Two
poems from Jessica Greenbaum's Cover Songs of the Alphabet
followed
by a note on the author
A
Day Like This One
Says
one generation to the next
our consideration of darkness
habitual by then,
and distant
like the horizon’s black line
sprouting yellow rays
from
the sun’s open fist
in your drawing. If we could only
live among your
flowers, their petals
cheering like seal flippers
their stems free from
clustered burrs
of memory. Even now the line
divides us, for instance, given
today’s
autumn balm I think
O just like this very day
but calmer, far less probable
and
so remember how we ate
breakfast that morning, washed
and dressed, and when
we made it home
the skyline smoking but the windows open
your drawing fluttered
from its tack
like any turned page
and we wondered who drank
from that
cold cup in the sink
and who wore those limp clothes
on the bed, and we
stared at the horizon
you drew (to offset the day’s dizziness)
and
held you in our breath
and wished we could begin again
The
First, Youngest Men
Were not artful enough by half, but we got over
On their sweat, summer’s
condiment, and magnificent
Proximity, as if actors had stepped off stage
To
climb in our laps. Sometimes they were so lanky
Their corduroys could not shape
to their hips
And hollows, and then we were warmed by the rays
Their pelvic
bones sent over the horizon of their belts,
And sometimes their heft eclipsed
a tender manner
So surprising we did not know what would come next
And we
were frightened. We loved their long hair,
Their brotherhood with guitars and
drums, and something
The ages should not overlook is that we were magnetized
By
peacefulness, and by people who desired it. Memory
Adopted those t-shirts,
left hanging on a branch
By the lake, that had enjoyed the confidence of their
collar
Bones and chests; whichever sweaters their mothers
Had lifted from
dresser to trunk we took to heart its pattern
And feel against our chin; whatever
posture they took
In opposition or even admiration for authority impressed
On
us the dash of their autonomy, and where they
Touched us we went phosphorescent,
like the lake’s skin
Sparking as a diver breaks it, for breath. The tang
of pine
Boughs and cold offset, as if arranged, their warm hands
And neck,
and there was the weight – that defining
Body-long entrance to our space
– while the constellations
Floated, years before they pressed down on
our men
With the spite of the abandoned, a handful at a time.
©
Jessica
Greenbaum was born in Brooklyn, where she now lives with her husband and two daughters.
She attended Barnard College and was in the first graduating class of the University
of Houston's Writing Program. A winner of Discovery/The Nation prize and
P.E.N.'s Emerging Writer award, her first book, Inventing Difficulty, was
brought out by Silverfish Review Press' Gerald Cable Award, in 2000. Poems, essays
and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Harvard
Review, Partisan Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Salamander,
Southwest Review, Cincinnati Review and elsewhere. She
is the poetry editor for upstreet (www.upstreet-mag.org).
.
"A
Day Like This One" first appeared in Partisan Review; "The First,
Youngest Men" first appeared in Harvard Review and subsequently appeared
on Poetry Daily.
