Five Poems by Rose Mary Boehm

 

Bartering your Soul for Salvation

 

If you are bartering your soul

you may be offered

 

Eleven silver plates

Ten white pigeons

Nine horned bulls

Eight chewing cows

Seven windmills milling

Six dogs a-leaping

Five rabbits running

Four ducks flying

Three wooden branches

Two turtle-doves

and

One electric candle in the nave.

 

So you want to save your soul.

 

Make a list.

What do you want to save if from?

What do you want to save it for?

 

Bigger and Better

 

Daily, Mother had an occasion to say

-when the war is over

or

-before the war.

Not sure what that meant,

I knew it was something desirable.

 

While there was a war, I had the field, the brook,

the beetles and caterpillars, butterflies, foxes,

acorns and the horse-chestnut trees,

dewy meadow mornings and wild hares.

A perfect world. I wondered about bananas,

vaguely remembered oranges.

--You’ll have them after the war.

 

Forty years on, my daughter screams

her nightmares into the city-summer night

and slips into our bed, terror

in her trembling ten-year old body.

She'd watched the news again.

 

Childhood Love Pains

 

I look out of my window wondering

if you will ever return or if you will

just continue to hide at the edge

of our yard where we first kissed on that

quiet summer evening not so long ago.

 

Your Metallica t-shirt is glowing in the summer moonlight,

when you trip on our mr. turtle pool and slip

into the slightly contaminated water sending the whirligig

beetles out in a frenzied rush to find a new home.

 

And I can’t help thinking back to earlier today when you

destroyed our love by selecting Betty Lou Blitzinger

as your chemistry lab partner.

 

 

Gladrags and Bling

 

Lima the easy, languorous lady – moisturized,

not bathed. Powdered with desert dust.

She flutters her gardens at passing callers.

Along her posh avenidas she dazzles with ponciana,

ficus, bougainvillae and hibiscus, hiding

scarcity and age under stunning artifice.

 

Backstage you find Xerophytic shrubs,

cactus, algarroba and a few palm oases.

The set: coastal desert, almost barren.

 

In the Andes' foothills la garúa - a mist rising from the sea –

kisses the slopes, softly exploding a dense

belt of flowers on slumbering plants.

 

One day I may well tire of velveteen glamour,

lusting instead for sharp young mornings,

scrubbed clean by nightly downpours,

storm-tousled tall grasses, slippery carpets

made from the trees' discarded garb.

 

My Cars Were Male

 

My first one was Sepp. Short

for Joseph

in Bavarian.

 

‘Rear-hinged doors make

entering and exiting a vehicle

easy.’ My friend Viktor put

bathroom bolts on the inside

of the doors. Fiat Cinquecento,

tshinkwetshento.

 

‘This model also features

a fabric roof folding all the way

back to the rear of the vehicle.’

It did indeed.

The time: before seat belts.

 

They called them suicide doors.

Cherished tradition of the

horse-drawn carriage builders.

The Fiat five hundred

could do 100 km per hour.

 

But you had to help a little

going uphill.

Also,

everyone else passed easily,

looking disturbed.

 

I picked up four friends

and the cat.

We went all the way.

To Paris.

 

I pretended to be a motorbike.

The car was only fifty-two inches wide.

 

When large pieces began to drop

off I took them to the cheap mechanic

who was glad to see me.

Said I didn’t need them.

 

Watching the motorway move

under my feet I wondered

whether I’d be able to watch

my heart if I got rid of the rib cage

which suddenly seemed

quite superfluous. 

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a ‘Pushcart’, once for ‘Best of Net’. Her latest: DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS? (Kelsay Books July 2022), WHISTLING IN THE DARK (Cyberwit July 2022), and SAUDADE (December 2022) are available on Amazon. A new MS, LIFE STUFF, has been scheduled by Kelsay Books for February 2024. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/