Dawn Potter
My Mother does
not care for thought—
Emily
Dickinson
A few meager
stars, a hazy moon
brighter than old Kentuck,
and a bulge of frost spooned
across the windshield like a
plucked,
flash-frozen
chick. Into this arctic
chariot, the heater chafes and
spouts
its idiot vows. Yes, I lied about Kentuck.
No doubt, it’s glowing like all
get-out,
like a pair of
gibbous moons, like molten
honey dripped into a summer lake.
Blame art, then: I’ve been soaking up Bolton’s
poems, and now I’m acting like a
fake
southerner, which
is to say gothically
depressed while making love to every
rum-
soaked predicate I meet. Treat gothically
as a ringer for New England numb.
Today a friendly
rube lauded my skill
at prosy contemplation, but what a
crock.
Call a heart a spade: call me a fading, moody kill-
joy with a romance eye for loss and
schlock.
The car fan
chatters hopelessly; newsmen
chant wind-chill rates and hockey
stats.
Like any hausfrau I fret over loaves in the oven,
socks on the line, carboys of milk,
and ruinous vats
of soup. There
they burn or boil.
Here I dally in this wrapper-strewn
capsule,
this (laugh with me!) bell jar. Can I stand loyal
to her, cruel queen of diction, and
also rule
my roost, my squat
piratical outpost?
I shiver; I prop my tome of poems
against the cruiser’s plastic wheel. I boast
that they age for me: these jeroboams
of syntax, these
sherry cups of rage.
Yet these tired hands; yet these
cold feet.
Go ahead: remind me to shut up, to flip the page,
to change the station, to bleat
of
Mother’s lonely vigil.
I’m not proud of my idle arrogance.
Meanwhile, the rye loaf chars and the milk spills.
They’re
out of my ken, for a hatful of minutes.
Let
me claim to be oracular.
“Poetry is not like reasoning,”
urges Shelley.
And I reply: “nothing in particular”
is
the maiden speech of every tragedy.
[I know I posted this a while ago, but I was in the mood for it again today. Must be the empty refrigerator and the pouring rain. The poem is forthcoming in Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014).]
4 comments:
I think it takes me just about as long to get a poem as it takes me to write one. And I think this poem actually took a long time to write even though it looks dashed off, like Emily Dickinson’s mother’s mind looked empty whereas it was actually overladened – which is the element of Emily Dickinson’s genius her mother provided, being overladened and therefore pathologically retired. “New England numb” + “gothically depressed” can be resolved in fearless passion, thank God, even if you never leave the car!
Being broke + broken car + messy palette + foul weather = a good poem, up to a point. It also makes me not want to be a poet if I have to go outside the house inside like this. I’d rather take to bed like Mrs D. and then be washed by Emily every morning, head to toe, and then again before I sleep.
Thanks, Dawn
The poem actually took longer to write than you might think. Streamlining the voice and the rhyme scheme was tricky.
Looking like it was dashed off was a compliment. As was "up to a point."
Am I right about Mrs D? Is that what you meant?
C.
I guess so. I'm not sure. The Dickinson remark triggered an imagined character in my head and I tried to inhabit her.
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