Some afternoons, in
a certain
mood, there’s a word, a name
I have to remember. Some
times its for no reason: the
twins I never could remember
till I thought of cameras in the
attic: Garret and Cameron.
Yesterday it was the ramshackle
casino, it’s name over the lake
where, for the first time, in
white shorts and tan legs, my
heart banged: would I be
asked to dance? And what of
“The Mocking Bird” with its
kiss her in the center if you
dare. You have to remember,
I was the plump girl with
glasses of course I didn’t wear
those nights so a lot blurred.
I was the girl who won science
contests and art awards. To have
boys who didn’t know I was
brainy, ask will I… was like
heroin. “Ramshackle Pavilion”
in a lost student’s poem sent me
to Google, to Lake Dunmore,
Branbury Beach: nothing. I knew
it burned down as if it never had
been there. Chimney Point? No.
With so many of my friends
going, the name of this dance hall
where I first felt pretty is a comfort
I’m starved for. I e mail Vt tourist
sites, history sites with little
hope until in a warm tub I think:
diary, the little red one with a
lock that never worked there
near the bed. I turn to Augusts
and there it was with seven
exclamation points and what I’d
been hunting for in so many
ways: Cove Point
Door Mat
I can still remember
how
annoyed he got the first time
I used it, “Door mat,”
the way his mother let a brute
of a man walk all over her.
“Door mat”—you’d think I’d
called his mother whore or
bitch. Not strange, I went on,
so many women are at ties.
I stated a list of them: the
ones who faked orgasm to
keep some man, the ones who
say nothing when strangers
look and call their husbands,
“charming, so nice.” Door mat
I say. I like the word. The ones
someone else wipes their feet,
their penis all over: what
woman I want to say without a
job, a good job and kids hasn’t
had a stint keeping her mouth shut,
making excuses. One friend has
taken to buying cheap sexy
clothes, bustiers and fish
net instead of painting. Door
mat, dour mat. Door mat
I want to scream at him, at
my friend who coddles a 45
year olds son who probably
steels her money. Even Hilary
was I hiss, standing up for
him with his penis in who
knows whose mouth. I want
to say, maybe because I feel
so tired and hardly an Amazon
today, walking about, some
one not me, afraid like all the
other D. N’s to say what I
am really thinking
Better To Just Let It Go
there’s too little
time, the cat
still leaping for flies. Alright,
lets not think of cats tho it can
be certain you can find one
if you had one. Or even lets
say your small dog, or retired
grey hound, there where you
take a photograph or take out
charcoals, know this could be
the last time, could be a memento
(which was the name of my 22
year old cat I held in her last
hours, eve photographed) but
you don’t care about that and
she’s in an envelope along with
my mother, skeletal after years
of wishing she could eat as
much chocolate as she wanted,
not get fat. What I mean is there
is too little to hunt what’s lost.
I saw it, the delicate script
with love, Clara and nobody
knew. No relative left knew who
Clara was. Better if I had dis-
covered her lonely in a home, or
in her own world. I would know.
“Who is Clara” over and over
on an 18 k ring in my mother’s
closet. Thick gold, what you’d
give a man. Not only who, but
why in my mother’s closet?
”Love, Clara” in thin etched
scroll, delicate as the ring wasn’t:
Clara, Claire, a ghost. Never
real, no will, no daughter, no
cat. Clara, clear air. Not there,
unreal, ghostly, gone as now
even the ring is
