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WRITING WELL Poetry by Renee Norman, 1999 Between Wor(l)ds in book time between wor(l)ds books stacked like steps around the architecture of her rented room Martha does not sleep snacks on sentences all night long gone is the flat line drawing of her day the structure of the office the symmetry of a prim supervisor the tailored suits on cool skin in her nylon slip she climbs and climbs the words a stairway to her reformation amazed at first light of morning to be identical she has not moved at all
Martha's father:
the boy-man damaged by war & the Englishman who emigrated to Southern Rhodesia with a Queen Anne chair
he is a heat sensor who reflects Martha's change in temperature or a veil that is drawn to distance confrontation
he knows the restlessness in her but did not question her marriage did not pass judgement either when she left the child
deep in a drug-induced sleep he mutters wisdom awake he offers nightmares
fingers that accuse stakes of the fallen walls around his body his mind's grasp of the horror he brings home to her
when she reads the first documented accounts of Hitler's atrocities it is her father's ribcage she envisions every bone of Adam another finger pointing
Assignation
he enters Martha as he might a room where the light is blinding his eyes
in the tub he draws circles on her skin with the soap laughing he tells her on his way to meet her approached and propositioned "i said i already have a lady"
he pushes small beds together holds Martha where the space between them forms a crevice a hard ridge of earth she feels beneath her back overpowering his tender hold
in this scented sinkhole talking the pronoun I rings in her ears
it is then she knows the future her skin round with dried white foam
Dream Moments
Martha felt his absence keenly when next day the meeting over he looked at her stubborn, unhappy defiant a kind of unperceptive dullness in his eyes missed moments that's what she feared most from these encounters
in her dream his kiss so fierce grabbed the unresolved feeling between them crushed it in the physical act of embrace
today her arms empty like a baby torn from a loving grip he stood there only a dream away
Through the Crib Bars
I. her pink cheeks leak through the crib bars asleep at last as if she hadn't been screaming that colicky high-pitched wail only moments ago
shadows of the rails fall down across her small back with weightless rods that imprison her to Martha's care for an instant Martha sees the stripes as lashes from a whip she shakes the image off with loathing
afraid to touch the soft skin for fear she'll wake and start the cycle again too soon she dreams the baby is pliant molded to her ribs like putty more like the babies in the books with four hour schedules and gurgles not this fierce creature hard to hold impossible to cuddle
II. she calls the baby's name through the leafy openings in the hedge a kind of lament whispered in the floral underworld but the baby doesn't respond already she has forgotten Martha forgotten the vessel
her curls are looser now the head upright she sits unaided fist tight around a plastic toy slick from saliva Martha misses her more than she would have thought possible a pink baby from some magazine Martha feels pain that someone accomplished what she didn't
III. the rules are that she must observe from a distance (her mother makes that clear) when Martha sees the child placed on her father's sickbed daily a small body curved into her father's emaciated thigh she can smell the camphor of the medicines hovering and her mother's servitude
IV. in the photos a stranger with Martha's eyes glances back good-byes made years ago For Martha's Ears Only if she were to take shape in my room i would whisper the only two words that fit
i am not Martha not a child of war seeking solace not Martha trapped in a loveless marriage or oppressed by children's petulance yet if she rose off the pages swelling in novel possibilities i would recognize the limbs hers a composite heart transplanted where a person is most worthy of the color of her skin the cold ungentle parts of her that worded me and whisper: i understand Renee Norman |