Violet Wilson

Some children,
in the night,
call to their parents
to protect them from
the monster in the closet.

Some children,
in the night,
open the closet door
and hope the monster inside
will protect them.

The first draft of this was written on January 8, 1997. It is more hopeful than I was at the time, but as hopeful as I desperately needed to be.

-----

Shine


I was pure polished copper,
deftly etched to show each strand of hair,
each lash,
each line on each palm.
My reason for being was
to gleam in sunlight like laughter made visible,
to glow in moonlight like a dream of the coming dawn.
I brought joy always,
I thought,
never knew of such a thing as
jealousy
until her majesty's guards
stole me from the sun
and the sun from me.

I knew my friends would come
as soon as the queen was dead.
I taught myself to lose count of the days;
it was easy when each was the same.
On the night of the mourning bells,
the crowbar easily broke
the mass of rust that used to be a lock,
and I ascended the stone stairs without aid
toward a blinding beam of light
that came from a crescent moon.

Oh, but what the sunrise showed —
as if the darkness had been
a thing with mass, heavier than air,
that settled like dew on my skin,
now black and green mottled
like a charred tree fallen
and covered with moss and death.

But tarnish isn't just a covering,
dirt from outside to be washed away —
no, those are my pure atoms,
joined now to something else
but still made of me.
I held on to all of it for weeks,
but there's no way to separate the two.

We tried to rub me clean,
but it would have taken years,
and it was in every crevice,
each etched hair, each garment fold.
I would have to bathe in an ocean
as pure as I had been before.
They came with me to the shore that night,
but I waded into the vinegar waves alone.

Blinded by tears, suffocating,
nerves inflamed as my skin dissolved,
pulsing blood on fire, but
I held my breath and bore the burn
until there was nothing left
I needed to lose.

I pulled myself from this stinging sea,
stepped into the moonlight,
and saw that I was not what I had been:
once-well-defined lines
were now blurred by the absence
of what once was there.
I will never regain it.

But as they rubbed me dry with
clean white flannel, their fingers
brushed my skin and halted,
hands transfixed by memory.
I am changed, they said, but still
the one they loved always.
As the tide receded at dawn,
I dared seek my reflection
in a still, sandy pool.

The sharp creases of my gown are gone,
but not the drape and line;
each delicate hair has disappeared,
but still the braids remain.
There is nothing here I do not want,
nothing I need that I don't now hold.
It's a subtler luster than before,
but in this seashore sunrise,
still,
still I shine.

Both of these were originally written in 1999 at the latest. The first was inspired by news reports from the chaos going on at the time in Eastern Europe. The second was inspired by a documentary on The Learning Channel — back when TLC had educational value — about the planned flooding in China for the Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project, and some of the sites that would be underwater, or would become islands. Anyway, there was a temple, Buddhist? Confucian? The details are fuzzy, so I'll just say, the poem is based loosely on real events.

-------

Across the border

I watched a woman spit in a soldier's right eye
just before he put a bullet through her face.

From the cover of the briars by the side of the road
I saw another girl weep and plead and finally nod,
agreeing to the toll this bridge troll would take.
Then once his snaps were undone she recanted;
it took four aides to pin her limbs against a tree
while payment was rendered. Even I could see
he would have to kill her for going back on her word.
Still, he kept his promise: he led her over the river
to freedom before his knife opened her throat.

I make my decision and make my way to the bridge.
I brace myself against the milestone and lift my skirts
and gaze past his scarred ear at that other shore.
That tree: I will walk across this bridge and
past her throatless body and stand beneath that elm
and I will wash the blood from my thighs in the river.
I will leave the blood here at the border,
and I will never speak of it or soldiers or martyrs again.


-------



By the river

Ancient wise words
inscribed in slow calligraphy on the long tiles of the temple walls.
There was no need for stained glass or gilt altars,
just the soft curves and sure lines left by men who knew
what matters is the message,
who died at peace, sure that the message would last the centuries.

They could not see
the soldiers coming now across the bridge to the stairs in the cliff,
following the orders of a leader afraid of anything so calm
that it might slow the white-water river surging through him until
he could hear his own words
and know that his message would not survive on the stone above his forgotten grave.

But priests and pupils
hear the soldiers' march and see the sure words blur through their tears.
They kneel beneath the tiles with faces lifted as if the words could flow
like water from the walls to fill them, but each mark is solid and true,
strong as the soldiers' steps
as they march up the steps to break what a thousand years hadn't touched.

A bowl of ink
sits on the floor; they were to have practiced their own calligraphy
with slim brushes on the parchment laid out at their feet.
The young boy stands and struggles to take down a tile as tall as he,
then turn its back to him,
dips his brush, and uses his beautiful strokes to write the lies

of the soldiers' leader,
words he was ashamed to have even heard, had never dreamed he would write.
The ink-stained hands of his mentor lift the stone to its place,
then move to take the others down while each student dips his own pen.
They have inscribed nightmares
on every tile and rehung them backwards by the time the soldiers arrive.

Each soldier knows
what is written on the true faces of the stones, but not one dares
to destroy anything that holds the writings of his general and god.
They kneel as they have been taught and recite the words they see,
then rise and step back
through the door to begin the twilight march down the cliffside.

Decades will pass,
and the young boy will learn, and teach, and grow stooped with age,
and with time spent bent over parchment and pupils, and friends' graves.
The general will die in exile, and the teacher will scrub faded ink
from the back of each stone,
turn each tile and lift it into place until he is exhausted.

But another set of wrinkled hands
will lift the last piece, and when the teacher turns he will see a soldier
who has climbed this mountain before. The soldier will kneel
as he was taught by his own mentor before he heard of his general.
He will leave his uniform shirt by the ink-stained bowl,
he will take the student's shift offered by the teacher,
and for the first time in decades, a calligrapher's brush
will call his fingers home.

I pretty much never do silly-homage poetry, but on the way home last night, shivering in 25 degrees after a high in the 50s the day before, the line "Beware the Ides of March, my son" popped into my head.  Today during my lunch break and my homeward commute, I worked out the rest.

-----

Middle-Marchy
(with no apologies to Lewis Carroll)

'Twas sprinter, and the grimy roads
Did run with water from the rain;
All slushy were the sidewalk curbs,
And the slurry clogged the drains.

"Beware the Ides of March, my child
The winds that bite, the boughs that crack!
Beware the fickle weather mild:
It will change in half a snap!"

She put her YakTrax on her boots;
Already were the sidewalks fraught—
No resting by the maple tree,
The temperature was Aught.

And as she trudged the gritty road,
Above, the looming sky of grey
Let loose its load of stinging snow,
Wind shrieking as it came!

One, two! One, two! Her boots strode through,
The YakTrax going clicker-clack!
Through the door, and home once more,
And met by hungry cats.

"Oh hast thou come, prehensile thumbs?
Spoon the tuna on our plates!
Serve our kibble without quibble,
Lest hunger make us faint!"

'Twas sprinter, and the grimy roads
Did run with water from the rain;
All slushy were the sidewalk curbs,
And the slurry clogged the drains.

-----

The original, for comparison:

Jaberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Meh, this one doesn't really work for me. The thing is, I think about it all the time, when I see wildflowers growing in places where no self-respecting plant should grow. I guess the poem is like a 70s pop-song earworm; I'm embarrassed to find myself reciting it, but I can't get it out of my head. Maybe some day I'll figure out how to remix it into something more satisfying, but for now, it's what I've got.

The email file says I sent it February 13, 1996, 3:12 a.m.

-----

City weeds

We grow
in the cracks of the sidewalk;
we come up
between the railroad rails.
Through the mortar
in the brick wall:
look anywhere,
we'll be there.

We dance in our own glory,
enthralled by our perfection.
Winds of winter
never hurt us.
Your cold stares
never hurt us.

You pull us
from between your roses;
you throw us
into the street.
We're crushed
by the wheels of a taxi,
seeds strewn
two blocks away.

You think that we are ugly,
that our chaos undermines you.
You're afraid
of our power,
our unassuming,
boundless power.

In the spring,
our quickened bodies
thrust our flowers
at the sky.
A slip of sun
will serve our purpose,
all we need
to survive.

Even you would find us stunning
if you saw us at this moment,
if you weren't
too busy running,
if you weren't
too busy planning

to destroy us
while we simply grow.

I wrote this yesterday on the way to the penultimate shrink session, finishing in the waiting room because I was way early. I feel compelled to critique it here, to say what parts I'm not happy about, what parts feel flat. But one thing I learned from my college writing classes (thank you, Patricia Powell) is that if you tell someone what you see, they will see it whether it's there or not. So I'll shut up. But I welcome useful criticism, so feel free to comment on which line annoys you most.

( first draft below the cut... )