July 2018
Laurie Byro
philbop@warwick.net
philbop@warwick.net
In 1985, while pursuing a business degree, I unhappily landed in a creative writing class and announced to the group that I thought Walt Whitman was a chain of schools throughout the United States. To my astonishment, I had found my pacing, abandoned prose, and started a poetry circle that has been meeting for 16 years. I have published four poetry collections, most recently: “The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities” Kelsay Books and “Wonder” Little Lantern Press (out of Wales). https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Laurie+Byro I am the Poet in Residence at the West Milford Township Library and despite it all, love New Jersey, and have lived here almost 60 years.
Secrets
For WS Merwin
A pile of windfall apples becomes
a fox lying nose in tail, a sentinel for memory,
as the late sun turns its fur into rusty barbed wire.
We’ve traveled for days. I’ve told you before
about these mountain roads. About the man
who lived in a shack who borrowed water,
fried me a plate of catfish for my Halloween
treat. I called him Uncle Charley, but he wasn’t
any relation of mine. The night we got caught swimming,
there was another who wore a hood, leafy and torn,
who watched with particular interest while I wrung
out my undershirt, scrubbed my skin pink before we
sat down to supper and I was forced to eat what
was good enough for them. What I thought I had left,
I kept finding again. A pile of hoods in our attic left
behind by the man and bleached white as bones. Clippings
of the pineys and the baby who had been stolen.
We find a fox lying nose to tail, a sentinel for memory,
sun glinting its fur rusty and I tell you, with lips bruised
like wind fall apples, I can’t stay here. Me with my old
coat mended so neatly where I had sewn secrets into its
pockets. Me in my little girl’s voice who tells
you a story with lips that are only slightly torn.
This was published in San Pedro River Review
Demeter Dresses for Dinner (while staying at the Absecon Hyatt)
Of course, she ate those love-apples, I heard she slurped
seeds and all straight down, the ungrateful twit. The devil
trailed her, followed her along the telephone wires, urged
her to defy her mother. That damned black-dog hounded
her from Absecon Island to Barnegat Bay. No way, could I
guilt her into minding her dear protector. She was between
the devil and the deep blue Wildwood Sea. They summoned her into
those pine barrens. That bastard-wolf brayed while the stars fell,
throwing us completely off her scent. It was no coincidence
they picked a trifecta weekend to ruin her. Powerballs be damned
how unlucky was the timing of this? Those grubby-nailed pineys,
how dare they abduct her, hide her under their phlox? And me
trying to explain all those bad parking tickets to the nice Officer?
No wonder, I lost my good figure, while that ingrate chatters on
about becoming a vegetarian? If I’m to one day be a grandmother,
it will be to some hideous crooked-tailed beast. The little darling
will surely have a hood or bat wings, no good can come
from her hanging with those people. Have you seen the condition
of their teeth? I didn’t raise her to be a pine-worshiper, what is that
a druid or something? Look at me, I used to be svelte, a sylph,
a knock-out they said. I could get any man alive and even some
dead, I had my share of Gods believe me. Now the mirrors reveal
the wreck of me. I have this matronly butt, it’s fallen straight
through the floor into some fresh new hell. And my legs, I could
have subbed for Tina in Atlantic City. Now? I’m a mess of varicose
veins. From chasing down (dare I say it), runaways? Or at least one.
I shall revenge myself of this place. All the tomatoes, the cranberry
bogs are next on my hit list. When I am through growing blacktop
instead of hibiscus, this place will be one crooked highway. Young lady,
you will have no trouble working your way back to me, Babe,
with or without do-wop accompaniment. All roads will lead to Mother.
Crops, you are doomed to bumper to bumper Sciroccos. Each pear
and peach tree blighted, this Garden State will become an asphalt anthill.
Sunflowers
Other than watching sunflowers grow tall and bend
low, old peasants working the soil, I can’t tell you how
I spent the summer. Every line I wrote, I crossed over,
all my mistakes erupted into bare spots on each
gold-fringed face. Bees flocked to my tow-haired children
making me believe there was never any deprivation.
Labor Day chrysanthemums split open a black kettle of sky.
Weary crone heads could be cut off and dried. I bundled
sunflowers and hung them upside down from the porch ceiling.
At night they sighed from their nooses. My father, alone
for the first time, slept in our spare bedroom. I cut each down
one at a time to give him pillow after pillow of sunflower.
By morning clutching coffee sweet and light in clay, he said
that the night before he had dreamt of his own true love.
Never once did I want to know her name.
This is published in: The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities
For WS Merwin
A pile of windfall apples becomes
a fox lying nose in tail, a sentinel for memory,
as the late sun turns its fur into rusty barbed wire.
We’ve traveled for days. I’ve told you before
about these mountain roads. About the man
who lived in a shack who borrowed water,
fried me a plate of catfish for my Halloween
treat. I called him Uncle Charley, but he wasn’t
any relation of mine. The night we got caught swimming,
there was another who wore a hood, leafy and torn,
who watched with particular interest while I wrung
out my undershirt, scrubbed my skin pink before we
sat down to supper and I was forced to eat what
was good enough for them. What I thought I had left,
I kept finding again. A pile of hoods in our attic left
behind by the man and bleached white as bones. Clippings
of the pineys and the baby who had been stolen.
We find a fox lying nose to tail, a sentinel for memory,
sun glinting its fur rusty and I tell you, with lips bruised
like wind fall apples, I can’t stay here. Me with my old
coat mended so neatly where I had sewn secrets into its
pockets. Me in my little girl’s voice who tells
you a story with lips that are only slightly torn.
This was published in San Pedro River Review
Demeter Dresses for Dinner (while staying at the Absecon Hyatt)
Of course, she ate those love-apples, I heard she slurped
seeds and all straight down, the ungrateful twit. The devil
trailed her, followed her along the telephone wires, urged
her to defy her mother. That damned black-dog hounded
her from Absecon Island to Barnegat Bay. No way, could I
guilt her into minding her dear protector. She was between
the devil and the deep blue Wildwood Sea. They summoned her into
those pine barrens. That bastard-wolf brayed while the stars fell,
throwing us completely off her scent. It was no coincidence
they picked a trifecta weekend to ruin her. Powerballs be damned
how unlucky was the timing of this? Those grubby-nailed pineys,
how dare they abduct her, hide her under their phlox? And me
trying to explain all those bad parking tickets to the nice Officer?
No wonder, I lost my good figure, while that ingrate chatters on
about becoming a vegetarian? If I’m to one day be a grandmother,
it will be to some hideous crooked-tailed beast. The little darling
will surely have a hood or bat wings, no good can come
from her hanging with those people. Have you seen the condition
of their teeth? I didn’t raise her to be a pine-worshiper, what is that
a druid or something? Look at me, I used to be svelte, a sylph,
a knock-out they said. I could get any man alive and even some
dead, I had my share of Gods believe me. Now the mirrors reveal
the wreck of me. I have this matronly butt, it’s fallen straight
through the floor into some fresh new hell. And my legs, I could
have subbed for Tina in Atlantic City. Now? I’m a mess of varicose
veins. From chasing down (dare I say it), runaways? Or at least one.
I shall revenge myself of this place. All the tomatoes, the cranberry
bogs are next on my hit list. When I am through growing blacktop
instead of hibiscus, this place will be one crooked highway. Young lady,
you will have no trouble working your way back to me, Babe,
with or without do-wop accompaniment. All roads will lead to Mother.
Crops, you are doomed to bumper to bumper Sciroccos. Each pear
and peach tree blighted, this Garden State will become an asphalt anthill.
Sunflowers
Other than watching sunflowers grow tall and bend
low, old peasants working the soil, I can’t tell you how
I spent the summer. Every line I wrote, I crossed over,
all my mistakes erupted into bare spots on each
gold-fringed face. Bees flocked to my tow-haired children
making me believe there was never any deprivation.
Labor Day chrysanthemums split open a black kettle of sky.
Weary crone heads could be cut off and dried. I bundled
sunflowers and hung them upside down from the porch ceiling.
At night they sighed from their nooses. My father, alone
for the first time, slept in our spare bedroom. I cut each down
one at a time to give him pillow after pillow of sunflower.
By morning clutching coffee sweet and light in clay, he said
that the night before he had dreamt of his own true love.
Never once did I want to know her name.
This is published in: The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities
© 2018 Laurie Byro
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