FROM THE ADULT DRIVE-IN
The hill, no the body unbroken
By the strip mall’s lights arced
Harp of her pelvic bone a mouth
Falling upon it like corn cut down
In a field I was forbidden
To walk through. There are so many
Kinds of darkness: her arms tied
To the bed, the shadow they cast
On the sheets whose brightness
Illuminates the hushed cars lying below.
Dark mouth surrounding the root
Or pressing against an opening:
A dog furrowing into the mole’s home
Following some distant trembling warmth.
• ♦ •
Having walked here through the darkening pines
The woman finds her lover in the abandoned
House, some hunter’s cabin, feathers everywhere.
She’s been running, has been pursued, a jealous
Husband who wants her. Is she afraid? Who cares.
We want the fucking to start. The field is so full
Of hunger that when she bends over the cars
Seem to move forward without being turned on.
Two women moving inside each other.
He’s coming for them sure as raccoons in grain
Pails. Their pale skin washes the screen
So we’re almost snow-blind. They can’t see us
Or him for that matter, huge in the doorframe.
He’s beginning to unbuckle his pants.
• ♦ •
O dark barns who will move me now?
I am undone by the flickering screen
By all those girls thrown against the coal black
Night. We, all of us, go back to the field
Scene of a back that went on forever,
The closed eyes, the want that entered us
As we drove by and tried not to look.
How will I ever learn to tell the truth
After the places my hands have been?
It is darker here than other towns, leaves
Burn clear through December. After that
We light beasts of the field to keep ourselves
Warm. Everyone has weathered each other’s want,
Familiar as the feed store’s smell of grain.
• ♦ •
Familiar as the feed store’s smell of grain
This figure seen from the road where the trees
Break apart. A woman straddling the pasture,
Arms white as birches that surround the body
Of cars idling beneath her. I cannot
Tell her voice from the leaves, just watch her mouth
Move, bare as plucked birds in a hunter’s
Hands. It’s a short walk to the fairgrounds.
I want to take her there, to the palace
Of the bandstand and have it out, music
Of tailbone, tensed hamstring, unrelenting
Chord of her neck pulled back till our eyes
Fill like a screen awash in headlights
As the hushed crowd pushes into the night.
• ♦ •
Like snow, feathers, thrush in the virgin’s mouth
It appeared, white against the dark sky. How
Did he know we wanted it, that we’d come
In all weather? A drive-in of skin flicks
For farmers, machinists, salesmen who lived
For small towns like ours. So much empty
Land and the mills shut down, our lives like barns
With both doors blown open: you could see straight
Through. O life before the freeway rose, dark
Turnpike passing thin as a shiv through
The backside of town. Nobody looking
For anyone to come home, truckers in
Back, some kids out for a ride, all of us
Expectant as deer in open season.
*
Hello Friends —
Today’s poem is by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. The above version of this sonnet sequence appeared in the journal Ninth Letter. A different (more recent) version of this poem also appears in Calvocoressi’s collection The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (2005) — but I’m sending you the older version because I like it better (possibly just because I fell in love with it first), and it’s my poem-a-day list so I get to choose. 😉 I would also like to note that I started writing this email before midnight and have at least some meek argument that I did not spoil my perfect record of having not missed a day all month.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2010.