Denise Duhamel

NOAH AND JOAN

It's not that I'm proud of the fact
that twenty percent of Americans believe
that Noah (of Noah's Ark) was married
to Joan of Arc.  It's true.  I'll admit it--
Americans are pretty dumb and forgetful
when it comes to history.  And they're notorious
for interpreting the Bible to suit themselves.
You don't have to tell me we can't spell anymore--
Ark or Arc,  it's all the same to us.

But think about it, just a second, time-line aside,
it's not such an awful mistake. The real Noah's Missis
was never even given a name. She was sort of milquetoasty,
a shadowy figure lugging sacks of oats up a plank.
I mean, Joan could have helped Noah build that ark
in her sensible slacks and hiking boots.  She was good with swords
and, presumably, power tools.  I think Noah and Joan
might have been a good match, visionaries
once mistaken for flood-phobic and heretic.

Never mind France wasn't France yet--
all the continents probably blended together,
one big mush.  Those Bible days would have been
good for Joan, those early times when premonitions
were common, when animals popped up
out of nowhere, when people were getting cured
left and right.  Instead of battles and prisons
and iron cages, Joan could have cruised
the Mediterranean, wherever the flood waters took that ark.

And Noah would have felt more like Dr. Doolittle,
a supportive Joan saying, "Let's not waste any time!
Hand over those boat blueprints, honey!"
All that sawing and hammering would have helped
calm her nightmares of mean kings and crowns,
a nasty futuristic place called England.
She'd convince Noah to become vegetarian.
She'd live to be much older than 19, those parakeets
and antelope leaping about her like children.

 From Two and Two, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005

from MILLE ET UN SENTIMENTS

701.    I feel amorous around angels.
702.    I feel bodacious, baiting these boy scouts.
703.    I feel cunnilingus should be part of the curriculum.
704.    I feel devastated by my dental dilemma.
705.    I feel eager to learn English.
706.    I feel fanatical about French.
707.    I feel gregarious compared to the Green Beret.
708.    I feel helpless in honkytonk bars.
709.    I feel justified in my love for julienne vegetables.
710.    I feel like the King of Kitsch.
711.    I feel a lull during leap year.
712.    I feel mean-spirited towards the minority leader.
713.    I feel neurotic, noting the nuances of newlyweds.
714.    I feel obese around Olive Oyl.
715.    I feel perturbed by your postcard.
716.    I feel like the Queen of Quirkiness.
717.    I feel the Republicans have reduced me to a rodent.
718.    I feel stupefied by your story.
719.    I feel titillated by too many tomatoes.
720.    I feel under appreciated by your underpants.
721.    I feel voracious about Verlaine.
722.    I feel winsome when it comes to window-shopping.
723.    I feel xeroxed when I see my extra-special twin.
724.    I feel a yearning for yarns about yearlings.
725.    I feel zippy around my zip drive.
726.    I feel like a yo-yo going back and forth from Yellowstone to 
the Yucatan, year after  year.
727.    I feel extra-cautious looking at my x-ray.
728.    I feel welcome in Wal-Mart.
729.    I feel virile around Vincent Van Gogh.
730.    I feel upper crust on the Upper West Side.
731.    I feel like telephoning Tel Aviv.
732.    I feel like a sorority sister in Sicily.
733.    I feel rococo in Rhode Island.
734.    I feel quaint using this Q-tip.
735.    I feel pretty poor eating this instant pudding.
736.    I feel like Oprah’s my oracle.
737.    I feel negligible in this negligee.
738.    I feel like a monster munching on this mattress.
739.    I feel luminous driving this Lexus.
740.    I feel like karate-chopping a Kennedy.
741.    I feel like jiggling my jugs.
742.    I feel independent of idiots.
743.    I feel horny when I look beyond your horn-rimmed glasses.
744.    I feel girly guest-starring in all these girly magazines.
745.    I feel like exploring my fetishes in Frederick’s of Hollywood.
746.    I feel like eating everything.
747.    I feel like divvying up my dumbbells and donating them to the 
daycare.
748.    I feel like a caricature of Captain Kangaroo.
749.    I feel bad about the beef business.
750.    I feel admirable as an apple.
751.    I feel as beautiful as a bowling pin.
752.    I feel as cordial as a cordless phone.
753.    I feel dangerous, like Detroit.
754.    I feel edible, like an egg.
755.    I feel foggy about Frost.
756.    I feel groggy listening to these Gregorian chants.
757.    I feel hexed by my hula-hoop.
758.    I feel incredibly innocent about the infidelity.
759.    I feel like a jerk in these Jordache jeans.
760.    I feel like playing the kazoo off-key.
761.    I feel loaded drinking all this lemonade.
762.    I feel mixed about the military.
763.    I feel a nervous wreck watching the nightly news.
764.    I feel open to outrage.
765.    I feel politely pissed off.
766.    I feel like Quasimodo on a quiz show.
767.    I feel resistance from ready-to-wear.
768.    I feel sultry listening to the Surgeon General.
769.    I feel turned on by tornadoes.
770.    I feel urgent about utilizing this urn.
771.    I feel like a wimp when it comes to wrestling.
772.    I feel like a xenophobe from Xanadu.
773.    I feel like yawning, listening to her yackety-yak.
774.    I feel Zen around zealots.
775.    I feel like yanking off my yarmulke.
776.    I feel like Xmas should be rated X.
777.    I feel wild about word processing.
778.    I feel voodoo vibes coming from this video game.
779.    I feel ultraconservative in this UFO.
780.    I feel trapped by Trotskyism.
781.    I feel like going stag, even though I have a spouse.
782.    I feel like the ringleader of rubber checks.
783.    I feel unlike the quintessential quipster.
784.    I feel pompous around Pulitzer Prize poets.
785.    I feel like an organ grinder listening to the opaque overture.
786.    I feel nippy in Nirvana.
787.    I feel menopausal in Maine.
788.    I feel like Lucifer in Little Rock.
789.    I feel like putting the kibosh on kiddie pools.
790.    I feel like a jackass during the jam session.
791.    I feel intense about my idol Iggy Pop.
792.    I feel humankind has lost its chutzpah.
793.    I feel grandiose sitting on the grand jury.
794.    I feel like a fuckup in another fistfight.
795.    I feel like the only eyewitness to the equinox.
796.    I feel it is my divine right to damage this doodad.
797.    I feel like the castaway of the century.
798.    I feel bored by all the brouhaha.
799.    I feel “art, an activity always available, attracts abundant 
aspirants among Americans and aliens alike.”  (Lewis Carroll)
800.    I feel able to bowl continuously until dawn.  Even as a 
girl--hey, I’m just a klutz--I’m learning more now, ogling pins 
quite robustly since timid upstarts vie for my willowy extra-young 
Zeitgeist.

 From Mille et un sentiments (Firewheel Editions, 2005)

ONE AFTERNOON WHEN BARBIE 
WANTED TO JOIN THE MILITARY

It was a crazy idea, she admits now,
but camouflage was one costume she still hadn't tried.
Barbie'd gone mod with Go-go boots during Vietnam.
Throughout Panama she was busy playing with a Frisbee
the size of a Coke bottle cap.  And while troops
were fighting in the Gulf,
she wore a gown inspired by Ivana Trump.
When Mattel told her, hell no-- she couldn't go,
Barbie borrowed GI Joe's fatigues,
safety pinning his pants' big waist
to better fit her own.
She settled in his olive tank.
But Barbie thought it was boring.
"Why don't you try running over something small?"
coaxed GI Joe, who sat naked behind the leg
of a human's living room chair.
Barbie saw imaginary bunnies
hopping through the shag carpet.
"I can't," she said.
GI Joe suggested she gun down the enemy
who was sneaking up behind her.
Barbie couldn't muster up the rage
for killing, even if it were only play.
Maybe if someone tried to take her parking space
or scratched her red Trans Am.
Maybe if someone had called her a derogatory name.
But what had this soldier from the other side done?
GI Joe, seeing their plan was a mistake,
asked her to return his clothes,
making Barbie promise not to tell anyone.
As she slipped back into her classic baby blue
one-piece swimsuit, she realized
this would be her second secret.
She couldn't tell about the time
she posed nude for Hustler.
A young photographer who lived in the house
dipped her legs in a full bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil,
then swabbed some more on her torso.
Barbie lounged on the red satin lining
of the kid's Sunday jacket. He dimmed
the lights and lit a candle
to create a glossy centerfold mood.
"Lick your lips," he kept saying,
forgetting Barbie didn't have a tongue.
She couldn't pout.  She couldn't even bite
the maraschino cherry he dangled in front of her mouth.
Luckily there was no film in his sister's camera,
so the boy's pictures never came out.
Luckily GI Joe wasn't in the real Army
or he said he would risk being court-martialed--
he wasn't supposed to lend his uniform
to anyone, especially a girl.
Just then a human hand deposited Ken from the sky.
Somewhere along the way he'd lost his sandals.
"What have you two been up to?" he asked.
Barbie didn't have the kind of eyes that could shift away
so she lost herself in the memory of a joke
made by her favorite comedian Sandra Bernhard
who said she liked her dates to be androgynous
because if she were going to be with a man
she didn't want to have to face that fact.
Barbie was grateful for Ken's plastic flatfeet
and plastic flat crotch.  No military
would ever take him, even if there were a draft.
As GI Joe bullied Ken into a headlock,
Barbie told the boys to cut it out.  She threatened
that if he kept it up, GI Joe would
never get that honorable discharge.

 From Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 

GRACE

I stared at the floor, lifting up
the black tiles from the white.  I could
do that, make flat surfaces
3-D by crossing my eyes.  I could
spell anything, even words I didn't know
the definitions of--like "botulism"
and "claustrophobic" and "thyroid".
I'd close my eyes and letters would spill
like blocks and I'd get everything right
in the spelling bee.  I'd know the exact
ages of people--41, 37, 56, 24--people
I'd never met, people who stopped by
Uncle Albert's big New Year's party
where I sat at the card table, beating
the old men at dominoes because I could see
how many dots were lying face down
so I always grabbed the ones I needed.
I understood foreign languages,
like French or Latin.  I'd hear my Aunt Gigi
or the priest and I'd translate like
a pocket dictionary.  I'd add up
three or four big numbers in a second
and a nearby adult was sure to kiss my forehead
or clap.  I'd know the punch line
to jokes I was hearing the first time
and nothing much could scare me--
not the car that hit me when I was six,
my mother and her moods,
not the few things I couldn't predict.
I understood something bigger than the hums
that filled my ears like vacuums or
air-conditioners.  I understood
if things got too bad I could die
if I had to, drink some bleach
when no one was watching.
I understood there were angels in my
thumb prints and sprites who lived
in my ear's hills who'd whisper
all the answers.  I was full of confidence and will
as I plunged my hand into the cookie tin
filled with buttons and the first one
I grabbed was the same size
as the one that needed replacing.
I mean, that's just how I lived
until one New Year's I guessed
a 29-year-old-woman was fifty.
Her blue cat's-eye glasses threw me
and everyone laughed except the woman.
They laughed right over my begging
for a second chance.  I fell
like a shooting star in slow motion,
one everyone gets to see and is
therefore unremarkable.  The next week
I spelled dessert "desert" on a spelling bee.
Suddenly, ordinary.

 From The Star-Spangled Banner, Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

THE UGLY STEP SISTER

You don't know what it was like.
My mother marries this bum who takes off on us,
after only a few months, leaving his little Cinderella
behind.  Oh yes, Cindy will try to tell you
that her father died.  She's like that, she's a martyr.
But between you and me, he took up
with a dame close to Cindy's age.
My mother never got a cent out of him
for child support.  So that explains
why sometimes the old lady was gruff.
My sisters and I didn't mind Cindy at first,
but her relentless cheeriness soon took its toll.
She dragged the dirty clothes to one of Chelsea's
many laundromats.  She was fond of talking
to mice and rats on the way.  She loved doing dishes
and scrubbing walls, taking phone messages,
and cleaning toilet bowls.  You know,
the kind of woman that makes the rest
of us look bad.  My sisters and I
weren't paranoid, but we couldn't help
but see this manic love for housework
as part of Cindy's sinister plan.  Our dates
would come to pick us up and Cindy'd pop out
of the kitchen offering warm chocolate chip cookies.
Critics often point to the fact that my sisters and I
were dark and she was blond, implying
jealousy on our part.  But let me
set the record straight.  We have the empty bottles
of Clairol's Nice 'n Easy to prove
Cindy was a fake.  She was a what her shrink called
a master manipulator.  She loved people
to feel bad for her-- her favorite phrase was a faint,
"I don't mind.  That's OK."  We should have known
she'd marry Jeff Charming, the guy from our high school
who went on to trade bonds.  Cindy finagled her way
into a private Christmas party on Wall Street,
charging a little black dress at Barney's
which she would have returned the next day
if Jeff hadn't fallen head over heels.
She claimed he took her on a horse and buggy ride
through Central Park, that it was the most romantic
evening of her life, even though she was home
before midnight-- a bit early, if you ask me, for Manhattan.
It turned out that Jeff was seeing someone else
and had to cover his tracks.  But Cindy didn't
let little things like another woman's happiness
get in her way.  She filled her glass slipper
with champagne she had lifted
from the Wall Street extravaganza.  She toasted
to Mr. Charming's coming around, which he did
soon enough.  At the wedding, some of Cindy's friends
looked at my sisters and me with pity.  The bride insisted
that our bridesmaids' dresses should be pumpkin,
which is a hard enough color for anyone to carry off.
But let me assure you, we're all very happy
now that Cindy's moved uptown.  We've
started a mail order business-- cosmetics
and perfumes.  Just between you and me,
there's quite a few bucks to be made
on women's self-doubts.  And though
we don't like to gloat, we hear Cindy Charming
isn't doing her aerobics anymore.  It's rumored
that she yells at the maid, then locks herself in her room,
pressing hot match tips into her palm.

 From How the Sky Fell (Pearl Editions, 1996)

© Copyright:  Denise Duhamel and University of Pittsburgh Press
 All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.