Poetry Magazine, Featured Poet: Jennifer Lagier, February 2001

Poetry Magazine

Jennifer Lagier

USA

    Jennifer Lagier is a member of the Italian American Writers Association, Robinson Jeffers Association and the National Writers Union, Local 7. She earned an M.A. in English at California State University, Stanislaus, and an M.L.I.S. in Library and Information Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been published in online 'ezines as well as anthologies and journals throughout the United States and Italy, most recently in Boomer Girls (University of Iowa Press) and New to North America: Writings by U.S. Immigrants, Their Children and Grandchildren (Burning Bush Publications).
    Her first book, Where We Grew Up, was published in 1999 by Small Poetry Press. Her second book, Second-Class Citizen, was published in 2000 as part of the Voices in Italian Americana Folio Series published by Bordighera, Inc.
    Jennifer is a full-time instructor at Hartnell College and an adjunct faculty member at California State University, Monterey Bay. She also represents Ward One on the Board of the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District.

Day of the Dead

Drizzle whispers tales
of coming winter
over mummified corn,
skeletal fields.

All morning, my telephone
repeats malicious rumors,
remaining weeks,
malignancy.

Dark hills
merge with darker storms
I hope to evade.

Tonight restless ghosts will rise,
haunt our dreams
as we celebrate
All Hallow's Eve.

I imagine the coming knife,
empty what was whole,
scrape pumpkin pulp,
cut away every seed.

Where We Grew Up

The walls had hooks,
wire barbs reaching from the stucco
to rip a child's skin.
From time to time,
fireballs would spin
around the asphalt kitchen floor
and drain pipes gave off an odd glow
beneath the yellow tiled sink.

I remember the hot breath
of some invisible presence
standing between my sister and me
alone and afraid
in our maple twin beds.
Dad whimpered in his sleep;
mother turned and turned,
grinding her teeth in frustrated anger.

Sometimes on especially hot summer evenings
we could hear the distant cries
of injured late shift cannery workers
as they tried pulling their crushed limbs
from relentless moving cogs
or assembly line belts.

The rising delta wind brought
their moaning pleas into stifling rooms
where we wept our way through bad dreams,
windows open as wide as they would go.
Every sound carried.

Communion of Clumsy Sisters,
Other Stumbling Souls

"I am hungry and you give me
a dictionary to decipher." -- Anne Sexton

I think of Eve
as she takes the first bite,
wipes seductive juice
from her soft, scarlet mouth.
Did she feel the worm stirring
in her suddenly-knotted stomach,
recognize guilt
with knowledge-tuned eyes?

Persephone's fatal hunger
opened a bleeding crack
in the blushing pomegranate's
tawny hide.
She forfeited sunlight,
sentenced to frigid months
among the dead,
a sterile kingdom of hell.

The table is set;
my lush, imagined feast,
a forbidden mirage.
I kneel at appetite's altar,
open my mouth,
begin the hard fall.

Last Supper

While other women
tore lettuce and arranged china,
I was in our hosts' bedroom,
undressing with your older brother.

Outside the closed door,
you speared smoked oysters,
jangled ice cubes, smoked,
drank your third V.O. and water.

The lasagna I brought
got too hot, burnt cheese
and singed tomato sauce
pouring smoke from the oven.

After, I paced
alone in the garden,
knew in a year I'd be gone,
this catastrophe over.

For the last time, we sat
together at the family table.
Your father lifted his wineglass;
you nervously touched me.

I looked into your Lazarus eyes
and delivered the final defiant kiss,
resurrected myself
with an act of betrayal.

Making the Leap

"I love the Fall, the way
we are eased out of Paradise gradually."-- Jane McVeigh

You bend, touch your lips to mine.
Common sense cracks; my tidy world starts to shake.

You are every color I have never seen, coolness
spilling onto desert where a shriveled heart pants.

Within hungry dreams, the cold slither
of naked realization flickers.

Clear-eyed, I ignore all warnings,
seek the abyss.

There is nothing original about this stumble.
We burn, break our orbits, collide until quenched.

We are children, seduced by hypnotic fruit,
craving and remade from our innocent state.

On Hold

Tonight I hang above sidewalks,
a wriggling Pinocchio puppet,
firmly nailed by the pants,
solid brick at my back,
frantic hands and feet
waving.

Friends and family pass,
hear me cry for help,
stop and scold me for bitching.
What's your complaint? they chide.
Of course you've been crucified
but aren't you still moving?

Guilt impedes any act of love
I have committed,
impales desire as it unfolds
distorts but never kills,
missing all major organs.

At dawn, the
gray alarm
takes me down,
secret passion
still pending.