Archive > Vol. 19 NO 2

Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Catastrophe Waltz

I touch a face suddenly and it murders me. 

                —Pablo Neruda, “Waltz”

We were not born in this house
but when the flood came, we pumped out its stomach.
We did our best to mop up its lungs.

The green bills floated off down the creek.
Never tell where the notebooks and potions were hid.
Don’t make me wash all my secrets away.

Here is the night I sat sewing and sewing
till I had stitched up my lips, sealed up my nostrils
and did the same for you as I’d done for me.

I can’t be found in old familiar places.
I’m in exile. I crawl out a window. I may wake tomorrow.
Tenderly let us practice the custody of our sight.

What I see is the trees moving forward.
Transfiguring blossoms that parade a few weeks
then the stealthy and steadier persuasion of leaves …

And what do I have left from my childhood?
That the nights are as dark now. That these are the pupils
my mother first looked in. Prints left on a teething rattle.

Where the wolf huff-puffed is a hazardous site.
You must burn all the straw, isolate sticks.
Then we’ll decontaminate every brick.

Oh backward is a bad choice of direction.
Knees weren’t made for it. It doesn’t suit feet.
Now I am removing the doorknob to the past.

Where I go is nowhere. I am stay-put.
Still as a cabineted pot. With a lid that is holding in
all my resentments, all my embellishments, and my dreams.

Don’t know whether I’m negative or positive.
Between you and me a strange chasm has opened.
Sometimes we wave ― we still have hands.

Our eyes meet. While we still have eyes.