Sarah Rose Nordgren
Fable
I
pull myself from the water by my hair
Shake
the leaves out of sleep
When
garage-entombed at night
I
perch on a child’s bicycle
Wearing
mother’s nightgown
Frayed
lace through winter
Growing
back to perfection
I
am the oldest daughter in the story
The
one whose shoes floated downstream
Who
baked bread in an underground oven
The
dark jealous girl walking
Barefoot
before the king
So
far north now and west of Helsinki
I
make my nest and lie in it
Run
furrows with my fingers in cold so close
It
doesn’t feel like weather
Instructions
for Marriage by Service
Surely
she’s worth seven years,
the
black girl who hangs
in
the corner like a dress,
insisting
on silence
with
her rose-bud eyes. I drink
from
the family cup
solemnly
while she dances
a
ghost dance with herself.
O
fertile is that field and ripe.
I
earn my keep by keeping
my
head down like a boxer
or
an ox. Balanced
on
my ladder-rung between
those
I must obey and she
who
hides a tiny spider in her
skirt-folds.
I earn her
a
little each day like
a
dropper full of wine. Let her
damned
sister dance in green
stockings.
Let funerals follow
us
like dogs on the road.
And
let her be worthy
of
the sweat I’ll spill over her
for
years to come.
Remarks
on the Morning’s Work in Winter
One
hour alone is worth two after your master
has
risen. The streetlamps, bright
and
silent in the snow, stalk
your
private movements. Rise early,
for
the mornings are shorter now, and perform
your
dirtiest tasks first.
Scrub
the hearth-grates, followed by your own
body,
with a stiff brush. Slippers
or
light shoes will ensure you glide between
rooms
like your grandfather’s ghost.
You
may be required to kindle
three
or four fires before daybreak,
but
their warmth is not for you.
Clean
the forks in a keg of sand and straw
till
they glint like teeth. Hold the lady’s
white
shoe in your hands like a living dove:
Caress
it with egg-whites and milk.
You
may find that the quiet, as it bleeds
in
through the window frames
and
from beneath closed doors behind which
people
are dreaming, deceives you into
believing,
for whole moments, that
you
are a part of this home: That the space
on
the floor where you kneel
polishing
brass handles was exactly measured
for
the width of your shoulders,
pelvis,
and knees. The dark mahogany
of
your skin blending perfectly with
the
other furniture.
Charmed
When
I finally emerge from my rickety,
wooden
house, the light has already moved on.
This
makes my image soft
on
the doorstep as I slip my kid gloves
over
my fingers one by one.
From
here I look down through
the
constellations circulating as if in cream.
The
wren and nuthatch lift my skirt hem
from
the mud and I’m ready
to
descend. There is a machine
that
delivers me from here to there
with
expediency and care. Anything I wish for
it
places in my hand miraculously.
Its
voice is the voice of one hundred hounds
singing
noel, and its arms are the bleeding
arms
of trees. I do my shopping
with
pleasure, and my hat gives a little nod
to
the other hats, and my knees curtsy
to
the knees. All the dainties
are
whisked away into a linen sack
for
later. As evening falls the streets empty
and
windows, like one hundred movie screens,
begin
to glow. A young boy follows me
through
the lanes at twenty paces, ringing
his
bell so I never feel alone.
Calendar
If
I wait long enough
between
the rusted trees
where
young mothers take their sons walking
I
know they will
airlift
in the crates of books.
There
will be Proust and Flaubert,
the
Russians, ancient religious texts,
and
from Poland a calendar
of
gourds. I imagine myself turning over
the
pages:
each
page a picture each picture a ripe or carved out womb
with
a lighted candle each page a month I will burn through.
I
envy the boy holding
his
mother’s hand in the woods.
I
have a body made hard by work
in
other people’s homes.
A
curve. A crooked
jaw.
Pockets full of moths.
Gray
beard. I don’t want
children,
no, I want to be a child.
If
you look for a new house
you
must consider
the
previous tenants, the price.
My
head used to have so much space in it,
a
sky with white birds darting
like
shooting stars.
Now
I’m more like a machine: furniture
bolted
to the floor. But
my
mother.
But an old man.
I
became an old man so early.
The
Artist’s Boy
The
sofa rises like a horse
from
its side in the yellow room.
Wood-smoke
and ink saturate air,
obscuring,
dividing shape
from
shape. One could fade
into
the scenery near the glow
of
his floating hair, this
perfect
baby. Somewhere,
rain
slicks up Main Street,
and
a man bicycles home
in
a navy coat, pushing his hat
into
the gray. His whiskers are
damp
as a dog’s. Flowers tornado
to
pavement as he whirs past—
coming
from, going to,
a
certain place. The child
wishes
a room into existence
and
it’s there. Walls yellow, furniture
warm
as a mare. Somehow,
when
you see him all nervousness
subsides.
Little mouth blowing
on
your cheek, those eyes
that
seem but painted on his eyes.
Ophelia
In
dreams, a writing tablet signifies a woman, since it receives
the
imprint of all kinds of letters. -Artemidorus
I
resisted the story so long and thus
believed,
unconsciously, its opposite—
a
mirror of what I hated, which was
no
better you see. Flesh and hair
so
ghostly you could read the veins.
I
dredged the pond till my joints
gave
my bones away. Just a few
sticks
composed in the muck,
sheltering
a school of fish. Now,
I
thought, at least I can be useful.
If
you have a voice, don’t
waste
it on opinions. Let the evening
audience
find you each time as if
by
chance. First, a swath of matted
hair,
and then the rest: a foal
propped
up and hesitant.