April 2019
Author’s Note: I have been going through a dry period in writing (I don’t say “block” as it sounds too bulky and permanent). The Best Poem theme made me sort through my poems, some of which are very old, and I was encouraged. If I could write so much, there must be a few more in me. My latest book is World Enough, and Time (Kelsay, 2017), and my poems have appeared recently in Spillway and Serving House.
I wrote “Milk Teeth” decades ago, when my sons, now in their forties with children of their own, were still at home. I remember sitting with those baby teeth in my hand and waiting for them to “speak’ to me, as they seemed like talismans. I was trying to capture the complexity and ambivalence of motherhood. This is a poem I revised to take something out (our cat, which my oldest son had rescued off the street). Marge Piercy was the one who said “take out the cat,” and considering how she feels about cats, that was surprising, but right. Just recently I cleaned out my jewelry box and found the milk teeth again, even more broken and discolored. But I still can’t throw them out.
Milk Teeth
In the jewelry box, under fake
gold and silver, imitation stones,
I uncover these raw pearls of teeth.
The jagged edges where they tore loose
from the gums are hollow in the middle,
and in some, the old blood ages brown.
I could not throw them out, these fragments
of their bodies. Now I can’t tell
whose teeth they were, pocked and uneven
as those years when time slowed to a leaf
seen on our walks, unfolding day by day,
or repeated itself like sandbox castles.
So near the nerve, the cavities
carved by sweetness in that enamel
boredom. Teeth formed around my milk,
outgrown and thrust away. I see them strung,
the medicine man’s bone necklace.
When I hunted under pillows trading
these for quarters, I made the best bargain.
Now they jangle in my palm, a currency
rising in value, these healing stones.
Originally published in Embers
I was reading about euthanasia and wanted to write about it, but could not find a way in. As I mulled the word over, it began to sound like a physical place, a continent one might encounter on a voyage to a totally different discovery. It took me years to write “Euthanasia: A Geography,” many different drafts, and I finally took the advice of everyone who read it and said I needed to cut the first stanza. (How hard it is to “murder our darlings”!) I feel the poem now expresses in the images of euthanasia’s geography what I could not say directly.
Euthanasia: A Geography
Spoken, it looms
like some vast island
he did not mean
to discover.
Its rock wall spans
the clear horizon,
daring him to scale
cliffs without footholds
to the bleached plateau,
treeless, cracked by heat.
Beneath a molten sky
spined bushes hunker.
The landscape he might
have mapped takes his own
measure. Now he must shoulder
light and shadow, chiseled
sky, and let the stars
draw closer.
He scans the distance
for the way across,
the pass through mountains
he does not choose to name,
words precious as water.
Consumed with thirst,
he walks in circles
till the land that seemed
too stark for bones
dissolves in sudden rain.
White blossoms open, fall
from clots of berries
poisonous, but sweet.
And what he thought were stones
unfold their wings.
Originally published in Poetry
This poem was written years ago, but is, unfortunately, even more relevant now. I’m treating hate as if it were a country from which someone could emigrate. As if the language of hate could be forgotten, or at least hidden away until it can be buried. For hate need not be passed down through generations, and it seems a kind of grace to keep one’s children safe from it. I almost always read this poem at the end of my readings now, and I’m so grateful it came to me. I’m not sure it’s one of my three best poems, but I think it’s an important one.
Out of Hate’s Country
Her sons grow to men
who face all faces
with undamaged eyes,
wait for each soul
to speak its name.
They don’t know
what an old country
she’s from, how she must
translate in her head
the grace that rolls
from their tongues.
The past spins
a powerful hex.
She hushes pride, spits
over her shoulder for luck.
As much as what she’s said
or done, her silence
has kept them safe.
Some moonlight night
she will rip out
the words of hate
sewn into her coat
and bury them deep
where all bones embrace.
Originally published in Calyx
Milk Teeth
In the jewelry box, under fake
gold and silver, imitation stones,
I uncover these raw pearls of teeth.
The jagged edges where they tore loose
from the gums are hollow in the middle,
and in some, the old blood ages brown.
I could not throw them out, these fragments
of their bodies. Now I can’t tell
whose teeth they were, pocked and uneven
as those years when time slowed to a leaf
seen on our walks, unfolding day by day,
or repeated itself like sandbox castles.
So near the nerve, the cavities
carved by sweetness in that enamel
boredom. Teeth formed around my milk,
outgrown and thrust away. I see them strung,
the medicine man’s bone necklace.
When I hunted under pillows trading
these for quarters, I made the best bargain.
Now they jangle in my palm, a currency
rising in value, these healing stones.
Originally published in Embers
I was reading about euthanasia and wanted to write about it, but could not find a way in. As I mulled the word over, it began to sound like a physical place, a continent one might encounter on a voyage to a totally different discovery. It took me years to write “Euthanasia: A Geography,” many different drafts, and I finally took the advice of everyone who read it and said I needed to cut the first stanza. (How hard it is to “murder our darlings”!) I feel the poem now expresses in the images of euthanasia’s geography what I could not say directly.
Euthanasia: A Geography
Spoken, it looms
like some vast island
he did not mean
to discover.
Its rock wall spans
the clear horizon,
daring him to scale
cliffs without footholds
to the bleached plateau,
treeless, cracked by heat.
Beneath a molten sky
spined bushes hunker.
The landscape he might
have mapped takes his own
measure. Now he must shoulder
light and shadow, chiseled
sky, and let the stars
draw closer.
He scans the distance
for the way across,
the pass through mountains
he does not choose to name,
words precious as water.
Consumed with thirst,
he walks in circles
till the land that seemed
too stark for bones
dissolves in sudden rain.
White blossoms open, fall
from clots of berries
poisonous, but sweet.
And what he thought were stones
unfold their wings.
Originally published in Poetry
This poem was written years ago, but is, unfortunately, even more relevant now. I’m treating hate as if it were a country from which someone could emigrate. As if the language of hate could be forgotten, or at least hidden away until it can be buried. For hate need not be passed down through generations, and it seems a kind of grace to keep one’s children safe from it. I almost always read this poem at the end of my readings now, and I’m so grateful it came to me. I’m not sure it’s one of my three best poems, but I think it’s an important one.
Out of Hate’s Country
Her sons grow to men
who face all faces
with undamaged eyes,
wait for each soul
to speak its name.
They don’t know
what an old country
she’s from, how she must
translate in her head
the grace that rolls
from their tongues.
The past spins
a powerful hex.
She hushes pride, spits
over her shoulder for luck.
As much as what she’s said
or done, her silence
has kept them safe.
Some moonlight night
she will rip out
the words of hate
sewn into her coat
and bury them deep
where all bones embrace.
Originally published in Calyx
© 2019 Mary Makofske
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