Two
poems from Melissa Ginsburg's Dear Weather Ghost
followed
by a note on the author
The
Dissection
Each
girl gets a pretty frogtray
and a dead pet and a ribbon
to dress it. Each
pet gets a drink
of long life and sacrifice
and lemonade and lemons, lies
down
in the black putty in a tin bed and wears
the wedding pins.
Willingly.
A girl wears the pins
on her lapel, laced with instinct,
a bad story, long
and messy
favorite subject. Each pet
and each girl wears the pins
and
learns lessons, sketched anatomy,
a love, a place to rest. Each pet lies patient.
Time to catch the bus. On the bus ride home
there is no bus ride home.
The
Rabbit
Once I was a milliner's apprentice.
I served a master. I tried hard.
I
loved his charts and flowers.
He toiled. He fringed poppies.
I
loved our caged rabbit in the dim room.
Pink half of a pair bond.
I
wove and steamed. I wooled and tweeded.
Yards of felt I ruined.
In
the dim room I caged and charted.
I poppied a pillbox. I lumped a cloche.
Love
boxed my hatter. I bowed.
I halved and pinked and pinned.
A
hat apprenticed the rabbit.
Rabbit served and dimmed.
I
failed lappets. Pinners and paste.
I laced and edged and ribboned.
I
owed failure and the milliner a debt.
I fell upon a button and a feather.
I
caged the cap and set the rabbit master.
©
Melissa
Ginsburg was born in Houston, Texas, and earned a BA from the University of Houston
and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was recipient
of the Iowa Arts Fellowship. Ginsburg lives in Iowa City and Los Angeles, where
she is at work on a novel. She is the author of the chapbook Arbor (New
Michigan Press, 2007). Her poems have appeared in Field, Seneca Review,
Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and other magazines.
