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Patricia Brody

In the Closet, Mother-Hunting

I don’t want to throw this green dress away;

            it’s a cloth reminder of her.                              

She and I would hunt for silvery lures,  bait                               

            she gave me to reel the boys in.                        

Summer-thin, water-green, this dress breathes a wisp

            of her smoke,  her hard, tanned scent.

Once the cotton was the color of the sea, just

            skimming over my smooth limbs, the broad straps

crossed in back to frame my shoulder blades.

Now the bright cloth she draws her fingers over                               

            adorns my child's limbs.                                   

The long, feline reach she etched onto me                                                         

            I see in sly-cat games my daughter plays.

She anointed me (her brand of sacred oil): 

            so that my scent would catch the breath only                            

of the cold princes I was compelled to follow.

            She never liked a single one, as if she didn’t know

what those liquid dresses would invite.

She was a dress-artist in her own right,                                     

            mother, who hadn't aged an inch, just yet.

 o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o   

Love Knot

Our first-born will not eat.

Blue-white and withered to a wraith, isn't he

lording it over us,

the little prince of pain?

Our downy boy knows how to play

his mother like a fiddle:

he cries on a dime,

crinkles up his baby blues,

plies us with his grin,

or sits there with his fork

scraping his death wish

across his dinner plate

                        not eating, not eating.                       

The tiny beak

we built a life around

is making sounds of dying.

How would you handle your bone child,

the boy you waited for?

You paced the floor,

both sleepless;

all he wanted was you who

held him close, half the night

until the bad monsters left. . .

and led him off to school,

neither one bearing

ever to let go.

 o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o   

Tea Leaves

Mango-ginger. My quickie on the corner.
Eucalyptus shadows–   no, can’t be.
This is Gotham. Where clueless green the leafstorm
swirls in the boughs -- -- city-swollen summer.
Last fledgling tips his wing to water,
his trip pre-paid;   my ducky songs, my pleas.
As if my word could caution that release.
He’ll go. Soar    stumble    dive  –  all out of order.

Baby’s back in school ---- I got no more.
Time for tea.    Once the baby-keeper
patois-crowed, “Look, there’s no eye-water!”
to prove a child wasn’t really weeping.
Two cooing creatures;   soon, she’ll sweat.
Mama bite the mango.   As good as she gets.

 o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o   

Rosy Ghost

The blue-and-rose hour.  Again.
Pisces dusk , when the sun lowers its glower
and makes of earth a moon.
                          Under moon,  dad and mom.
Snow.   On the hill they cast their blue shadows.
In after-after-glow   like this   did I
                                                            with Eros -- --
(or was it Wulf? No, I know.)  I mean Joe.
He was the one.  Up the Hudson past the palisades,
past Tarrytown, past  -- --   I forget -- --  Dying
                                                             for one more turn.
Back.   To scrape off
wind-shield ice and scrape off clothes.
Love’s glow scraped to a burning rose      and I
peered through thorn-lit windows at the women
starting supper.   With the bairns,   rosy
from the bath.   And pined for that           blue heaven.

 o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o    o0o   

William's Shy Romantic

She breathed her own ethers into his words.
Recorded pine , cloud-cave, brother’s footfall;
felt fog stir, heard lightning release, denied
her own bruised feet, wrenched spine, rent heart
with the starched nightdress,  under the pillow.
Brewed late-day, spiked possets, cooled his hot head.
Too soon, he brought Mary and seven babes.
She nursed them too with mother-herbs,
chamomile, the poppies and packed journal
tossed out in her green-world to curl yellow.
She anticipated, enflamed his muse.
                            Well, what was she to do? She did for two.
If he were mouthpiece, even brain,
she was lute, reflex let-down, milk-blue rain.

[This poem was originally published in "Western Humanities Review," Winter 2004. 

It is reprinted here with permission from the author.]