you asked me why I slept with men for all those years
A girl gets into a car. A man
promises to take her
to see deer, promises
babies this time of year.
The girl has never seen
deer. In a movie, she saw
a unicorn turn into a woman,
hair all the way to her ankles.
The girl watches fawns
nudged along, mist rising
from their curving necks, quiet
except for the fence creaking
as he leans into her. I can make
what happens next different.
I can make the man
merciful. I can make the girl
run, climb the fence, head
for the trees. I can make
the deer fold her into them
like the pages of a book. I can make
this a field trip, a bus of girls
on a nature walk. She dawdles,
falling behind with her friend.
They are bookish, everyone calls
them weird. Together, they draw
cushions of moss, the rippled lines
of oak. In the hush of ferns, the girl
takes her friend’s hand. See, I can make
her learn about love this way.
Two Interiors, or How I Came to Love Art History
My whole life, I’ve been paying a debt, what I owed
for being owned that summer in Western Pennsylvania.
I needed to pay back my parents for their terror, my mother
begging the Coast Guard to drain the lake. I owe her
for her sorrow, too, when I was found. A fever made
the man throw me back, sick and suddenly little
again. How do you repay a fever? Or a bear
on a bottle of children’s Tylenol. I tried, was good
studious, each A an entry in the ledger of what I owed
the volunteer fire department that searched, the rip
in the paper covering the windows that let me see
there were trees still and weather, the nurse the too-young
doctor handed the needle too. Time makes owing
ownership though it happened without me noticing.
Instead I was in a museum remembering power
skews left in conventional portraits with scepters
or masses of cloth set against an ethereal crown or wife
standing slightly to the right while this portrait is awash
in shifting greys and whites of disheveled sheets, subjects
implied by the two women’s names in the title. Instead
I was thinking about light, how it holds a figure
like a lover even when they are no longer in the frame.
the archive is all in present tense
Librarians turn slender shadows in the afternoon light
gathering materials along the ledge. Three men exit
a Jeep on a hill side, doors slam in unison. Two orphans
walk into a dance for soldiers. Wind winters down
from the north. Concertina wire unspools
like fat loops of cursive, I’ve always wanted
a boyfriend like you language making it impossible
for her to love me back, though no one could love
me now, preoccupied as I am by war, paging
arrest records, letters, diaries, clippings
in their acid-free envelops. I sort through tea lights,
radio crackles, paper fortune tellers predicting the man
who will marry you, what house he will buy
for you, paper turning to snow in her hands
folding, unfolding.
After the librarians bring
the snow I check if they are watching, then touch the jars,
feel the cold of silence, of waiting. The men pass
concertina wire hand-to-hand as trucks convey
people up the mountain. One orphan creases
his hat, the other smooths her pleats, practices
American slang, a letter turns over to an empty
verso, a blank my want tumbles into. The archive is full
of blanks. So many archivists come before dawn
to catalog them and are still behind.
Librarians bring everything I write on a call slip
without judgement or warning. I write en masse.
I write war bride, I write amnesty, I write savagery
is the natural condition of the human race, I write
I can’t keep my men from the refugee women.
I page dirt from the camp floor, blankets
and hunger, sickness and sorrow. I could page
his service records or the stories he told
about how his commanders liked him so much, they kept
me from all that. I could page the women’s voices
in their velvet bags bound with string. The archive is full
of string, full of wire and casings and food stamp books
and adoption records and wills and transfer requests.
The archive is full of tanks and spears and muskets
and porcelain and dollars and steamboats and axes
and folly and fall. Cataloged, so I can page it all.
A girl gets into a car. A man
promises to take her
to see deer, promises
babies this time of year.
The girl has never seen
deer. In a movie, she saw
a unicorn turn into a woman,
hair all the way to her ankles.
The girl watches fawns
nudged along, mist rising
from their curving necks, quiet
except for the fence creaking
as he leans into her. I can make
what happens next different.
I can make the man
merciful. I can make the girl
run, climb the fence, head
for the trees. I can make
the deer fold her into them
like the pages of a book. I can make
this a field trip, a bus of girls
on a nature walk. She dawdles,
falling behind with her friend.
They are bookish, everyone calls
them weird. Together, they draw
cushions of moss, the rippled lines
of oak. In the hush of ferns, the girl
takes her friend’s hand. See, I can make
her learn about love this way.
Two Interiors, or How I Came to Love Art History
My whole life, I’ve been paying a debt, what I owed
for being owned that summer in Western Pennsylvania.
I needed to pay back my parents for their terror, my mother
begging the Coast Guard to drain the lake. I owe her
for her sorrow, too, when I was found. A fever made
the man throw me back, sick and suddenly little
again. How do you repay a fever? Or a bear
on a bottle of children’s Tylenol. I tried, was good
studious, each A an entry in the ledger of what I owed
the volunteer fire department that searched, the rip
in the paper covering the windows that let me see
there were trees still and weather, the nurse the too-young
doctor handed the needle too. Time makes owing
ownership though it happened without me noticing.
Instead I was in a museum remembering power
skews left in conventional portraits with scepters
or masses of cloth set against an ethereal crown or wife
standing slightly to the right while this portrait is awash
in shifting greys and whites of disheveled sheets, subjects
implied by the two women’s names in the title. Instead
I was thinking about light, how it holds a figure
like a lover even when they are no longer in the frame.
the archive is all in present tense
Librarians turn slender shadows in the afternoon light
gathering materials along the ledge. Three men exit
a Jeep on a hill side, doors slam in unison. Two orphans
walk into a dance for soldiers. Wind winters down
from the north. Concertina wire unspools
like fat loops of cursive, I’ve always wanted
a boyfriend like you language making it impossible
for her to love me back, though no one could love
me now, preoccupied as I am by war, paging
arrest records, letters, diaries, clippings
in their acid-free envelops. I sort through tea lights,
radio crackles, paper fortune tellers predicting the man
who will marry you, what house he will buy
for you, paper turning to snow in her hands
folding, unfolding.
After the librarians bring
the snow I check if they are watching, then touch the jars,
feel the cold of silence, of waiting. The men pass
concertina wire hand-to-hand as trucks convey
people up the mountain. One orphan creases
his hat, the other smooths her pleats, practices
American slang, a letter turns over to an empty
verso, a blank my want tumbles into. The archive is full
of blanks. So many archivists come before dawn
to catalog them and are still behind.
Librarians bring everything I write on a call slip
without judgement or warning. I write en masse.
I write war bride, I write amnesty, I write savagery
is the natural condition of the human race, I write
I can’t keep my men from the refugee women.
I page dirt from the camp floor, blankets
and hunger, sickness and sorrow. I could page
his service records or the stories he told
about how his commanders liked him so much, they kept
me from all that. I could page the women’s voices
in their velvet bags bound with string. The archive is full
of string, full of wire and casings and food stamp books
and adoption records and wills and transfer requests.
The archive is full of tanks and spears and muskets
and porcelain and dollars and steamboats and axes
and folly and fall. Cataloged, so I can page it all.
