THE LINCOLN REVIEW
STRAIT
[space between]
[neither here nor there]
/ /
should’ve spoken to her
felt unworthy of her grief
unkempt unclean
unready to accept what she had to offer
unable to extend what she surely needed
in that public space filled with others
I climbed the stairs away from her
/ /
A necklace
curled like a silver snake
between cobblestones
its chain knotted
its tiny heart scraped
and scratched
lost by someone
warms in my hand
its concentrated
weight lodges
in the linty corner
of my winter jacket
/ /
I enter the rain
the rain follows me
and I follow a small child
into the crosswalk
his umbrella threatens
to kite him away
his father strides ahead
unconcerned
does not look back
I carry the worry for him
shepherd the child and his umbrella
across the lanes of the Avenue
/ /
the dog goes out
sniffs and pees
then returns from
the outside world
its cornucopia of odors
gutter treats
and finds me at my desk
presses the cold
of her fur against my leg
she tells me she is here
she has been away
doing dog things
in a different world
the rug at my feet
her other dream
[ ]
[captive]
[cramped]
/ /
Brother, I have to stop writing
because the page is only getting smaller
and I remain,
/ /
An active-shooter alert
rings my phone
and I must imagine now
the scene at the hospital down the street
nurses and doctors in scrubs
sheltering in some prescribed place
patients learning of a new way
they might die in a clean well-lit room
/ /
when I was young pheasants jeweled
the narrow rows between dried cornstalks
and I was sent into the field to find
the birds huddled in quiet community
to scare them with my voice and body
flush their beauty toward the guns
/ /
the prettiest sandals
I ever wore
had wood-veneer heels
and thin maroon straps
that drew blood
when I danced
/ /
I dreamt my son and I
gripped a thin metal bar
far up in unadorned air
our feet perched uncomfortably on a rung
we could have been birds
but we felt paralyzed powerless
we had to move ourselves forward
so little to go on
/ /
All straits,
and none but straits…
[ ]
[channel, passage]
[and then]
/ /
an envelope full of trees
was mailed across the sea
Gift it said Three black-
stroked trees spritzed
with silver honey-gold
halo of bees DO NOT
BEND The parable
of the willow met
its west
and just before
winter too
/ /
Once I tamed a feral cat
it spat and hissed whenever I drew near
we were terrified of each other
but she looked so soft angora cream
and ginger unlike any other barn cat
I’d ever seen I wanted
to pet her to hold her
Her hunger broke her spirit
no her spirit changed as she came
to eat the food I put out for her
each day a little closer to me
until finally she was mine
more mine than any cat
has ever been
I named her Schätze my Treasure
/ /
speaking outside my self
my mother tongue sometimes foreign
the strait of translation
from one language to another
feeling into word
This is true: a tree is made of air
[ ]
[currents]
[visible and invisible]
/ /
I couldn’t have known
where now my house
was once a river
the loamy bed
slack-jawed peat
swells and caves
the sundry calamitous
contingencies
a season can reveal
/ /
When it’s icy, walk like a penguin
says my mother, nearly ninety
She demonstrates in the kitchen
her weight shifting forward
onto her sturdy black shoe
/ /
I can do this, I say
I cast a thought from here to there
reel myself over its thread
It was first a thought
then I was bodily there
/ /
Mid-recital at Memorial Chapel
a woman in the pew in front of me
gets up and leaves
scarf pulled across her face
she rushes down the aisle
Buxtehude organ notes slather the air
search for conclusion
the stranger’s sudden departure
has changed the music
/ /
I’m lost, he didn’t say
his silence filling me
/ /
the blue wall of my room
my little yard
the stone path
between houses
these everyday straits
/ /
I sit in a shiny metal pod
in a moving necklace of others
boxes made of brick
and wood speed past
soft green squares separate them
from each other and from us
The man beside me says
This is where the shipyard once was
They built ocean-bound Antelope clippers
here on the banks of the Mystic
I move the word swiftly
across my tongue MissiTuk –
what once brackish
swelled its banks
now sliced from ocean
fresh tamed trashed
years days minutes surge
upthrough skin that gives
/ /
Notes on “Strait”
Dirk Keppel, a Civil War soldier, ended a letter to his brother with these words: Brother, I have to stop writing because the page is only getting smaller and I remain.
The line, All straits, and none but straits, is from John Donne’s poem, “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness.”
The Mystic River in Massachusetts was known by local indigenous people as the “MissiTuk,” meaning “great tidal river;” in the 19th century, clipper ships were built on its banks and sailed out to the ocean; later, it was dammed.
Mary Buchinger, author of e i n f ü h l u n g/in feeling (2018), Aerialist (2015), and Roomful of Sparrows (2008), is president of the New England Poetry Club and professor of English and Communication Studies at MCPHS University in Boston; her work has appeared in AGNI, DIAGRAM, Gargoyle, Nimrod, Salamander, Slice, and elsewhere.
ISSN 2632-4423