Two Lost Poems in Doubleback Review

My poems "Amaryllis" and "The Death of the Lobster" were both first published a few years ago. Then the magazines in which they appeared went under, and the poems disappeared.

I am very happy to report that both poems have been excavated and republished by the brand-new Doubleback Review, which specializes in doing precisely this thing.

Read the poems here.

Time-Lapse

Time-Lapse
A rose
A bow
A star

A hand
A fist
A jaw

In pink
In red
In blue-violet, mauve

February 14, Columbia Heights

Photo: "Wrapped for Sale" by Garry Knight

There is always someone
     yelling
just outside the Metro station.
Today, no different, but what
this man is protesting
    or exalting
I can't tell from here.

It's two syllables, 
the yelling man's chant,
shouted 
    over and over. 

I stop at the crosswalk, ducking
the upward-flap rustle of pigeons.

The light changes; the cars slow.
Yes. I hear it now.

RO-SES, the yelling man yells.
RO-SES. ROSES.

Approach

He is loose-fingered, cautious,
unbreathing yet. To him she is
a butterfly, only just
touched down.

But he is neither the collector
nor the net: to her he is
the full flower her tired feet
have found.







illustration by Martin Johnson Heade

Virtue

Two weeks before the move
You look hard at every cup,
Each one of your threadbare towels.
You envision sitting down on a rug far away
And pulling these things from a box.

Then you imagine a monastic existence,
A rug with no boxes. You've left
The cracked cups at the dump,
A bag of nice sweaters at Goodwill.
In the empty room you are proud
of the nothing you have. Then

In your mind the new doorbell rings.
Your neighbor has come
To introduce herself,
And she brought you yellow flowers,
In a cup she made herself.


photograph by Catherine Jamieson

At Summer's End

The cricket in the lavender
doesn't ever seem to sleep.

All night he chatters, and next morning
he's still got plenty to say. I don't know

how long crickets live, but surely
last night was at least one year of his life.

What could be so interesting,
so complicated that it takes

a whole year to tell?
I sit in the crabgrass. I've got time.






photograph by Molly Wizenberg

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.



Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 - February 11, 1963)
photograph by flickr user scheithelapeyre

After Three Days of Rain

The white irises
are rumpled, look like
your sheets in the morning.






iris photograph by Mike VanDerWalker

Anna in the Brambles

She had hidden the dark, oily seeds,
buried them deep in the dry side of the garden.
Winter saw rock-hard ground, silence between rooms,
white skies. And then spring, and with the rise
of string beans, peppers, foxglove,
the garden gave an army
of thorny, hungry spines.
She was uprooting them, swearing, bleeding,
when I found her in the dirt.




photograph by wordsforsnow

Solace

The heaviest clouds are memories now,
and each thorn gives up its rain.
I dreamt I saw your shadow,
a flicker at the edge of the meadow.
Every step took me hours and hours,
and when I reached you you had gone.
In the trampled grass where the doe makes her bed,
a damp and budding armful: peony, lavender,
strawberry, thistle.
These are the flowers of my heart,
and in new sun they will bloom.







painting by Cassandra Barney

After a Long Winter

There are trees near your house
that you did not know were cherry
until the blossoms came.









photograph by Toshihiro Oshima

The Language of Flowers: Lily of the Valley

sweetness, humility, healing, spring, a return to happiness

I sleep late. The lawnmowers
do not wake me, nor the landlord's
angry wife. The light
finds my eyes gently,
as the rain begins. The house
is empty. The bright street,
deserted. The comforter
has been rejected, a cool white dog
at the foot of the bed.

All the clocks are wrong or gone,
I guess he took his with him. I force open
a window. It is time to start the day.





painting by Cassandra Barney
another season of floriography begins.

The First Beautiful Day

Spring slides over the last patch of gray;
somewhere a river is thawing.
My tongue is heavy with flowers.




photograph by Rachel K

Spring

The carrots are born and the rabbits
are dying. The root came up--
crayon orange, firm with promise--from
the dry rows just off the porch.

Over the fence the neighbor's pool
has claimed another rabbit. Face first
like a fish. Still as a lily pad.
Her nose does not know
the riches are ready.






photograph by Emily McPhie

Heptonstall

Sylvia Plath, pale patron saint
of all this rising sadness, I must know
that this is the last life,
this unrepentant madness.

In Heptonstall the chalky door
of your smallest and final cocoon
bears the scars of the nails of virgins,
the glittery spots of dried-tear moons.

Someone has left you sugary sweet peas,
wrapped in thin pink paper. I hope
they did not wake you. I hope
there is no waking.

A Reading from the Letter of Joan of Arc to the Adolescents

for Sunshine

God knows it isn't easy
being fourteen. Breasts alone
are strange enough; don't get me started
on the tinny chorus of expectations,
the fire in your dreams. It has taken me
more than a little time to get it
but trust me, when you feel your heart thrum
strong and sure in your chest you will know
what breasts are for. When the king plants
an iris in the swollen dark earth, when your mother
lays your armor to sleep deep in the ground,
you will see how your brave bright love
was never the wrong choice.



photograph by Charlotte Miceli

Interlude: Happy Birthday, Cassandra Barney

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one miss Cassandra Barney, my inspiration, collaborator and friend. Take a minute today, if you will, to cruise over to her blog and send her birthday wishes, or just think glittery thoughts in her general direction. She works hard, plays hard, dreams hard, and loves hard, and I only hope today is all that it can be for her, that she is inundated with affection and children's drawings and good wishes.



Thistle
Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode stripes through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars pricked holes
in the black paper above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around the big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.

Catching Up with An Ex Over Coffee

Tell me, he says, about one time
you've been drunk. He doesn't say,
I dare you. He doesn't say, don't lie.
He doesn't say, how much do you think
you've really changed? I set my jaw
against the blows. In Brooklyn, once,
I say. My TA's apartment.
Across the too-small table I know
the gears are turning.
I don't say, After you, of course.
I say that it was February. Post-
theatre, back through the carving night
to his cold rooms. I say he showed me
cyanotypes, the skeletons of flowers,
pictures from Poland I'd already seen.
I say he brought out pepper vodka, that
his lanky frame had got a taste for it, but I,
tiny I, sputtered as his roommate laughed.
I tell how the dim bathroom
was slanted when I got there, how
the cold water sizzled on my flushed cheeks.
I do not say, I would have slept on the floor
but he did not have blankets enough. I do not say,
The next morning he talked to me
like a stranger. I say
he left me in Central Park,
an angel in the snow, beneath the 6am silence
of Jeanne-Claude and Christo's spectacle.
I say it was just breathtaking.



pinhole photograph by Tom Karlo

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

No one spoke,
The host, the guest,
The white chrysanthemums.




Ryota, translated by Kenneth Rexroth
photograph by flickr user cas lad.

Night in the Garden

There are monsters in the garden,
gnawing tomatoes into pulpy lace,
pea pods into twigs. Their pincers
arc, little crescents in the light
of the harvest moon.

The earwigs shy
from the divine fire of my flashlight.
They cling to the stakes as I shake them down
like walnuts.

At the fence I slow my sword of judgment.
The ripe sunflowers hold the day's heat still,
and snug in the heart of the widest lion face,
the bumblebee hums in his sleep.

The night is suddenly so loud, alive
with cries for love and hunger.
The flashlight clicks off beneath my heavy thumb.
I back slowly from the nursery.






photograph by Cassandra Barney