To read Mary Ellen Redmond’s interview with Gregory Orr in this issue.
_______
Mary Ellen Redmond
Quiz Tomorrow
I wake to the dark
drum roll of October rain,
a street lined with vacant
homes.
White wicker, gas grills
wait out the season in
storage.
Kids gather at the corner
looking
like a herd of little
humpbacks, until
a yellow bus swallows them
whole.
On the road to school, a
single red
tree redeems the dirty linen
skyline.
Blackbirds, heads moving up
and down like typewriter
keys,
lift their tail feathers,
making
random checks across a lawn.
A student trudges in damp and
drowsy.
Today’s lesson? On the board:
Listen to the rain.
Pay attention to birds.
So Good
I was so famished,
I could have eaten you
whole—
gulped you down in mouthfuls
without chewing,
bits and dribble
for my napkin to catch.
But instead
you fed me slowly
from a child’s spoon,
the stuff of which I first
devoured,
then started swirling around
my mouth and tongue,
finally swallowing
not knowing
when the next
agonizing morsel
would arrive.
Unlikely Valentine
I want to thank whoever sent
the eleven moths that lay
flat
against my window pane
this November evening.
Their delicate wings are
shaped
like hearts, edged in a soft
brown fringe.
Rain’s turned to sleet, and I
am afraid
they will not live the night,
but now
they are lovely, unexpected, and so
still, (not a single flutter from them.)
watch leaves fly at the mercy
of
the wind
spin settle
until the next flurry
flutter turns to crackle
as they scoot
consider this leaf the color
of merlot
smooth as tanned hide a
framework of veins
an object magnified reveals
its divine structure
the tip of my finger is an
intricate maze
a sprig of dusty miller now a
velvet antler
a maple seed becomes a
dragonfly wing
to what have I been blind?
look
and whatever tongue called this world
to
attention—
put your ear to its lips
The Things We Hold On To
When my father got sober
(seriously this time) he paced
from
the front door to the back, staring past the screen
as if the answer were in the
leaf pile next to the apple tree.
He
did not talk for days.
Now he hides in the lining of
my dreams,
watching
to see what I will write.
I will write about his white
linen bureau scarf, his daily change,
his
teeth swimming in a glass.
There was a time when I could
make myself invisible
in
the narrow space between wall and stove.
There is too much chatter
above my shoulders.
Stars
and stars tonight, confetti thrown into the ether.
A fragment of Jack’s skull
clenched in Jackie’s hand.
Oh,
the things we hold on to.
Six brown pears in a black
bowl.
Sixteen
swans on Long Pond.
