Cold Pastoral. Rebecca Dunham

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MNEMOSYNE TO THE POET

      For you, memory is but

      an oil lamp to snuff, left to

      smoke. Diademed by earth’s

      velvet mantle. So easy

      for you to ignore: hadal

      press of sea, the open

      vein’s plumes,

      how they wheel like

      a maelstrom up and down.

      My sight spills through

      waves of old, blown

      glass. I am not permitted

      to turn, pillow to cheek,

      and wait for sleep to find me.

      Am not permitted

      to learn how not to look.

ELEGY, WIND-WHIPPED

       May 23, 2011, Joplin, Missouri

       1. REFUSE

      Doll hair—brown yarn—

      loops round a hickory’s jagged

      limb and she dances

      the wind like a human body

      clinched above

      the gallows. See—your own

      eyes stitched open as hers—

      there is no difference, batting

      or flesh, still you will

      hang, emptied by my breath.

      She could be dead. Easily

      she could be your daughter.

       2. HAMPSHIRE TERRACE

      Search and mark with a spray-

      painted X. Nothing left

      to salvage. You do not like

      to say it, but you need

      the dogs. No tools you possess

      can help you find silence.

       We’re always hopeful but we briefed

       the guys to plan for the worst.

      Crowbar, chainsaw, chisel

      you dig, hail beating.

      In time, you think,

       please let me be in time.

       3. LIST

      Tilt, slant, heel—a careening, a leaning, to one side. Incline. To please, to like, to desire. To cut away in narrow strips, stave and plank, to shear. To lister: to furrow the land—plow and drill—drop and cover. Who is the one that compiles? Roll clouds scroll the sky. Call it and we will listen: anything but there is no list, there is no list.

       4. CATECHISM

       What is the chief end of human life?

      Sirens like a trumpet’s call.

      Roll the beds to the hall

      and pull the blinds—too late—

       What reason have you for saying so?

      Burst rose of sharded light.

      IV lines ripped loose, beds thrown

      against the wall, blood-drenched

       What is the highest good of man?

      and bathed in life. And these

      are the lucky ones, the blessed

      who walk among our ruin.

       What is, what reason, what is

       the good of man?

      The very same. Bathed in life,

      the burst rose. O sharded

      light, sirens like a trumpet’s call.

       5. BROKEN

      Stripped and strafed—another

      casualty—their skeletons

      spear the sky. Shag-barked

      hickory, catalpa, a 135-ringed oak.

      Debris perches like turkey

      vultures on their arms.

      Each one, a splintered body

      to be hewn and dragged out

      of town, put to the pyre.

      They deserve this much, at least.

      Smoke masses, and

      grief re-greens the sky.

       6. MUCORMYCOSIS

      puncture wound hard black

      center —press—

      let the pain remind you