Four Poems by Ellen Wright

 

THE WATER SAYS

 

Of all the yellow-haired youths coming 

to kneel where the lap of my lip slurps 

the length of my banks.  And of all 

 

the bronzined boys ogling the twinkling 

trinkets the sun in its heat hangs on 

the peaks of my ripples you alone 

 

have eyes to prize the bottomless 

love I harbour.  Let my water lilies 

twine their stems around you. 

 

My smouldering koi light your way. 

You shall have my turtle as a rock 

to stay your feet.  My crane to pole 

 

your soul through the dark 

of the deep.  How do I know 

you’re true?  The instant 

 

your eyes wander you lose 

them.  You find the zero 

of a fish mouth in their place. 

 

A ruff of sallow fins supplants 

your ears.  And a hairy clump  

of roots anchors you to 

 

the suck of my muck forever.   

 

 

 

I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO WASTE MY BREATH

 

mourning our Laundromat.  

Or resenting the townhouse 

whose gourmet kitchen gleams  

where the washers broke down daily  

and Mr. Katz used to bellow  

dryer number sree at us neighbours 

sunning ourselves in folding chairs 

on his sidewalk 

 

Or grieving the Heights Cinema where seniors  

who could stomach its rancid-butter fumes  

watched first-run movies for $8.00.  

Or hating the boutique development  

that has supplanted it 

 

Or lamenting our library,  

with its public computers, 

its bounteous tax forms 

and its research librarian who once tracked down 

the Crossland Bank president’s address 

so I could stop his minions dunning me  

for money I didn’t owe them— 

gone from the corner where 40 stories  

of condos have stolen our sky from the east. 

 

Why should I bother missing our vista  

to the west where the Horrible Hotel  

eclipses the Manhattan skyline 

so its residents can bask in sea breezes  

three stories above the height-limit once imposed  

by a Zoning Board that lost its case  

in a court too friendly to developers 

   

when the cops have just discovered  

that yet another pile of rags on the platform  

of the Jay Street-MetroTech Station  

shrouds the remains of yet another  

stinky unshaven soul 

a trickle of blood issuing from his mouth?

 

 

 

OBLIVION

 

If my heart had not turned 

to nothing 

in the void 

 

that sometimes engulfs me, 

I would never have left 

a cookie-tin cover on top 

 

of the organ console. 

If my right hand had not 

turned to nothing 

 

in the heartless void 

that obscured the cookie-tin cover, 

when I reached, following my Prelude, 

 

to stow my Orgelbüchlein 

on top of the organ console, 

it would not have catapulted 

 

the cookie-tin cover 

against the back of the altos’ pew 

to clatter onto the floor 

 

several bounces 

across the chancel 

into the silence 

 

of the funeral 

for the hundred-seven-year-old 

woman everyone adored. 

 

 

EATING DISORDER

 

Instead of disgorging 

your moral outrage 

as a baritone roar 

of disparaging epithets  

 

instead of slavering to devour  

rug fringes  

extension cords  

my slothful toes 

 

instead of ruminating on how 

you might use your  

chyme of dust bunnies  

cobwebs and hair tangles   

to wield as evidence  

against me 

 

take it all with you into the closet 

with the shoes 

and the broom 

then go ahead and growl  

at my stash of flotsam 

 

take your time digesting  

the schadenfreude you have  

wolfed down over a life  

I never could live without  

making a mess 

 

but don’t even think of hoovering  

your brown bag bellyache  

over anything  

you might presume  

to call clutter. 

 

 

ELLEN WRIGHT is author of the poetry collection, Family Portrait with Oilwell (2023, Kelsay Books) and the chapbook, In Transit (2007, Main Street Rag). She has recent work in Paterson Literary Review, Naugatuck River Review, Common Ground Review and The Fourth River, among others. She makes her home in Brooklyn and her living as a musician.