That Time Sondheim Compared me to Auden

Earlier today on Facebook, in honor of his birthday, I posted a picture of a letter I got from Stephen Sondheim many years ago (pictured below) about some poems I'd written. He and I had been penpals for over a decade at this point, writing to each other a couple of times a month about anything and everything, so it wasn't a huge presumption for me to send my chapbook. However, I also sent a few paragraph-length palindromes written by my then-boyfriend Bennett as a buffer in case he hated the poems (and believe me, he would've told me). Several people have asked (nay, demanded) that I produce said poems, so here they are, below the photo.

Smoke

for AT

I walk by your old apartment, the smell

Of smoke and the grimy

High Street dusk reminding me

Of the evenings we spent

On your rotting second-floor porch, two singers

Sneaking Virginia Slims, giggling

Like ten-year-olds, first Best Friends.

Knowing that our voices would be

Foggy and hoarse the next day,

We puffed and postured,

Blowing smoke rings.

You said the 100’s made my

Fingers look even stubbier.

To me the slender cigarettes

Seemed a natural extension of

Your long white limbs,

Red nails shining in the smoldering glow.

We laughed, and the shadow

Of your curls shook.

I’m not smoking tonight.

In your old bedroom window

A woman, silhouetted by the flickering

Ghost-blue of a TV

Is waiting for someone.

__________________

The Calculator

Driven to violence by Math 102

I pried my calculator apart over lunch.

Maybe I hoped that numbers

Would come spattering onto

The table like poppy seeds

But in the end, the torn organs

Did little to enlighten me:

A screw like a tiny

Unconscious cartoon eye

With an X for a pupil;

A lightbulb fit

For a dollhouse chandelier;

The sticky ectoplasm of the

Digital display –

And beneath a plastic

Domino-printed skin

Its brain, a metal map

Of green avenues, a strange city

With no people

___________________

Thaw

for DC

Today I can smell it, the too-early surge

Of life, wanting to blossom

Before the last frost.

There is something

Of you in this, fragrance of anticipation,

Wet green smell of desire;

Something of you, too, in knowing

That it won’t last, this heavy

Hum of energy deep in the soil.

It’s a bright lie, annual empty promise,

A hundred kisses, given

For no official reason. Let’s go sit in the sun.

____________________

HUBBY SCARED TO DEATH BY WIFE’S WIG

Thought It Was A Rat

– the Sun

when she went to the five & dime

that thursday she thought

they’re on sale why not

put a little excitement in

our lives now that the kids

are gone so she chose a pert

little stack of auburn curls

and a shiny red

teddy black chantilly trim

she was rehearsing on the

sofa arranging herself like a

pile of stiff satin cushions

when joe came home from the mill

early he used the backdoor

and headed for the john she

thought just as well but giddy

she forgot about the

wiglet poised on the porcelain

and she never thought of joe’s

myopia and irrational

fear of rodents

and by the time the

lace straps had started

to chafe and she called joe

hey joe did you fall in he was

flat on the moldy linoleum

his fly was still open and his

arms frozen in flight the wig

dangled forlorn from the sink and

still she waited her back ached and

she thought jesus the draft

how could you sleep

in one of these you’d

catch your death

_____________________________

The History of Trilliums

for Dorothy Pickens Westlake (1906-1988)

As a girl my mother picked

Trilliums in these woods, stooping

To grab them on her scabby knees,

Dirt from their gaping roots staining

Her cotton skirt.

Then, wiry hair sticky on her cheek,

She’d scramble home, panting,

Pressing them to her mother’s manicured hands.

Believing the leafy flowers

Would intercede for her,

She beamed into the powdered

Frowning face (Don’t smile so much!

It causes wrinkles).

The frail petals would bow

Devoutly over the rim of a silver bowl

At dinner, where my mother, ears

Burning from the curling iron, eyed

Her sister’s pale white face,

Favored curls gleaming through the leaves.

I have seen trilliums only from the car;

Protected now by law and the deepening darkness

Of the woods, their white faces shroud the hillside –

But I wonder if my mother remembers

The smell of the severed stems

The angel touch of the trinity of petals

The pallid face of each fading saint

_______________________________

Nativity

“It won’t be long before…female mammals will be capable of virgin birth….”

New York Times

Just imagine the first one, terrified

Nine-year-old, unlucky

Early bloomer like me,

Surrounded by pie-eyed

Televangelists and masked

Magi, the most eminent

Specialists from around

The world, paparazzi

From the New York Times

And Weekly World News

Granted equal berths

(“Elvis’ Ghost Is Father of Miracle Babe!”).

For nine months, her Advent,

She’s been thinking of names;

In playground whispers it’s “Jesus Jr.,”

But she favors Corey. The parents

Who just last year admitted

There was no Santa now say

She carries the Christ, come

To give Judgment. Privately

She casts a skeptical eye

On the idea of God

Or anyone else, for that matter,

Coming out of her Down There,

But she’s begun to love

The attention, accustomed

Now to the respectful distance

From which her every wish is granted

(Fish sticks and Oreos every night

For the past 35 weeks).

She manages one last plucky grin

For the cameras, Virgin Mother

In Little Mermaid pajamas.

(Half the world is hurrying

To get its girls

Fixed like kittens,

Uterus removed to lose

This new Curse, motherhood

By virtue of possibility)

Bulbs flash as the contractions

Stab, she pushes, preachers

Are on their knees, keening,

The whole world holding its breath

As the infant girl opens the

One mouth on each perfect head

_________________________

The Visible Man

She began to suspect he was on to her.

But it wasn’t her fault. She was dropped

Into some crazy window of vision the day

He stepped up to the lectern, clear

As the anatomy kit she’d had as a kid.

Five years later she still got a thrill

From the sight of the blood whirring through

The blue veins, lungs pumping, brain

Painted with frescoes of thought.

And she knew he saw everyone this way –

That in a crowded room he could feel

The heat of their hearts, hidden ambitions

Undressed, pressing him breathless against the door,

Naked soul-flesh of strangers.

She was jealous as hell of them. How,

After all, could she belong to him,

Knowing that? And how could he

Belong to her, being known?

For awhile, five hundred miles and the

Relentless rumble and blare of Dominicano

Merengue couldn’t sever the thread –

She lay awake hearing the crickets outside

His midwestern bedroom window –

And even after he grew wary and began

To scramble the signal, she still

Got the sound and a staticky ghost;

And at the end, until he disappeared

From the edges of her head, he still

Let her come to him at night, more

Beautiful in the blue half-light, to touch

His mouth and uncovered eyes in sleep.