Also by Donna Reis
poetry
No Passing Zone
Certain Dog Shows and Church: A Sequence of Poems
Incantations
nonfiction
Seeking Ghosts in the Warwick Valley: 60 Personal Accounts
editor
Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews
published by
Deerbrook Editions
P.O. Box 542
Cumberland, ME 04021
www.deerbrookeditions.com
preview cataloque: www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions
first edition © 2022 by Donna Reis
All rights reserved
ISBN: 979-8-9865052-1-3
Book design by Jeffrey Haste
Cover art: Catskill–December, painting by David H. Drake, used with premission from the artist www.davidhdrake.com
For Tom, again, and always, and for my father, Reverend Harry A. Reis
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.—Rilke
Shoes
On the icy-black ocean floor lie hundreds of shoes, some side by side as if slipped off before bed, others akimbo, searching for their mates, while some sleep on their sides with children’s lace-ups in tow. Wing tips who lost their spats retrace their steps. High-button, heeled boots still try to run; spectators sneer Floozies; married shoes whisper, You never left me. Torn soles of bellhops, cooks, maids and machinists— row after row, so still, still there.
. . . like I was an orphan shoe from the lost and found always missing the other.
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Mexican Standoff
I. August, 1973
When my father went to Mexico to coax Mom back, she sent him home with a peasant dress to give me in her place.
Full-length bleached muslin, satin stitched red, purple, orange and coral flowers with green leaves and stems blooming across its yoke.
An embroidered repeat of bouquets tied in yellow ribbons spilled down its front separated by two love birds—
one blue and red, one fuchsia and red. I hung it in my closet to admire, afraid I’d betray my father if I wore it.
II. June, 1974
Your chariot awaits you, Tiger, my doctor grinned, I’ve arranged for an ambulance to bring you to your graduation. My father and godmother
slipped the embroidered shift over my sutured belly, fractured pelvis and casted legs, like Disney birds dressing Cinderella. Anxious I’d ruin my dress or the day, I squelched throwing-up throughout the jostling ride. At the football field, they lifted me into a wheelchair and wheeled me
to the stage where my father gave the benediction, as the principal lowered a basket of flowers onto my lap. The student body stood
and applauded. Two plaster feet peered from the dress’s hem like white doves, legs elevated like wings.
Boy Left For Nicky
There he was at the high school reunion the boy Ellen and I left in a tree fifty years ago. Who let you down? He said we were mean. But men climbed us like ladders and left us, their rough workmen’s hands sent us higher and higher, past the underside of leaves toward the sky.
It’s not our parting I grieve, but that you’re the only one who remembers my last summer of innocence, of dumb omnipotence, my body unmarred. Nixon’s wiretaps were still under wraps. The Vietnam War limped on for another year. You remember how we drove backroads in your blue Duster swaying to Janis and Big Brother. I loved how you hugged the curves, steering one-handed. You liked how I knew every car-make by its grill and headlights even in the dark. How I beamed when you predicted I’d make a good car mechanic’s wife.
I never told you how three months after our last date, grills and headlights took on a different meaning when I was struck hitchhiking by a hit and run driver. Months later, I wrote what happened. The letter was returned, and the postal clerk who answered my call lamented Oh Honey, I’m so sorry, we had a fire awhile back and lost all our forwarding addresses.
Learning to Sail
When our poetry teacher said Learn to sail, I heard Learn to fail, a course I would have aced. I failed math so badly I was given a rolled, blank paper at my graduation.
When learning to meditate, I blurted I masturbated this morning! It wasn’t even true.
I’ve said pummel when I meant plummet, forsaken instead of forgiven, misgiven for mistaken, spring instead of fall. And once I said hate when I meant love.
Penile Dementia
If I said I still remember the sound of your breath when you moan, I know you wouldn’t believe me.
I still feel the blades of your pelvic bones, the hollows below your hips sculpted so I can pull you deeper.
If I recall your brother’s name and your mother’s maiden name, you’d suspect me of stalking. I think you already do. How is it you don’t remember my name?
Suspect
You need proof I’m not a hoax, ask a clue question to see if I’m password admittable. I don’t mention your birthmark, that cinder flying across the cerulean of your eye. I’m certain you don’t remember the wine stain claiming my neck. Maybe I was unfair to materialize you from memory. I see that now as you brush grey matter from your sleeves, blinking in harsh sunlight, muttering, Why me? Why now?
How Do You Like Them Apples
or Stick that in your pipe and smoke it were often tacked on for extra punctuation. Other mothers might ask, When are you gonna wake up and fly right, while mine said, When are you gonna wake up and die right?
Moments of vanity and satisfaction were sneered at: Get off your high horse, or Aren’t you just the bee’s knees?
Compliments were doled out when hell froze over. But mostly I let her locution roll off my back, because I had a brain like a sieve and would have lost my head if it wasn’t screwed on tight, while Mother hurled idioms with artistry, always hitting the nail on the head, the final one in our coffins.
Screening
Before Mike bought The Nite Owl, he owned The Kelpie, a couple of blocks uptown. He was married then— to a blonde, pretty enough to be a Bond girl. Maybe her name was Ursula or Kierstin. Summers, we’d watch her drive up and down Windermere Avenue in her black Jaguar.
One night, she invited Sean Meaney off our corner to her bedroom. Mike left the bar and clamored upstairs early. Hearing him coming, Sean dove through the window, leaving the broken screen leaning against the clapboards long after The Kelpie went under. Sometimes, I want to go back just to see if the screen is still there.
For Jimbo
Eight litters in five years, one crooked eye, teats enlarged and pendulous, not the feathery Golden Retriever of my dreams, but our eyes locked. I wasn’t leaving her with the breeder who was dumping Dawn
at six years old. I brought her to college classes, the library, friends’ homes for dinner. Some asked me to leave her outside, where she’d dutifully wait on the stoop. When I returned, she’d bark her bliss, take my hand in her mouth,
pull me to the car saying, You’re mine, all mine. She also was a primal huntress of woodchucks. She’d pounce, shake the backs of their necks till they dangled lifeless. My boyfriend, a bit basic himself,
announced that tanned breasts excited him. Eager to please, I bared my body to afternoon sun in a clearing in the woods. Dawn came and went snuffling possibilities—then returned plopping her kill at my feet.
The woodchuck came to life and charged. Dawn watched me scramble over stones, breasts jostling through briars, as I ran for my life, then soared like an arrow to save me.
Notes and Dedication
A note about “Shoes”: Filmmaker, James Cameron, who produced and directed the movie, “The Titanic,” visited the Titanic wreck 33 times. He reported, “We’ve seen shoes (on the ocean floor around the wreck), which strongly suggest there was a body there at one point.”
The quote on page 11, “. . . like an orphan shoe from the lost and found always missing the other,” by Mary Chapin Carpenter is from her song, John Doe, No. 24.
The poem “Botched Job” is for Jim Delahanty.
The poem “Portal” describes the mansion that presided over Torohill Farm before it burned down.
The quote on page 33, “Just last week, nearly three years since you flew from your miserable, precious body, I buried my face in your ties,” is from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Mom Gives Away Your Ties,” from her book, Transfer, 2011, BOA Editions, Ltd.
The epigraph in “Torohill” is from the book Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier, Avon Books, 1938.
The epigraph written for “Letter to Jane Kenyon,” is “You always belonged here. I’m the one who worries if I fit in with the furniture and the landscape.” Written by Jane Kenyon from her poem, “Here,” from her book Otherwise, New and Selected Poems, 1996, Graywolf Press.
“Ocean Grove, New Jersey” is for Tom.
“Our Forlorn Hope” is the title of one of Tom’s songs on his CD, On the Plains.
I am grateful to Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Wyn Cooper, Mary Louise Kiernan, Janet Hamill, Amy Holman, April Ossmann and Estha Weiner and especially to my blessed husband, Tom Miller, for all their fabulous editorial advice
Acknowledgments
Anti-Heroin Chic, “God’s Shepherd.”
Atlanta Review, “Ocean Grove, New Jersey,” & “Doting.”
Cimarron Review, “Orientation.”
Delmarva Review, “Learning to Sail,” & “Dawn.”
Evening Street Review, “My Father’s Alternate Life.”
Furious Gazelle, “Dawn.”
Mudfish, “Letter to Jane Kenyon.”
OxMag, “Shoes.”
The Same, “Egg in a Basket, Bird in a Nest, Toad in a Hole,” “To John Berryman Who Would Have Turned 100 This Year.”
Sheila-Na-Gig, “Mexican Standoff,” “Portal,” “The Last Night.”
Verse-Virtual, “Excelsior,” “The Hill,” “Botched Job,” “How Do You Like Them Apples,” “Grey Rock, Squirrel Island,” “Mexican Standoff,”“Learn to Sail,” “Miracle Whip & Woolite,” “Our Forlorn Hope,” “Please Forward,” “The Festival of Broken Needles.”
“The Adirondacks,” & “Torohill” were previously published in No Passing Zone, Deerbrook Editions (December 2012).
“Doting,” “Learn to Sail,” “Letter to Jane Kenyon,” & “Ocean Grove, New Jersey,” were read on the Joe Dans Morning Show at WTBQ, 93.5 FM & 1110 AM in Warwick, New York.
Many poems in this collection were read on The Visionary Woman Tarot Radio Show with Kristine and Shotsie Gorman at KSVY, 91.3 FM in Sonoma, California.
Anthologies:
Poetry In Performance # 43, “To John Berryman Who Would Have Turned 100 This Year.” (The City College of New York, 2015).
About the Author
Donna Reis is the author of two full length poetry collections: Torohill (Deerbrook Editions, 2022) and No Passing Zone (Deerbrook Editions, 2012), which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is co-editor and contributor to the anthology, Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews (The University of Akron Press, 2005). Her non-fiction book, Seeking Ghosts in the Warwick Valley: 60 Personal Accounts (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2003) has sold nearly 3000 copies. She has written three poetry chapbooks: Certain (Finishing Line Press, 2012); Dog Shows and Church: A Sequence of Poems (2000) and Incantations (1995) both published by Eurydice Press. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review and Delmarva Review. Reis has been published in more than ten anthologies, most recently CAPS Poetry 2020: 20th Anniversary (Caps Press, 2020); Coffee Poems, Reflections on Life with Coffee (World Enough Writers, 2019); Local News: Poetry about Small Towns (MWPH Books, 2019). She received her Master of Science Degree in Education from Hunter College, The City University of New York, in 1986. A student of the late William Matthews, she completed her Master of Arts Degree in Creative Writing at The City College, City University of New York, in 2002.
Reis was born in Greenwich, Connecticut and grew up in Greenwood Lake, New York. She was married to the late musician and composer, Tom Miller. She has taught poetry workshops at The Northeast Poetry Center, College of Poetry and the Albert Wisner library in Warwick, New York. She is an avid quilter and now lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her dog, Phoebe and her cats, Peekamoose and Pud-Tud.
