Two
poems from Alison Powell's I Am Your Tin Ship
followed
by a note on the author
Decorum:
A Study
A
person could be at a loss. The width, spools and yardage, meringue
airs, impossible
long fingers, of decorum. Its army sashay of the side-
walk.
Iguana-eyed, left on stoop, no knock or ring. The small blue bruises
from
wearing these hard tasteful heels. Like molasses in a dress going
down
the stairs to answer. Because to lift the unbashful marble, ah it’s lit
differently,
the arm would straighten. Door and doorbell taking on a low
religious
typewriter drone. Stomach rot of rose milk and rubbing
alcohol. A person makes
a habit of not knowing what to make of it,
as
fact is, most days no door or invitation wants opening.
The table crowded
with its nestled chairs. Eyes close at a glance.
Jeffersonville,
Indiana, 1983
Why we are sure tired. The grocery carts drifting pods.
Our mistakes steeped
in the dull milk bath. Our worst
crop nebulous, gray, seeded. The heat. Hurry,
we've run out
of
each other, silent and spiteful – children from prim dumb
women, deft
with scissors. The world full of butterscotch,
paper dolls around the head
like a tight white crown,
brown
bag chain-link garlands droop. The heat. Any minute
now. Death-defying. Plucking
raisins out of carpet, knee
to shag. Morning, glass and phone, morning oh
my, gold
watch
and sewing, tomato pin cushion red breast, mis-
carriage. Why was that the
doorbell. It was such grace,
heard from inside this fireplace. What precision.
This sticky
toothed
heat, willows, locusts. My what empty. What lapping
shadowy strides. Shuffleboard
sand and cigarette smoke,
here's to a speedy recovery, patent leather shoes
like a fist.
©
Alison
Powell's poetry has appeared in journals including Black Warrior Review,
AGNI, Puerto del Sol, Caketrain, Quarterly West, RHINO,
Denver Quarterly, Cream City Review, New Orleans Review,
and the anthology Best New Poets (2006); her work is forthcoming in Guernica
and Spoon River. A recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center,
Millay Colony for the Arts, and Writers at Work, she was the Agha Shahid Ali Fellow
at the Fine Arts Work Center in 2006. Her first book of poems (currently titled
On the Desire to Levitate) was a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry
Prize (2007), T.S. Eliot Prize, Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series, and a semi-finalist
for the Walt Whitman Award (National Poetry Series). She is pursuing her PhD in
Literature at CUNY, focusing on the Renaissance and Metaphysical poets. Originally
from Indiana, she now lives in the Lower East Side and teaches at Fordham University.
"Decorum:
A Study" first appeared in Guernica;
"Jeffersonville, Indiana, 1983" is forthcoming in Spoon River.
