August 2002 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
The clothesline, Grammy quipped,
is a tree house string with a can
where women gather to swirl
a rumor in lukewarm tea.
Watch your back! she warned.
The birds have ears.
They’ll carry a secret around the block.
They learn to sing from listening.
Grampa grinned from old cocoons
of hammocks on the shaded porch.
Aware she was his brick and tree,
his every grain of reasoning.
Amazed at how tortilla flesh
stood up to welcome mats of graves.
Amazed at how she passed the sun
from fingertip to fingertip
as if it were a flaming torch.
Those full-lipped white magnolia smiles
wove lasting garlands in my hands.
She spoke directly to a rose
as if its infant needed her.
Flowers learned to kneel in moisture,
then revolt again toward light.
Epiphany was just a page
of cotton shirts, blood removed,
sleeves relaxed like bygone ghosts.
Her stomach wiggled when she laughed —
bowls of tested gelatin.
An apron for her negligé…
the teeth of a washboard for silk
and a good book of dreams
to balance a menu of hail.
*First Published in Stirring Magazine
August 2002 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
Blueberry pancakes, strawberry syrup
news broadcast of Bush’s war
how different the world is for us
And you Allen, did you have correct change
and are sitting on the bank of the river
dangling your feet, calloused
from insomniac narcotic walks through Berkeley
where Whitman stood under street lamps
and in grocery stores tempting you
with the body of a young boy
have you taken off your fedora, or put it on
sing me a bar of Spanish loyalist song
or read me poems
I’m no brother, I’m your son
though I’ve seen only 20 sides ‘America
can I hide among the whiskers of your beard
we can find reindeer to fly us to the moon
and talk to god, which one is not important
I’m waiting, as long as I’m able
August 2002 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
The basement was always locked,
locked tight as a nut in a bolt.
From here the magic grew,
a guess gone wild,
a brothel of abandoned hours.
Having nothing to say,
we pressed our ears to the walls
until a story, a ghost
dropped seeds for inquisitive eyes.
Sweating like glasses dripping in heat,
we parted the cobwebs,
their living room drapes —
knew by instinct tied to time,
this place was a sunken ship
where chandeliers once burned
their tenuous suns.
A million crevices and caves,
eros of a question’s lid,
underwear drawer of a house,
forbidden but calling our hands.
Bridges we found to the sea –-
piers of an ancient storm.
A dusty chair missing a leg,
someone’s palsied, pilfered dream,
its cushion a tongue
that spoke with silence and tilt.
Too young to embrace satin dark,
accept an unanswering world
of strapless luggage,
boxes wet from a flood
like faces in an old folk’s home,
a dirty handkerchief that knows —
we listened for marching mice,
making the best of jetting
across their little roads.
Here the beams were odysseys –-
rod and staff reduced to twig.
We left the door of fear ajar
so tiny streaks of light could talk.
On the other side of the slab
colors were even and clean –-
drafts of red spaghetti sauce
promised us no poverty.
August 2002 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
“I want to go!” was all you said,
as if you were slamming a book.
So I laid out your hat,
a tube of pink lipstick and blush
replacing the color
drained from my cheeks.
Death struck me then
as pottery with handles loose.
To you it snapped like fingernails —
a casualty of brushing up
against the hardness of a life.
“You don’t need eyes to see a forest.
The picture stays in your lungs.”
I packed a red checked tablecloth
pretending the dice weren’t close.
At the edge of a grave,
even the desert looks green.
Country roads spit gravel back
like bacon cooking in a pan.
You needed the custard of clouds
while I busied my triggers
shooting at hail.
The end was soft alyssum grains
finding the gust of a faithful breeze.
Sweat on your brow
could have been streams,
could have been rain licking the moss.
A stone divided by will
is still a stone in reckoning.
Innocence was telling me
to drive around the avalanche.
*First Published in Megaera
August 2002 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
I’m five again. Dresses with bows
in the back become an impossible reach.
Mother’s death is everywhere — especially
in speechlessness, in flour bags
beneath dark olives of Daddy’s eyes.
He’s earned this shade of painful pitch.
Phrases that corner her name
rub rocks in the gaping sore, create
a kind of carpet burn when
elbows touch by accident.
My sister tries on all her clothes —
ghostly blouses hang below her shaking knees
like circus tents without their pegs.
She throws them on the bedroom floor
in angry heaps of autumn leaves.
Soon enough we’ll learn to sweep,
pull the weeds where flowers grew.
Every trinket in the house —
from dishes to porcelain cats,
from quilts to tables set for three —
business cards with edges curled
smeared with the ink of her grave.
Her shiny brown piano seat
has cobwebs in its antique joints.
A maid comes in to clean the keys
that seem to shrink like bars of soap.
Soon we’ll plant a fence or two
as if they’re trees and have a place.
He’ll water them at cocktail hour,
watch the fog as it fixes
the absent to nothingness.
I stay in the gloves of my skin.
afraid to window-crack a tear.
Questioning the cauterized
with crayons and an empty page,
I draw her name in large red streaks
as if its lipstick colored gray.
Wedding photos disappear.
Another woman’s furniture arrives in trucks.
I look for a cushion with pins.
August 2002 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
Your hair was the color of pearls,
but I didn’t think they were real.
I couldn’t admit to the ash
of your skin, its porcelain pose
on saucers of graves.
Two long days beside your bed.
A cradle I pushed but could not rock.
My eyes were grabbing renaissance.
I knew it but I acted blind.
You warned me of death and its salt —
how oceans are garnished with thirst.
You taught me how to rope and rise
a baby grand from dining rooms
of buried ships — and still I
painted ivory keys of fingernails
neon shades of busy lies
with no respect for waning light.
A wish was stepping on my hands.
Too young to abide the wrinkling fruit,
I wasn’t prepared for the rind.
“Consider a storm the polish of craft,
expect the ice to be sharp” — you said,
but I sat deaf ten miles away.
I should have been there,
when the clock of your heartbeat stopped —
darning a prayer for the size of the hole,
as lungs collapsed like old cocoons.
