Poetry
four
Exegesis
the function of
this tour is to invent
the symbolic, to transform
the human field into
a pageant of meaning — we
arise from our labor, comb
our hair, put on our
elements — we totter then
stand, we move out into
the world — the rift
makes the ritual:
a dervish, a bargain,
a cadence, a threshold,
the cog that makes us
run — we dreamt a tapestry
or shroud in which every
text was sacred: we dreamt it,
we wove it, begged it
sing, then tore
it down
Taking
First, her
shoulders
undone
Then a more
complicated matter
so tiny and
numerous that it takes forever
You will want
an open window
in an upstairs
bedroom,
the white
dress puddled
at her feet
The complexity
is to be waved off,
and I
clasp,
catch
toward the iceberg of her nakedness.
Later, I wrote
it was like riding the night,
What I can tell you is
it was terribly
quiet
nothing but
a windowpane
reason
a loaded gun
< NOTE: This poem is erasure/unmasking/disrobement of Billy Collins’ “Taking Off Emily
Dickinson’s Clothes.” >
Little Fable
great against a tree, smoking — the back of your hands, those awful headaches: we felt that we were in a darkened church: we knew it was right, it was really happening, and my job was to stay there: to remain invisible, taut, black bow against the flare line — the radio played the same songs again and we kept walking backwards — an inverted inventory — vigorous twilight and your cricket-mad voice — the human throat produces color, is religious, is romantic, stays behind yet keeps on walking — the daydream smokes a cigarette, is aware of your hair, is above in a flowerbox, like tulips in saucers, like mourning doves ever mourning of an evening, like a sliver of dark out there on the horizon — the thrum of night loads the fire escape, unfurls / slashes rain into a storm, like welding wind into night on the roof: the elegance of evening, of your still cupped hands — the moon a hook for the sky to hang on, the fog a grave sound — and my heart a filled silence, a little animal that is there beside you, briefly, then just as suddenly is gone — as if you were the fire, the little stars, the thrum of the engine moving us quickly / restlessly / relentlessly through space: the thing was we had turned into a door that we then had to walk through — and life went on, in a different kind of weather, with different stars churning overhead
Mère
the old women rose with the moon
twisting their gnarled arms across the sky
they hovered over the places they had walked
they passed the houses where they had lived as girls
the dark, pine-arched roads where they had received first kisses
and clutched at boys or other girls in the quickening dark
they passed the hospitals or rooms where they had birthed children
they passed the graves of children, they passed their own graves
they tore light out of the stars and wore it as cloaks
other light they flung to earth where it split apart and shattered
they crowned each other with the wrecks of their longings and despairs
they fell apart, cohered again, they spun with the weather
they watched the world flame out, ignoring them at best or hating them
they rose over the ridge like a troop of fixed stars
Contributor
Donna de la PerrièreDonna de la Perrière is the author of two full-length books, True Crime and Saint Erasure. A third book, Works of Love & Terror, is forthcoming from Talisman House in the spring of 2019. She teaches in San Francisco and lives in Oakland. Read more at www.donnadelaperriere.net
