pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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POETRY POSTING 2

Here's another poem. I wrote this one for my paternal grandmother, whom I adored.

I'm not happy with some of the line breaks and punctuation, but it's already been published in this form. I still play with it though.

A poem for a friend follows.

Then, finally, a villanelle about growing up queer in South Carolina bored out of my skull and driving around in circles wondering how to escape and build a meaningful life for myself. That one's published in an early form, too, but I still haven't gotten the 4 a.m. line right yet. I don't know the HTML code to indent the 4 a.m. line, but it's supposed to have a deep indent.

I.C.U.
for Nina (1912–1994)

The hideous glass swan I gave you one Christmas
sits in a rack on the table,
its back exposed and empty:
a hole to be filled with candies—
anything to conceal the gaping hole,
to conceal the casket, lowering.

I dice carrots and onions, garlic
fresh from the ground,
mix a stew with ingredients I've never recorded—
its taste as strong as your table
planted in this common kitchen
forged from our own blood.

Blood on the cutting board, fat to one side—
our meat is dredged in flour then dropped over fire.
The wood is splattered with us
and my arms offer no protection.

I keen into the kitchen utensils:
pots and spoons and cast-iron pans
that will outlive us all.
The Tupperware secure behind your fine bone china
and the silent morning stove, already cooling.

© 1991.

•

OUTSIDE CAROL'S WINDOW

Look at the red world and smoke it
The naked hard clouds say bleed
Whispered voices wake sacred marble things
Move through them Know their breathing
Bend the trees with concrete arcs of questions

The sky is not his hand and will not harm you
Dance into this wind in your own gown

© 2003

•

DRIVING

We rode those streets in search of something more
than another night of six packs in my car.
We rode those streets like we'd been there before.

In a rusted-out Camaro bought cheap to restore
we crossed the Georgia line in search of bars
and rode those streets in search of something more

than the endless TV gray inside the door
of one more milltown evening, too familiar
to those of us who'd seen it all before.

So I raced red lights while you kept score
and Lynyrd Skynyrd played on blown-out woofers
and we rode around restless, wanting more

but not knowing where to find it.
Then, already 4,
and low on gas, we'd sneak up sagging stairs
that had given us away late nights before

and find my bed. Feet dangling toward the floor
to stop the room from spinning, no answers
for the questions in our heads, we tried to imagine more
and stared at peeling walls we'd seen before.

© 1999

12:15 p.m. - 2005-05-09

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