Poems by Elizabeth Raby |
by Elizabeth Raby |
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There was a time, an ancient time, when books were made mostly by monks.
A Unity
When Mother taught me to keep my knees together, my dress down, she only remembered it was the way things were done. She had forgotten a woman’s best hope is to keep herself hidden.
When the hurt hawk was shot in his poem, Mr. Jeffers pretended the great male spirit soared unsheathed after an appropriate fall of feminine feathers.
I’m the woman Kazantzakis wrote out of his novels. He cut off my head, or slit my throat. Nevertheless I believe in this body, all bodies, and in the disintegration of the body, even the bodies of men. Oh men, love my flesh and yours. The desire to fly away from it does not make it possible.
Poem Found on the Bus
The woman speaks to her window (or is it to her husband who sits in red-capped silence on the aisle?)
It’s a white birch— that’s what it is— the more I look at it— it’s a white birch tree.
I’m going to shoot him— I’m going to borrow a gun— I’m going to borrow a shotgun and shoot him.
I don’t blame her. I knew what it was— I can tell— it’s not fair to me.
That’s my weakness— I know it is— I know—
members only— they didn’t let me in, I still want to join— thirty years, I want to go there and have lunch— I still want to join, go there for lunch—
I draw a parallel, think about the joke we share: I/she finite and conscious. The struggle to find a fit with time in our time.
There’s a cemetery, My Lord— big mausoleum things— I wonder who pays for it— it’s any price you can afford— that’s a church—
Shop, she’s going shopping— that’s what she is, spend all she makes— she’s going shopping— these trees are doing real good.
I haven’t been to Leh’s either, not yet— it’s a furniture store, that’s what it is— shop, there’re certain things I’m interested in
Did she drive him to silence? Did he drive her to speech?
What do you call it?— what do you call it, I’m asking? what do you call it, I’m asking you? What do you call it?
Short Term Residency
I stand up here in front of you wearing reassuring granny glasses, my knife-pleated flannel skirt.
Behind me someone struggles to peer over my right shoulder from her smoky mound of old skins, lifetime of beads and skulls.
She considers her blackened pot, the broth your bones would make. She whispers in my ear. I feel winds, the pull of endless blue.
A sudden cackle unnerves me. I step back. Her teeth, worn to sharp points, bite the meaty part of my neck. I am used to this, am able to smile. Perhaps you haven’t noticed.
“Shall we write some poems?” At the Museum
See those, my darling? They’re called books. See the one that’s open? A reader had to turn the paper pages one by one. Words were printed on both the front and back of each. We still had some books when I was a little girl like you. I remember their faint scent, perhaps from the printer’s ink, perhaps from the paper itself. I miss them sometimes.
There was a time, an ancient time, when books were made mostly by monks. They wrote in ink on stretched animal skin called parchment, one perfect page after another. They drew tiny pictures, colored them and the big letter that began each section, filled them in with twirls, specks of gold. Not many people ever got to see them, fewer still held them in their hands. I suppose when books began to be printed on a press, those people thought something good was gone.
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