Memory

I wrote this when I was living in the city in 1990. I had never lived alone in my adult life. My children were with their mother, Shelly, in Ithaca. I saw them every two weeks. We went to all the old places, Rosemary’s Pizza and DeRoberti’s, Thompkins Square Park, the playground in Washington Square, and we often, through the fall, walked by St. Mark’s Church, where the poets read. Despite having lived in New York for a decade before this I did not start attending open mike readings till that same fall, when Leanne Brown was running them. Do I have her name right? Maybe I am hallucinating it. I know I’ve seen her poetry books here at the library. Before the kids would arrive I’d change my insanely clean, roach-free apartment around to accommodate them. Out came the toys and the two single futons. When they would leave I felt like I was in a windowless brick box. I can’t stand to even think about it now. So, the pests referred to in the poem are an invention.

Memory

 

“Let me count your fingers

thumb your cups

and tuck your raincoats in.”

Handle bars lock horns with iron gates

St. Mark’s Church in the rain.

A shopping bag wraps round my feet

lets go and crosses cobblestones.

 

Pests swarm over dirty dishes

the coat is warm but frayed

hands are cold until they come

into skin and hair and the sky

is strange with clouds and sun.

 

“Eurydice,” I say. “Come home.”

“But I’m Persephone, this is my home.”

 

Remember what you hear

knotted in the crimson coil

finger wound with tension

spotted black eyed susan

deepest yellow I can give

to stop the rage

of our infernal season.