The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Kathi Morrison-Taylor
I think of prayer. The slow reach up and curl back, leg rising steadily, a knobby arm of a clock; then time tumbles--like that. Seven-year-olds looping across blue-carpeted sprung floor. The reason to stretch so far seems complex, gesture surprising and off-hand. Each spine answers the will of an arc, pearls concealed so the arch is more like a tree bent back by ice or wind, not the necklace of bone hung from skull to seat, contorted into architecture. It's natural. Their bodies bend before age trains them back from the ledge where flips and dives command at least a try. I can still imagine perfect faith, the breath that fills my lungs as I look up and back into the center of God, or just loyal sky wheeling to catch our dizzy amens. TOMATOES My sloppy work makes me cringe. I planned to stake them but they grew too quickly. Now with florists' wire and strong bamboo, I devise a plan to raise their fruits, pull the dragging arms erect without splintering limbs. Most say they're delicate, and it's true that at twilight you can't water them without risking blight, but don't discount their unruly ways: Beefsteak tomatoes strain stems until they rest in bush beans, cherry tomatoes tempt moles with dusty spice, and Big Boys in our corner plot, tease sharp eyes, flash orange beacons under watermelon vine. They wax wild like the teenage girls I teach, who should be too smart to lie or cheat, as they sometimes do. Next year, I will cage them quick, before they know July sun, encircle each seedling with wire hoops, fair boundaries for enthusiasm. They will grow upright, aligned in rows, tendrils trained efficiently. They'll perform as I ask them to--unlike my girls, who tend themselves appallingly, prop their breasts with Wonder bras, and bare their midriffs to the summer's heat. BAD DOG, MEMORY All the time you're telling it to stay, it drools for a reward, eager to scramble off with its bone to a private corner of your mind. Mornings, you wake to its howling at garbage men who've come to take rubbish from the curb of your dreams. You curse its protective racket. Later, when it's curled up tightly, whuffling, foot-kicking, soft-jowled; or at your heels, secret rock-eater, tongue dripping--you love it . Forgive lost collars, prized dead crabs, its late return, limp cat in its jaws. It whines at your displeasure but barks at joy. Cacophonous past, beyond obedience, old and full of tricks: Take it by the choke chain. PILE OF DISCARDED SHOES Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC Unnaturally older than their owners, nothing like the leather they were, strangely limp and wrinkled, they hold each other--toe-to-toe or heel-to-instep--not a metaphor but evidence. Their emptiness aches as if to separate feet from shoes itself were brutal. Phantom metatarsals sharpen themselves on disbelief. An era away from Nazi death ovens, their brown tongues and black knotty laces burn my vision until I tear and wonder if I am too young to be authentically bitter or grieved. Behind glass in semi-darkness, they prove a mountain of distressed humanity, footprints lost yet preserved, in each sole, an archive of flesh memory. © Copyright 2006-7 by Cook Communication |