12
Seamstress
Megan Burns
Thumbelina
Margaret Ryan
The Lament of the Crash-Test Dummy
George Dickerson
Cross-Country, Gershwin, Pizza
Thom Ward
~ . ~ . ~
Seamstress
Megan Burns
sleeping beauty with her prick
& her loom, just a curse
just a little blood
do you think it's enough that the prince
came to save her? sweet smell of menses
coating from first kiss her thighs
two great buoys navigating the terrible
noise of the fairy tale with its briar
rose beginning: so fair, almost
from a child's mouth, the round Oh, Oh, Oh
mimicking surprise at those pink panties gone
darker red, gone darker brown, even the dogs
in the kingdom were entranced
with the way she sat legs spread before the spinner
one hand beneath her skirt fingering
the undone stitch, one hand on the spindle
both moving faster than her breath
her lips humming on the warp of the loom
her real name traced on the thorn
she'll lose her kingdom for, her kingdom
for her beauty, her kingdom for one
last session between the wheel & the window
now down on the floor, face like a match
just blown out, skirt above the whitest
parts of her thighs, the dogs licking
the fresh blood from her fingertips
(Megan Burns is co-editor of Trembling Pillow Press and managing editor of LIMN, a showcase for work by students and faculty at The New Orleans School for the Imagination. Her work has been published in magazines and journals such as Ellipsis, Creative Juices, Trope, New Laurel Review, Exquisite Corpse, Pigs 'n Poets, and The Double Dealer. In Spring 2000, she was awarded the Robert F. Gibbons Prize for Poetry by the University of New Orleans, and was chosen in Fall 2000 as a finalist for the Marble Faun Prize for Poetry, an award given annually by the Faulkner Society.)
[Editors' Note: We mentioned to Burns that her poem brought to mind Paul Valéry's haunting "La Fileuse" ("The Spinner"). She wrote "Seamstress" without knowing of it. Time permitting, we may produce our own French translation. Meanwhile, translations from readers are welcome. ]
~ . ~
Thumbelina
Margaret Ryan
The barren woman pretended
she was my mother, but I know she found me
among the pistils of a crystal
tulip, named me little one, little thumb.
I loved my walnut shell bed, the rose petal
coverlet. But surely the world was bigger
than the plate of water she let me play in
on the kitchen table, rowing across
in my tulip petal, pushing water aside
with white horsehair oars.
The frog queen entered the house
through a broken pane in the casement,
stole me, bed and all. Marooned
midstream on a the leaf of a waterlily,
I learned I'd be the bride of her son.
Ugly inarticulate toad! Covered ith warts,
without words. To live in their mud hut
under the marshes! The fish
listened to my weeping, gnawed
at the lily-leaf's root. I drifted free.
The wide stream flowed like gold
between banks foaming with flowers. Birds
sang to me, and a white butterfly
floated beside. I tethered him to the raft
with my sash, afraid to drift on alone.
Then the winged beetle plucked me up,
flew me ashore, placed me high
in the limbs of a tree. I wept, waving
goodbye to the butterfly. He'd starve
without me, without wings to bring food.
But what could I do? The scarab
kept me as a pet. His friends said,
"Only two legs! No feelers! A waist
like a woman! Hideous!" Among scales and slime,
my pale skin and gold hair seemed grotesque.
The cockchafer set me down on a daisy,
clattered away. I lived day to day,
ate honey and dew, wove a hammock
of grass blades, hung it
beneath a blossom of clover. That summer
I roamed the woods, mistress of my own at last.
But winter withered the clover. Sleeping
among leaf mold, pine needles, I shivered,
longing for my walnut bed. I stumbled
like the dead through a field of cut corn.
Stubble rose like a forest around me. Snow fell,
each flake a shovelful of ice on my head.
Finally a field mouse found me. She said
I must tell her stories. Sheherazade, I spun
tales for my supper, sang what I'd learned from the birds.
Now she says I must marry the mole. His blind nose
and elegant velvet repel me. Light! He speaks
slightingly of sun, of flowers he has never seen.
Each night I slide down his tunnel to tend
the swallow I found there, almost frozen.
Now his heart thuds under the straw coverlet
I wove. Alive, he speaks of the thorn bush
where his wings were wounded. I speak of the ugly mole,
the gloomy rooms I do not wish to inhabit.
The swallow will mend by spring. He says
we will fly south, tells of a garden
where my prince, a crystal man my size
with his own wings, sleeps in the stamens
of flowers. Can I leave the kind field mouse,
flee the well-meaning mole? My life
has been one long flight, a journey
I have not chosen. Soon I must decide.
For now I sing with the swallow. All winter
we dream of wings.
(Prior publ. Ryan, Black Raspberries (The Parsonage Press, 1988))
(This is Margaret Ryan's first appearance in the magazine.
Other books include Filling Out a Life, So You Have to Give a Speech!,
Figure Skating. She teaches at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.)
~ . ~
The Lament of the Crash-Test Dummy
George Dickerson
Technicians purse their indifferent lips,
While I am strapped in, shoulder and groin,
Positioned, readied to accelerate
To final impact at the concrete wall.
Across the expanse of the car's front seat,
Sits my randomly selected mate--
With her fake, blonde hair and hard plastic skin--
Staring rigidly ahead as if we
Had aborted a hopeless argument--
Hardly the companion I might have chosen
To accompany me to oblivion.
Experiment's dummies, not meant to feel,
Soon to be intimate in twisted steel,
We could surely have spasmed sensual grace,
A bit of tenderness, a touch of hands,
A wisp of hair stroked from impassioned face--
Had we had but time and dexterity.
Pardon me, but may I ask what it is
I'm supposed to have done--what heinous crime
Have I perpetrated--roused from the dark,
Befuddled in my sleep, not half awake,
Hustled from a dream in sweet nakedness--
To be so callously flung across space
Like some senseless particle of matter?
If only I were given soul to sing,
I wouldn't tickle death in increments;
Instead I'd hope there is a God somewhere,
And I'd make a banjo of crickets' wings,
Or imagine rooms full of meadowlarks
And breasts whose great humps could eclipse the moon
And salamanders that can dance in fire.
(Prior publ. Selected Poems, 1959-1999 (Rattapallax Press, 2000))
(George Dickerson is a contributing editor to the magazine.)
~ . ~
Cross-Country, Gershwin, Pizza
Thom Ward
Look: when people wonder if it's the going out
or the coming back, if the flakes are brisk
as clarinet notes and the crust tolerates our heft,
so many dark loquacious olives, recall that truth
is always dubious compared to fiction
and characters without irony turn quixotic places
lethal. Realize you might be the woman who panics
and rings the fire department that upon arrival
learns the red-tangerine is not the adjacent house
in flames, but the start of another sunblast
through which the piano counterpoints, syncopates
while anchovies fling gossip about the mozzarella.
Most often subterfuge is only method acting,
this hour like a good bottle of wine, a little more
than both of us need and almost enough
if opened with friends. We might as well let
arthritis meet wisdom, acquiesce to the poles
puncturing snow, the skis pushing themselves
over miles of frosted earth -- yes no yes no yes no
(Author of Small Boats with Oars of Different Size (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press, 2000), Thom Ward has contributed an essay ("A Little Primer on What and How")
and other poetry to the magazine. (Feb 2001.) The BOA Editions editor appears at the Catskill Mountain Foundation in Hunter on September 15. (See Listings.)
~ . ~ . ~