Cover

What We Carry

POEMS BY

DORIANNE LAUX

BOA EDITIONS, LTD.  •  BROCKPORT, NY  •  1994

Copyright

Copyright © 1994 by Dorianne Laux

Manufactured in the United States of America

LC #: 94–71369

ISBN: 978-1-880238-06-6 cloth

ISBN: 978-1-880238-07-3 paper

ISBN: 978-1-938160-37-0 eBook

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Dedication

for my mother

WHAT WE CARRY

Late October

Midnight. The cats under the open window,

their guttural, territorial yowls.

Crouched in the neighbor’s driveway with a broom,

I jab at them with the bristle end,

chasing their raised tails as they scramble

from bush to bush, intent on killing each other.

I shout and kick until they finally

give it up; one shimmies beneath the fence,

the other under a car. I stand in my underwear

in the trembling quiet, remembering my dream.

Something had been stolen from me, valueless

and irreplaceable. Grease and grass blades

were stuck to the bottoms of my feet.

I was shaking and sweating. I had wanted

to kill them. The moon was a white dinner plate

broken exactly in half. I saw myself as I was:

forty-one years old, standing on a slab

of cold concrete, a broom handle slipping

from my hands, my breasts bare, my hair

on end, afraid of what I might do next.

Dust

Someone spoke to me last night,

told me the truth. Just a few words,

but I recognized it.

I knew I should make myself get up,

write it down, but it was late,

and I was exhausted from working

all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Now, I remember only the flavor —

not like food, sweet or sharp.

More like a fine powder, like dust.

And I wasn’t elated or frightened,

but simply rapt, aware.

That’s how it is sometimes —

God comes to your window,

all bright light and black wings,

and you’re just too tired to open it.

If This Is Paradise

The true mystery of the world is the visible…

— OSCAR WILDE

If this is paradise: trees, beehives,

boulders. And this: bald moon, shooting

stars, a little sun. If in your hands

this is paradise: sensate flesh,

hidden bone, your own eyes

opening, then why should we speak?

Why not lift into each day like the animals

that we are and go silently

about our true business: the hunt

for water, fat berries, the mushroom’s

pale meat, tumble through waist-high grasses

without reason, find shade and rest there,

our limbs spread beneath the meaningless sky,

find the scent of the lover

and mate wildly. If this is paradise

and all we have to do is be born and live

and die, why pick up the stick at all?

Why see the wheel in the rock?

Why bring back from the burning fields

a bowl full of fire and pretend that it’s magic?

What Could Happen

Noon. A stale Saturday. The hills

rise above the town, nudge houses and shops

toward the valley, kick the shallow river

into place. Here, a dog can bark for days

and no one will care enough

to toss an empty can or an unread newspaper

in his direction. No one complains.

The men stand in loose knots

outside Ace Hardware, talk a little, stare

at the blue tools. A few kids

sulk through the park, the sandbox full

of hardscrabble, the monkey bars

too hot to touch. In a town like this

a woman on the edge of forty

could drive around in her old car, the back end

all jingle and rivet, one headlight

taped in place, the hood held down with greasy rope,

and no one would notice.

She could drive up and down the same street

all day, eating persimmons,

stopping only for a moment to wonder

at the wooden Indian on the corner of 6th and B,

the shop window behind it

filled with beaten leather, bright woven goods

from Guatemala, postcards of this town

before it began to go under, began

to fade into a likeness of itself.

She could pull in at the corner store for a soda

and pause before uncapping it,

press the cold glass against her cheek,

roll it under her palm down the length of her neck

then slip it beneath the V of her blouse

and let it rest there, where she’s hottest.

She could get back in her car

and turn the key, bring the engine up

like a swarm of bottle flies, feel it

shake like an empty caboose.

She could twist the radio too high

and drive like this for the rest of the day —

the same street, the same hairpin turn

that knocks the jack in the trunk from one wheel well

to the other — or she could pass the turn

and keep going, the cold soda

wedged between her legs, the bass notes

throbbing like a vein, out past the closed shops

and squat houses, the church

with its bland white arch, toward the hills,

beyond that shadowy nest of red madrones.

After Twelve Days of Rain

I couldn’t name it, the sweet

sadness welling up in me for weeks.

So I cleaned, found myself standing

in a room with a rag in my hand,

the birds calling time-to-go, time-to-go.

And like an old woman near the end

of her life I could hear it, the voice

of a man I never loved who pressed

my breasts to his lips and whispered

“My little doves, my white, white lilies.”

I could almost cry when I remember it.

I don’t remember when I began

to call everyone “sweetie,”

as if they were my daughters,

my darlings, my little birds.

I have always loved too much,

or not enough. Last night

I read a poem about God and almost

believed it — God sipping coffee,

smoking cherry tobacco. I’ve arrived

at a time in my life when I could believe

almost anything.

Today, pumping gas into my old car, I stood

hatless in the rain and the whole world

went silent — cars on the wet street

sliding past without sound, the attendant’s

mouth opening and closing on air

as he walked from pump to pump, his footsteps

erased in the rain — nothing

but the tiny numbers in their square windows

rolling by my shoulder, the unstoppable seconds

gliding by as I stood at the Chevron,

balanced evenly on my two feet, a gas nozzle

gripped in my hand, my hair gathering rain.

And I saw it didn’t matter

who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone.

The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty

of the Iranian attendant, the thickening

clouds — nothing was mine. And I understood

finally, after a semester of philosophy,

a thousand books of poetry, after death

and childbirth and the startled cries of men

who called out my name as they entered me,

I finally believed I was alone, felt it

in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo

like a thin bell. And the sounds

came back, the slish of tires

and footsteps, all the delicate cargo

they carried saying thank you

and yes. So I paid and climbed into my car

as if nothing had happened —

as if everything mattered — What else could I do?

I drove to the grocery store

and bought wheat bread and milk,

a candy bar wrapped in gold foil,

smiled at the teenaged cashier

with the pimpled face and the plastic

name plate pinned above her small breast,

and knew her secret, her sweet fear —

Little bird. Little darling. She handed me

my change, my brown bag, a torn receipt,

pushed the cash drawer in with her hip

and smiled back.

Aphasia

for Honeya

After the stroke all she could say

was Venezuela, pointing to the pitcher

with its bright blue rim, her one word

command. And when she drank the clear

water in and gave the glass back,

it was Venezuela again, gratitude,

maybe, or the word now simply

a sigh, like the sky in the window,

the pillows a cloudy definition

propped beneath her head. Pink roses

dying on the bedside table, each fallen

petal a scrap in the shape of a country

she’d never been to, had never once

expressed interest in, and now

it was everywhere, in the peach

she lifted, dripping, to her lips,

the white tissue in the box, her brooding

children when they came to visit,

baptized with their new name

after each kiss. And at night

she whispered it, dark narcotic

in her husband’s ear as he bent

to listen, her hands fumbling

at her buttons, her breasts,

holding them up to the light

like a gift. Venezuela, she said.

Graveyard at Hurd’s Gulch

His grave is strewn with litter again,

crumpled napkins, a plastic spoon, white

styrofoam cup tipped on its side, bright

half-moon of lipstick on the rim.

I want to scold her for the mess she’s left,

the flattened grass and squashed grapes,

but I’ve seen her walking toward the trees,

her hollow body receding, her shadow

following behind. I’m the intruder,

come not to mourn a specific body

but to rest under a tree, my finger tracing

the rows of glowing marble,

the cloud-covered hips of the hills.

I always take the same spot,

next to the sunken stone that says MOTHER,

the carved dates with the little dash between them,

a brief, deep cut, like a metaphor for life.

Does she whisper, I wonder, to the one

she loves, or simply eat and sleep, content

for an hour above the bed of his bones?

I think she brings him oranges and secrets,

her day’s torn and intricate lace.

I have no one on this hill to dine with.

I’m blessed. Everyone I love is still alive.

I know there is no God, no afterlife,

but there is this peace, the granite angel

with moss-covered wings whose face

I have grown to love, her sad smile

like that sadness we feel after sex,

those few delirious hours when we needed nothing

but breath and flesh, after we’ve flown back

into ourselves, our imperfect heavy bodies,

just before the terrible hunger returns.

What We Carry

for Donald

He tells me his mother carries his father’s ashes

on the front seat in a cardboard box, exactly

where she placed them after the funeral.

Her explanation: she hasn’t decided

where they should be scattered.

It’s been three years.

I imagine her driving home from the store,

a sack of groceries jostling next to the box —

smell of lemons, breakfast rolls,

the radio tuned to the news.

He says he never liked his father,

but made peace with him before he died.

That he carries what he can

and discards the rest.

We are sitting in a cafe.

Because I don’t love him, I love

to watch him watch the women walk by

in their sheer summer skirts.

From where I sit I can see them approach,

then study his face as he watches them go.

We are friends. We are both lonely.

I never tell him about my father

so he doesn’t know that when I think of his —

blue ashes in a cardboard box — I think

of my own, alive in a room

somewhere in Oregon, a woman

helping his worn body into bed, the same body

that crushed my sister’s childhood, mine.

Maybe this wife kisses him

goodnight, tells him she loves him,

actually means it. This close to the end,

if he asked forgiveness, what could I say?

If I were handed my father’s ashes,

what would I do with them?

What body of water would be fit

for his scattering? What ground?

It’s best when I think least. I listen

to my friend’s story without judgement

or surprise, taking it in as he takes in

the women, without question, simply a given,

as unexceptional as conversation between friends,

the laughter and at each end

the relative comfort of silence.

The Job

for Tobey

When my friend lost her little finger

between the rollers of a printing press,

I hadn’t met her yet. It must have taken

months for the stump to heal, skin stretched

and stitched over bone, must have taken

years before she could consider it calmly,

as she does now, in an airport cafe

over a cup of black coffee.

She doesn’t complain or blame the unguarded

machine, the noise of the factory, the job

with its long unbroken hours.

She simply opens her damaged hand and studies

the emptiness, the loss

of symmetry and flesh, and tells me

it was a small price to pay,

that her missing finger taught her

to take more care with her life,

with what she reaches out

to touch, to stay awake when she’s awake

and listen, to pay attention

to what’s turning in the world.

For the Sake of Strangers

No matter what the grief, its weight,

we are obliged to carry it.

We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength

that pushes us through crowds.

And then the young boy gives me directions

so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,

waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.

All day it continues, each kindness

reaching toward another — a stranger

singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees

offering their blossoms, a retarded child

who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.

Somehow they always find me, seem even

to be waiting, determined to keep me

from myself, from the thing that calls to me

as it must have once called to them —

this temptation to step off the edge

and fall weightless, away from the world.

What I Wouldn’t Do

The only job I didn’t like, quit

after the first shift, was selling

subscriptions to TV Guide over the phone.

Before that it was fast food, all

the onion rings I could eat, handing

sacks of deep fried burritos through

the sliding window, the hungry hands

grabbing back. And at the laundromat,

plucking bright coins from a palm

or pressing them into one, kids

screaming from the bathroom and twenty

dryers on high. Cleaning houses was fine,

polishing the knick-knacks of the rich.

I liked holding the hand-blown glass bell

from Czechoslovakia up to the light,

the jewelled clapper swinging lazily

from side to side, its foreign,

A-minor ping. I drifted, an itinerant,

from job to job, the sanatorium

where I pureed peas and carrots

and stringy beets, scooped them,

like pudding, onto flesh-colored

plastic plates, or the gas station

where I dipped the ten-foot measuring stick

into the hole in the blacktop,

pulled it up hand over hand

into the twilight, dripping

its liquid gold, pink-tinged.

I liked the donut shop best, 3 AM,

alone in the kitchen, surrounded

by sugar and squat mounds of dough,

the flashing neon sign strung from wire

behind the window, gilding my white uniform

yellow, then blue, then drop-dead red.

It wasn’t that I hated calling them, hour

after hour, stuck in a booth with a list

of strangers’ names, dialing their numbers

with the eraser end of a pencil and them

saying hello. It was that moment

of expectation, before I answered back,

the sound of their held breath,

their disappointment when they realized

I wasn’t who they thought I was,

the familiar voice, or the voice they loved

and had been waiting all day to hear.

Singing Back the World

I don’t remember how it began.

The singing. Judy at the wheel

in the middle of Sentimental Journey.

The side of her face glowing.

Her full lips moving. Beyond her shoulder

the little houses sliding by.

And Geri. Her frizzy hair tumbling

in the wind wing’s breeze, fumbling

with the words. All of us singing

as loud as we can. Off key.

Not even a semblance of harmony.

Driving home in a blue Comet singing

I’ll Be Seeing You and Love Is a Rose.

The love songs of war. The war songs

of love. Mixing up verses, eras, words.

Songs from stupid musicals.

Coming in strong on the easy refrains.

Straining our middle aged voices

trying to reach impossible notes,

reconstruct forgotten phrases.

Cole Porter’s Anything Goes.

Shamelessly la la la-ing

whole sections. Forgetting

the rent, the kids, the men,

the other woman. The sad goodbye.

The whole of childhood. Forgetting

the lost dog. Polio. The grey planes

pregnant with bombs. Fields

of white headstones. All of it gone

as we struggle to remember

the words. One of us picking up

where the others leave off. Intent

on the song. Forgetting our bodies,

their pitiful limbs, their heaviness.

Nothing but three throats

beating back the world — Laurie’s

radiation treatments. The scars

on Christina’s arms. Kim’s brother.

Molly’s grandfather. Jane’s sister.

Singing to the telephone poles

skimming by. Stoplights

blooming green. The road,

a glassy black river edged

with brilliant gilded weeds. The car

an immense boat cutting the air

into blue angelic plumes. Singing

Blue Moon and Paper Moon

and Mack the Knife, and Nobody Knows

the Trouble I’ve Seen.

Balance

I’m remembering again, the day

we stood on the porch and you smoked

while the old man told you

about his basement full of wine,

his bad heart and the doctor’s warning,

how he held the dusty bottle out to you,

glad, he said, to give it away

to someone who appreciated

its value and spirit, the years

it took to settle into its richness

and worth. I’m watching again,

each cell alive, as you reach

for the wine, your forearm exposed

below the rolled sleeve, the fine hairs

that sweep along the muscle, glowing,

lifting a little in the afternoon breeze.

I’m memorizing the shape of the moment:

your hand and the small bones

lengthening beneath the skin

as it tightens in the gripping,

in the receiving of the gift, the exact

texture and color of your skin,

and the old man’s face, reduced

to its essence. That,

and the brief second

when both of you had a hand on the bottle —

the thing not yet given,

not yet taken, but held

between you, stoppered, full.

And my body is flooded again

with an elemental joy,

holding onto it against another day

in the unknowable future when I’m given

terrible news, some dark burden

I’ll be forced to carry. I know

this is useless, and can’t possibly work,

but I’m saving that moment, for balance.

SMALL GODS

For My Daughter Who Loves Animals

Once a week, whether the money is there

or not, I write a check for her lessons.

But today, as I waited in the car for her

to finish her chores, after she had wrapped

this one’s delicate legs, brushed burrs

and caked mud from that one’s tail,

I saw her stop and offer her body

to a horse’s itchy head. One arm up,

she gave him the whole length of her side.

And he knew the gesture, understood

the gift, stepped in close on oiled hooves

and pressed his head to her ribcage.

From hip to armpit he raked her body until,

to keep from falling, she leaned into him

full weight, her foot braced

against a tack post for balance.

Before horses, it was snakes, coiled

around her arms like African bracelets.

And before that, stray dogs, cats

of every color, even the misfits,

the abandoned and abused.

It took me so long to learn how to love,

how to give myself up and over to another.

Now I see how she has always

loved them all, snails and spiders,

from the very beginning, without fear or shame,

saw even the least of them, ants,

gnats, heard and answered

even the slightest of their calls.

Planning the Future

I never dreamed my daughter would be 16

until the day arrived with a car full of kids

and balloons, take-out Mexican food

and a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake.

A few months later and she has a boyfriend

in a baseball cap and baggy pants, two gold hoop

earrings and a shaved head. They are happy.

After school they do their homework together,

stretched out on her bed, the door open

to the edge of the legal limit.

Every history question finished deserves

a kiss. They’re embarrassed by the names

they’ve invented for each other,

by their tenderness. Toward evening

they watch MTV, mute the volume

during the commercials and plan their future —

junior college, then marriage, then kids,

what they’ll take with them — his dog,

her rat. I’m happy for them, even knowing

what will happen — the last gift, the last

kiss, her huddled on her bed, blinded

by her own bright pain. And I can see clearly

the day she’ll walk away, keys on a ring,

a suitcase banging her legs.

Then the real work of motherhood will begin,

the job of waking into each morning, trusting.

Finding What’s Lost

In the middle of the poem my daughter reminds me

that I promised to drive her to the bus stop.

She waits a few beats then calls out the time.

Repeats that I’ve promised.

I keep the line in my head, repeat it under my breath

as I look for my keys, rummage through my purse,

my jacket pockets. When we’re in the car, I search

the floor for a Jack-in-the-Box bag, a ticket stub,

a bridge toll dollar, anything to write on.

I’m still repeating my line when she points

out the window and says “Look, there’s the poppy

I told you about,” and as I turn the corner I see it,

grown through a crack between the sidewalk and the curb.

We talk about it while I scan driveways for kids

on skateboards and bikes, while the old man who runs

the Rexall locks up for the night and a mangy dog

lifts a frail leg and sprays the side of a tree.

Then we talk about her history essay and her boyfriend,

and she asks again about summer vacation, if we’re

going somewhere or just staying home. I say

I don’t know and ask what she’d rather do, but by now

we’re at the bus stop and she leans over

and, this is so unlike her, brushes her lips

quickly against my cheek. Then, without looking back,

she’s out the door, and the line, the poem,

is gone, lost somewhere near 8th and G, hovering

like an orange flower over the gravel street.

Homecoming

At the high school football game, the boys

stroke their new muscles, the girls sweeten their lips

with gloss that smells of bubblegum, candy cane,

or cinnamon. In pleated cheerleader skirts

they walk home with each other, practicing yells,

their long bare legs forming in the dark.

Under the arched field lights a girl

in a velvet prom dress stands near the chainlink,

a cone of roses held between her breasts.

Her lanky father, in a corduroy suit, leans

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