Shut the Door
Father shuts the door when the baby is dropped --
thank
god for the carpet. The children cry
though
the baby does not and he feeds her
pudding
from the tips of his fingers.
Close out the sound of his voice
teaching
the children that cows say baa,
sheep
lift their heads to bark,
and
chickens growl, deep within their beaks.
In a long hall, father holds mother, sister holds baby,
all
silent in green plastic chairs.
Brother
sleeps in the hospital room, one kidney
resting
in a dish, his eyes shut against brilliant pain.
At home mother finds the note from that lady in the choir,
pink
paper, sharp gilt edges.
It
dares say, “Your wife is so lucky.”
“Get
the hell out of this house,” Mother snaps at Father, “and shut the door.”
Close your eyes so we can’t see father in the rain
hauling
boxes to the round, red car,
mother
mopping the kitchen floor
like
there was nothing in there he wanted anyway.
Now, where’s father? Sister’s kissing that teenage boy,
his
tongue a tourist in her mouth, hands traveling
her
countryside. She laughs, pushes him up
against the door.
Somebody call 911; she’s twelve years old and on fire.
Drug Wars, 1971
It
comes on.
I
lie with Mike in front of the fire.
Surges
through the bloodstream;
showers
of sparks swim their way home.
Mike’s
friends at the table behind us
talk
about killing someone. A rival dealer.
The
television gets turned up.
Try
to cover their voices.
News
announcer says,
Viet Nam. Body bags.
Body
bags. Black plastic.
Lead
him out into the blasted night,
along
a tapering road, waning moon.
Shoot
him down before he screams,
bury
him fast.
Or,
run him over; cover the body with a tarp
and
let that be a warning.
I
blink on with each breath in.
Off
with each breath out.
The
oak floor bites my bones,
pillow
under my head stinks of long-ago dog.
Our
hostess barks,
Those suggestions
just aren’t
practical.
Cat
Stevens sings,
Peace Train,
Everybody get on
the peace train.
A
door opens and closes.
Someone
enters. Someone leaves.
Clump
of heavy boots,
muddy
water sloshing in the corridor.
The
monsoon. Two guys on guard duty;
one
tries to light a joint,
muzzle
flash,
the
other is shouting and
something
big explodes.
Arms
and legs,
heavy
and useless lengths of meat.
If I could move,
I’d drive out of Berkeley and never
return,
clear across the country to Palm
Beach, Florida.
Befriend an elderly woman.
Play Scrabble, stroke her cross-eyed
cat,
walk home to a cottage
glistening in a
sun-shower.
Fruiting banana trees, birds of
paradise.
We
swallowed gelcaps
in
torrential rain.
Mike
had said, Pure pleasure.
Pure pleasure
from the sassafras
root.
Right
hand begins to burn,
to
leak.
Drifts
away from me.
Dust
and grit,
a
lost butterfly barrette,
one
antenna bitten off by a snake.
Slip
it into a pocket
and
now it’s mine.
That
woman at the table smiles,
offers
us rum.
Don’t tell
anyone, she
hisses.
My
jaw, frozen.
Clamped
shut, hinges vibrating.
Only
the fire is not afraid.
Speaks
for itself
in a foreign tongue.
A Whole Truckload of Bread
On
the road to Makaha,
I
pass a pick-up truck
packed
with loaves of bread
tied
down with twine
as
if the bread were so light
it
could fly off
to
children’s hungry tables.
I
imagine myself,
stained
apron around my waist,
toes
dug into the red Hawaiian earth,
making
thousands of pieces of French toast --
cracking
a bathtub full of eggs,
stirring
in a pail of milk,
scooping
cinnamon with a mug,
nutmeg
with a serving spoon.
Salt
is drizzled in from my fist
and
then I fry slice after slice,
butter
spattering in a pan
the
size of a wading pool.
Syrup
drips down their chins
and
the children try to lick it up.
Sly
and greedy,
they
kick at bare-rumped dogs
weaving
among their ankles.
The
stacks of French toast
are
sprinkled with the dust
from
angels’ wings
but
there is no time to speak of this because
the
children are busy eating
tens,
dozens of pieces
and
this is good.
I
want to keep them here,
in
this makeshift kitchen,
under
a breathless sky,
cutting
and chewing their breakfast,
their
stomachs warm now and rounded,
their
mouths stuck shut
with sugar.
At the Art Institute, Chicago, 1974
I go into the Ladies room.
The lounge has padded benches
like lips stretched tight.
I curl down into myself and cry.
The cleaning lady with her mop, her
pail,
sucks hard on her cigarette to
finish it,
tosses the butt into the ashtray,
crosses to me, sits so close
our thighs touch,
and bursts into tears.
After a couple of minutes,
she licks her wedding ring,
tongue lingering over facets,
then watches the sparkle on diamond
chips,
asks, Why are we crying?
I tell her about The Irish
Troubles,
the knock on my lover’s Belfast
door,
the one single shot to the heart,
his blood, redder than his beard,
his hair.
How his mother had called and told
me,
No
point in coming here now; there’s nothing left.
The woman takes my hand in hers,
strokes it the way you would a
baby’s back
when you hope she will fall asleep.
We become silent and still,
a bas relief,
two connected figures
half-swallowed by a leather mouth:
“Women, Weeping.”
At
five p.m., as usual,
the
farmer across the road
whistled
commands to his dog
who
quartered the paddock,
rounded
up lazy cattle,
sent
them, bellies swaying,
in
long lines back to the barn
for
food and warmth,
the
relief of milking, while
a
small group of young bulls still grazed
on
the other side of the fence.
Two
hours later I walked alone
down
the road to the Johnsons
who
fed me along with their daughters.
We
finished with applesauce cake and tea.
Len,
in a bent-wood rocker,
read
about medical mysteries of the east.
Ruth
loaned me a wheel. I set it spinning
and
the girls carded wool for us while watching TV.
The
whole room began to hum.
At
home, you returned, late as always.
I
made you dinner.
You
told me everything,
asked
about nothing.
Sipped
a brandy,
kissed
me on the cheek,
and
fell asleep.
In
the morning, off you drove again
in
our pale grey Holden.
I
watched through the picture window as
the
cows grew larger and you grew smaller,
then
disappeared around the big bend
with
the burned-out house,
only
its chimney standing.
Rafaella Del
Bourgo’s writing has appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Rattle, Oberon,
Nimrod, and The Bitter Oleander. She has won many awards including
the League of Minnesota Poets Prize in 2009. In 2010, she won the Alan Ginsberg
Poetry Award. She was also the 2010 winner of the Grandmother Earth Poetry
Award. In 2012 Ms. Del Bourgo won the Paumanok Poetry Award. In
2013 she was the recipient of the Northern Colorado Writers first prize for
poetry and in 2014, the New Millennium Prize for Poetry. In 2017 she won
the Mudfish Poetry Prize and was nominated for the third time for a Pushcart
Prize. Her chapbook Inexplicable Business: Poems Domestic and Wild
was published by Finishing Line Press. She lives in Berkeley with her
husband.
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