As it turns out, I refuse to go to another vigil
for a massacre. It won’t make any difference
if I read their names or examine the brief biographies.
They’re children. They did the things children do.
If their parents fall on each other, unable to hold
their tears, the TV audience shakes their heads.
How heavy the heads feel. If you set them on pikes
around the rim of the city, the heads would bend
and sway over travelers, who find the customs puzzling.
do what everybody is
There’s an admonishment I hear
as I bundle my mornings together –
glacial lace for the winter.
Why can’t I be someone’s regular dog,
quiet at the end of the leash,
underwritten by faith? I have
an ear for a whistle, a tooth for your eye.
Cats in the rain
I unrestable, I pur my hands on the table,
I chap my elbows at you, I tape my toes
together so they don’t go off on their own.
I doll-faced with a new day’s makeup,
a parcel wrinkled at the corners,
paper torn, but in my dreams
we dream together the same deprivations –
music at the bottom of an empty
soup bowl, the scrape and bang.
Fly away, the train gnarling
in front of us, my sweaty grip
on the plastic handle of the suitcase.
We are going somewhere with beer
soda and ice cream, raight under
the plane trees, the freckles of bark
littering, a slap to the museum of snow.
Musical figures: church supper
1. A rattle of folding chairs
2. A smacking of coffee cups
3. Gum tocked as punctuation
4. Laughter banging over grief
5. Lint in pockets rolled
6. Lipstick patched over dry lips
7. Smells of mildew and wax on choir robes as the robes jostle
8. The solitary washer of dishes tipping saucers into the sink.
Samn Stockwell has published extensively. Her new book, Musical Figures, is published by Thirty West Publishing House. Previous books won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prize at Elixir. Recent poems are in Ploughshares, Pleiades, and others.
© Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
