gedney

Photograph

Once we knew she would never heal,
my mother packed her apartment.
She sorted through old catalogs filled
with sewing patterns, the pieces to an unfinished
quilt, and a box of photographs kept
in the back of her closet that told a new narrative,
different from mother-in-law, or grandmother.

Months after her death, I found them,
hidden behind newer, more familiar pictures.
In the faded browns and greys she stands in a group,
smiling at a young man, their names and a date
penned on the back, distal secrets, hidden in neat cursive.

becoming unbecoming

The Mannequin above Main Street Motors

When the only ladies' dress shop closed,
she was left on the street for trash, unsalvageable,

one arm missing, lost at the shoulder, one leg
at the hip. But she was wearing a blue-sequined negligee

and blonde wig, so they helped themselves to her
on a lark—drunken impulse—and for years kept her

leaning in a corner, beside an attic
window, rendered invisible. The dusk

was also perpetual in the garage below,
punctuated only by bare bulbs hung close

over the engines. An oily grime coated
the walls, and a decade of calendars promoted

stock-car drivers, women in dated swimsuits,
even their bodies out of fashion. Radio distorted

there; cigarette smoke moaned, the pedal steel
conceding to that place a greater, echoing

sorrow. So, lame, forgotten prank, she remained,
back turned forever to the dark storage

behind her, gaze leveled just above
anyone's who could have looked up

to mistake in the cast of her face fresh longing—
her expression still reluctant figure for it.


Claudia Emerson, Figure Studies

Tear It Down

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

Jack Gilbert

One Month Later

I am filled with a thousand butterflies that carry me to him.