Bokeh A Chapbook of Poetry
Traci Rosenbaum Photography by Cory Chylik
Bokeh
A Chapbook of Poetry
by Traci Rosenbaum With photography by Cory Chylik
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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Cory Chylik for his photographs and the inspiration they provided. Also, thanks to my husband for...well, for everything.
Table of Contents Deluge
1
A Woman Named Nothing
2
Early Food, Late Poison
3
Frozen
4
Chrysalis
5
For Sale:
6
Lunatic
7
Night Drive
8
Retreat
9
The 7:06
10
Silhouette
11
Arachne’s Legacy
12
Forgive Me
13
Anniversary
14
Ghost Town
15
Getting Out
16
Nature Against Man
17
The Last Time I Went to Church
18
Foliage
19
Things I Wondered on My Son’s Birthday
20
Gibson Park
21
The Fall of Troy
22
Vanishing Point
23
Lessons in Potential Difference
24
First Time Flying
25
Apache
26
Grandpa Never Wore a Watch
27
Paris Gibson Square
28
One For the Go, One For Last
29
Stealing Syringa
30
Deluge water slips silent a translucent marble slab snaking over stone then, a precipice flows fracture into droplets what was once so clear dissolves into froth and fog I envy the ones who never ride the currents who don’t have to fear drowning inches deep, or miles I jump in without knowing torrents fill my ears can’t keep my feet under me strange how people love the music of turbulence when they can watch from the shore
1
A Woman Named Nothing in London, tourists can take Jack the Ripper tours Whitechapel alleys behind chained gates, no entrance white paint sprayed on stone where undiscovered artists slash canvas, wait to be born
derelict Buck’s End rebuilt into cheap housing a three-car driveway crushed paper cups, broken glass are the site’s only markers and Mitre Square, paved still with the same cobblestones that echoed running steps against wrought iron and brick but couldn’t trip the butcher
2
Early Food, Late Poison twilight skies like peaches on fire burn until heat wilts the streetlights children home before they come on as mothers police dinnertime and fathers pull armchair levers a figure hunches through bushes around trees avoiding the light and pausing only to kick down every picket fence
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Frozen like a broken leaf on snow grown too small for its shadow I lie in our bed my tears and my blood leaking onto crisp white sheets
but they are my sheets and my bedroom in my house besides, I know that if I leave, your fists will miss the feel of my face your hands will ache to make welts rise red on my skin how could I do that to you, who loves me so much you remind me every day I’d die without you maybe I’ll wait until spring 4
Chrysalis emerge from blankets never touching the blank side of my bed pulling her hair back barrette in my mouth momma, she asks me can butterflies swim? my own hair mangled smell of burnt pop tarts and johnson’s shampoo holes torn in her jeans and mine stare at me daring me to lie knowing that I can’t I hope so, baby I tell her, but I can only whisper
5
For Sale: bronze baby shoes, scuffed two vintage capguns, caps and gunbelt included coin collection, incomplete die-cast models, most broken metal Keep Out sign dirt bike, bent frame, no back tire switchblade knife, rusted size large black leather jacket several holes in the back, patched army foot locker and BDUs, both used once crib set, still in box princess-cut ring, never worn table and three chairs, like new and one length of rope, slightly worn below the knot 6
Lunatic When she was a girl, shadows slid from her like silk shrugged from bare shoulders. On summer days, sunlight shone brighter on her face, but nothing can burn so bright without catching fire. Under autumn boughs, clouds settled inside her mind. She shattered mirrors, sliced her arms with silvered glass, laughed at her fractured image. Now, wind twists leaves from her hair and she stands outside knee-deep in snow. With hands like crooked branches, she clutches at the moon.
7
Night Drive brake lights, fever bright scorch eyes propped wide with caffeine wipers slash rain-splashed glass but don’t clear my vision haze hangs dense against the horizon’s crouched mountains tape blasts, Johnny Cash offers his empire of dirt dashed white lines combine forget their destination eyes slip, rumble strip rattles me back to the world tires squeal, let the wheel spin in my hands, because when windshield and rearview look the same, does a person’s direction matter?
8
Retreat smoke drifts in ripples trickles from a burning stick drips embers and ash riverside, gray trails circle skipped stones like smoke rings puffed from circled lips waves waft on the shore damping campfire gossip and marshmallow talk with vaporous haze, hiding from eyes that don’t see anymore a husband and wife wearing smiles drawn as bowstrings retire together he sneaks to other places while she sleeps, and in her dreams no one hears the splash
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The 7:06 a cargo train, its cars aflame, hurtles through this town without a name as one, every dog cowers and snaps at air, eyes rolled skyward to whites
every child looses the same shriek, thrust from their sleep by the same nightmare where teddy bears grow fangs and shadows pinch with poison claws parents boil water, sharpen knives, and lay pokers onto fireplace coals
and a carpenter, his mouth full of nails, stumbles off into the void
10
Silhouette Newborn morning comes red-faced from skies between upraised peaks, cries in the voice of eagles circling the water hunting the shadows of fish like she hunted me, plucked me from a dim dance floor— boy with busted pockets and broken shoes meets girl who is likewise shattered, just in different ways—and now she lies in my bed, an hourglass with too many curves tipped on its side so dust runs out like water too fast for me to catch, so perilous I don’t want to.
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Arachne’s Legacy somewhere, a widow spins her unfinished opus stretches silken strands hands trenched by eons of ice freezing to the fracture point she spans nighttime skies with filaments of lightning connects clouds and ground with wisps of gossamer rain casts her web across the skies and then drops to earth hangs a lacework of rivers threads them through forests twisting bark into branches until her labyrinth trembles a trill, a flutter she picks feathers from her teeth 12
Forgive Me Thorned branches shiver Crooked as broken crosses Ghosts of Golgotha Voyeur with spyglass I watch him drop earthward Like Christ’s crown he grasps Black talons bleed his barbed perch Winged Janus, bringer of spring Half made of darkness Cowl of ebony feathers But lit from beneath By sun’s reflection on dirt Still, he genuflects With excruciating grace
What can this creature Who soars so close to heaven Possibly have to pray for?
13
Anniversary Today, concrete mists casket-seal windswept vistas. South-going herons etch their arched epitaphs against clouds that wept autumn away yesterday. Indifferent wind twists the promise of snow through my hair, tears its tresses free from pinned coils, knots them around where my ring used to be, and like barbed wire through honeycomb, you still tangle through my thoughts until I can’t see. 14
Ghost Town I like to visit graveyards, but never new ones carpeted in grass epitaphs still etched deeply in marble not yet rounded by weather my feet would rather follow footpaths through witchgrass between wandering rows of stones that lean into each other, whisper secrets of lives lived China’s Bo people hang coffins from mountainsides Florida’s divers can explore a reef of ashes set in concrete Greeks sleep in leased crypts evicted after three years but here, a mother lies beside five tiny stones placed with her own hands to be mourned by all who pass
15
Getting Out The air outside home, heavy in my nose, smells soft like rancid butter. I walk down dirt streets, swing open the door of the bar/bus stop combo, set my duffel on a stool. For two hours I watch men drinking themselves sober, letting the clock tell them lies. When I step outside, the door opens easier. Diesel cloud carries me past town’s last two houses where two old cats watch each other from windowsills across a yard full of weeds. 16
Nature Against Man they started as buds unfurled under summer’s sun starbursts of white against green danced to wind-music bowed, shivering in the rain kissed bees with pollen-dust lips re-emerged each year only to be harvested shipped cross-country in cold trucks brought in a back door cut to acceptable lengths arranged by a dark-dressed man for a while they lay heaped against a catafalque draped over a cross then tossed into a dumpster starbursts of white against green
17
The Last Time I Went to Church low murmurs and the rustle of Sunday dresses programs fan faces some exalted, some tearful, and some merely bored by all this talk of Jesus and life eternal the cycle of sit, rise, kneel keeps their minds off why they’re here we file to the front between lily-scented aisles I lead the column first to glimpse your hair against satin and mahogany as I say goodbye all I can think is that you never liked this song 18
Foliage To the eyes of a toddler, golden leaves heaped in piles are crackly mountains begging for conquest. In thirty minutes of windmilling arms and teakettle shrieks, she has undone an entire day’s work. Climbing from the rubble with flotsam stuck to her sweater and tangled through her pigtails she runs toward me, swirling autumn in her wake, outshining late October’s ruins like a lone flower growing from a railroad track bed.
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Things I Wondered On My Son’s Birthday if no one shows up should i pick up the balloons now or tomorrow? don’t windward balloons kill birds or dolphins or some such? didn’t we see that on Discovery Channel burrowed together, laps full of popcorn and his mother’s eyes lighting his face? does she get my checks? will they be enough to buy a ticket to see just how tall my boy will grow? most of all, what will i do with all these presents if the ransom is too high?
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Gibson Park vestiges, rain-wet against gravel mosaics skitter toward the water ride the surface, cast-off quills in a lake of ink there’s one. over there. a downy whisper barely heard over goose-talk and the hollow sound of basketballs her finger points at a mallard plume but her eyes follow that orange speck; skate, spinning along the rim but never touch net she crouches over her legs tries to pick up the feather but it’s stuck under her wheels 21
The Fall of Troy Sunset warms ember-red boards guarded by flowerbed moats where snapdragons swim figure eights and knights shield Queen Anne’s lace from invading Narcissus. Tight-locked drawbridge slats attached by rust-twists tease, excite, invite chubby child fingers searching for a buttress, offer footholds to fat infant feet. Halfway up the castle wall, a prince slips, lands diaper-first in forget-me-nots. Between his toes, the miniature dagger that betrayed his climb trickles blood. Chin quivering, he hitches in a breath and wails. His keening echoes against bricks that blush with dusk’s trailing fingers, ricochets off draped windows reflecting wounded skies, scatters birds, but reaches no ears in the yard where he’s fenced.
22
Vanishing Point we used to hold hands strut the boardwalk together trash under our feet you grinned when I kissed you with sticky cotton candy lips
screams rose and boards thrummed each time the coaster roared past scorched popcorn mixed with machine grease filled our noses sounds of compressed air bursting from hydraulics can still launch me back there to the days before that wide path of splintered planks diminished until it was only wide enough for one man to walk alone
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Lessons in Potential Difference you wake to the feel of wind on your cheeks, raising the hair from your scalp like the Van de Graaff generator in freshman physics the first time I held your hand strung through lab tables one palm on the silver ball and the other clasped by yours not yet knowing it was the hand that would one day hang limp and sleepy out the window on the way to some horizon not marked on my map that I never thought was there but you always did
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First Time Flying On a hunk of tire tread strung between grey links in Black Eagle Park, I taught myself to swing discovered the perfect point in the arc to kick my legs and throw my head back when to tuck my feet and one day when to jump that one half-second hung weightless before gravity stole flight and breath held an unruly magic I still chase and never find except in the faces of children flying that first time, arms out, unfettered by their chains
25
Apache for twenty winters and twenty-one summers, it sat on four flat shoes no good for nothin’ but scrap melt the thing down and be done took two come-alongs and a towtruck winch to yank it up Dearborn Hill glass’ll cost more than she’s worth ain’t started since ‘85 restoration’s slow with no one to hold the light or hand me my tools but when the key finally turns I know you will ride with me you done a damn fine job, son don’t take the corners too fast
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Grandpa Never Wore a Watch A grandfather laying out solitaire games keeps better time than his namesake clock’s ticks and gongs. While one set of hands bisects reminders of missed doctor visits, the other set snaps a shirt closed over souvenirs from shotgun holidays in cities Hank Williams never sang about. One face watched decades pass with the same Spartan gaze. The other bears a wrinkle for every minute he’s lived.
He feels his age most when another one appears like a new ring in an old tree, a fresh wound that will heal into one more scar among many.
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Paris Gibson Square the sun still loves you place where my mom went to school halls once strode by nuns backs so ruler-straight, as if their rosaries weighed nothing filled with echoes now of choir notes and the yellow smell of old pencil shavings your tower lasted twenty years under the weight of a clock they knew would be too heavy for you so you had no face to cry when they severed your left wing, sold it to hollywood to dodge the cost of demolition and turned you into a museum a relic full of relics
28
One for the Go, One for Last he taught me to play in bubbles of distilled light from coleman lanterns moths casting shadow puppets my hands sticky with marshmallows and campfire dirt counting cards, watching flashlights bob to the outhouse coyote-squeals, crickets a dog barking at darkness and the beercan crack as he opened another I still remember how he squinted at his hand crushing his smoke and cursing his luck, playing like he’d never forget the rules 29
Stealing Syringa When I smell lilacs I think of my grandmother Though she delighted in fistfuls of dandelions I would swipe scissors and walk Black Eagle alleys cutting neighbors’ fragrant fronds One from the unkempt yard of a vacant trailer Two from wild branches hung over a splintered fence Three from the woman who ran me off with a broom screaming broken Croatian Someday I will walk through a garden of granite gather random blooms mix them with dandelions & lilacs, and remember her
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Poetry © 2012 Traci Rosenbaum Photography © 2012 Zen Viking Photography All Rights Reserved