Post on 28-Jun-2018
Some steps toward composing a chapbook manuscript: Gather together the poems you consider “finished” or close to finished. Include poems that have been published in journals or magazines (making a note as to where and when those poems were published, information you’ll need to include later in your list of acknowledgements.) Begin by sorting your poems into 3 piles: Finished/published; close-to finished; unfinished, but maybe important pieces of a larger whole. Look at the pages of finished work; see how many pages you have. If there are 20 to 30 pages, look at how these pieces might work together, in terms of theme and/or style, how they might “speak to” one another. If the pile of finished poems is fewer than 25 pages, or the finished poems don’t seem to quite cohere, add poems from the other piles that might complement the finished poems, in some way — that might add texture or variety or fill in gaps in a kind of story your poems, as an aggregate, might tell. Try arranging these poems in terms of theme or subject matter or in a way that creates a kind of story or narrative arc, which may or may not be chronological. Try weaving different strands, in terms of themes or approaches — a prose poem, a lineated poem — or layering different textures. Keep sifting and going back and forth between the piles. When you have 25 pages that seem to cohere — poems that “speak to one another” — arrange them so that the sequence of poems makes a shape that seems satisfying to you, or that tells a kind of story. Do as much work as you can on the poems that seem unfinished but that the overall manuscript seems to need. Looking at the poems as part of a whole should help you to “see” them in a new light, and thus give you a different lens through which to revise. Choose a first poem for the manuscript that provides an entryway into the work, in terms of voice or subject matter. The opening poem should be strong and set a kind of tone. It might be “accessible” and welcoming, or it might be mysterious and intriguing; either way, it should make the reader want to read further Compile the poems, in order, into a single Word document. Each poem should begin on a new page. Use a font like Times or Times Roman, 12 point, 1.5 spacing between the lines. Use one-inch margins all around. I recommend left-hand justification, unless centering the poem on the page is somehow integral to the work. Indicate “stanza break, more” or “no stanza break, more,” when a poem goes over one page. Create a table of contents, listing the poem titles but not the page numbers.
Add the table of contents to the front of your Word document, along with any pages that include epigraphs or dedications and any pages that serves as section breaks in the manuscript. Number the pages of the document. (In Word, choose “insert page numbers” from the pull-down menu.) Now go back to your table of contents and add the page numbers, listing for each poem the number of the page on which it begins. The table of contents page will be page one of the manuscript. Create a cover page with a title — even it it’s only a “working title” — and your name and contact information. I’m providing you also with the manuscripts of both Narcissus and Earth, in Word, as they were submitted to the respective contests they won. The final pdf of Earth, also attached, will let you see the changes that were made before it was published. Look at other published chapbooks, as well, to get ideas for ways of assembling your manuscript. A chapbook, to my mind, is an ideal vessel for a distinct group of poems, something that can be read in one sitting and that contains a concise sequence of poems. Sometimes, I read a chapbook that seems to me like a small box of jewels. https://chapbookinterviews.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/cecilia-woloch/
2
Contents
WHAT WAS PROMISED ME 3
TETA 4
HER TREE 7
2006 8
YOUR RIVER 9
WILD COMMON PRAYER 10
FOR THE BIRDS 11
MY FACE 13
OUR FATHER, IN THE LAST GOLD LIGHT OF SPRING 14
LITTLE SONG FOR THE ONE AFRAID 15
EARTH 16
GHOST SYCAMORE 17
HARRY & PEARL: A VILLANELLE 19
AFTERLIFE 21
MY MOTHER IS THE POEM I’LL NEVER WRITE 22
A PLACE IN THE MUSIC 24
3
WHAT WAS PROMISED ME
Nothing. A ring and some salt. Rice in the white shoes. Music. A doll. The book my
mother read to me, over and over, when I was a child: tigers turning to butter, to milk.
An amulet from a boy who carried a knife in his pocket, too. Night — I was not
promised dawn — stars hooked to sky by my father’s hands. Love like a tree I could
climb to the top of and then jump down from, or swing from, or fly. Mercies so small I
could hide each one inside a flower. Sharp white teeth. A clock made of pearls, each
pearl an hour, and the hours numberless. The pink dress that disappeared — where did it
go? — and the tiny ballerina spinning and spinning inside a dome. A door that would
open and close. No house. No home but the story I’ve lived toward. Luck running out
like a shimmer of wind. Two buckets full of cold water, wood for a fire, and flame.
4
TETA
— for my great-aunt
Teta, it’s winter in Pittsburgh again
—darkbrick city of smokestacks and soot —
and we’re walking up Broadway Avenue,
past billboards and vacant lots,
through the slush of snow and cinders
as the streetcars slur past — ghosts
in our flowered babushkas and shabby coats,
shopping bags weighing down our arms.
We’ve bought cans of beets, heads of cabbage,
meat ground fresh that we’ll squeeze into fists,
and we don’t flinch when the crew-cut kids hiss,
D.P.’s, at our backs; we’re not ashamed anymore, at last,
to have come from nowhere, nothing, dirt —
the village you fled as a young girl, gone,
the houses burned and the fields you worked
into rows of green grown wild again.
Once you spooned honey into my mouth
because my arms and legs were like sticks
because I itched and wept and wanted,
more than sweetness, to know who I was.
But you sighed, No one wants to remember that stuff —
how you came to this new country, stinking of ship;
how you sold bootleg hootch for cash,
your own smooth flesh for a rich man’s song —
— stanza break, more —
5
the fat growing fat on the fat of the land
while you buried one child in a pauper’s grave,
raised two others on blood money, prayer;
all your sins in a basket too heavy to lift.
Your body already a heap of grief
the day you slipped in the alley and fell
in the garden you’d made of ground bone, ash,
under a slit of tin-washed sky.
And that was the last time you ever fell.
I watched as you shrank in your narrow bed,
blind, but you gripped my hand and sang
the old song of the little bird in a tongue
I still don’t understand — dark syllables fluttering
just out of reach — until you were shadow, whisper,
gone —your whole life a ragged story
stitched into breath, unstitched again.
Teta, we’ve never been much in this world,
although we were many, too many, once—
the children’s children who circled your table,
blowing out candles, eyes tilted like yours;
our faces the same face all over again,
the face of the stranger wherever we turned —
my cousin the Cossack, the Gypsy, the Jew
my cousin the dark Slav, my cousin the slave.
— stanza break, more —
6
And we’ll never belong to this place
where you came with your one suitcase
tied with rope, your shape like a shadow
risen from earth— some mute root pulled
from a meadow where wildflowers blazed
in the summer and winter lay down.
This is America, Teta, you’re dead,
and our dying means nothing here.
Give me your bags.
7
HER TREE
There was a tree I loved and had always loved, as a child will love a tree when the tree
has always loved her, too. Silver willow, I heard it was called. I called it Grandmother-
as-a-Girl. I called it Grandmother-Under-the-Ground. I waded the river beneath its
shade, my feet in the cool, shallow water, then lay in the sunlight to listen for her. When
the storm crossed the meadow — a sudden darkening; great ships of clouds racing
overhead— each leaf of my grandmother’s tree turned its shimmering back to the breeze;
each leaf a tongue to the rain, many-tongued. I stood up in the wind and ran through the
high grass as if through a sea of light. Half afraid that the tree would fly, but I turned to
look and the tree didn’t budge. Its branches only swayed like the arms of a woman
waving good-bye. A woman who’d stood in the doorway, once, of a house that would
someday burn to the ground, shaking the crumbs from her apron for birds. A woman I
knew would die too young, earth in her mouth, and keep calling me back. I reached the
road with my arms full of wildflowers, weeds, one twig I’d snapped from a branch. All
this I saved for an altar, a grave. Drenched in the sky — gray, then silver, then green.
8
2006
In the year of the poppy year of the cornflower
year of the meadow of yarrow and buttercup
year of the thistle and ox-eyed daisy
in the spring of the year of our lord
of the train the engine the ticket the map
of the landscape of leaf shadow willow and birch
blurring past in the smoke of the burning fields
in the mist of the evening the ringing of bells
bells for the living bells for the dead
of the last great war which is one long war
of the ancient soldier come in his uniform
to stand hopefully at the door
of the house of no mirrors swept of ash
(in which I was a guest of the dark bread and rain)
to ask Have the Germans already left?
sixty years after the forests were flushed
of the last of our enemies last of the partisans
of the holy republic of mud
of the blood mixed with earth of the bones of itself
of which no one knows but the trees anymore
of which no one speaks but the child made of grass.
9
YOUR RIVER
(For Eve, on the Chattahoochee)
Your river has wish in it, and rain
and mud and twigs and the trees' lost leaves.
Oh, it's not really your river, but still
you widow it, walk beside it some.
Your dogs think the river is theirs,
bark at the birds and fish, swim sticks
across where it's deepest in their mouths.
It's not really their river, but nights
they breathe the dark house at its bend asleep.
And the green barn dreams your gone husband's dreams —
joist and beam, the sweet machines
in their sweet repose of rust and weeds
— oh wheel, oh hope, oh grass grown deep.
Today I circled the meadow, a hawk
in the river's lifted dress, this wind.
10
WILD COMMON PRAYER
I dreamt you were whole again, radiant, calm: your hair still golden but tinged with red
— a halo of rosy, burnished light; your hands untrembling in your lap. I was surprised to
find you home. But I’ve been here all along, you said. Or might have said. You didn’t
speak. You’d simply aged as women age whose bodies ease them toward death; grown
softer, more yourself. And I was the one who stood amazed, there in the kitchen where
we’d spent so many quiet mornings, friend. Wanting to touch you, wanting to simply not
forsake you ever now. Outside, the pasture lay down calmly; each blade shimmered in the
wind. This is eternity, I thought, and felt you breaking into all your lovely fragments as I
woke.
11
FOR THE BIRDS
I stopped under a sycamore, looked up:
bare white limbs against blue, blue sky
and in those branches, flickering, birds,
each with a bright green-yellow breast,
each the size of a small child's fist.
So what kind of birds are you? I asked
and slipped on my glasses, the better to glimpse
such wing and color, such flashiness.
Then, breathless, I climbed the sun-swept hill
to the naturalists’ offices, rushed inside,
saying, "I have a question about a bird!"
and was handed a book of birds to check.
I considered Common Yellow Throat —
Skulks in marshes. Male wears black mask.
Wichity-wichity song —loved that music,
but wondered if music could be the answer
to anything? I leafed through a few more pages,
learned that American Goldfinches turn
from winter's muddy greenish-brown
to summer's yellow brightness, turn
betwixt, in spring, this lemon-lime,
and fly in hiccups, flash their gold, a flock
of such birds being called a charm,
from the Latin carmen , meaning song.
— stanza break, more —
12
I ran back down the hill like a woman afire
practically into the sycamore's arms,
singing, anyway, skulks in marshes,
black mask, wichity-wichity song!
Singing, Spread out your colors, flash me your wings —
as the charm made its green-yellow sweep through the sky.
13
MY FACE
I thought I'd grow up to be a fish. Or a tree, or a piece of wind, like God. I thought I’d
scrape against myself until my face became my face. I never thought I'd grow up to look
like my mother, much as I craved her one pink dress, stuttered around in her high heeled
shoes, tried to sing the songs she sang. Or like my father, with his shadow in his shadow,
pockets, keys. I planted tulips upside down, thinking those flowers would bloom in hell,
and that hell was deep inside the earth. I walked around when I was small and spit my
name into my hands. I wanted everything to shine. And I was dark. And could not swim.
14
OUR FATHER, IN THE LAST GOLD LIGHT OF SPRING
says to me, Take down your hands.
Says, Let your sister have it, if she wants.
Wants nothing now.
The light that stood behind him will not stand.
So summer comes.
So he has not stood up in years,
who was the last of something, once.
Who once swam through flames, I thought.
Who made a shadow like a bird.
What do I want to know, and can’t?
That what he’d never said, he said.
That he’d kept his ankles covered where the chains
had gnawed his skin.
That he’d planted corn and melons
near the creek beside the house.
That the leafy golden light behind him
darkened. It was June.
15
LITTLE SONG FOR THE ONE AFRAID
Oh beloved, oh afraid
of the bloodstain, dark spot, ticking clock
of what has shone in your life like luck —
too bright to last — oh fortunate
who slipped the licked stones, glittering
inside your pockets, spread your arms
and dreamt your ghost wings would unfurl
from your bony shoulders —angel bones —
and that the sky would hold you up
and love — a tree from which you swung —
oh branch you called your father's name
oh bird who sang your mother's song
oh little sweeper of the world
whose life inside my life has burned.
16
EARTH
We’ve traveled like this all our lives, all our life as a people on the earth. We’ve gathered
and scattered and gathered again. In rooms made of firelight or of song. We’ve buried our
dead, when we could, in places they loved, or the bones of them. Every step, a turn of the
wheel, a word set down and no other word; every turn of the wheel a prayer in mud, the
answer of one God. Sometimes we’ve veiled ourselves and sometimes we’ve stood,
clothed only in sunlight and wind. Sugar of flowers on our breath; honey of birdcall in
our mouths. Once, I’d forgotten the way to the well and the smell of cool rain led me
there. Once I was only a child in my sleep; then I awoke and was everywhere.
17
GHOST SYCAMORE
The winter I knew you weren’t coming back,
I ran down the hill from the house, the path
through the woods turning red and gold with death
— dank leaves underfoot; branches twined overhead —
and, breathless, stopped where the lake begins,
having glimpsed, through the blur of mist, a glint
of something silvery, knife-sharp, bright —
I stepped from the shadows toward that shine
and suddenly, there, in the sky at my feet
on the lake’s surface, shimmering, a tree,
or the ghost of a pale tree, lightning-limbed,
that seemed to have risen up from within
the body of water, the body of sky —
and again, on the far shore, the other side,
the same tree —spectral, luminous —
bowed as in grief at the water’s edge
where it stood among lush pines, bone-white, stark
— stripped of leaves, of rough outer bark —
— stanza break, more —
18
old sycamore, old boundary-marker — father,
as I saw you in a dream, once, self and other
self, in this world and the next, as if a veil
between them lifted, then everything went still.
19
HARRY & PEARL: A VILLANELLE
My father wears shoes in the afterworld
— the shiny, brown dress shoes we buried him in.
My mother goes barefoot and answers to Pearl
though that wasn’t her name — Daddy called her girl
and told us, Your mother works hard; be good kids.
Now Daddy wears shoes in the afterworld
because he lay shoeless his last years, lay curled
like a child in his bed crying out, or he’d sing
and our mother went barefoot and answered him. Pearl
was her middle name, given her, slurred, at birth
— a drunken grand uncle’s grandiose gift.
But our father wears shoes in the afterworld
and our mother, who followed him — ever his jewel —
to wherever they’ve gone, in her last white dress
goes barefoot beside him now, answers to Pearl
— won’t answer to mother and won’t be implored;
she cooked and she cleaned and she sang that’s enough.
Now my father wears shoes in the afterworld
— shiny brown dress shoes — and gives her a twirl
in his arms she’s his girl, she’s his girl again, laughs,
my mother, who’s barefoot and answers to Pearl
— stanza break, more —
20
when I call to her, call to my sweet disappeared
mother and father who slipped through my breath.
My father wears shoes in the afterworld.
My mother goes barefoot and answers to Pearl.
21
AFTERLIFE
I want to be fierce and joyful and a meadow when I’m dead. Spindly flowers and waist-
high grass and the shadows of clouds across that brightness, shifting, like so many ships
in the sky. I want to be all in one place, at last, but vast, a sea by the side of the road. I
mean green, and I mean poppies and daisies, everything blooming at once. And I want to
be, again, that girl who pushed into the wind. Who stood up to the sun, big-mouthed and
brave. I mean, if I’m going to die, let me live. Let me wade out into the darkest part of
the night and name myself. Wild-haired bitch of the mongrel stars. Moon on her
shoulders. Dirt-rich, proud.
22
MY MOTHER IS THE POEM I’LL NEVER WRITE
When I hated myself,
when I sulked and bled
and had no god to call,
she loved me;
she called me back.
Her strength was the wren’s
plain strength
but my mother was beautiful,
more beautiful than I saw,
more delicate.
Really, I don’t want to tell anyone.
What’s to tell?
Her crooked hands.
When I was hungry,
I was fed.
When I was sad,
I could lie down
beside her in her bed,
or when I was glad,
exhausted from joy
from working beside her
in the garden
or in the kitchen
she swept and swept.
When I had wrecked my life,
she told me, “You don’t have to
fall apart.”
— No stanza break, more —
23
When I was wrong
she taught me
how to forgive myself.
When she died
I took the flowers from her grave
and scattered them.
When I want her voice,
her face again,
I have only
to look in the mirror.
Gone like the sparrow,
gone like the wren.
Gone like the blossoms
blown into drifts
from which her name
was gathered once.
24
A PLACE IN THE MUSIC
Once, as if in a dream, I saw them walking away from me. Or not away, but just ahead. In
a little shiver of silvery wind. They knew I was following, and kept on. Arms linked,
walking side-by-side, on a road between fields of waist-high grass. Wind tossing their
hair and ruffling the hems of the flowery dresses the women wore. Some uncle or other,
still a boy, scampering after the rest — was that joy? And what it said to me, this vision
or dream, was not to be afraid: that it's only a kind of magic, death, and the story is rich;
the story goes on. I was behind them, watching them walking into the wind, when I heard
the hum beginning inside me— a place in the music, high and sweet — as if they were
singing or also heard the song I’d begun to hear, and were glad. And loved me still. The
sky that silver, too. Although none of them turned around.
25
Acknowledgements:
"What Was Promised Me" and "Our Father in the Last Gold Light of Spring" appeared in
Cave Wall.
"Teta" and "Afterlife" appeared in The Crab Orchard Review.
"2006" was awarded the Indiana Review Poetry Prize and will appear in the Indiana
Review in 2014.
"Your River" appeared in The Mississippi Review.
"Wild Common Prayer" appeared in Double Room.
"For the Birds" appeared in Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About
Birds, edited by Billy Collins.
"Harry and Pearl: A Villanelle" appeared in The Spoon River Poetry Review.
Copyright © 2014 Cecilia Woloch All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Two Sylvias Press PO Box 1524 Kingston, WA 98346 twosylviaspress@gmail.com Cover Art: Crossed Tails by Jonde Northcutt Cover Design: Kelli Russell Agodon Book Design: Annette Spaulding-Convy Created with the belief that great writing is good for the world, Two Sylvias Press mixes modern technology, classic style, and literary intellect with an eco-friendly heart. We draw our inspiration from the poetic literary talent of Sylvia Plath and the editorial business sense of Sylvia Beach. We are an independent press dedicated to publishing the exceptional voices of writers. For more information about Two Sylvias Press or to learn more about the eBook version of Earth please visit: www.twosylviaspress.com First Edition. Created in the United States of America. ISBN: 13: 978-0692333372 ISBN: 10: 0692333371
Two Sylvias Press www.twosylviaspress.com
Praise For Earth
In Earth, Cecilia Woloch writes with the wonder and resilience that are essential, not only to empathy, but to transformation. Woloch weds us to the natural world through language that is both straightforward and particular. A “river’s lifting dress” comes to represent history; branches swaying “like the arms of a woman waving goodbye” come to represent mortality. These remarkable poems are hymns and requiems; they are made of "blood mixed with earth." —Terrance Hayes These poems reflect a mature writer, a woman unflinching in both love and craft. The love is unabashed; the language boldly lyrical and image-rich. As a devoted reader of Cecilia Woloch's writing, I relish anything she offers, so I welcome Earth, this book of passionate, vigorous poetry, in which grandeur of spirit always redeems sorrow. As Woloch writes in the gorgeous prose poem "Afterlife": "I want to be fierce and joyful and a meadow when I'm dead." May we all be meadows with you, Dear Poet. —Holly Prado These poems gel together beautifully with a musical sense of foreboding and epiphany inhabiting the lines. These pages give us a terrain where a "honey of birdcall in our mouth" seems equally at place with a landscape populated with a willow that leaves the speaker "half afraid that the tree would fly." I want to return to Earth again and again. —Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Acknowledgements
Some of these poems first appeared in the following journals and magazines. Many thanks to the editors. Indiana Review: “2006” Cave Wall: "What Was Promised Me" and "Our Father in the Last Gold Light of Spring" Crab Orchard Review: "Teta" and "Afterlife" Mississippi Review: "Your River" Double Room: "Wild Common Prayer" Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds, edited by Billy Collins: “For the Birds” Spoon River Poetry Review: "Harry and Pearl: A Villanelle" Asheville Poetry Review: “Little Song for the One Afraid” and “Earth” Double Room: “Wild Common Prayer” American Mustard: “My Face” and “A Place in the Music” Love and gratitude to Holly Prado and her Tuesday morning writing workshop for ongoing support and encouragement, and to Carine Topal and Sarah Luczaj for their invaluable feedback on work-in-progress.
Table of Contents
I.
What Was Promised Me 1 Teta 2 Her Tree 5 Little Song For The One Afraid 6 My Face 7 A Place In The Music 8 2006 9 Earth 10 II. Your River 13 Wild Common Prayer 14 For The Birds 15 Our Father, In The Last Gold Light Of Spring 17 Ghost Sycamore 19 Harry & Pearl: A Villanelle 21 My Mother Is The Poem I’ll Never Write 23 Afterlife 25
~ 1 ~
WHAT WAS PROMISED ME
Nothing. A ring and some salt. Rice in the white shoes. Music. A doll.
The book my mother read to me, over and over, when I was a child: tigers
turning to butter, to milk. An amulet from a boy who carried a knife in his
pocket, too. Night — I was not promised dawn — stars hooked to sky by
my father’s hands. Love like a tree I could climb to the top of and then jump
down from, or swing from, or fly. Mercies so small I could hide each one
inside a flower. Sharp white teeth. A clock made of pearls, each pearl an
hour, and the hours numberless. The pink dress that disappeared — where
did it go? — and the tiny ballerina spinning and spinning inside a dome. A
door that would open and close. No house. No home but the story I’ve lived
toward. Luck running out like a shimmer of wind. Two buckets full of cold
water, wood for a fire, and flame.
~ 2 ~
TETA
for my great-aunt
Teta, it’s winter in Pittsburgh again
— darkbrick city of smokestacks and soot —
and we’re walking up Broadway Avenue,
past billboards and vacant lots,
through the slush of snow and cinders
as the streetcars slur past — ghosts
in our flowered babushkas and shabby coats,
shopping bags weighing down our arms.
We’ve bought cans of beets, heads of cabbage,
meat ground fresh that we’ll squeeze into fists,
and we don’t flinch when the crew-cut kids hiss,
D.P.’s, at our backs; we’re not ashamed anymore, at last,
to have come from nowhere, nothing, dirt —
the village you fled as a young girl, gone,
the houses burned and the fields you worked
into rows of green grown wild again.
Once you spooned honey into my mouth
because my arms and legs were like sticks,
because I itched and wept and wanted,
more than sweetness, to know who I was.
But you sighed, No one wants to remember that stuff —
~ 3 ~
how you came to this new country, stinking of ship;
how you sold bootleg hootch for cash,
your own smooth flesh for a rich man’s song —
the fat growing fat on the fat of the land
while you buried one child in a pauper’s grave,
raised two others on blood money, prayer.
All your sins in a basket too heavy to lift
and your body already a heap of grief
the day you slipped in the alley and fell
in that garden you’d made of ground bone, ash,
under a slit of tin-washed sky.
And then you never stood up again.
I watched as you shrank in your narrow bed,
blind, but you gripped my hand and sang
the old song of the little bird in a tongue
I still don’t understand — dark syllables fluttering
just out of reach — until you were shadow, whisper,
less —your whole life a ragged story
stitched into breath, unstitched again.
Teta, we’ve never been much in this world,
although we were many, too many, once —
the children’s children who circled your table,
blowing out candles, eyes tilted like yours;
~ 4 ~
our faces the same face all over again,
the face of the stranger wherever we turned —
my cousin the Cossack, the Gypsy, the Jew;
my cousin the dark Slav, my cousin the slave.
And we’ll never belong to this place
where you came with your one suitcase
tied with rope, with your shape like a shadow
risen from earth — some mute root pulled
from a meadow where wildflowers blazed
in the summer and winter lay down.
This is America, Teta, you’re dead,
and our dying means nothing here.
Give me your bags.
~ 5 ~
HER TREE There was a tree I loved and had always loved. Silver willow, I heard it was
called. I called it Grandmother-as-a-Girl. I called it Grandmother-Under-the-
Ground. I waded the river beneath its shade, my feet in the cool, shallow
water, then lay in the sunlight to listen for her. When the storm crossed the
meadow — a sudden darkening; great ships of clouds racing overhead —
each leaf of my grandmother’s tree turned its shimmering back to the
breeze; each leaf a tongue to the rain, many-tongued. I stood up in the wind
and ran through the high grass, as if through a sea of light. Half afraid that
the tree would fly, but I turned to look and the tree didn’t budge. Its
branches only swayed like the arms of a woman waving good-bye. A woman
who’d stood in the doorway, once, of a house that would burn to the
ground when she’d gone, shaking the crumbs from her apron for birds. A
woman I knew would die too young, earth in her mouth, and keep calling
me back. I reached the road with my arms full of wildflowers, weeds, one
twig I’d snapped from a branch. All this I saved for an altar, a grave.
Drenched in the sky — gray, then silver, then green.
~ 6 ~
LITTLE SONG FOR THE ONE AFRAID
Oh beloved, oh afraid
of the bloodstain, dark spot, ticking clock
of what has shone in your life like luck —
too bright to last — oh fortunate
who slipped the licked stones, glittering
inside your pockets, spread your arms
and dreamt your ghost wings would unfurl
from your bony shoulders — angel bones —
and that the sky would hold you up
and love — a tree from which you swung —
oh branch you called your father's name
oh bird who sang your mother's song
oh little sweeper of the world
whose life inside my life has burned.
~ 7 ~
MY FACE I thought I'd grow up to be a fish. Or a tree, or a piece of wind, like God. I
thought I’d scrape against myself until my face became my face. I never
thought I'd grow up to look like my mother, much as I craved her one pink
dress, stuttered around in her high heeled shoes, tried to sing the songs she
sang. Or like my father, with his shadow in his shadow, pockets, keys. I
planted tulips upside down, thinking those flowers would bloom in hell, and
that hell was deep inside the earth. I walked around when I was small and
spit my name into my hands. I wanted everything to shine. But I was dark.
And could not swim.
~ 8 ~
A PLACE IN THE MUSIC
Once, in a dream that wasn’t a dream, I saw them walking away from me.
Or not away, but just ahead. All my dead beloveds in a shiver of silvery
wind. They knew I was following, and kept on. Arms linked, walking side-
by-side on a road between fields of waist-high grass. The wind tossing their
hair and the hems of the flowered dresses the women wore. Some uncle or
other, still a boy, running after the rest — was that joy? And what it said to
me, this picture in my mind, was to not be afraid: that it's only a kind of
magic, death, and the story is rich, the story goes on. I was behind them,
watching them walk into the wind, when I heard the hum beginning inside
me— a place in the music, high and sweet — as if they were singing or also
heard the song I’d begun to hear, and were glad. And loved me still. The sky
that silver, too. Although none of them turned around.
~ 9 ~
2006
In the year of the poppy year of the cornflower
year of the meadow of yarrow and buttercup
year of the thistle and ox-eyed daisy
in the spring of the year of our lord
of the train the engine the ticket the map
of the landscape of leaf shadow willow white birch
blurring past in the smoke of the burning fields
in the blue mist of evening the ringing of bells
ringing out for the living the living the dead
of the last great war which is one long war
of the ancient soldier come in his uniform
to stand hopefully at the door
of the house of no mirrors swept of ash
(in which I was a guest of the dark bread and rain)
to ask, Have the Germans already left?
sixty years after the forests were flushed
of the last of our enemies last of the partisans
of the holy republic of mud
of the blood mixed with earth of the bones of itself
of which no one knows but the trees anymore
of which no one speaks but the child made of grass.
~ 10 ~
EARTH
We’ve traveled like this all our lives, all our life as a people on the earth.
We’ve gathered and scattered and gathered again. In rooms made of firelight
or of song. We’ve buried our dead, when we could, in places they loved, or
the bones of them. Every step, a turn of the wheel, a word set down and no
other word; every turn of the wheel a prayer in mud, the answer of one
God. Sometimes we’ve veiled ourselves and sometimes we’ve stood,
clothed only in sunlight and wind. Sugar of flowers on our breath; honey of
birdcall in our mouths. Once, I’d forgotten the way to the well and the
smell of cool rain led me there. Once I was only a child in my sleep; then I
awoke and was everywhere.
~ 13 ~
YOUR RIVER for Eve, on the Chattahoochee Your river has wish in it, and rain
and mud and twigs and the trees' lost leaves.
Oh, it's not really your river, but still
you widow it, walk beside it some.
Your dogs think the river is theirs,
bark at the birds and fish, swim sticks
across where it's deepest in their mouths.
It's not really their river, but nights
they breathe the dark house at its bend asleep.
As the green barn dreams your gone love’s dreams —
joist and beam, the sweet machines
in their sweet repose of weeds and rust
— oh wheel, oh hope, oh grass grown deep.
Today I circled the meadow, a hawk
in the river's lifted dress, this wind.
~ 14 ~
WILD COMMON PRAYER
for SLS
I dreamt you were whole again, radiant, calm: your hair still golden but
tinged with red — a halo of rosy, burnished light — and your hands
untrembling in your lap. I was surprised to find you home. But I’ve been here
all along, you said. Or might have said. You didn’t speak. You’d only aged
as women age whose bodies ease them toward death; grown softer, more
yourself. And I was the one who stood amazed, there in the kitchen where
we’d spent so many quiet mornings, friend. Wanting to touch you, wanting
to simply not forsake you now. Outside, the pasture lay down calmly; each
blade shimmered in the wind. This is eternity, I thought, and felt you breaking
into all your lovely fragments as I woke.
~ 15 ~
FOR THE BIRDS
I stopped under a sycamore, looked up:
bare white limbs against blue, blue sky
and in those branches, flickering, birds,
each with a bright green-yellow breast,
each the size of a small child's fist.
So what kind of birds are you? I asked
and slipped on my glasses, the better to glimpse
such wing and color, such flashiness.
Then, breathless, I climbed the sun-swept hill
to the naturalists’ offices, rushed inside,
saying, I have a question about a bird!
and was handed a book of birds to check.
I considered Common Yellow Throat —
Skulks in marshes. Male wears black mask.
Wichity-wichity song — loved that music,
but wondered if music could be the answer
to anything? I leafed through a few more pages,
learned that American Goldfinches turn
from winter's muddy greenish-brown
to summer's yellow brightness, turn
betwixt, in spring, this lemon-lime
~ 16 ~
and fly in hiccups, flash their gold, a flock
of such birds being called a charm,
from the Latin carmen, meaning song.
I flew back down the hill in that windy light
practically into the sycamore's arms,
singing, anyway, skulks in marshes,
black mask, wichity-wichity song!
Singing, Spread out your colors, flash me your wings —
as the charm made its green-yellow sweep through the sky.
~ 17 ~
OUR FATHER, IN THE LAST GOLD LIGHT OF SPRING says to me, Take down your hands.
Says, Let your sister have it, if she wants.
Wants nothing now.
The light that stood behind him will not stand.
So summer comes.
So he has not stood up in years,
who was the last of something, once.
Who once swam through flames, I thought.
Who made a shadow like a bird.
What do I want to know, and can’t?
That what he’d never said, he said.
That he’d kept his ankles covered where the chains
had gnawed his skin.
That he’d planted corn and melons
near the creek beside the house.
~ 19 ~
GHOST SYCAMORE
The winter I knew you weren’t coming back,
I ran down the hill from the house, the path
through the woods turning red and gold with death
— dank leaves underfoot; branches twined overhead —
and, breathless, stopped where the lake begins,
having glimpsed, through the tangled mist, a glint
of something glimmering, silvery, bright —
I stepped from the shadows toward that shine
and suddenly, there, in the sky at my feet
on the lake’s surface, shimmering, a tree —
or the ghost of a white tree, lightning-limbed,
that seemed to have risen up from within
the body of water, the body of sky —
and again, on the far shore, the other side,
the same tree — spectral, luminous —
bowed as in grief at the water’s edge
~ 20 ~
where it stood among lush pines, bone-white, stark
— stripped of leaves, of rough outer bark —
old sycamore, old boundary-marker — father,
as I saw you in a dream, once, self and other
self, in this world and the next, as if a veil
between them lifted, then everything went still.
~ 21 ~
HARRY & PEARL: A VILLANELLE
My father wears shoes in the afterworld
— the shiny, brown dress shoes we buried him in.
My mother goes barefoot and answers to Pearl
though that wasn’t her name. Daddy called her girl
and told us, Your mother works hard; be good kids.
Now Daddy wears shoes in the afterworld
because he lay shoeless his last years, lay curled
like a child in his bed crying out, or he’d sing
and our mother went barefoot and answered him. Pearl
was her middle name, given her, slurred, at birth
— a drunken grand uncle’s grandiose gift.
But our father wears shoes in the afterworld
and our mother, who followed him — ever his jewel —
to wherever they’ve gone, in her last white dress
goes barefoot beside him now, answers to Pearl
— won’t answer to mother and won’t be implored;
she cooked and she cleaned and she sang that’s enough.
Now my father wears shoes in the afterworld
~ 22 ~
— shiny brown dress shoes — and gives her a twirl
in his arms, she’s his girl, she’s his girl again, laughs —
my mother, who’s barefoot and answers to Pearl
when I call to her, call to my sweet disappeared
mother and father who slipped through my breath.
My father wears shoes in the afterworld.
My mother goes barefoot and answers to Pearl.
~ 23 ~
MY MOTHER IS THE POEM I’LL NEVER WRITE
When I hated myself,
when I sulked and bled
and had no god to call,
she loved me;
she called me back.
Her strength was the wren’s
plain strength
but my mother was beautiful,
more beautiful than I saw,
more delicate.
Really, I don’t want to tell anyone.
What’s to tell?
Her crooked hands.
When I was hungry,
I was fed.
When I was sad,
I could lie down
beside her in her bed,
or when I was glad,
exhausted from joy
from working beside her
in the garden
or in the kitchen
~ 24 ~
she swept and swept.
When I had wrecked my life,
she told me, You don’t have to
fall apart.
When I was wrong
she taught me
how to forgive myself.
When she died
I took the flowers from her grave
and scattered them.
When I want her voice,
her face again,
I have only
to look in the mirror.
Gone like the sparrow,
gone like the wren.
Gone like the blossoms
blown into drifts
from which her name
was gathered once.
~ 25 ~
AFTERLIFE
I want to be fierce and joyful and a meadow when I’m dead. Spindly flowers
and waist-high grass and the shadows of clouds across that brightness,
shifting, like so many ships in the sky. I want to be all in one place, at last,
but vast, a sea by the side of the road. I mean green, and I mean poppies and
daisies, everything blooming at once. And I want to be, again, that girl who
pushed into the wind. Who stood up to the sun, big-mouthed and brave. I
mean, if I’m going to die, let me live. Let me wade out into the darkest part
of the night and name myself. Wild-haired bitch of the mongrel stars. Moon
on her shoulders. Dirt-rich, proud.
~ 27 ~
Cecilia Woloch is the author of six collections of poems, most
recently Carpathia (BOA Editions 2009). The French translation of
her second book, Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem, was published as
Tzigane: le poeme gitane by Scribe-l’Harmattan in 2014. Tsigan has
also been adapted for multi-media performances in the U.S. and
Europe. Her novella, Sur la Route, a finalist for the Colony Collapse
Prize, is forthcoming from Quale Press in 2015. Other literary
honors include The Indiana Review Prize for Poetry, The New Ohio
Review Prize for Poetry, the Scott Russell Sanders Prize for Creative
Nonfiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the
Arts, the California Arts Council, CEC/ArtsLink International,
Chateau de la Napoule Foundation, the Center for International
Theatre Development and many others. She collaborates regularly
with musicians, dancers, visual artists, theatre artists and
filmmakers. The founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild
and The Paris Poetry Workshop, she has also served on the faculties
of a number of creative writing programs and teaches
independently throughout the U.S. and around the world.
~ 28 ~
Publications by Two Sylvias Press: The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano (Print and eBook) Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry edited by Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy (Print and eBook) The Poet Tarot and Guidebook: A Deck Of Creative Exploration (Print) Earth, Winner of the 2014 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize (Print and eBook) By Cecilia Woloch The Cardiologist’s Daughter by Natasha Kochicheril Moni (Print and eBook) She Returns to the Floating World by Jeannine Hall Gailey (Print and eBook) Hourglass Museum by Kelli Russell Agodon (eBook) Dear Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s Diary & Poems by Esther Altshul Helfgott (eBook) Listening to Mozart: Poems of Alzheimer’s by Esther Altshul Helfgott (eBook) Cloud Pharmacy by Susan Rich (eBook) Crab Creek Review 30th Anniversary Issue featuring Northwest Poets edited by Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy (eBook) Please visit Two Sylvias Press (www.twosylviaspress.com) for information on purchasing our print books, eBooks, writing tools, and for submission guidelines for our annual chapbook prize. Two Sylvias Press also offers editing services and manuscript consultations.
~ 29 ~
Created with the belief that great writing
is good for the world.
Visit us online: www.twosylviaspress.com