Ballast, poetry by Linda Aldrich by Deerbrook Editions

Ballast P OEM S

Linda Aldrich

deer br o ok edi t ions

p ublis hed by Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions

for David

Table of Contents

In the Well of a Wave off Kanagawa

i. Seven Scenes from a Single Life, 1985

Red Removed 17 Buried Deep 18 Nothing Else 19 Prayer before the Gallows 21 Helix 22 ii. 25 Properties of Fracture 29 Chicken Scratch 30 The Turning 31 The Final Appeal 32 Wherewithal 33 To My Rumored Other Sister (whispered sister) 34 Penmanship 36 iii. 37 Edith Ginn Capt. Thomas Ginn Thomas and Edith Sonnet for Winter Sky by Will Barnet February Again

41 42 43 45 46

iv. 47 Beveled 51 Antigone Buries Polynices 52 Blueberries 53 Composure 54 Hereafter 55 Par Avion 56 Bells, Bells 57

v. 59 Seeds 63 Mother Gone, Notes in the Back Box 64 House Tour 67 Getting Back before Dark 68 Resolve 69 recon 70 Regret 71 Lost-Wax 72 vi. 73 The Disappearance of Mademoiselle The Mime Dream of the Green Bench To Mother on the Anniversary of Your Death Notes from the Library Lecture 46. Biblio in the Age before Recrimination

77 78 79 80 81 83

vii. 85 To My Students Who Danced 89 Cameo 90 And Then It Comes 91 Graveside, Colorado 93 Last Poem with a Train in It 94 Watercolors 96 End of Summer 97 Acknowledgements 99 About the Author 101

Ballast

In the Well of a Wave off Kanagawa

Hokusai, 1830

In the same boat with Hokusai, I watch other boats, slender arcs of yellow moon, struggle in the dark water, ride the back of a wet dragon that roils and rises mightily over them, all froth and disruption, a tower about to collapse. This is the day they will die. This the moment before it happens, before they jump through small windows of time. They are facing away, pulling hard on the oars, hoping to slide up one side, down the other, as though theirs is just any row of eyes going someplace, their oblivious heads lined up, thinking of those they left on shore? But look, they’re already dead and don’t know it. Hokusai has filled their sockets with black ink, their mouths fall open. He looks past them to Mt. Fuji, and the mountain looks back at him, cloaked in white, impassive, unmoved, like a line of rope thrown to us. Our boat steadies, holds taut. If Hokusai decides to jump, I will take his hand.

Seven Scenes from a Single Life, 1985 i. At the Berkeley Psychic Institute, seven students and one teacher watched the air around my head to see what might appear about past lives and contracts I had hidden from my consciousness regarding children. A boy and a girl, they finally said, will come to you according to a pledge you made one day before this incarnation, but if circumstances aren’t right for them to come, they understand and let you go completely. They know San Francisco’s not a mecca for straight men, and then, there’s the matter of your acting career, how paying the rent is a daily fear.

i. At the Berkeley Psychic Institute, seven students and one teacher watched the air around my head to see what might appear about past lives and contracts I had hidden from my consciousness regarding children. A boy and a girl, they finally said, will come to you according to a pledge you made one day before this incarnation, but if circumstances aren’t right for them to come, they understand and let you go completely. They know San Francisco’s not a mecca for straight men, and then, there’s the matter of your acting career, how paying the rent is a daily fear.

Red Removed

The sharp-shinned hawk got the cardinal yesterday— so many tiny feathers, each tip dipped in vermilion. But the greater part of him, the bright pumping heart I saw sing from the maple, is nowhere to be found. No overstatement to say he got me through winter, his unabashed presence at my feeder, his color pulsing against darkness. One night, I chased the owl away from him: running, waving my arms, the snow lying in drifts behind my eyes, my legs spindly from cold. Each day I could find his flame branded into the brittle black of woods, an ember longing for spring and almost there, his song more voluptuous, his balance in the tallest tree, more reaching and reckless. I cheered for him, my bold, bright bird: our coming season of fulfillment. Now this leeching absence, this handful of down.

Buried Deep

Six months before her banishment, Mary Dyer gave birth to a stillborn; unearthed by Puritan magistrates, the baby was used as proof of heresy, 1637. They say the baby had not legs or arms but a horned face (because no round head) and sharp talons for toes, indeed all ugliness, and for the sins of her mother was born dead and buried with haste in a blanket, the lantern’s circle the only mark, and that the midwife, Mary’s one friend, whispered a small prayer into what was not an ear. The Elder admonished silence, lest all women be encouraged in their lust, lest evil hear its name and grow among them. She named the baby Anne, after the one who whispered and later showed her where the baby lay and sprinkled there some seeds of featherfew. In the child’s monstrosity, she never believed, or in any kind of sin brought manifest to children. Of her loss, she could not speak and found herself put straight to work as remedy, but how she cried to gather eggs from under the hen’s warm breast, reaching into that soft dawn, as though to find a tiny hand and draw it close again. 18

Nothing Else

Mary Dyer, Quaker, was hanged for heresy, Massachusetts Bay Colony, June 1, 1660. It is what it is, a dangling of roots exposed to air, a play thing for a village, a doll separated from its head, not a smooth, slow pull, but a yank, her own weight a problem, coarse drubbing and drumming and the village foaming for a broken thing, an ungodly act. Nothing to turn this into. Not the slip of a robe over her head, not a necklace clasp and her sister’s smooth hands, these gloved man’s hands, deer hide hands so sure of themselves, this place of certainty and so much hunting, skinning, bleeding out, and ever the lifting up and always the bringing down, and on the bowed heads of the lambs, a righteous clubbing, the ground thick with heretics. Nothing to turn this into. Not a wide braid of hair, the heavy rope she will wear, not the measure of her growing years and the many careful brushings, her mother pulling her back with each stroke (oh where is her mother?) gentle tether. Not gentle what they do, and better a woman to watch die, they believe, than another pair 19

of breeches and an ill-washed shirt. Better the layers of petticoats and her wetting herself, legs a spasm of whiteness, her vile fecundity. Let her quake, they will say. Let her tongue grow numb with prayer.

Prayer before the Gallows

June 1, 1660

She imagines herself in flight, perhaps a white owl finding its way through the dark to settle on the brims of the black hats soon to walk home, heavy with her perched and galling weight. But she would rather be the tall, gray bird found tangled in the ship’s rigging, how they took it out gently and built a wooden cage to mend its wings, fed it hand by hand small fish, long neck fluttering, a narrow stream of fish swimming to the lake of the bird’s belly, and for the ship, an omen of good fortune.

Helix

(on learning Mary Dyer was my 12th great-grandmother) Hidden staircase, twisted ribbon suspended in the secret dark of marrow, random bones thrown down, replicating myself, self I am Escher nightmare of not belonging, endless curl of stairs going up and down (motherless daughters are not motherless, but lost) motherlost forged one night joyous or forgettable, I was determined: hazel eyes, widow’s peak, tipped pelvis the sin of standing out, gifts wrapped tight to my chest, breasts not growing, bound as blight my sexual self my art a sign of strange turnings a spine turning on itself augur of double-bind, alleles of shame carried behind locked doors, we cried, not letting ourselves have too much, never a full sob, women who wintered with dying geraniums generations taking whatever was handed us, ingratiated with words that flew to the next bush, fell like frozen birds caught in the snare

rabbit girls, we drew tight hives of circles around our witch, spun her until she buzzed and spit, her dizzying power, our terrified game of tiptoe and chase may I, may I but now we cannot play, left limp, de-limbed in the woods: muted mitochondrial, mouths taped shut noose, nodus, noeud, knot, garotte, slipknot, hangman’s halter at the end of 13 coils, you dropped 13 generations, came breakneck speed of snapping, your breath on my back bone of my bone, I meet you, cut the rope. Not for naught.

ii. Yes, paying the rent was a daily fear, even in the Mission District, so I had three part-time jobs, and one was giving out free cigarettes in Union Square, and one nearly got me fired for stealing a stapler from the mailroom at Bechtel—an evil giant known for its corruption, so I felt defiant and judged myself the lesser transgressor. Desperate times required desperate measures, and Jean Valjean stole bread to feed his sister’s children, right? This pleased my mind a bit, but I knew better: women compensate by stealing, they say, when perfect love doesn’t come their way.

Properties of Fracture

To break off edges of ice with my foot hastened spring—the more cracked loose from the continent of hard, the better I felt, the quicker my release from rubber boots and leggings, where my white asparagus body lay inside a starched dress and prickly petticoat, stuffed into snow pants, jacket, scarf: a thick, zipped package making its way to third grade for the love of Miss Carson and her many colorful shoes, for the perfection of her cursive s’s cresting on the idea of beach, but mostly for her rocks and minerals on the long table covered with butcher paper— village of density and striation, igneous and metamorphic, petrified wood, slippery soapstone, garnets tumbled from sediment, and in a cup, obsidian tears shot from fire. When spring came, I dug up drab stones like dirty potatoes from under the swings, smashed them to brightness with my father’s hammer, and put them on her desk before the bell. After the pledge of allegiance, after she took attendance, finally, finally, “Who brought me this lovely quartz? And mica! Class, did you know people used to make windows from mica? Are these from you?” she said, smiling her wide way into me, and she would never know how my dense universe fractured into whorls of light, pumices of moon. Geodes I would come to know later, how summer’s embers bed down inside us.

Chicken Scratch

Wallpapered outhouse ravenous woodstove cooking heating armloads of wood from barn to leaning kitchen grandmother’s back to us kneading rolling things out for breakfast dinner next week some nights so cold glasses of water freeze by the beds under blankets we wait for lids to lift wood to go in lids to slide back some days chicken feet to play with after the head comes off pulling tendons makes claws open and close can grab my sister’s nose no car no going anywhere except walking to town to the store with the deep porch and the wide boards grandfather’s hand like bark paced to slowness he’s 80 I’m 8 shuffling through the store picking up sugar flour salt tobacco for his pipe things not from the garden I look at the penny candy but know better Mr. Kiernan says how’re you doing today Jim how’s Kate I hear the grandchildren are visiting is this Martha’s girl how can that be she’s so tall out comes the credit book grandfather signs a shaky X to my eyes a dead bug stretched flat wrong answer on the test big kiss from no one I say why don’t you write your name easier this way he says Mr. Kiernan doesn’t say Mother says I won’t be able to sit down for a week if I talk about it again newspapers have pictures that’s why he likes looking at the paper every morning pouring coffee into a saucer to cool it down I better grow up get off my high horse I’m drawing a map of the farm for my sister and me I put an X near the tree struck by lightning come spring we’ll dig for treasure lightning strikes where there is gold

Acknowledgments Many thanks to the editors of the publications listed below, in which the following poems first appeared, some in earlier versions. Aims Literary Journal: “Lost Wax” Balancing Act II, Littoral Press: “The Turning,” “Last Poem with a Train in It,” and “Wherewithal” Hole in the Head Review: “Antigone Buries Polynices,” and “To My Rumored Other Sister (whispered sister)” Ilanot Review: “The Disappearance of Mademoiselle” and “Penmanship” Maine Public Radio, Poems from Here, Stuart Kestenbaum, Maine State Poet Laureate: “The Final Appeal,” “Bells, Bells,” and “To Mother on the Anniversary of Your Death” Off the Coast: “House Tour” and “46. Biblio, in the Age before Recrimination” Poet Lore: “Buried Deep” and “Nothing Else” Portland Press Herald, Deep Water, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc and Megan Grumbling, eds. “Cameo,” “Hereafter,” and “Notes from the Library Lecture” Portland Press Herald, “…Poet Laureate for City That Gave the World Longfellow”: “Watercolors” Solstice Literary Magazine: “Scenes from a Single Life” The Best of Write Action #2: The Tenth Anniversary Anthology: “Red Removed” The Café Review: “End of Summer” and “Properties of Fracture” The Maine Arts Journal: The UMVA Quarterly: “In the Well of a Wave off Kanagawa” and “The Mime”

I thank my faithful Portland writing group poets for their help with many of these poems. I would also thank Marcia F. Brown, Sawnie Morris, Veronica Patterson, and Betsy Sholl for their close scrutiny of an earlier version of this manuscript and the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference with Joan Houlihan for further inspiration. Thank you to Jeffrey Haste for designing and publishing this book with such artistry and to Lillie Morris for the use of her beautiful painting “Balancing Act II” for my cover. I am grateful for the abiding love of my husband, David Miller, who is always the first to hear my awkward new drafts with unending patience and encouragement. Many thanks to the Portland Public Library for providing a home for the Portland Poet Laureate Program. I am happy to have had the honor to serve in that role for the city I love.

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About the Author Linda Aldrich currently serves as Portland, Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate and has published two previous collections of poetry, Foothold (2008) and March and Mad Women (2012). She received an MFA from Vermont College and has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She was recently awarded a Hewnoaks residency fellowship. Her poem “Woman without Arms” won the Emily Dickinson Award from Universities West Press. Before becoming a poet, Linda was the director of the Young Conservatory and a member of the repertory at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and later was Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado. More recently, Linda has taught English and writing classes at Keene State College and Southern Maine Community College. As Portland’s Poet Laureate, Linda founded the Leaf of Voices reading series at the Portland Public Library and has given readings and writing workshops around the state. She also co-hosts the Local Buzz reading series at the Thomas Memorial Library in Cape Elizabeth. She lives in Portland with her husband, David Miller, and their exceptional dog Simba.

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