Verseful

-Shyanne Figueroa Bennett

Glimmering membrane of water

split when she enters. Sinks

to clay floor. Sand. Shell.

sedimenting to form

a woman   dark

as lake floor. Dark

as they created. In debris

of dynamic heads. Silver men

glisten unsewn and woven

into her being broken,

hollowed to carry

remnants of souls strewn

in man-made waters.

What can be made from nothing?

The question hooks to her neck.

Her curl hair gills for breath.

Iridescent scales shed

from slender sinewy form

as her intricate jawbones

mechanize for an open

-- unprecedented speech

for she who was carved

out of isthmus

intended for silence.

Nothing much. Just wishing that you have a happy new year :).

I don’t want a new dress, I said.

My mother plucked from her mouth ninety-nine pins.

I suppose there are plenty, she said, girls of ten

Who would be glad to have a new dress.

Snip-snip. Snip-snip. The cold scissors

Ate quickly as white rabbit round my arm.

She won’t speak to me if I have a new dress!

My feet rattled on the kitchen floor.

How can I fit you if you won’t stand still?

My tears made a map of Australia

On the sofa cushion; from the hot center

My friend’s eyes flashed, fierce as embers.

She would not speak to me, perhaps never again.

She would paralyze me with one piercing look.

I’d rather have my friend than a new dress!

My mother wouldn’t understand, my grownup mother

Whose grasshopper thimble winked at the sun

And whose laughter was made by small waves

Rearranging seashells on Australia’s shore.

I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t stay home

where the big dipper rises from, time

and again: one mountain ash.

And I wouldn’t have thought without traveling out

how huge that dipper was,

how small that tree.

Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage

might work: Because you wear pink but write poems

about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell

at your keys when you lose them, and laugh,

loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,

gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials

from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.

You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents

of what you packed were written inside the boxes.

Because you think swans are overrated.

Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me

to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence.

Because you underline everything you read, and circle

the things you think are important, and put stars next

to the things you think I should think are important,

and write notes in the margins about all the people

you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there.

Because you make that pork recipe you found

in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read

that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing

except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self

and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights

are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed

over the windows, you still believe someone outside

can see you. And one day five summers ago,

when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge

was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments—

there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew,

which you paid for with your last damn dime

because you once overheard me say that I liked it.

by Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

We will have to slow down the pace of this project. So, a few announcements regarding that and some food for thought.

I died for beauty, but was scarce

Adjusted in the tomb,

When one who died for truth was lain

In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?

"For beauty," I replied.

"And I for truth,--the two are one;

We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,

We talked between the rooms.

Until the moss had reached our lips,

And covered up our names.

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

LIFE, believe, is not a dream

So dark as sages say;

Oft a little morning rain

Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,

But these are transient all;

If the shower will make the roses bloom,

O why lament its fall?

Rapidly, merrily,

Life’s sunny hours flit by,

Gratefully, cheerily,

Enjoy them as they fly!

What though Death at times steps in

And calls our best away?

What though sorrow seems to win,

O’er hope, a heavy sway?

Yet, hope again elastic springs,

Unconquered, though she fell;

Still buoyant are her golden wings,

Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,

The day of trial bear,

For gloriously, victoriously,

Can courage quell despair!