Sixfold Poetry Winter 2013 Read online

  where the last Post-it reads: This is the place

  the soul is most afraid of, on this height,

  this ecstatic turret, and climbing

  into the playpen he lies down with the rabbits

  who nuzzle his face, their eyes half-closed,

  their furry, smoky-white heads

  moving back and forth

  in mysterious jerks.

  Katherine Smith

  House of Cards

  January 1871

  When I was in Richmond I met a man.

  I touched pulp where a sword had pierced his eye,

  dressed the bloody bruise of his crushed thigh

  where hooves trampled his femur and pelvis. I caressed

  his fragile parts to health until his hard mouth broke

  into a smile. I dream now that he commands me

  to escape my father and brothers, run back

  to Richmond. But before he left the hospital

  for the battlefield where he died he asked me

  to marry him and I refused. I don’t regret it.

  I’ve learned too much belief in any man,

  even a good one, can drive a woman mad.

  The night when I dreamed he lay on me

  and I screamed so loud I woke with Daddy

  and the boys standing over my bed,

  I told them it was nothing.

  It’s hard to be the only woman

  in a house full of men. I wept last night,

  and when I opened my eyes the stars

  were beginning to fade in the dawn light.

  Come spring when the quince is red as passion,

  I’m determined to set out on that train,

  seeking nothing. I’ll never marry. For now

  the quince orchard lies buried under snow

  and a crust of ice thickens on the river.

  I’m done looking for portents in voices,

  tea leaves, dreams. I believe in the cold, real

  and sharp. When I walk this morning to the coop

  the hens make the soft clucking sounds

  that comfort me The rooster puts his beak

  under his wing and goes back to sleep.

  I steal from each hen a warm brown egg

  and follow my footprints in the snow

  back to the house. The weight of my family

  settles on me like a shawl crocheted of iron.

  I head to the kitchen to boil coffee.

  Daddy and the boys will say it’s too bitter.

  When they come in from milking the cows,

  drop the load of firewood for the stove

  they labor to keep burning all winter,

  I’ll add cream to theirs and drink mine black.

  Bad

  Spring 1870

  Mother didn’t like for me to climb the mountain,

  warned me of black bears, ghosts. Now she’s gone

  I wouldn’t mind meeting either just to know

  I wasn’t alone. Beneath my wool skirts my legs warm.

  Quince perfumes the air, crimson, sharp as pepper.

  The gnarled apple trees grow delicate curls,

  white petals like my baby brother’s fine blond hair.

  The wind chases clouds over the mountains.

  I can’t imagine a world without me or the mountains.

  Some folks might call it selfish, but what has come

  to pass is so different from what I thought

  I don’t mind what folks call me. There is in me

  a flame, a fire I used to be ashamed of,

  that keeps my mind from wandering

  at the creek where the path doglegs right

  into valley ruins, a melancholy patchwork

  quilted by women’s hands and passed down

  to daughters. On her death bed my mother’s

  barbed look snagged me as if she knew I’d turn

  from memory like a man towards reason,

  run away from what was certain as the home

  that once held me fast, beloved as Priest mountain.

  Top

  September 1870

  My father helps to gather apples, little gnarled

  things that’ll last all winter baked into pie.

  While summer lingers I stew them with rhubarb,

  ladle into a white bowl, covered with cream,

  the summer fruit that slides down the dark throats

  of brothers raw with weeping. For six months

  the frogs’ croak from the river winds up

  and stops, a toy that topples instead of spinning.

  Daddy repeats time to plant, time to harvest

  and his words fall short of meaning as if

  something were chipped or missing at the bottom

  of him that sets thought gyrating into the world.

  The men and boys won’t stop looking

  as if they were waiting for a miracle

  but all I can do is boil the clothes with lye,

  wash the dusty floors, put food on the table.

  I skip church on Sundays when other girls float

  in taffeta to church on Norwood road.

  Through crepe myrtle’s blazing branches, I watch,

  and bite a tongue of iron. When I feed the pigs

  I slap the sow so hard with the rusty pail

  that she no longer comes running for slops,

  squints at me with knowing eyes. I don’t have it

  in me to believe a thing except the secret

  of silver I saved nursing soldiers in Richmond.

  Next spring I’ll lay ten coins on the palm of the man

  at the train depot with the tin roof that flashes

  in the sun between the river and the church,

  run away to nurse again in Richmond, instead

  of a heart lay the rest on the kitchen table.

  Altar

  Richmond 1880

  I was just a girl, could never hope

  to make the sun rise and set by milking cows

  My body wouldn’t chant the silent prayer

  of broom-work and feather duster. There was

  a hardness in me better suited to dressing wounds

  or stopping the flow of gushing blood and pus

  than to mopping floors. Years after I ran off

  I knew myself flawed as if by making me God

  had left a chink of doubt for men to slip

  through to nothingness. Twice, though I knew

  it meant wearing the men’s rage till death

  like shame at the flesh that cloaked me,

  I almost went back and didn’t. I went to work

  in hospitals nursing the sick to whom I didn’t belong.

  I still wonder at night what happened to my kin,

  but wear my concern lightly as a crust of thin ice

  that melts in the April sun. Sometimes I think

  with what I’ve understood I could have borne

  to stay except I’ve learned that mother love

  left behind that day the train pulled away

  from dwindling mountains isn’t enough

  to keep anyone at home.

  Red Sea

  It was just me and the bleak world

  of scrub pine, red clay, rattling husks

  of dead sumac. It was just me

  and the massive earth and the stone house

  no one had lived in for a long time. My life

  a fact, without illumination. I followed

  the yellow dog up the overgrown path

  to where the bare Virginia mountain

  crouched under the grey sky,

  turned to walk the three miles home

  down the same road I’d come.

  The Blue Ridge turned red, then

  a pale yellow without the usual

  crescendo of dusk. I heard a laughter

  like the bones of winter sun.

  My daughter had been gone months,

  her childhood like a sea
/>   that had parted

  and swallowed up half my life.

  What was I doing alone

  on this mountain? The grey sky

  let go of snow as if releasing letters,

  an alphabet of wordless understanding

  that fluttered through the remaining light.

  Good-Bye

  Good-bye third-floor room with maples leaves,

  green seedpod that taps the window,

  morning mist swirling over the James River.

  beautiful light, thunder on the mountain.

  Good-bye ash tree, sumac, wisteria.

  Good-bye blackberry bramble.

  Good-bye yellow dog, Maizie.

  Good-bye peace.

  Some say peace is carried within,

  but can I fold up valleys

  and take them with me?

  Can I fold the James River,

  the light, the blackberry bramble,

  the yellow dog, and the maple tree

  like silk dresses I slip into my suitcase?

  Can I unpack a mountain?

  David Sloan

  On the Rocks

  It is a rare snapshot. For one thing

  We are together; I am so small,

  No more than four or five,

  Perched on the ledge of a rock face

  Below you, and I would be afraid

  If it weren’t for the single loop

  Of rope you secured around my waist,

  If it weren’t for you, standing

  A few feet diagonally above me,

  Holding the rope that wraps

  Around your back and spools

  Out into your ready hands.

  Even though you aren’t looking

  At me, even though your gaze

  Stretches into the distance,

  Like a man haunted by vistas

  That would lure you away for half

  A lifetime, even though I cannot foresee

  The years ahead when I would still climb,

  Roped up and hoping you would return

  To hold the other end flapping

  Free somewhere above me,

  Even though standing there dwarfed

  By the cliff face and by you,

  I could not know that finally

  The son would find a way

  To reach the end of the abandoned

  Rope and dangle it gingerly down

  To the father who had fallen

  So far away, and hoist him up,

  At this particular moment,

  Four or five and high up

  On the sunlit rocks, linked

  To no one else but you,

  I know that I feel safer

  Than I have ever felt since.

  Skidmarks

  The accident itself was almost a relief,

  the tumor that blooms benignly,

  a blighted elm that finally falls beside—

  not through—the roof. No gasoline-fed flames,

  no glass-imbedded bodies stuffed head-down

  into a crumpled car, no blood pooling on pavement.

  One son escaped with a twisted back,

  one with a lacerated cheek and a few days

  of jittery dreams. My brother hobbled away

  on an ankle that swelled like a snakebite

  when he slammed down the imaginary brake

  on the passenger side right before impact.

  Just after midnight the call came that every parent

  dreads and half expects. I outwardly grieved

  for the car and the boys’ shaking voices,

  but privately, knowing we had once again cheated

  the bringer of plagues and curses, I exulted

  with the gratitude of the undeserving—uneasily—

  as one who dreams himself awake lying

  on a dark road, squealing tires an overture.

  Blanket Indictment

  My parents gave me Indian names—Thumb-in-mouth

  and Blue-blanket-boy, but I couldn’t stop, dragged it

  everywhere, nuzzled silky edges against my cheek

  so I could breathe in trapped scents

  of my six-year-old world: Rocky’s

  wet fur, apple cake and cocoa,

  eucalyptus, lavender.

  My blanket got soggy

  when I draped it over baby’s face in the tub.

  He turned a shade of blue and churned

  water everywhere. It hid with me

  under the bed when I heard

  high heels clicking down

  the hall for a spanking

  I always deserved.

  They would try to yank it away for the wash,

  but I would wail and fist it as if it were

  my own skin. They marveled

  at my banshee strength,

  bought another I left

  untouched. At night

  I swaddled myself to prevent sneak attacks.

  Sometimes in the layered dark it would

  shield me from graveyard sounds

  of scraping shovels. I thought

  they had given up.

  I never heard the nightly shear of scissors,

  one shred at a time, never suspected,

  as it dwindled, first to the size

  of a hand towel,

  then a dollar, that early on I

  would learn how,

  imperceptibly,

  everything is snipped away,

  down to the nothing

  I still clutch.

  What Matters

  Does it matter that I never intended to stay,

  never wanted to enter, touch, upset her?

  But there’s no rest from the doling out of pain.

  The necklace she wore when we first met that day

  invited a twisting. Her throat was a delicate bird.

  No matter, because I never intended to stay.

  My hands itched to hold her, not to betray

  the whiteness, only to feel the flutter, the purr.

  Can nothing arrest the doling out of pain?

  She praised my hands, believed that I could play

  the cello, read Rilke, caressed the words.

  I mattered, and she intended for me to stay.

  I patted her soft-sweatered back, tried to pray,

  heard myself say not too hard, too hard—

  but nothing could arrest the doling out of pain

  For a moment under bruise-colored skies we lay

  serenely. It passed—Oh, the voices I heard.

  She’s just matter now. I never intended to stay.

  No arrest will ever end this doling out of pain.

  Fathers’ Hands

  Carving a bow for my son, who wants

  a weapon to terrorize squirrels

  and deliver the world, I snag the blade,

  fumble the whittle stroke and slice my finger.

  The cut oozes. My hand is sturdy,

  scarred, nothing like my father’s—

  unmarked, maple-colored.

  His hands stitched gashes without a flinch.

  They mortared rock walls to hold a hillside up.

  On the violin, his fingers flew like wingtips.

  Once as a child I saw sparks spray

  from that smoking bow. He tried to teach

  my hands how to drive a nail straight,

  which spans would bear a load

  and which would snap, how to follow

  the grain of things, how to hear notes first,

  then pluck them as if out of a peach tree.

  A single feather in his hair, my son stalks

  the squirrel, holds the bow steady,

  draws back the shaft, aims, lets fly.

  Target and archer are unruffled by the miss.

  He bounds over to the arrow, takes it

  in his nimble fingers, so like his father’s

  father’s, and nocks the end,

  eager to aim, miss and aim again.

  Al
exandra Smyth

  Exoskeleton Blues

  I.

  It’s that time of the month again—

  the moon is bulging out of its socket.

  My fillings shriek with pain and everything

  is an insult: the skirt that no longer zips,

  the door that says pull that won’t open

  when I push it, the coworker who insists

  on ending my name with an ‘i’ like some kind

  of porn star when my email signature clearly

  shows I spell it with an ‘ie.’ I want to be

  Alexandra, the patron saint of not giving

  a fuck, but the creatures with shells are

  suffering and I can’t take this anymore.

  II.

  I am one with the invertebrates, hoping

  for chitin and barnacles, armor of my own.

  I walk with my belly to my enemies, the only

  barrier between softness and the world is

  a pair of Spanx one size too small, waistband

  chewing a ring around my middle, telling

  my lovers “look how small I made myself for

  you,” while the tell-tale stomach roll flaps

  smugly in the breeze. We are all crustaceans

  in the bedroom, and when I am in front of you

  I feel too big for this skin, wishing I could molt.

  III.

  The moon, that big old slut, pulls at the tides

  and in turn the tides pull on me. My body swells

  and deflates, bellwether of blood to come.

  I am always surprised at the elasticity of my skin,

  the network of silver stretch marks across my hip

  a map, literally, of how far I’ve come. It’s the human

  body’s largest organ, and every seven years

  years it regenerates into something new. A lobster

  lives for seven years, and will shed its exoskeleton

  twenty to twenty-five times. The things that I could do

  if I was given fresh armor over two dozen times.

  How to Make Him Love You

  First, you must wait:

  desire will become dilute, inoffensive,

  the last dregs of a drink on the rocks left

  to sit and melt. This isn’t weakness; this