This Is Not the Poem
in which the good girl learns
the leather jacket, the joint,
the rug burns on her knees.
The poem of a small flask filled
with heat she tries to swallow,
as she will swallow other things,
because he likes to watch
her open mouth. Not the poem
as spinning bottle in the basement,
the body that turns and turns
upon itself, dizzy taste
of spiked punch, ashtray lips.
Or the first tongue stud.
The first tonguing like someone lost
in an unexpected room. Not
the first hand fumbling her shirt,
discovering the lay of buttons,
the tease of eye and hook.
Instead. The poem of pimples.
Call them zits. The poem of braces
pinching until a kiss becomes
the same as being punished
by her mom. She hates this poem,
that she is not the ponytail,
the pop of cherry gum. The poem
that cannot flirt—a skirt flipped up,
a flash of panties in the breeze.
Grunge
Ugly is the new beautiful, my best friend said,
brushing shadow
on my eyes, a color called sludge.
Suddenly plaid flannel
was a way of softening how strange we’d become,
our arms like streets
in a stretched-out city, how tall we were,
jangled with caffeine.
The end of school was a rest stop someone kept moving
further away.
The clock kept dragging its aluminum hands.
We changed our minds
about boys, dumped the ones who slid the walls
of empty swimming pools,
gliding their skateboards in reverse.
Or the debate champions
who answered every question with a rough
tongue of tweed.
Other strangers were the answer. We tied
on weighted boots,
painted our nails radioactive,
forgot to wash
our hair. We played the same CD a thousand times,
imagined heroin, cocaine,
any foreign beating in the blood. Ugly
was the new desiring—
it made asphalt easy to love, our mouths a shade
of oil slick.
Proscenium
Theater camp—which meant we acted
like adults or how we thought adults would be,
if they stayed brave forever,
always reciting secrets to the dim
audience of the world,
each whisper pitched to carry.
It took training to speak so clearly or the backstage
shadows, the velvet curtain
where we watched lovers imitate desire,
the O of open mouths,
one body draped across another
like a yard of cloth.
Michelle, who strangled my hand
as if in answer to the scene—all day, we ran lines,
passed words in the small company between us.
We practiced fighting on the mats,
false slaps, a choreography of jabs
and punches that left us with real bruises.
Three-quarter speed. Full speed.
The trick to falling
was locking eyes. The trick was looking back at her.
We dressed in black,
carried props to the table—
a bowl of wax oranges
that looked so fresh we almost tasted juice,
a wallet full of counterfeit,
a plastic baby in a bassinet.
In vocal class, we said to be, or not be
without the consonants.
We rolled on the ground to find the infant cry
inside our lungs. What we wanted—a speech
about the thorn-memory of flowers.
Everyone was an ingénue that June
or played the ancient lady or wore the pants.
Everyone was in costume,
moving like someone else, from
the hips, the jutting chin,
from the gap between our legs.
We learned to hold a sword—the foil
just our sharpest point.
We sang on cue.
One night we bought sangria with her fake ID,
drank from the box until the dorm room faded out.
Wine and citrus on our tongues—
the word for blood.
We had rehearsed the bed and the drawn curtain.
Easy, then, to close our eyes,
improvise the way
our teachers told us to, Yes, And
—and Yes and Yes, repeating like an exercise until we fell
asleep. Skin to skin felt true
enough, like what actors call the moment.
We curled into the moment of that place—
only my fingers in the naked dark,
the opening of that summer,
the brightened arch of her.
Water through a Hand
In the changing room,
a woman loops the tape
around my chest.
I hold my breath against
the measurement
and remember
my mother, how she used
to stand this close
when I was five,
shampooing my hair,
the scent of apples
filling up our bath,
how I watched through wet
eyelashes the small wet
curls of her,
and her breasts that swayed
like an afterthought
of the body.
I never asked to touch,
although I often did
as if by accident.
At other times, so distant
from the nakedness
of the shower,
she exchanged a black lace bra
for nude, her back to me,
a strand of pearls
laid out across the bed,
her clip-on earrings
oystered in a velvet box.
That was thirty years ago,
when what I wanted
was dresses pink
as tender parts, or a pair
of Mary Janes
in mirror-shine. Here,
I raise my arms to learn
cup size and band.
I try on bits of cloth
that match my skin—
and this satin
paradox of women,
the wire of our movements,
the way we slip
like water through a hand. 
Jehanne Dubrow’s work has appeared in Poetry, New England Review, Ploughshares, and The New Republic. She is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Stateside (Northwestern UP).
|
