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This is to certify that the I

thesis entitled

UNTITLED COLLECTION OF POETRY

presented by
JEAN I CE DAGHER

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. _degreein English

Major professor 5

Date Jain—13W /€§L

/‘777

 

 

 

 

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UNTITLED COLLECTION OF POETRY

BY

Jeanice Dagher

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1979

ABSTRACT
UNTITLED COLLECTION OF POETRY
BY

Jeanice Dagher

The following is a collection of poetry written by
the student between 1975 and 1979. It consists of selected
original pieces of that period.

Much of the poetry was written during classes and
seminars while studying for the Master's degree at
Michigan State University. It incorporates and applies -
principles of creative writing learned in those courses.
Also represented is work done privately by the student to

further develop skills and techniques in the craft.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Second of Three Poems on my Grandfather‘s Dying
nightdreams #10 (uncle roland's poem)
blackbirds

acknowledgement poem for a revolutionary father
written by an american citizen whose ancestors
rode camels somewhere in arabia

the next best thing to being there

coq au vin

Soft Touch

visiting poets

untitled on rugs

two poems before the wedding

nightdreams #3

nightdreams #14

Broken Stretch

new rooms

poem for maureen b., who lives in the apartment
directly beneath

previously unadmitted respect for mice and squirrels
who build their nests in winter

eight p.m. kitchen still
last stand
morning after a reading by a well-known woman poet

unnamed affair with a birdmant

ii

11
14
15
17
18
19
21
22
24

25

27

29
30
31
32
34

iii
tights
unnamed water poem

so you can see, of course,
why women can't be president...

note from a column on modern living

matter of principle during the fifty year
of co-habitation

tuesday night: the women's shower room

poem for rossini
written during a saturday afternoon texaco broadcast

sunday afternoon in mid-march
during a recently announced tornado warning

l.b. #5 (my husband works nights as a bouncer
in a local college bar)

l.b. #6 (sixth co-habitation poem)

one mambo with a jamaican painter

may 21 elisa lopez, my friend and office partner
relates a terrible sunday afternoon

during the week she taught 'indians'

to her drama class at school

first poem like a natural man

realization of an approaching winter

first fault in a solid coundation

one poem/in the n.y. painter series

getting through the first divorce
with old smokey

elegy: for dead dirty highway animals
and another element of my own kindness
slipped away

poem for april fools

36
38

40

41

43

44

46

48

49
SO

51

52
53
54
59

61

63

65

67

Second of Three Poems on my Grandfather's Dying

Two days before you died

I sat in your chair in the study

having a beer, trying to stay my own age
so you could stay yours.

we had just brought you home,

the hospital bed a gift

from concerned friends in the city.
Everybody wanted you to die

out at the farm

with your tomatoes and raspberries.

You lay in the steel crib

across from me, in this same room

where you once wrote letters and postcards
to couples traveling in Germany:

the same room where you looked up
derivations of endless words,

cut articles from news magazines

and labeled each file

with title and date.

Changed now, the pictures and framed quotations
have been pulled from the walls

with the pious explanation

that Grandpa reaches at everything:

he still has a lot of strength, you know,
in his arms, and

you know Grandpa

puts washcloths

on his head.

I watched you pull yourself up
past the stainless steel bars
and sit there, blinking at me
from the edge of the bed.

I tried not to sing the words:
Do you want part of my beer?

NO.

A great crane blinking gently,

long white legs hanging bare

and chilled.

I watched as you reached

for the gardening hat on the pillow.

It was the one object still familiar,

my mother‘s gift to the man who wears washcloths,
and you pulled it down tight

past your ears. The robe slides on easily this time
and we walk out the back door.

Standing together in front of the flowers.

arm in arm in front of the sunset,

it is the last scene of Lassie Comes Home.

My thoughts are lines of sentimental fiction:
Communion. Silence. Twilight.

I look down to see the gown up around your waist

as you stand alone, peacefully pissing a golden arc
in your own back yard, up and over the flowers.

You taught me about white pine trees.

My instinct is still to count the needles,

looking for five together, while moving on a freeway
toward the upper peninsula. You told me

to be aware

of Milton's artistry and the English side

of my heritage, in spite of my father's darkness,
and my need to believe I was all gospel and hips.
The blood is half and half, you said.

Now you've taught me about dying:

pillows or teddy bears or worn-out beloved objects
held against the skin of one‘s cheek

do not make it any easier.

Old friends who bring violets

and hold your hand in theirs during the dinner hour
do not make it any easier.

What helps

is hanging on to oneself,

steering the ship with both hands,

urinating alone, standing up,

a sweet short prayer,

without a damn measuring cup

just for the record

of patient‘s output.

nightdreams #10 (uncle roland's poem)

in a sailboat

somewhere off a lakecoast in maine
we talked about volkswagen gears
and my father's dictums.

you tried to be meaningful

to this fifteen-year old child
of your crazy sister

and the stocky arab

who wouldn't drink beer

and maybe she would cease to be
a dicipline problem

at school.

so you taught me how

to steer the rudder:

we swam at noon in long, serious strokes,

in perfect duet,

to the same point

past the middle of the water

and then back.

you taught me to play poker,

and the difference between liberals and republicans.
there was a mc carthy sticker

on the back of your rain slicker

on the day we went to town,

your feet moving large on the cracked blacktop,
ludicrous in moccasins.

in real life,

the pastor of a small church in indianapolis,
you joined the waterville parade,

stepping high down the street,

talking wildly about the smell of the air

and i followed behind,

trying to lengthen my strides,
pretending to be your child

in the family of sweetcakes and redheads
and such long fingers

as if you were the drum major

and i was dancing behind you,

kicking high

in the front row.

we haven't spoken since.

fighting for years, you and i

over the deed to the land

up by the water,

over the wicker cane-backed rocking chair

that my grandmother got tired of having on the front porch,
over the car radio in my old v.w.

that cracked three winters ago outside detroit.
we fought over the power drill

that was left behind in the garage

and over the four-poster bed from the back of the house
that, if re-finished, would be like new.

no one even cares any more

but the two of us, together again,

singing worn-out strains of

who has the right,

who has the right.

what grandpa did

during those concerts

was plant tomatoes

in his back yard

and then

he died.

you kissed me at the death reception

wearing a pair of black earth shoes

with the collar and coat.

you carried a tiny china coffeecup

in three fingers

and ate a vanilla cookie with the other hand
held high in the air.

you walked away from me

before i could get in

some counterpoint.

now, we both continue

through our sunday afternoons;

the matinee in different cities.

i put fat vines in clay pots,

coaxing and coaching as if i am washing a baby.
you, humming in your garage,

string mobiles together of stained glass

and hang them in your front window.

we both stand back and are proud of our work.

what i want to say

is that it's you, over and over,

who breaks through hospital doors,
rescuing me from terrors and nightmares,
from fatal diseases, from an interview
with my dead father.

you, in a bad haircut

and ill-fitting earth shoes

are the hen casey figure, the thin-chested viking
who saves me,

dazed and crying,

through months and nights

of dreams.

blackbirds

twenty-four madmen
baked in a pie

we all had lousy mothers

we all cried when we were kids

we all wanted to be friends

we all chewed the inside lining of our mouths
and needed, needed, needed

to be loved

my mother told me

that i was an exceptionally perceptive child
that i was an artist

but artists

can't count change

they never have lunch money
they don't fry eggs right
breaking the yolks and
browning the edges

what artists do

is fly high

in colors

like a french flag

artists need their mothers

neighbors came at night

and drank coffee in the living room and said
before i got ready for bed

that my eyes were like saucers

and i imagined

8

two rounds of pale green melmac
like cucumber slices

pressed

over the black holes

of an unshaven man

who has no eyes

my mother let me know though

that i was no joe blow no

ordinary just average person

on the street

so

i'm crying

and that's why you

who spent your nine ten and eleven

year old summers in yellowstone national park
can't understand

only picasso can understand
and sylvia sylvia sylvia

that this misery is elite
see

and while i haven‘t had
my first divorce

or screwed upside down

ten times

coming

or cut off one portion

of my upper lip

it's this:

artists are

alone-in-the-world

as they climb the sides of buildings
to paint the city red.

acknowledgement poem for a revolutionary father
written by an american citizen whose ancestors
rode camels somewhere in arabia

mostly it's

remembering you through the years

looking out of an oval frame

in the pages of an early american art book

and i wonder why

you're the only one

of that huge host of ruffelled fathers
standing like grouse in a philadelphia painting
that i have feeling for.

maybe it‘s always hearing your name

in the sentence about chopping down trees
and closing the banks.

maybe it's seeing your face

painted on cakes in february,

the lines of blue and brown

with two cherries crossed

on top.

maybe i'm drawn to you

because everybody knows

why you don‘t smile, staring out straight,
sombre and tight-lipped

like the mona lisa

that hung over the laundry chute

in my father‘s house, the lips fixed

like a mouth slot for pennies.

you‘re equally familiar

with an inked-in face

on billboards and enamelled bathroom walls
in public places.

standing at the prow of ships

you're always pointing, never speaking:

9

10

the liberty solos always went to other voices.

i,too, am an ineloquent sort,

smiling and nodding at detroit newsboys

as they address someone else on the

same side of the street.

there's the tie between us, binding us like

shy blind dates,

like cosmic partners

at a bicentennial ball. you, with the wooden dentures
and me, with dark rings always

around my eyes. you, falling up the steps of airplanes
and me, scrubbing my knees

with a vegetable brush

through the long summers in toledo:

waltzing around against michaelangelo clouds,

the backdrop propped against a chimney on the roof

of some large building in los angeles,

we eat a supper of roast bird, greasy bread,

and spice.

the next best thing to being there

1.

we're told that long-distance rates
are a last—true bargain.

i call opticians in detroit,

my old friend now in medical school,
a woman 1 know

who is being divorced.

in october

after several hours of vodkas and tomato juice
and playing bach's magnificats

over and over

i remembered old Christmases.

eves in the lutheran church

when you sang lofty german strains
with a voice still new,

your hair a much deeper shade of red.
calling you that day

as if you weren't my mother

but an old roommate,

as if we weren't both drunk

but loving,

i asked if you remembered

and you did.

11

12

2.

that was better than all the frozen pecan pies,
and the bourbon, hard rye bread, rolls of postage stamps
and other magic you pull out of your grocery bags
hauled up in the back of your volkswagen

from southern ohio;

better than these gifts you produce

from your favorite tophat

in february,

your attempt to atone

for years best forgotten.

the art of a rotten childhood

runs out after awhile:

the song of

truths my mother taught me

loses its rhythm

and i think, instead,

about re-potting the vines

that hang in the south window.

you‘ve kept the auction going for fifteen years,
playing all the speaking parts yourself.

you ask a price, then try to meet it.

i am the fat young cow standing in the middle.

listen: 1 love you

for the old innertube

in upstate new york

twenty summers ago

that was tied to a rope

that was tied to a dock

instead of to you.

we ate lemon meringue pie for breakfast

and you didn't mind if i put grandpa‘s vicks inhaler stick

up my nose.

13

spit, you said,

has no germs, and

colds come from viruses

not from the rain. '

but this is the best story :
that it's fine

to grease a pan

with your bare

fingers.

coq au vin

two chicken sisters

huddle together

close as a couple of spoons
boiling

at the bottom

of a dutch oven.

they seem stubborn as hell,
stoicly enduring their fate,
cryptic like early martyrs
or great lovers who have died
side by side in bed

without a flinch.

it‘s been only minutes

since i washed them carefully
with warm water in the sink,
holding them upright on the edge,
rubbing their thighs

with a dry towel.

now, pouring a cup

of very dark wine

slowly down

over the two of them,

over the pale skin and scrubbed flesh
that waits,

i am more guilty

than the witch
who ate fat children.

14

Soft Touch

It was winter when that boy with long vowels, long legs
invited me to dinner for two (he was cooking)

and a night of conversation about our heroes
in his basement, three-room apartment.

Those dark old men of delta music,
Mississippi men eighty years old

with knuckles like boughs of olive trees;
we thought them just as holy.

We loved the old throats like pulled leather.
We loved their yellow thumbnails.

We loved the men with banjoes on their knees
and grandaddy legs that moved with the blues

who picked and clucked about Saturday night drinking,
Sunday morning singing, and big-kneed gals

who love you so good, you think you've
died and went to heaven.

We sipped california italian from cheap mugs
and ate lettuce in quarters with french dressing,

and I'm thinking that it‘s a friend here:
the Man who Wants my Mind and loves the blues

and comes from Truly Arkansas. We sat grinning
in the dark at someone's backup horns and talked

15

16

of the real real truth
of preachers and dark old men

and we talked about Aloneness, we were whiz kids
and mystics and he moved over to kiss my mouth

just as it seemed we could make it together
against a world outside of sunshine songs

and eagles flying around in Colorado. Incredible, I thought,
to meet a twin, to be saved and soothed by a mental double

and incredible that the best trumpets pumping brass
could make him laugh out loud; I hardly heard him saying

in a new, soft/stroke way, the voice of someone
who'd been at it for years, I can hardly wait

to get your clothes off, as I watched my sweater
rise up over my head and sail away.

visiting poets

the new man

of letters and the arts
doesn‘t have wrists
that are wasting away
nor a chest

caving in.

instead, he goes to picnics
in may and june.

he drinks four beers.

he tells you 'terrific'

and throws his left arm
healthily around a milkmaid
of the english department.

he has a rollicking good time.

the visiting poet never forgets
to eat his lunch.

he is irreverent:

a delightful rogue

who says warm spring

is for loving and thighs,

for beers,

for kisses,

for wet

ground.

wearing a pair of new moccasins
he holds out two lovely arms,
Awhite, and long, and lean

in their t-shirt

and i run straight for them,
hitting right between:

red rover.

l7

untitled on rugs

walked from school

early in the afternoon

and tried to feel norwegian
and tried to feel the wind
and tried to feel poems

for the orange trees

on both.sides of the street

but it came

only on getting to the front door
and i saw the rug

lying lonely

unwanted

the green stripes

caked with mud

it was abandoned

in the hall

1 gathered it in my arms

and carried it upstairs

where i washed it in the bathtub
filled with warm water and soap
like a stray dog

18

two poems before the wedding

nightdream #2

about the rings:

you brought them in
on a satin pillow,
pink

in huge hands

and the first

was a bangle bracelet

in slow motion

i turned a whole revolution
on the altar steps

and wailed

don't you know

it's a size five?

but there was another one:

this one came from a gumball machine
and the size was right

but it was somewhat dented

and the paint was chipping off

to reveal clear p1astic---

it turned

my finger

green.

19

nightdreams #3

the one about the wondrous birth
the monstrous birth

that felt like movement

from my bowels

and smelled old

like a geriatric nursing ward

of a large city hospital

my baby is dry
and cracked

the eyelids click

open and closed

with porcelain/ice eyes
beneath the skin

and her armpits are green

crumbling through cloth
like aged cheese:

bony and brown

the thing is like a spot
for the unicef drive
every october

i've given birth

to an old baby doll
maybe once my mother's
from a rochester attic
and badly in need

of repair

20

nightdreams #8

the dream was of
carefully making love
with the man

who pulled

my teeth.

i wore a nurse's dress

with long sleeves.

i had bony knees

just below the hem.

we pulled the venetian blinds
right down and

meant something tremendous

to each.other

standing there

above the linoleum floor:

we made out like maniacs.

the man was actually

a terrific dentist--
married and gentle,

with four kids

and an expensive sunday camera
he was soft in his middle
as he held my head close
and ripped at my jaw
saying

easy, easy now,

i'm going to push down,
i'm pushing down:

the worst part

is waking up

before i could get back

a second time.

21

nightdreams #14

gregory, you
were the young bricklayer
i didn't marry

although we planned it

through one long summer in toledo,
making love in the cemetary,

in your grandfather's boat

as it was tied to the dock in the lake
you took off the top

of my dustrose suit

while sandflies hovered

over small silver fish

that lay dead near the water.

i remember you had strong forearms
and thick hands, and i was sure
that love made it right.

you took me to weddings in your mother‘s family

with all the polish relatives

and the thin bridesmaid who was a model from Chicago.
we danced under ugly white lights,

knees bending together

like two spoons. we drank

no beer

at all.

two years ago you were back from the navy

and we walked in the snow

through a park in detroit

though we had never done it before.

i was returned from an ann arbor lover.

our peacoats were matching, yours a heavier gauge

22

23

and darker blue than mine.

we were a pair that day, blue against the white snow,
leaving matched sets of footprints

as we talked about buying a house in alaska

and i knew as we talked

that you'd buy me a paintbox and canvasses

and leave me alone in the mornings.

last week i dreamed about driving through kansas
to find you, through unfenced cornfields

lit yellow by van gogh nightstars.

in a metallic blue sedan

i drove all night to a blacktop lot
surrounded by grass that was wet with the dew
of farmlands.

moving inside

i saw your back. it was the same,

square and straight, your shoulders covered
in the gray smooth cotton

of an air force shirt as you waited,

with others, like a school of silver fish,
for your breakfast

and i had a sense of relief

i hadn't known in years,

like getting home, as i fought

the sound of an alarm clock singing

and reluctantly

woke up.

Broken Stretch

In the back of my head

are the words to Shakespeare's women,
words to other ladies

before going down, going down:

Some of your function, Mistress—-

it sure is.

The man is a running back

for the Los Angeles Rams.

I am the ground

in November.

He pulls on his socks

by the light in the bathroom

and they hang down around his ankles,
the elastic broken. He says

he is tired in spite of the shower
and wonders if he'll enjoy the party
and dissapears to find his shirt.

I spread out in the empty bed

and find a cool place in the sheets.
Stretching open, newly delivered

i feel vague drums of rhythms

people make against each other,-
upon each other,

lonely sounds of distant drumming
that meet this vessel

as it moves through

a Nile Avenue.

Cassandra/Cleopatra

on a night train
to Egypt.

24

new rooms

i have met the lady of this house
and wood floors

and white painted mouldings

who lived here thirty years
before her legs gave way

to the stairs

going up

i saw her

in the bathtub drain
where thin white hairs
permanently curled
clung to the sides

and in the pantry closet
where old sugar

spilled in the dark

and escaped the painters

i met her above

one corner of the linoleum floor in the kitchen
where there is still

the smell of a cat

and in the bathroom where
embarrassed

i placed my douchebag

on the same hook

where she hung hers

today i scraped soap
from the dish

25

26.

scraped her away

faded camay

old pink

gone soft

with all the morning washings

rinsed down
under both faucets
turned full

and i said

goodbye

poem for maureen b., who lives in the apartment
directly beneath

you are the woman downstairs
under the frame of my bed.

most nights we mirror each other
in parallel movements--

skaters from the same city
performing clear figures

on two sides of the wooden floor:
we ride with separate moonmen

at the same time on thrusday.

the one time you came upstairs

to this place with the same dimensions,

the same front window placement

and hallway arches,

you wore mexican sandals, prescription sunglasses,
and each eyelash

was individually placed.

you mentioned liking hesse,

that you didn't want to finish your doctorate,
that the floors were perfect for oriental rugs.
you said you lived

on a private income

and once had a baby in buffalo

that died.

that was july.

now, in december

past christmas

we continue

the season program.
your partner is persian
and mine's from Ohio--

27

28

still, the precision is good.

like rockettes, we kick smiling.

like cheerleaders in the backyard before supper
we keep it oiled and moving:

if arguments break out

in early evening

four voices come together

in counterpoint

from two sides

of a thin divider

yet we rarely converse
on the staircase

that runs

between.

previously unadmitted respect for mice and squirrels
who build their nests in winter

the idea of singing one's own song

has always been a difficult problem

reminding me always of whooping birds

or a man under a tree, caruso, arms outstretched
with mouth rounded to a perfect 0.

i‘m stuck, not wanting to sing about my own body
(although it is a woman'sl

and stuck not wanting to sing about loving my own self
through the really bad times——

sticks and stones and hugging one's own

thin shoulders, arms wrapped round.

so if there's anything at all

it must be for the person

who ties unmatched bits of lonely strings together
to make long and strong functional things--

who puts them together with old newspapers

to make fat piles left outside, overdue,

to be rained on and snowed on:

the person who binds and binds and binds.

i once scrubbed the oily collar of a yellow shirt
at six a.m. by a small light left on in the kitchen
after an all-night liason

with persent british playwrights

relevant and erudite;

it was pure pleasure in that moment

to be wet and stand with soap

up and down my arms

singing popular arias mentally,

a wildwoman

with a vegetable brush.

29

eight p.m. kitchen still

it must have been

the bottom of the bag

where the bottle of dishwashing soap
shouldered raw chicken,

staying much too long,

not removed until

bacon grease slid down the drain

and leaves of romaine were finally cleared away
from the strainer.

in early winter darkness

a small light shines from above the sink
‘where ivory flanks the faucet's left side:
almost americana

but for the blood

staining the white logo

and dried hard

down the front

of the bottle.

30

last stand

positioned on the couch,

lying flat, i listen to movement in the street.
alternately pointing my toes toward the opposite wall
and flexing them back toward my body

i wait this sunday evening

for your return from a weekend in the city.
stirring at each engine sound,

straining to see

shoes stroking the pavement of the street
outside the front window, tonight

i'm a high-strung downtown tootsie

waiting for the thin man,

waiting for the big break,

the key turning twice in the door

as if it is a love poem

except i've never found the bed too wide
without you: and you don't suspect

that if there was a shotgun

lying ready beneath the springs
(like in your mother's t.v. room)
i'd crawl like sam houston

on my belly behind the dark and dusty back
and crouch there, waiting

to even die defending these walls,
this weekend of no high lights,
i'd be young john wayne

keeping this sweet time of mine
from your love.

31

morning after a reading by a well—known woman poet

cold coffee, old and rancid

at eight-thirty, only a half hour
from the pot. a dirty fingernail
cuts into the direction of the poem
starting to come out

at the typewriter:

i can never find clippers

when i need them.

seems less than help

the reading by a famous woman poet
yesterday

was a small destruction

an interruption

of a younger movement--

my green rhythms try hard

to push up

like newborn nephthytis leaves

on the shelf.

toward noon the lines break away from me
like horses running over the front

of a book cover. i can't get them back.
the image of a slight woman behind a notebook
drinking from a clear glass

of water

appears

and i hear rhythms

of medicine men humming

and her voice talking

about wooded land and grandma's bones

and blood anger

32

33

while i poke with a silver teaspoon
at the muddy liquid in my cup
thinking

that my own grandmother

wasn't even part-

cree

and i wonder

if i'll ever get

to massachusetts.

unnamed affair with a birdman

there was no name

for the man who walked
solitary

around the block

four times morning

and evening.

in winter he waited

with a broom

in the parking lot

swiping at neighbors' tires,
clearing the snow, and
waving goodbye.

i watched him for months,
heavy past my window,
shouting up at the trees--
coaxing falling leaves
turned brown

into an orange plastic bucket
before they hit the ground.
at noon he sang

with two arms outstretched
on the curb across the street:
caruso.

in july a practical nurse downstairs
called him the birdman
and said he was

harmless. ,

october now.
i may be in love by this time,

34

35

having watched the skin grow loose
at the back of his neck

in late summer; having watched him
grow thinner

through the fall,

and i find myself

listening hard

for leaves moving at mid—morning
outside the window

on the front side of the building:
running delighted

to look out

as if it is romeo

or the

ice cream

truck.

tights

i plucked my eyebrows

and planned my divorce,

taking up first

a career in dancing.

the company is progressive,

dark bald men and

oriental women

covering a wide wood stage

as we dance through the numbers,
the songs of being all right, all right--
backed by brass

blowing bad jams

eighteen people right across
are doing the bump

and oh

we are

a hit.

dramatic

dynamic

born under a bad, bad sign,

born with a back

just made for dancing

we glow with artistic temperament
and are liquid,

moving up and out

with the libidinal stuff

that pulses through the veins of dancers
and oils their hips: ’

36

37

i smile wide, wide
into the mirror

and part my lips

as i bump

for all i'm worth

with the bathroom sink.

unnamed water poem

i recently heard

from a practical nurse

that scorpio is a water sign

as we stood in my sister's kitchen
in southern chic

and i washed my blue jeans

in the kitchen sink,

water splashing up

and over the front of my green shirt
as she watched, uncomfortable,
from her place at the table

and the sign of the lion.

maybe it's why

i opted for dishes

in the division of duties

that never came to be--

the laundry sits piled in your closet
at least six weeks.

and maybe it's why

i shower all the plants

four times a year, climbing around
behind the curtain, jeans rolled up
past the knees, moving ridiculous
through the leaves, coaxing and coaching
and bending the leaves back

to expose the lowest bough

of the old avocado

as if i am an efficient nun

scrubbing little boys' heads

in the bathtubs

of an old brick orphanage

outside Cleveland:

38

39

and maybe it's why

i took a bath with yesterday's laundry
filling the tub

one day this winter,

moving slow,

through soap

and soft foundations,
parting the folds

of cotton and silk

and three black leotards

as if i was a mermaid
and they,

northern

baltic

seals.

so you can see, of course, why women can't be president...

the zombie in giant-size lavender flowers.

the zombie in a japanese searsucker robe.

the zombie who hangs on the kitchen faucet.

the zombie who blows her nose and eats stale roast beef.
the zombie who spits out all the tough spots.

the zombie who eats dirty lettuce like a rabbit.

the zombie who can't tie her bathrobe

and the breasts hang down:

she is really

someone in a rain forest.

recluse at the kitchen counter

she looks out

at neighbors parking their cars

and cries at trumpets on the stereo.

she cries because she never breezily carried
her raincoat over one arm at the airport.
she cries because she wants a baby.

she cries because she is a baby.

she cries because no forward on the team
ever loved her.

lavender wildwoman, a lonely petunia
she shuffles back

and forth

between two rooms, ridiculous,

the stupid flowers waving aloha

all across her ass

as she moves to the bathroom

where she carefully checks herself
for hollow cheeks.

40

note from a column on modern living

the hardest part

of interracial marriage
isn't the neighborhoods
of redwood and station wagons
or finding enough
university towns

or the projected problems
of two adolescent
curly-headed children.
instead,

it comes down

to the real thing:

that's

who

_got the rhythm

and who

ain't.

living with a white man

in the downstairs floor

of a re-sanded mansion

i could sing 'summertime'

any night of the week

but

being with you, it's more lonely
than red-blooded:

and though i point out

that our palms are the same

and your father's part chocktaw
and i am half-arab

and the skin of your grandmother's face
stretched over the bones

is lighter than mine

41

42

on friday night

no one says

i sound better
than roberta flack.

matter of principle during the fifth year of co-habitation

we lived in these same rooms

the year you were twenty-six,

the year you were my age,

the year we bought a component stereo set.

it was the year i bought a fifth of expensive whiskey
and drank it all

while nailing the edges of a washed orange rug

down around the sides of the room.

there have been birthdays and unrequested record albums
since then. grocery bills and broken engines.

the night i was raped by a mutual friend

on the thin carpet of his front room,

not coming home

till morning.

now, considering the fact

that you might not be back

at all tonight,

sitting angry in a bar

with your hat

still on

i know i'll go to bed

about twelve-thirty

and fall asleep in my bathrobe

watching two newscasters

with bad haircuts, and jackets of tiny plaid

on the evening

wrap-up.

43

tuesday night: the women‘s shower room

where they installed
stainless steel
columns of water

hot and cold showers
grey obelisks

like news columns

in squares

of paris

walking through the wide front room

white light from ceiling tubes
showing clear lines

of breasts, bellies, and

the curve of women's backs.
chilled skin

under water running

over long hair

shaken back,

the movement of horses,
shoulder blades

rubbing beneath

like unacknowledged wings.
bottles stand at the edges
of the tiled bath

holding green herbs and honey,
milk, essence of apricot
and strawberry oil;

44

45

it could be evening

in a greek forest—~-

my father's voice

reading loud about

icarus falling, about

the music of flutes and muses
coming from behind the trees---

this center room

is a middle path

cut in dirt

and dark

olive brush

with leaves breaking
underfoot

and vines against the
sky light

hanging

green and purple:
almost sirens

except

there are

no

voices

singing.

poem for rossini
written during a saturday afternoon texaco broadcast

re—potting vines at an inadequate sink,

scraping earth from the clay sides of pots,

lumps from white, winding roots,

i try to forget all my various kinds

of fatal diseases

in the winter that i'm sure i'll kick off

before i'm thirty. i find some comfort

in pre-occupation, and stare at the light

of the kitchen window through a glass of white wine.
i listen to the opera broadcast on the radio

and sipping, singing to myself,

tucking the roots down into the black earth

i forget the lump on my right shin

and the pain in my jaw as my father's hypochondria
is beginning to awaken this winter

in his first daughter. i forget the cancer viruses
that float each day around in the hall

outside my door, under the light of the single bulb
like Siamese silver fish.

meanwhile,

the italian chorus is gold and red brocade.
painted mouths, opened in tenor,

sing in unison a perfect 0.

at half-time i hear a story

about rossini throwing brass cups

down at the street from his third floor window,
angry at noise coming in at his work.

i imagine his white nightgown and spectacles,

a nightscrooge scribbling tight

by a striped candle. as i fill in more dirt

i imagine him sitting above the stage

like j.b., watching the second half of his opera,

46

47

overseeing the afternoon performance at the met,

defying the century he's been gone,

sticking around stubbornly

and throwing an occasional cup

at a misdirected actor.

that thought

and the voice of the texaco broadcast man

fat past the speakers. as the chorus sang wide and full,
as rossini looms and storms up above

makes dying like sistine thunder,

like gold leaf ceilings, '

like a braided, brocaded

old pOpe's robe, like the choral recordings
of monks singing christmas chants

and the viruses

outside the door,

the slow fish swimming

in air

dissapear.

sunday evening in mid-march
during a recently announced tornado warning

on the floor

cross-legged

at the far side

of the basement

smelling mold and wondering why
someone empties garbage

of bags and sour milk cartons

on the washer side of the laundry room
my things surround me

in an even semi-circle:

cigarettes in a long green wrapper,
the yellow norton poem book,

and a small sardine can

to use for ashes,

all gathered up in my arms

as the radio said

take immediate cover

and so i wait in the laundry room

for the apocalypse.

i wonder where you are

and whether the chinese dinner

is getting brown on the stove

and are you conversing through a tornado
with your instructor of afro-am lit

in his shopping center apartment, in perfectly striped
living room chairs, with his old lady gone
and your hat

still on

as i wait

on the laundry room floor

for voices to sing

a jehovah finale

and the world to end.

48

l.b. #5 (my husband works nights as a bouncer
in a local college bar)

on the nights lonnie's away,
moving through the aisles,

making his way through a field of
blond heads

i turn into a green woman

walking too,

but slowly

through the rooms

watering the plants

with a clean mayonnaise jar--

i approach the mirror at the end of the hall
as if it holds a lover

leaning in the frame, smiling

in the dark. in the bathroom

i switch on the light

and carefully check my face

for strong bones.

i read to the monkeys in rousseau's jungle
that hangs, framed in silver, above the desk.
at nine o'clock i call the local disc jockey
who's soloing the evening show and ask for the one
by the jamaican woman called 'love and affection',
then sing with the radio as it plays,

eyes closed above the kitchen sink.

before sleeping i turn up each palm

and dab cologne at the skin from the bottle
given by the woman downstairs who complained
that it never stays on

long enough.

49

l.b. #6 (sixth co—habitation poem)

lonnie,
about the slip:

is it only coincidence
that after these five years
of co-habitation

of sharing the same mug

during the supper meal,

of loving these same two bodies,
swimming the distance from shoulder
to thigh and back up again

year after year

that when the small blue case
where my diaphragm stays

when not in use cracked

on the yellow tile

of the bathroom floor

1 put it

instead, in your old
stopwatch box?

50

one mambo with a jamaican painter

i think i fell in love with you

on the winter weekends in detroit

when, in five p.m. darkness

that fell on the street,

we drank bottles of imported beer

in the empty living room

and lined up the brown glass

on the mantle when we finished.

you taught me to dance

your childhood numbers from the gyms

and the streets and the black june heat

of brooklyn

so i mamboed for you

above the diamonds

of the parquet floor,

a displaced gypsy dancer,

my father's first daughter,

back and forth in front of your paint room,

the canvasses leaning cooly against the wall.
your brushes stuck up against the dark of the
back study window like steady reeds of green and brown,
a silent marsh, jars of pens and water, watching.
we moved to the congas and trumpets

like it was a ballroom, and you moved my hips
to the proper beat with your large hands,

long fingers, as you hummed old latin phrases,

n arthur murray night school instructor

knowing all the songs, whirling a fat housewife,
in time with the music.

51

may 21 elisa lopez, my friend and office partner
relates a terrible sunday afternoon

during the week she taught 'indians'

to her drama class at school

monday morning at 10 o' clock

elisa walks in and rubs her belly,

complaining that she's overweight

underneath two posters of rousseau's cool blue flowers.
she stretches and tells me that she spent sunday

with her husband out at the farm of her brother-in-law
and dale went fishing while she stayed inside.

they'd eaten strong brownies the night before

ans she suddenly got sick, kneeling in the bathroom,
encircling the toilet with her arms

and throwing up everything

she'd ever eaten.

there was chinese food from chung's on cass in detroit,
she said, and my grandmother's black beans and white rice.
there were firecrackers of moussaka and ratatouille,

the tomato sparks exploding against the smooth white walls
of the toilet. there was the beef stew we had for dinner
last night, and it looked like the rag rug

in my mother's kitchen. 1 threw up all the noodles

and sandwiches i ever ate for lunch, and all the chickens
cooked in sour cream. i threw endless strings of spaghetti»
like an italian plaza fountain, and then

i began to throw up Vietnamese people, arms and legs
kicking around without direction. there were pieces

of cloth from the war. i threw up buffaloes

from the plains in wyoming, and then there were indians,
indians falling, shot through and torn apart,

the skin falling red and burnished, like silk scarves,
the skin, the skin was like copper and clay,

it was

the color

of maine potatoes.

52

first poem like a natural man

once a year, i walk for two weeks to school,
bypassing my volkswagen in its assigned spot

between the two fat lines on either side.

instead, i put on my boots and hike down the street,
stretching my legs out in front of me

in the morning shadow like a rubber legged cartoon man.
i pretned my legs are long, that my hips

do not wave aloha behind me, a pleasant good morning
to all the warm brick houses

that line the street, behind the trees.

1 ponder

the cycles of life

for the twenty minutes it takes to get there,
propelling myself along, humming country tunes,
shuffling through the leaves that have fallen.

the cycle continues: for three years now,

i've walked the same path in the autumn

and the trees drop their leaves, readying for winter:
each year, during this period

of walking and looking and idly considering

life's rhythms, i am more sure that next year,

in spite of fights with my husband,

headaches from beer the night before,

losing old friends who move to arizona,

i will still be here, keeping on,

walking and singing songs to myself,

surviving, as the trees survive in cycles

of moist growth in the summer, and retreat

from the cold.

53

realization of an approaching winter

1.

that tiny balls of fur and hair will form
on the smooth fronts of sweaters

as surely as time goes by

as surely as women grow old

and rouge their small cheeks red

2.

that friends will love you

in long, long lines,

shaking hands and taking turns
waltzing around in fun

and understanding amidst huge spaghetti suppers.
they'll call in july

amd say they lost a lot of weight
and then

they will be

gone

3.
people will fight to be king of the mountain

they‘ll fight with their arms and their hands
people will scream at the sight of open arteries

4.

girls will think of weddings

at the end of a long white aisle:
colored light in a stone cathedral
where a faceless man

will be waiting

54

55

girls will believe that they have long legs
as they watch the shadows in the street
on the way home for supper

girls will go steady on friday nights

in large brick houses empty for the weekend
and be stroked and touched

on green carpets, on blue carpets

as they hear songs of french umbrellas
playing in their heads,

as they watch the watermarks

of carlight shadows

move against the back wall

5.

women will never like the shape of their breasts:
they're tiny

they're too big

they point out in two directions

like friendly walleyes

women will never like

the shapes of their asses:

even if it's a corderoy-covered valentine
even if it's a packed-tight cannonball
held high in blue jeans

6.

women will never couple

with someone their own size:
they hug their lover's belly
as if it is a cherry tree

56

or roll around with a puck—like manchild
who leaves angles and bruises
to tell you where he's been

people will never fit together
nicely and rightly like boxcars
moving one

into

another

7.

every woman wants to do a dance

with a prince whose jawline is cut glass
and to ride up to banberry cross

through the middle of town

on a cock horse

with bells

8.

and every woman will be her mother:
as surely as someone will scoop you up some night
and kiss your mouth

and steal up inside

as the street light

comes in

as surely as i came out

tied to her

tight to her

and women will be pregnant

and drink coffee with cream,
fanning out on kitchen chairs

as they laugh in the morning

with girlfriends

57

9.

every woman will swallow herself
and become an inflated bozo doll
and out of that air

will come another

like jesus and pelicans

she'll give it her flesh

and keep it in a warm hole on her side
to grow

it will peer out when she vacuums
with the old hoover

and watch while she rubs at

the edge of the tub

watching the rings

dissapear

10.

some afternoon

every woman will think of her mother

while she stands in the kitchen

making a blender milkshake

or while she tries to buy a bad cup of coffee
from the machine in the lobby of her office:
maybe she'll do it while

she and her lover

ride away on wednesday night

after the mystery special

if her mother baked pies and angel cakes

she'll think of her

if her mother went on dates and grapefruit diets
she'll think of her

if her mother went to the beauty shop

and came home with her hair stuck together

58

like a polish costume doll

she'll think of her

if her mother taught second grade

and tied scarves around her neck in the morning

she'll think of her

if her mother sat in a black leather chair

and drank gold whiskey as she watched civil rights rallies
she'll think of her

and know

that the woman

of half—moons rising

and the woman in the picture
that hangs over the couch

and the woman playing the piano
with two hands and smiling

is really
the same
as she

first fault in a solid foundation

we had a_gala new year's eve

you and i

after five years of a sweet and considerate marriage
we danced out of our covers

and tried ourselves out

moving our hips in latin circles
against the music

against new partners; we moved out
two separate doors:

1 took the front

and you took the back

and looking over our shoulders

only slightly

we moved out

into different streetlights and
different moonlights and

we told ourselves

we deserved this one night

of last indulgence in our illusions.

two old lovers

we danced parallel

through the evening,

green and orange and black wool striped
riding my ass like it was a cement street
buckling from the june heat

in brooklyn, smiling like crazy

all the time;

lying under a different window that night
in sheets that were blue

59

60

i knew

you were riding away, swimming the length
of a beautiful girl

of ukrainian descent:

we were both

still

laughing.

in the morning

we met

outside the front door: ‘
you helped me inside, i made us some coffee,
and we sweetly kept distance

from the different smells and bruises,
untying the knots

of each other's costumes,

crawling under old blankets

and sleeping

till supper.

one poem/in the n.y. painter series

the day that it

broke open

i stayed out

through the afternoon
not drinking

in a bar

where i tried

to read a paper

then came home
drank american blend
whiskey on ice

went in the bathroom

and stared at all the red places
on my face

in the half-mirror

half-light

then took your orange toothbrush.
with the little square bristles
all even

all level

and brushed my eyebrows up

in the same direction

1 plucked them all out
and washed them away

came out to the living room"
and stuffed a pillow

up my dress

feeling how the fabric

hit my knees

and remembered the summer

61

62

i moved into one old apartment

with the first man

taking showers from the heat
baking dark cakes at night
with the t.v. on

thinking how i wore smocks
to the grocery store

all the time

wishing i were older

in the summer

when i knew

no n.y. painters

and no jamaican breadfruit stores

near flatbush avenue

in the summer

when my eyebrows
were lightly tweezed
close

to the natural
hairline

'getting through the first divorce
with old smokey

singing to the radio

while driving down a main street
in middle michigan

i got all

the second line harmony

right

tried to reach you

on monday afternoon

out in the snowy farm lot
covered brown and white
in the back

with ice

and‘grass

that was fat

in summer

while the cats

lay satisfied

in a living room corner
listening

to my silly phone calls
black

on gray

you and i

are still sparring
dodging punches
bragging cool
avoiding marks
avoiding swelling
on our two

smooth faces

that come from

63

64

moving too close
to the middle
of the ring

we move with hands open
palms clean

mine are covered with vaseline
for softness

and my eyelids glisten

like cheap twinkling

christmas lights

or the snow

in a bing crosby

carol

but

i'm saying today

i'm ready

to mambo in your bedroom

behind the orange checkered curtains
your grandmother gave you

from her trunk

for her boy

that became

a man

elegy: for dead dirty highway animals
and another element of my own kindness
slipped away

i started the job in february

when there was ice

over the road to fowler

and only a couple

of dead cats

frozen on the sides

while i steered the truck

with both hands

gripping the wheel

at two and four o'clock positions
staring hard past the lights

of factory workers moving toward the city
in the middle of the night, constant
in the curves

and the black cold

like zen.

i forgot how

i've never been able

to drive over animals in the road.
now, it's spring

and it's common to see them
bumped off the freeway,

eyes part-closed

or heads off and lying

near the back end;

i remember staring

on a hot day in ohio

fascinated

at the body of a dead mother possum
as babies crawled out from inside

65

66

blind and pink

they moved toward the corners
and i stuck my finger out,
pointing.

the mother's eyes are open,
her eyes are open, i said,
they're open

and my grandmother said

not to touch the fur

because of disease.

now, preoccupied

with meeting time norms

and speed limits,

with filling in all the right squares
of the little trucker's charts

i drive the curves

and absently figure the identities

of the pink and gray bodies

on the way to the osteopathic hospital
in carson city:

clumps of muddy fur,

they look like they're only sleeping
_in the noise of moving traffic.
racoons are the only ones

i readily recognize

while the others

without their heads on

look mostly

all the same.

poem for april fools

-she reached her twenty-eighth year

after the first winter alone in the bed
hiding under her grandmother's quilt

from evening snowstorms.

she reached that birthday

after leaving her husband

striding down the front walk

in a corderoy jacket and french-cut blue jeans,
a leather suitcase in each hand,

and in the afternoons

that followed sweet liberation

she screwed

one whole swim team:

one after another

like a half-sleep dream show

boys and men they moved through her bedroom
in early afternoon

and she stretched wet and silent

toward the aqua divers.

tuesday nights after work

she swam lengths in a simple blue tank suit
at the university pool,

opening and folding in,

pushing herself forward

in smooth time,

a silent dance beneath the surface

a giant jellyfish

swimming in tutu

without a partner;

in the long afternoons

while taking a lunch break

she tested the reach of her arm
through the water, through the sheets,

67

68

to where the long swimmer lay,

all polished bone

and

line

stretching the length
of the wall beside him,
just beyond her reach:

she

lay encircled

by his body
thinking
that young men

haven't yet

learned the hurt.

how

strange to be

with a man still warm.

to hug in sleep is innocent,

and

she feel small again.

it tickles.
how strange

to he kissed slowly.

getting dressed

she
the
for
who
and

thinks of her husband,

daddy-man who goes to work

the school system of a medium town,

took nine years to love her

reached for her in the night when she moved

from the curve of his body.
confusing, that still
as march marks the change of seasons

she

absently thinks, in that same moment,

of sweetly making love with a whole baseball team,

in pure good faith, a good humour gesture,

as they emerge, sweaty and grinning

from the dug-out

between innings.

"‘llllllllllllllll“