USA

dslockward@aol.com

MISCARRIAGE

I had not come to kill them,
only to see the blue eggs in the nest.
I waited until the mother flew out,
then went with a stick to nudge them a bit—
three tiny eggs, the color of sky, speckled with white.

Something in me that summer could not bear
perfection. Something had happened
to my mother. She’d been gone a long time.
My father’s whispered words hovered like dragonflies—
miscarriage, fallopian tubes, hysterectomy.

I touched my stick to one of the shells
and pushed. I heard the pip-pip of the rupture—
then another, and another. I saw the life
in the shells—three tiny fetuses, each covered with slime,
and inside, still pulsing, a black eye like a bead.

Mrs. VanNess came out of her house shouting,
Don’t touch! She saw what I’d done
and chased me away. I was a wicked girl, she yelled.
She would tell my parents. I’d be tormented
by nightmares. I would roast in hell.

My mother rested in the shade under a tree.
My father brought her iced tea and lemon cookies
with poppy seeds. She looked like the antique doll
held behind glass at the museum, limbs rigid,
her face crazed china.

I wanted to tell her what I’d done, to climb into her lap
and confess. My father wouldn’t let me
touch her. He must have known she’d break.
I wanted to tell her I’d seen the babies
with their terrible, terrible eyes.

published in Poet Lore

THE BARREN WOMAN’S GIFT

Give me something to love, something living
in the house—a cat, she begs.
Her husband says No, cats are sneaky.
They pee in area rugs and stink
up the house.

For her birthday, he gives a facsimile
of a tabby cat, huge and stuffed with down.
Isis she names it, cradles the fluff in her lap, imagines
growth. She prepares a basket,
adds a soft pillow, a rubber mouse.

She dreams purring, then for many nights,
howling like a great baby, bereft. There, there,
she whispers, lifting it against her shoulder
and stroking the haunches.

In bed, she settles it between her
and her husband. It chews the top
of her gown, licks her face
with its rough tongue. Paws knead
her skin, the spine stiffens with pleasure,

such longing
to kill mice with her teeth. She dumps the bodies
on his side of the bed, chases him away
with her fishy breath.

  When he comes
near, she arches her back and hisses,
extends her claws, ready to pounce, dainty mouth
stuffed with feathers and wings.

published in U.S. 1 Worksheets

EATING MY WORDS

I have plucked them from my garden
and my neighbor’s too, a basketful
of syllables. Some I eat fresh from the soil,
like a rabbit raiding a lettuce patch. Delicious
dirty words—lascivious, licentious, libidinous.

Some go on windowsills to ripen
in sun. Others I put up in Mason jars
and store like nuts in a squirrel’s nest,
sustenance for the winter ahead.

I am assisted by my lover, a former librarian.
We shape inkhorn terms from raw
syllables, blend compounds with hyphens,
roll out malapropisms. We pour chilled sidereal
into long-stemmed crystal, wrap our tongues
around salacious and salubrious.

My star-flanked lover offers a slice
of pizzicato. I pass the glissando.
We eat predaciously, two athletes
of the soul, feeding our desire
to speak. Words tumble out in a stew
of confusion—bluegrass, hoodoo, bushwhack,
incubus and sucubus, bedrock, serendipity,
silly putty, tatterdemalion, violet, and lavender.

We savor each frangible, incendiary syllable,
swishing and squishing them in our mouths,
picking out plangent caught between our teeth.

Dessert, a lubricious savannah,
we garnish with ictus and nimbus.
My lover is all slipstream, I am all spindrift.
Together we are perfectly flummoxed.
No rebarbatives after this feast, only a filament
and a tumbler of smooth sprezzatura.

published in North American Review

HER DAUGHTER’S FEET

My friend Sally was obsessed
with her baby’s feet—the soft dough
of the soles, the ten pea-sized toes—
and because she knew they’d change,
she painted portraits of the feet, canvas
after canvas. Sometimes she dipped the soles
in paint and pressed them onto paper,
like a nurse making hospital footprints.

Feet walked the walls of the house—
feet in water,
  in leaves,
    feet floating in air.
Chartreuse, turquoise, burnt sienna—
everything shone—nails
painted in silver and gold, feet bejeweled
with anklets and rings, toes with streamers
of ribbons.
  And some of the feet had wings.

The year her daughter disappeared,
Sally stared at the walls, at her daughter’s feet,
stared like a tracker looking for a trail.
I thought then of the daughters of China,
their feet bound in yards of cloth, trained to walk
on the wrong bones, unable to dance
or run.

I looked again at those walls,
grown cold as stone, wished hard
for a scattering of seeds, noticed
once more the delicate brushstrokes,
the precision of wings.

published in South Dakota Review

THE STUDY OF NATURE

Every morning for thirty years you’ve kissed me,
the same kiss, one neat peck, chaste

as toast. Look through the window.
Take a lesson from the cat that visits our yard:

Hide in the bushes. Be still, every muscle poised.
Observe me as I stroll across the patio and enter

the garden, your ears raised and stiff, as if listening
to some ancient primal call, some deep-throated

growl. Catch the scent of my heated blood drifting
through leaves. Let it tickle the touch organs

of your whiskers. Size me up. Picture your mouth
stuffed. Think of the different ways

to take me. When I’ve bent over to smell a rose
or nibble a berry, unaware of your upraised fur,

the vertical lift of your tail, sneak out of the bushes,
one paw in front of the other. Go slow, glide,

as if not moving at all. Imagine me all catnip
and cream. Then pounce. Lick me

with your rough tongue. Make me pray
for mercy. Devour me down to the bone.

published in Rattle

© All Copyright, Diane Lockward.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.