Five Poems by Andrena Zawinski

 

Dreamers

 

A woman races dusty rows,

deposits bundles of butter lettuce

from the bowls of her arms

into white plastic bins roadside.

 

Past the burn scar scorched

into the horizon in the thick air

of another fire season,

a small breath of wind kisses

 

her face silkened in sweat,

cooling down her body

as temples pulse, nose burns,

throat tightens at day’s end

 

with the ache of the field

pulsing every muscle

as crows eye new seeds

in furrows thirsting for water.

 

At home her little girl waits

at the open window for her,

elbows at the sill, hands cupping chin,

her wide eyes pitched upward

 

past the cresting sun toward a sky

waiting to darken then fill

the page of night she reads

as stars full of wishes and dreams.

 

 

She’d Sit and Sew

 

A curious gladness shook me.—Stanley Kunitz

 

Evenings she’d sit there rocking and sewing,

darning a sock, stitching a tattered button hole,

hemming a skirt, or the more elaborate projects

crocheting a hat, shawl, or throw as if this

 

private piece work were its own peace.

Even as repetition weakened her weary hands,

she sometimes reached down to tousle my hair

as I slumped in a sleepy heap at her feet,

 

and when through the dusty blind slats

a thin thread of light streaked across my lap,

it was then that curious gladness shook me.

 

 

What a Doll!                                                                                                           

Barbie was everything we didn’t want to be…everything

the feminist movement was trying to escape.—Gloria Steinem

 

They keep hawking her,

the busty Barbie

with wasp waist

and tiny feet,

once a bachelor party

gag gift in lingerie

and peek-a-boo box.

 

They keep pushing her

inside the Dream House,

inside a body the dream

for a future to travel

bare and smooth, passport

her boobs and buttocks.

 

They keep propping her up

as rock star, reporter, pilot,

engineer (of washing machines)

or tech head computing code

(for drawing puppies).

 

What a hustle these token

blue-collar and black face Barbies,

the dentist, president, astronaut,

all donning careers like hats,

sporting tights and spikes,

and always fashion forward.

 

What a hype this dolly

for fixing bodies by starving,

waxing, plumping, binding,

and slicing, this Barbie,

in all the wrong proportions,

in too many ways to measure.

 

 

She, the queen bee marries winter                                                                                

—a Cento honoring Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963

(from last lines in her books Colossus and Ariel)

 

The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges,

each wave-tip glitters like a knife.

           

            Gulls mulled in the greenest light

            face the bald-faced sun

            with their gifts to a difficult borning.

            Clear vowels rising like balloons:

 

            I shall be good as new, love, love my season.

            Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

            I eat men like air that kill, that kill, that kill.

            The queen bee marries the winter of your year.

 

Eye, the cauldron of mourning,

starless and fatherless, a dark water

                       

            asks nothing of life,

            of the profane grail, the dreaming skull,

            the mausoleum, the wax house.

            The box is only temporary.

 

 

All the Ways I Do Not Wish to Die                                                                                

 

Not alone, sprawled out on the floor

like my mother, woozy enough to slip

and hit her head on a coal bucket

door stop after a stay in a hospital

she said would be her last and was.

 

Not so weak in bed like my brother,

too exhausted to pick up the phone

to tell me he loved me, papers signed

to have life support removed. Not alone

 

in the bathroom like my father,

who survived wanderlust,

brain surgery, electro shock therapy,

but not throwing up into a toilet

clutching his chest.

 

Not coughing and choking

like my hard hatted grandfathers,

lungs closing inside mines and mills

so children and grandchildren

could breathe fresh air.

 

Not from a stray road rage bullet

or gang initiation or sniping revenge

dispensing a forlorn childhood

on victims at movies, ballgames,

concerts, schools, grocery stores.

 

Not mysteriously, like the poet Neruda,

soul sparring from the ground

against exhumation for historical

curiosity, in his eye sockets

tango dancers in a final soltada.

 

Not burning at the stake like my ancestral

sister witches, high on lysergic acid

from fungus in bread, hated and scorned

under Salem’s unrepentant sky

bleeding down on their screams.

 

Not alone, the way it is, the way it must be,                                                                          

in a world that is a beautiful place

to be born into, if you don’t mind

the smiling mortician at the door.

 

And when death knocks there, I plan

to stand and declare: all my life I was a bride

married to amazement. I was the bridegroom

taking the world into my arms.

 

Author’s Note: lines in the penultimate stanza are from Lawrence Ferlinghetti,

lines in the final stanza from Mary Oliver.

Andrena Zawinski, veteran teacher of writing and activist poet, lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry has received awards for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. Her latest book is Landings from Kelsay Books; others are Something About from Blue Light Press (a PEN Oakland Award) and Traveling in Reflected Light from Pig Iron Press (a Kenneth Patchen Prize) along with several chapbooks and work appearing widely online and in print.