USA

bbates+@pitt.edu

In the Napa Valley, Writing

A curve of road swells the car
down slick tarmac to the gravel drive

to the missions scalloped bib of red tile
the hung jug of its bell

to the click of gravel under the oxcart
dust settling on the hen house

Inside, the incessant scratching
the unhatched eggs

Outside, the flowering quince flirts
with white handkerchief at a still-lit moon

Figs pop their skins, leak syrup on ground
Ants move in the underbrush

These words on a page
like silt at the bottom of a cistern

The only song
is a clatter of bucket in the well.

My Sister Weeds My Garden

Why should we punish ourselves with scorn
as if to have a large ass were worse than
being greedy or mean? Marge Piercy


Pale as honeysuckle from the surgeon's saw, I watch
while she culls my garden for cocklebur, thistle and ragweed,
cropping the hollyhocks for seed, crumbling redmums across the soil.

Oaky firm, she's planted herself, feet rooted to her shoes,
daring the hill to send her slipping
on chickweed meshed between the rowdy phlox.

A colossus in my tiny garden, her arms are mills
sending a torrent of weeds to the four corners.
Her haunches move as pistons on a body she hates.

She wants to be snipped into thin blades
with the hard edges of shears she grips,
whittled into a small peg to hold a man's coat.

Anything but a plug of hips or knees like trees,
she says before the mirror when we are dressing.
A Helen launching a thousand arrested stares

of men whose bored faces shift from cording wood,
she heeds the call of my simple garden, so entrenched in duty
that only Paris could steal her from her chore.

Publication Credit: New Zoo Poetry Review

 

© All Copyright, Marilyn Bates.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.