospital,
in the inoperable ache of fear.
Today the rain stops. I can hear! Trees drip.
They spatter & whisper as I walk their
breathing avenue. The wind has died back;
edge-catching light elaborates the air.
From the road car-tunes rush close then slacken.
I climb the green hill. There at last I reach
a figured stillness where no nightmares slide.
Green leaves turn inside out to grow. They breach
their barriers. I come, eyes wide, outside.
MARIE PONSOT
Petit Dejeuner
I sing a song
of the croissant
and of the wily French
who trick themselves daily
back to the world
for its sweet ceremony
Ah to be reeled
up into morning
on that crisp,
buttery
hook
LINDA PASTAN
Not-Yet
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.
Out the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch—
one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
Kiss Off Page 6