Letter to the house (I):
the woman pours out like water. This is because
her body spooks easily, because her hand
would not hold the summer. And so the summer
separated. And so the house inside the house,
inside you, rises in her throat. Would she make
this movement into sound, or even . . . but-, but
she is in front of the window, and the faces
watching-- and the ones that will watch-- scare
her into what she would not be. Hear her sing
like some crone? She does not. She
cannot. The house
(you)
calls her crazy, with those windows
pretending to be glass, the ceilings that look
to be flat,--but-, but at night, when it is hot,
she hears the sky hump
over like someone dead,--if only to say "although, al-though." And now here, like water, she bends her head toward it all, as if to say:
(letter:) yes, this house-- this house inside
my house,
you--
is the shawl
I have wrapped my face in . . . such white!
Eva Heisler lives in upstate New York where she works nights on the children's ward of a psychiatric hospital. Poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in
Ironwood, Kansas Quarterly, Montana Review, Sonora Review,
and
The Women's Review of Books. go to this issue's table of contents
Letter to the house (II):
or why she would write
anyway,
for the smell
that was on her grandmother's hands inside the house
(and you, them). And so it is
behind the winter there was this dowry-- and quickly
it went,
and
full. The first word
of that ghost behind the winter she repeats on the paper, repeats until the paper repeats:
"There is earth in this air"-- and ice, and why don't
the windows stray. It is because, because
her breathing grows faces, because: under the sink
there are buckets, small ones, filled with water-- and
it might as well be said: she wants them some place
else, and she wants the house (you) to answer
for her, and she wants the smell of that soap, and
she wants it cold.
Yellow Flag
The woman
holds
a moon-plant.
She might as well
be lost. The lights
of a distant city
reveal the way
she will not go.
The landscape--
a black star--
is not hers.
Hands
hang from windows
over the red
mud, this
desire. This
asylum, hungry
star,
gathers the urges
that were hers.
The End of Part One
She didn't want to meet. She didn't want to sail. She
didn't want to turn. She didn't want to branch. She
didn't want to rip. She didn't want stem, planks, inside
a moth. She didn't want to speak. She didn't want to
light the lamps. She didn't want to see the albums. She
didn't want to undress. She didn't want to dress. She
didn't want to loosen the sheet, and it was tight. It was
blank, it was black, and it wound the room, the day,
voice. She didn't want to see. She didn't want to sleep.
She didn't want to scrub the pines. She didn't want a
blanket. She didn't want a shovel. She didn't want to
open the box. She didn't want a comb, feather, step,
sound, tent.
