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Sixfold Poetry Fall 2013 Page 4


  Skipping to the Back of the Qur’an

  I.

  With hardship comes ease

                  with hardship comes ease

  Twice it reads

                   and I think 

                                                  practice

                       practice

  practice

  Earlier

                  I read

  as sure as rain as grass is green

  this is a discerning recitation

                   not a flippant jest

  II.

  There is an image of denial

                  as men reclining in mirth

  and as I read of their damned fate

  I am afraid

                  I myself

  am too in love with distraction

  At times

                  these old recitations

  are less words on a page

  and more the coarse

  whistle of wind eroding rock

  the only cruelty of God is time

  III.

  A garden and a river

  and always a cup of nectar in your hand

  hatred

                  and

                                  injury

  removed from your breast

  the blind are not

                  the same as the seeing

  God

                  be gentle for a while

  do not leave me alone to my pleasure

  Suzanne Burns

  Window Shopping

  Whether or not we ordered the same cup of coffee

  in two different ways or punctured the skin

  of a ripened fig with two separate nails

  to unlock the jewels clasped inside,

  on that Saturday afternoon in late March

  we loved each other over the forced majesty

  of charcuterie plates wondering where their hearts went,

  valentines even the sort of people

  who talk about eating kumquats,

  standing in line to buy kumquats, leave behind,

  always excusing life’s bloody things.

  The butcher tells us on Tuesdays he slices open a pig,

  unfurling a roll of pink silk to expose the puzzle beneath.

  The Sturm und Drang of his tattoos pitch and yaw

  as he sharpens a knife I imagine plunging into you

  in front of that Sylvia Plath mural we passed.

  I once saw a bell jar descend over a village scene,

  Swiss Christmas, reindeer lawn, ribbon candy

  tripping on its own psychedelic stripes.

  You replaced my dream of either skiing the Alps

  or becoming the next Sylvia Plath,

  who even wanted to die each spring, forgetting

  how with Ted Hughes at Court Green

  she once churned among the butter of daffodils.

  You never need to pick me flowers or write poems

  when your close body makes me forget my words

  and what happened to all the boys in school

  who thought kumquats were obscene

  and W.C. Fields beckoning his “little kumquat”

  to him, the newest and youngest blonde girl

  unlocking more puzzles on the silver screen

  while I wait to cut open and climb inside of you.

  It is more than wanting to know your view of things,

  what you stand in line to eat,

  how to erase the times you shared crackers and cheese

  in another woman’s picnic scene,

  how she understood the provenance of gourmet eating

  while miles away from both of you

  I sharpened the edge of my lonely knife

  and waited to start the kind of romance

  that does not need a plate of figs and honey

  or you dipping a finger in her empty wine glass

  to mark that one sweet spot that will never wash clean.

  Having a Gelato with You

  is maybe what Frank O’Hara really meant

  because these years sitting across from you

  have made me rupture with presumptuousness.

  People like summer because for a few months

  they no longer smell death tying itself into their shoes.

  The busses run without incident. People say,

  Well, Goddamn! only to compliment a perfected belly flop

  or the way daisies press themselves between novel pages

  like Prom corsages, if Prom meant watching bugs

  line up on picnic blankets, that forgotten smear of deviled egg

  harnessing enough good cheer to last until winter.

  I love to kiss you until I forget winter exists.

  Even your tongue, cold from scoops

  of pistachio or spearmint, asks me

  to mouth the words, “summer dress.”

  I want you to follow me to our hotel like we just met

  and there will never be anything on television

  better than watching me brush my teeth

  and be extra quiet when I spit.

  Having a gelato with you lets me catalog the way

  your eyebrows scuttle across your face but never overlap.

  You order steaks with that red ribbon middle,

  turning blood into a gift more than a predicament.

  I want to memorize each of your innumerable facts.

  You like museums, so I pretend to like museums

  though even in Paris they seemed nothing but dead.

  Around you I am glad the way kids are glad

  the Easter bunny never forgets cheap candy

  tastes better hidden in grass and Mona Lisa

  looks better in photographs. Having a gelato with you

  is a portrait with your tiny spoon and cup.

  Is this how you looked as a baby? I never think about babies

  unless I am around your pinked coin face.

  I swallow chocolate and wish you could have seen me

  once stalk these streets in my plaid 90’s dress

  when ice cream meant a cherry on top,

  the girl from Twin Peaks who could tie the stem in a knot

  and make everyone dream of her snowy skin,

  even in summer when the Portland boys got me alone,

  disappointed my tongue never learned that trick.

  Having a gelato with you is knowing you will say

  all the things even men in fairytales forget.

  It is okay if your feet are too big.

  Who needs that stupid glass shoe?

  Having a gelato with you makes me want to call you art.

  No museum means more, though I know

  what you will say when we seer lilies behind our eyes,

  our impressions of sloppy, waterlogged stars,

  that French Braille of paint.

  Before we met I sat on a bench in front of my first Monet

  and held my breath. I can’t remember if I really cried

  at all that blue like I said,

  but having a gelato with you makes me understand

  that if we opened our eyes at the very same time

  there would be something more than tears.

  Room Service

  I have never asked if your wife knows

  how we always order dessert,

  concoctions of chocolate or caramel,

  butterflied sponge cake cut soft on the bias

  yielding to the urgency of your mouth

  the way I imagine you unzipping my dress with your teeth.

 
I wonder if I might tell you, in the hotel above where we sit,

  to use your hands instead,

  that a husband and a father is not meant

  to follow me upstairs like the beginning of a foreign film

  where the leading man is really a woman

  and the flowers symbolize anything but flowers.

  No one knows how I once danced with a man upstairs,

  a party in a suite, both of us moving closer

  than when lovers joke about being thisclose,

  my summer dress breezing around his body,

  heat steaming between my legs as if something inside me

  insisted he knew it was there, how I only said yes

  because there was no one to sing along to Black Sabbath

  playing on the radio in the next room,

  the man never guessing me for a fan

  and having no time to love me or the flower pinned in my hair

  as I pretended to be some other kind of woman

  who would never bake cupcakes for a birthday.

  I doubt what you say about staying loyal to your home base

  and hope no man ever describes me as a baseball cliché

  while a waiter glides past us with crème brulee,

  a room service tray meant to entice other diners

  away from their husbands and wives.

  I have ordered room service with boys

  who liked to watch porn and eat sushi off my thighs

  and men who designed sugar as foreplay,

  a crescendo of spoons eternally tapping for that one sweet spot.

  I could have almost loved you if we ate lunch outside,

  this time our hands butterflying each other

  as we wonder what will come of the day,

  the thought of spending time with crème brulee

  no more delicious than buying an old record from the store next door,

  a former hard rock anthem blazed on its sleeve

  as we remember how it feels getting to first base,

  that rocketing red glare before we grow old enough

  to need secret sugar off a tray,

  that edible Cinderella shoe,

  to find each other even a little bit charming.

  The Light in Your Kitchen Window

  You do not know I am standing out here

  like something, for once, that belongs in the dark.

  I am not afraid of an errant zombie

  lost and looking for brains

  or the kind of man who collects fingers in a box,

  breath catching the way it does

  on the biggest and best carnival ride

  at the thought of cutting off the tips

  where my composed shadows play against your front walk.

  There is a circus in my heart for you.

  What I mean is more than the roar of a lonely woman

  masquerading as a ghost beneath the streetlight.

  You have tried many times to turn me

  into your own private ghost

  by the way you keep your lips closed now when we kiss,

  and how we never kiss,

  and how you dropped my nickname somewhere out back,

  but this sideshow we exist in is still filled with hope.

  There is cotton candy there, too,

  electric pink dross of good dreams

  before all we did was go around saying,

  or refusing to say, I’m sorry.

  We have washed and dried dishes in the same sink

  so this is nothing to shut your blinds to,

  the way I wave before you go to the bed

  I have loved you in and out of too many times

  to keep hidden in my own special box.

  I am standing outside your window

  watching you water plants, make tomorrow’s sandwich,

  force yourself not to wave back.

  I mean the kind of sorry that might sound better

  translated into the private language we once spoke

  when we liked the same movies we hadn’t even seen,

  Laurel and Hardy and that piano

  negotiating their thirty-nine steps

  onto a list of favorites we meant to sip hot chocolate to,

  some certain look shared between us

  no other certain looks could compete with.

  The look that keeps me anchored in front of your window

  long after the lights go out,

  long after you tuck yourself in

  by negotiating your body to turn from where I once slept,

  somehow a little afraid of what will happen next.

  The Last Supper

  Even the day before Christmas

  they bring a slice of lime on a saucer

  to float in my Diet Coke like we are celebrating.

  The next table over cracks walnuts,

  reveals blue veins with their cheese knives

  and I wonder if they are also pretending

  their brother is still alive.

  I want to say, Wait, this is specific.

  We are different the way everyone thinks they are different.

  Someone orders wine. I can never taste

  the chocolate or the leather and wonder

  if the aged oak barrel looks like the cartoon

  of a man jumping over Niagara Falls.

  Those suspenders must save him every time.

  To create the illusion of appetite before dinner

  we walked past all the downtown mannequins

  I once starved myself to look like.

  Now we spend too much on steak and lobster

  and order dessert in our brother’s honor

  that everyone just pushes around on their plates.

  Sometimes nights in Portland feel customized for pleasure.

  Midnight dirty snowball donut runs, pretending

  to get married at The Church of Elvis, 1991,

  when everyone good was still alive, like Kelly

  and Kurt Cobain and Paul Newman and your mother.

  The moments when staring at a bridge reveals

  something more than wanting to jump over.

  This not one of those nights.

  I was reading a book about JFK Jr.’s plane crash

  the night you died. This fact feels important,

  like how I used to fantasize about watching

  the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade with John-John

  in the secret window of a penthouse

  lined with his mother’s first editions

  and his father’s ghost to avenge like our very own Hamlet.

  I have never been drunk enough or religious enough

  to see a ghost but now look for signs everywhere,

  poking my head in Cameron’s Books

  to flip through yellow tabloids and wait for a sign.

  Something simple, like “Yours til Niagara Falls.”

  There doesn’t need to be a barrel. Maybe a recipe book

  because in the life we are still stuck in you once cooked

  a chicken dish that made me like eating chicken again.

  I never thought I would run out of time to tell you

  I really liked the way you cooked chicken.

  I don’t understand signs enough to know

  if that old People magazine photo crumbling

  in my hands of John Jr. and Carolyn

  when they were still the Kennedys our mothers

  ran out of time to pin their next hopes on

  was a message about how death meets

  older brothers and East Hampton blondes evenly.

  Maybe the nights made for pleasure

  are the only nights we should remember.

  How another brother made sure our waiter

  understood the way I like my steak

  then told me when it came to not be afraid

  of a final toast followed by a first cut

 
; and the tiny bit of blood left dazzling

  my clean white plate.

  Katherine Smith

  Mountain Lion

  Nothing human’s in that sky,

  like a room where guests aren’t welcome

  no radio towers or electric wires,

  and even the planes fly parallel to highway eighty-one

  fifty miles to the west or turn east

  north of here and fly to Richmond.

  Just a few hawks circle the blue.

  She eats a bite of the apple she took with her

  and walks the gravel road to the ridge,

  brushes her hair from her face and smiles

  a habit like the sympathy she offers the mountain.

  If she’s quiet she’ll see the deer in the undergrowth,

  and once she saw a brown bear and cubs.

  These hours when there’s no one to civilize her,

  to put her in the proper perspective

  she often imagines what she might say to the mountain,

  how she’d advise it not to take too personally,

  the dynamite and the quarry,

  how she’d point to the example of the bear,

  dung bright with purple berries,

  its misunderstood subjectivity; to the deer’s

  flighty point of view; to the wild wheat

  harvested from the hillside,

  its ingratitude at being found;

  to the scrub pine that has taken root

  while she was gone all autumn, green needles

  bright with toxic gasses sucked from the wide blue sky.

  But she knows if the mountain could

  it wouldn’t offer brilliant arguments

  but lift itself from golden haunches and leap.

  Navel Orange

  Audrey hates to bring in the groceries,

  to struggle in through the side door, arms full

  after the ease of plucking food like costumes

  from a rich wardrobe: crushed velvet of coffee beans,

  chains of barley, couscous, wheat-berries, grains

  of edible gold. She harvests from the aisles

  the silks of ruby red chard, of collard greens.

  But then she has to get it all home.

  It is—like the friends and lovers

  with whom she once packed her mind,

  their ruffled shadows, satin mysteries

  all there for the choosing—too gorgeous.

  No one told her of the difficulties of storage.

  Once home the paper grocery bags, dampened,

  split open, spilling fruit. Ripe cantaloupe

  with its fragrance of sugar and garbage,

  the lover with his belly, his suits, his job

  at the financial corporation, a marriage

  that haunted him, and four sweet children.

  The voluminous sugars had to fit

  somewhere. Only like the melon

  they didn’t. It has taken years to decipher,