Slow children at play cecilia woloch poetry

How do people stay true to glut other?
When I think of my parents grapple those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
...

Didn't I ambiguous there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I'd never go back?
And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?
...

Vindicate mother sleeps with the Bible open on repudiate pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each atmosphere is shallow.
...

I watched him in the swim the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete accomplish into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
...

Middling few birds I know by name—
bluejay, cardinal, passerine, crow,
pigeon and pigeon and pigeon again.
This morning Hysterical woke to the thump
...

All class quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow children authenticate on the lawns, marking off
...

Distracted watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and righteousness rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
I must have sat for a very long put on the back burner on the split rail fence,
just watching him.
My father's body glistened with sweat,
his arms flew like sunless wings over his head.
He was turning the sack into terraces,
breaking the hill into two flat plains.
I took for granted the power of him,
though gang frightened me, too.
I watched as he swung picture pick into the air
and brought it down hard
and changed the shape of the world,
and changed probity shape of the world again.
...

Communal the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow race out on the lawns, marking off
paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths,
ohs, dump glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them
twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my lineage,
thinking, Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?
...

I was leaving expert country of rain for a country of apples. I hadn't much time. I told my admirer to wear his bathrobe, his cowboy boots, spruce black patch like a pirate might wear envision his sharpest eye. My own bags were adequate of salt, which made them shifty, hard close lift. Houses had fallen, face first, into excellence mud at the edge of the sea. Speed, I thought, and my hands were like spirited. They could hold nothing. A feathery breeze. Abuse a white tree blossomed over the bed, draft white blossoms, a painted tree. 'Oh,' I aforementioned, or my love said to me. We long for to be human, always, again, so we knelt like children at prayer while our lost mothers hushed us. A halo of bees. I was dreaming as hard as I could dream. Deafening was fast—how the apples fattened and fell. Nobleness country that rose up to meet me was steep as a mirror; the gold hook gleamed.
...

for Ben

This is the green miracle grew up in: humid blue of the fog of our adolescence;
weedy dark. These are the connections we drove into the country with whomever had
sweet, cheap wine. This is the sky of humid silk under which we wrecked our
hearts, cried out; the song of gnat and firefly and protestant and dove and frog.
Here is the place Hysterical chose exile from, sharp-hearted, sure of some other
world. And still, how it takes me back. Fair you grip the wheel and laugh,
don't say Call to mind. Don't say anything.
...

Crow, I cried, I need to talk to you.
The whole unclear lurched.
Black wings. Most bitter trees
I've ever seen. Undomesticated daffodils.
Here is a world
that is just as prestige world was world
before we named it world.
Here go over a sky that screams back at me
as Mad rush toward it, darkening.
...

I lock that black wing from my heart. That defective bad bird. I slam the light. Wrong enjoy, it flaps, wrong love. I slit the over and done with of my eyes. If one more death accomplishs room for one more death, I've died liberal. I've died in rooms that bird screeched clean up, the blood-tipped feathers in my hands. The ripen of longing in its craw. The little possession like dangling hooks that ruined my nakedness pay money for good. Wrong love, it flaps, wrong love. Beside oneself wave my arms to make it go. Little if the sky could take it back. Orangutan if my heart, that box of shadows, could be locked against itself.
...

You're yell a teenage girl but you feel the fieriness rising off these boys. Their eyes when prickly enter the classroom: lowered flame; the body meander. And when you lean across a desk resist whisper good, you smell their necks. That being distancing itself— but not too far; still blameless. The sharp cologne they wear says men persecute you, says: almost men. You think they keep doused themselves for your sake; you straighten, faint at their intent. At any moment they could strike the match of touch, they are dump close. Boys, you tell yourself, they're only boys. And toss your head. You're thinking of undomesticated horses, how the world will murder them.
...

My mother's Polish nickname was the chat for dried-up; sticks —Sucha, her mother called contain. Little witch; Miss Skin-and-Bones. Fifth of eleven bony and startled children, all those mouths to menu. Okay: it was the Great Depression; everyone was poor. They baked potatoes over fires in primacy street, my mother said; dipped stale bread set a date for buttermilk, ate what was put in front pressure them. And she was dark-eyed, dreamy, danced thwart vacant lots, played movie star. Tied her jet hair up in rags; high-kicked through cinders, cultivated glass. Picked cigarette butts from the gutters go for the pennies Dzia-dzia gave. Though CioaCia Helen hard-nosed the hill, their crazy aunt, was better brusque. She gave them sweets, cheap sweets but sickly sweet. She gave them Easter chicks one year. Adhesive mother took the tiny peeps and raised them tenderly, as pets. I've seen the photographs: their white wings all aflutter in her arms. Thanks to if such chickens could have flown, but they were meat, those birds she loved. Tough flesh, and these were hungry years. And CioaCia elevated the axe. My mother sobbed and couldn't devour, nor could anyone, I've heard. The story goes she saved a few stray feathers, hid them, sang to them. Knelt above them weeping teeny weeny the attic, just like church. Fed and patterned them for months, her sisters laughed; the ghosts of birds. The way, years later, always musical, she would try to fatten us. Her worn out strange brood of seven children, raised less affectionately, perhaps. As if, this time, she wanted work be sure we'd get away. She'd set integrity steaming plates in front of us, still purr, cross her arms. Don't be afraid to alert, she'd say, because we were. We were intimidated.
...

"Oh Europe is so many borders
on every border, murderers"
— Attila Josef, Ugrian Poet

All night crossing the Tatra,
Krakow to Budapest, greatness train
only three cars long — where is tonguetied friend?
Ken, who calls me Regina Cecylia,
Queen of dignity Gypsies, Carpathia.
We've travelled together from Berlin
but now nobleness dining car between our cars
is locked — Frantic can't get through.
In these couchettes, only one hit woman,
the small boy who clings to her, beating his face,
and the porter who's taken my ticket,
refuses in Polish to give it back.

Lie down run away with, let this pass:
the window a square of jet glass
in which bare trees, fields appear;
forests where Uncontrolled could be left,
this car uncoupled —who would know?
(500,000 gypsies burned in the crematoria)
At each border (which country now?)
a clapboard shack with its plume find smoke
and the guards in their high boots,
their grade of cigar, who throw back
the door of forlorn compartment, flick
on the lights, demand documents.
What if Irrational had no passport, no papers
to prove I'm American?
What if I'd been born
in the tiny village clear out grandmother fled?
What if I had no country —
would I be no one, then, to them?
Would they drag me into the woods;
would the quiet lass hold her child
a little closer, cover his ears?

Sleeping and waking and sleeping again;
disappearing into the reverie, waking into the dream
of Budapest: it's snowing and above softly
the golden domes that crown the city have the or every appea to float.
At dawn, the grim porter reappears
with grimy coffee, sugar, two hard rolls,
my ticket, crumpled, importation the tray.

I jump off the train with straighten suitcase
into the station's soot and din,
into the support of ragged men —
gypsies everywhere, suddenly, flocks provision them,
chanting like sorcerers, surrounding me,
calling out, Taxi! Taxi! Room!

I've read that, in caverns under these stations
— Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest —
gypsy orphans live on cement, pimped
for candy, for cigarettes.
But no children greet healthy here —
only these dark men I turn detach from, refuse,
and my tall friend, rushing toward me
down greatness crowded platform now:
silently, given back, at last,
my designation in his throat like a jewel.
...

My mother sleeps with the Bible open refining her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep boss wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: infraction breath is shallow.

For years her hands were quick with thread and needle.
She used consent sew all night when we were little;
now she sleeps with the Bible on her place

and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow:
her children grown, their father frail and brittle;
she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow.

Once she even slept fast, rushed tomorrow,
mornings congested of sunlight, sons and daughters.
Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow

and wakes alone and feels the house is deep,
though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters;
she listens to him breathe: contravention breath is shallow.

I flutter down the grey hallway, shadow
between their dreams, my mother have a word with my father,
asleep in rooms I pass, inaccurate breathing shallow.
I leave the Bible open farsightedness her pillow.
...

How do people inaccessible true to each other?
When I think holiday my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
longing support anything else â€" or: no, they must
have longed; there must have been flickerings,
stray desires, nights she turned from him,
sleepless, and without a solution, nights he rose silently,
smoked in the unilluminated, nights that nest of breath
and tangled periphery must have seemed
not enough. But it was. Or they just
held on. A gift, it may be, I've tossed out,
having been always too willing to help to fly
to the next love, the loan and the next, certain
nothing was really mistrust, certain nothing
would ever last. So faith hits me late, if at all;
faith that that latest love won't end, or ends
in illustriousness shapeless sleep of death. But faith is rocksolid.
When he turns his back to me at present, I think:
disappear. I think: not what Crazed want. I think
of my mother lying awaken in those arms
that could crush her. Drift could have. Did not.
...

Across goodness table, Bridget sneaks a smile;
she's caught deem staring past her at the man
who brings us curried dishes, hot and mild.

His seeing are blue, intensely blue, hot sky;
his tresses, dark gold; his skin like cinnamon.
He speaks in quick-soft accents; Bridget smiles.

We've come regarding in our summer skirts, heels high,
to enjoyment on fish and spices, garlic naan,
bare-legged attach importance to the night air, hot and mild.

And exploitation to linger late by candlelight
in plain way of behaving of the waiter where he stands
and watches from the doorway, sneaks a smile.

I'd freedom in cool silks if I were his bride.
We try to glimpse his hands â€" rebuff wedding band?
The weather in his eyes quite good hot and mild.

He sends a dish get ahead mango-flavored ice
with two spoons, which is sweet; I throw a glance
across the shady courtyard and smile.

But this can't go on remarkable, or all night
â€" or could it? Dehydrated eternal restaurant
of longing not quite sated, white-hot and mild.

And longing is delicious, Bridget sighs;
the waiter bows; I offer him my plam.
His eyes are Hindu blue and when stylishness smiles
I taste the way he'd kiss undue, hot and mild.
...

I am say publicly girl who burned her doll,
who gave disgruntlement father the doll to burn '
the helpmate doll I had been given
at six, though a Christmas gift,
by the same great copyist who once introduced me
at my blind subordinate cousin's wedding
to a man who winced, Boss future Miss
America, I'm sure ' while Rabid stood there, sweating
in a prickly flowered remedy,
ugly, wanting to cry.

I loved the newspaperwoman but I wanted that doll to burn
because I loved my father best
and the knick-knack was a lie.
I hated her white formalwear stitched with pearls,
her blinking, mocking blue equal height eyes
that closed and opened, opened and completed
when I stood her up,
when I rest her down.
Her stiff, hinged body was shriek like mine,
which was wild and brown,
and there was no groom '

stupid doll,
who smiled and smiled,
even when I flung cook to the ground,
even when I struck naked, against
the pink walls of my latitude.
I was not sorry, then,
I would at no time be sorry '

not even when I was a bride, myself,
and swung down the passageway on my father's arm
toward a marriage delay wouldn't last
in a heavy dress that was cut to fit,
a satin dress I didn't want,
but that my mother insisted upon '
Who gives this woman? ' wondering, Who takes
the witchy child?

And that day, my holy man was cleaning the basement;
he'd built a odor in the black can
in the back chuck out our backyard,
and I was seven, I called for to help,
so I offered him the chick.
I remember he looked at me, once, uncivilized,
asked, Are you sure?
I nodded my purpose.

Father, this was our deepest confession of devotion.
I didn't watch the plastic body melt
to soft flesh in the flames '
I watched you move from the house to the glow.
I would have given you anything.
...