Mannequin Envy
a journal of visual and literary arts
~fall 2006 ~
| "I'm the editor of the online magazine Big Toe Review My first chapbook, Ordinary Mysteries, was published by White Heron Press in 2004. My poems have been published or are forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, DMQ Review, Rattle, Diner, Berkshire Review, Heat City Review, and Worcester Review. I recently completed my first full-length book, Everybody Wants to be Cary Grant. I live in Ware, Massachusetts." |
| IN MEMORY OF THE NEARNESS OF YOU I use the heels of my palms to thrust open a stubborn window, causing a book to plop on its side, slide off the shelf—washed over by a wave of other books, then crash into a rose filled vase before smacking down on the hardwood floor. What follows is silence, like the split second after a mother slaps her child. But no wailing or pleading here. We're given only the quiet, and that inherited fear that turns the heart to sand slipping through an hourglass. We watch the water search with its fingers the valleys of the room, and allow our eyes to blur, shards of prisms gleaming in late afternoon. I say we the whole time meaning I, and I look up: eggshell walls that give and give until I give way to the revelation that you will not lean in the doorway smelling of strawberries and righteousness. The last grains will trickle out. Pain will not enter this house. I have all the time in the world and my heart is a rose is a rose is a rose. RIPPING A CHARLES SIMIC POEM OUT OF THE NEW YORKER It's the one about the insomniac fortuneteller huffing down snowy streets, professing premonitions to the headless mannequins in the tombstone-storefronts. I've been roaming the bookstore for hours. The saleswoman in the hand-knit sweater (a blinking red bulb where a reindeer's nose and her right breast meet) has been eyeing me from the register, sweeping her tongue over her teeth: a primitive gesture that says, I know what you're up to, Buster. Subscription cards trail behind me into the self-help section, the way bloody footprints lead to the executioner's favorite hotdog stand. I could've paid the $3.99 and been home already, but the doll in the fourth stanza has sold her hard luck story— how mice built a nest in her head, and a sliver of pale-indigo moonlight illuminates her manufactured face, revealing the snout emerging from one of her eye sockets— and I want like crazy to save her, pull one page away from the others, stealthily, like digging a tunnel through a dungeon wall. The magazine drops like the last brick holding back sunlight. I tuck the poem into my jacket and turn towards the electronic doors. The saleswoman crows like a guard from her tower, the red light on her chest flashing like gunfire. The doors slide open to reveal fresh snow and a woman reaching for my palms, eager to read the newsprint on my fingers. VINTAGE GRAY The morning glory— another thing that will never be my friend. —Basho Rain has a way of darkening the bark on trees, deepening the wood cracks in fences. Grass appears softer, envious of clouds that tease with their rootlessness, their promise of travel and a good night's sleep. Normally, I'd have a little Johnny Hodges playing in the background or Casablanca splashing silvery-blue against a wall, but today I'm listening to a vintage radio broadcast: Bing Crosby banters with Jack Teagarden, the cool cadence of Crosby's voice complementary to the sound of fat oak leaves pounced by rain. I can see them: Bing still boyish on the verge of fifty, placing a hand on the rawhide shoulders of Teagarden, who periodically grins at the floor, fidgets with the slide of his trombone. I smile at the plate I'm washing, the tension slackens in my neck and my apartment warms with the admiration in their voices. Both men have been dead for decades but somewhere there's a place, a park bench looking out over a lake or a table at some café left vacant, unused since their passing. Not an homage to where they once had their lunch but a space that encompassed what they knew and never knew of each other. Not heaven or a memory (nothing we can't touch or prove), but a room behind a locked door behind which we can stand, a spot on a map we can point to. Somewhere we know exists and leave alone. |