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Feature
Poet:
Elizabeth
Harrington
It's Your Birthday
Here. Slip into its red dress
these rose silk
sleeves made from breath of butterfly.
The shoes--
Pure travel--frosted icy white with unnamed stars
of a little known galaxy.
Don't forget the hat, stitched with
four kinds of wind,
topped with cattails, squirrel,
the blue of blue
sky through a square of morning window.
Only the brooch remains. Pin it here
to the left of the orchid.
Then rise as the spirit rises
each morning to sip tea eternal brown in your cup.
We are waiting, the band is blazing
the candles speechless
and hot to the touch.
If
It's Sunday morning and I can't think
where I left my body. Clothes
draped over the armchair, an empty
box of crackerjacks these slingbacks
all evidence of a past corporal existence.
But this morning, no sleepy reflection in glass
no hair plastered against the cheek
no floor coming cold to my feet.
And that's not all that's missing.
No mind comes to words. Only scraps
of music and story spilling
like ivy over its absence.
Surely I'm somewhere to be found.
Here's my street.
My purple shadow.
My garden shooting up
under a blue sky that remembers.
If only I could slip
into my red dress. If only
my throat could grow words
again. If only, eyes suspended like tiny
microphones on a stage, I could watch
the dance of cats. If only something
could set me going again, like love,
like the fat gold of a banker's
watch, like a promise whispered wetly
at the back of a forgotten ear.
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Elizabeth Harrington’s poetry has been published
in many literary magazines. She is a contributor to an anthology
(Split Verse) published by Midmarch Arts Press and is a winner
of the 1996 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. You can reach her
at Mimsybur@aol.com.
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Just One More. Okay, Two.
Ding dong
the Hershey bell. Taste, that long night,
is fluttering its scarf.
I would die and still
be chewing, spatula fat in my hand.
Fatter faster my fate. Enlarging each bite.
O, deliberate danish
O, meat of begonia
O, dark and private weather of Perugina. I'm turning
my back on you.
But abstinence is carrying a tray. Oh, heaven under ice! It's
zoo fruit and lemongrass
beaches and bathing suits. It's your briefcase
so carefully arranged. It's March, that
chill face. It's everyone's mouth,
everyone's straight out longing.
A year after my death
I miss my hair
I miss my state of mind
I miss my language.
Please, throw me a word like tetrazinni.
I miss the smell of me
I miss opening my mouth
"Fuck you"! I miss that, too.
I miss being animate. Bold but bewildered
I miss bowling in borrowed shoes
I miss killing time
I miss grinning
I miss hurting
I miss doing the Lindy Hop
I miss separating lights from darks
I miss the soft lumps in Cream of Wheat
I miss getting drunk
What I wouldn't do for a little Sapporro.
I miss fetid breath. But it's alive! It's alive!
I miss the cut of the knife
I miss spinning on ice
I miss your own white violence
I miss waking to an empty house
I've missed the boat
I miss missing you
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