Poetry

Cynthia Marshall

CARL'S COAT

 Carl's coat has a big collar, an arch, neatly tweedy,
 that widens away from his neck in a gold and green weave.
 He is tidy and angry, his voice,
 which has pebbles at the bottom, oboe,
 gets a little whine, viola, when he talks about not
 being published. His seaweed fingers wave around globes of air,
 close like sea urchins when he finishes his point, that sympathy
 makes it worse. Not being published is better
 than being pushed off a pier, I say. Better to not be published, Carl,
 than not smell like warm soaked bark. Let me, your clownfish,
 nuzzle under that tweed. Wrap your whine
 around me like the morning's wrinkled sheet.
 Tug my waist to your hip and I'll glide low
 on your hands for each and every globe.

 MAZE

 When the adults were busy, she'd wander around
 the big house, stay out of her grandfather's way and drift
 to the tiny bathroom hidden under the long spiral stair,
 to its door with the same curve as the wall and edges
 that slanted inward to fit precisely into the frame.

 The only clues were the thin black outline
 and the small brass knob under the waist-high molding;
 a door and a room designed by the same aesthetic that clips
 bushes into mazes.

 Inside, she'd look above the sink at the stoppered
 glass bottles painted with French peasants, a man and a woman,
 and at the linen towels with tangled
 monograms. Then, above and to the side, at two
 little paintings, both in straight black frames, of Vesuvius erupting:

 the first, the volcano leaning against the night
 with pinpoints of lights gathered around the harbor at its feet;
 the second, the shaken mount
 releasing into the deep blue, pouring a burning orange cape over itself
 and the water and all that lay in between, so pretty
 it barely let her step back to the blank white walls.


 MONUMENTS

 Once he'd safely delivered my grandmother
 across the ocean to the hotel,
 my great uncle gave me a gold
 pillbox of nitroglycerine tablets, innocent
 as pebbles and said someone with her should carry
 them at all times.
                      Before he flew home,
 we walked London streets in late sun.
 She stepped in the shadow of empire's monuments,
 whitened hand, little glints of diamond,
 gripping her cane, while my uncle, a smile
 hovering on his face like a sand ripple told
 stories about being stationed here during the war.
 In an air raid, a woman from his office, a building
 that was right over there, went up to the roof
 to watch the buzz bombs drop
 and was never seen again.

 INITIATION

 Jack licked his finger and tapped it
 on the powder piled
 next to the lines
 for him and Larry. Thin trunks
 of starved pines flickered
 in the firelight and Larry
 put another chopped sapling
 on the flames.
 Jack seemed kind
 even though here was another
 thing I'd never done before
 so I opened my mouth
 and let him paint the grainy coke on my gums
 in wet strokes,
 to show me how it numbs.

 FOOD

 I lift spaghetti from the pot, hot mounds
 of stuff dripping to my bowl. My job
 each day provide the food. Just feed my self.
 But that's what hurts most: Hunger rises hourly
 like seedlings' open mouths that gape
 at light. I've searched for calm in small gains:
 the milk of onions, sunrise in carrot rings,
 the mashed flesh of potato that changes
 want to content. But I have no mother.
 I am no mother. My body stings like
 a smack against a child's soft head, not soothed
 by one kiss. This strangling work
 won't fill as fast as screams.
 The splatter's left for me to clean.

 GOOD SAMARITAN

 She stood at the bottom of the subway escalator
 saying, Please would you mind -
 Mindlessly, I pulled coins from my pocket
 but as I extended my hand,    stepped out of my path for her,
 I listened. She said, sparing a token. She had no cup.
 I said, Sorry I didn't hear you. I'm out of tokens.
 and put the money in her hand and walked away.
 I had tokens in my pocket, each a dollar fifty
 considerably more than my spare change.
 One ride to let her leave where she was.
 A dollar plus one half! Six quarters!
 Two weeks ago, someone offered me a deal on tokens.
 After the turnstile, I looked in my hand and was one short.
 No more dealing in tokens for me,
 even though I made a decision long ago if I have spare
 change in my pocket, give it to who asks,
 but, Don't open your wallet here, a kind man once berated me at fifteen
 for waving bills around Grand Central.
 A token, an omen, a gift, a tidbit, a harbinger, my esteem,
 gratitude, admiration, I love you, I want you, you are worth
 stopping for but how much
 can you possibly want?

 FINE LINES

 Triumphant, she explains how
 she has been forced to outwit
 bureaucrats, lawyers, experts, all
 of whom, with sucked-in cheeks,
 called her a crackpot. But she won
 the lawsuit and reiterates: You have to watch out
 for idiots all the time.

 I think of watching wave machines tilt lurid blue heaves
 from one end of the plastic box to the other;
 color pushing here, absence pushing there,
 an uncertain, whole balance.

 But it's exhausting to watch shadow enhance light,
 to know it brings form and depth to the flat
 snow on the playing field where neighbors walk their puppy,
 each pushing through crust to get across.
 There are too many days when heavy blue glycerin
 wells like poison in my mouth, when I am certain
 that Kevin, who smiles when I come to buy gas
 will overcharge on my next oil change
 if I don't torment him with surveillance.

 I long for my friend's little boy,
 who, when he sees sunlight on the floor, stands
 sure-footed in the sharp squares and bends
 to touch the pretty light and smiles; between
 the light and shadow,
 he can't feel any difference.


 WRESTLERS

 The postcard leans on the clock
 next to the bed. Naked,
 braided, they have stopped
 the way roughhousing dogs
 pause when one catches
 the other's head
 in its teeth. One man has coiled
 a sinewy arm along
 the muscle that holds him
 in a headlock. A whimper.
 A pivot.

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