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Loonfeather Press, Minnesota
ISBN 0 - 926147
- 04 - 8
These
are sensual poems womanly and wise. In this superb collection,
filled with startling and unexpected images, CarolAnn Russell writes
about motherhood, marriage, and sisterly love. The female figures
are legendary in stature
- Marcia Southwick
I
If we had touched
them together,
if she had smiled,
slipping out of
her blouse,
unfastening her
white brassiere,
would I have imagined
myself
a mother someday
as I lay my cheek
against her rich
and generous flesh?
Would I have fed
myself then
against the world's
starvation,
the ancient hunger
for beauty
to shine its blue
moon
into the cells
of our bodies?
II
Skin to skin, loving
women
in the sunlight
of an ordinary day,
that singular language
of touch.
Pinwheels of flesh
leaf out
around the darkening
buds
over the green
fields of the heart,
keeping us rounded
and soft
against the world's
steel elbows.
III
I keep expecting
things to change
into their opposites.
If and when the
cancer comes
help me to remember
I am the center
of the paradox,
my breasts the
yin and yang
of pleasure, pain
perfectly paired
and bonded,
the first part
of my body
I touched alone,
and loved.
Now, pillowed against
the scarred chest
of a friend,
her prostheses
like burial mounds,
I am lead to grow
toward you
like some private
miracle.
When Josef lies napping,
swaddled
in flannel, spiders
twirl
spinning their
nets of silk.
When Josef lies
napping, solemn as Churchill,
dust motes dance
on the breath
of his snores.
Curled liked a bodhisattva,
resplendent in
diaper and tee-shirt
Josef presides:
Prince
of the Boulevard,
Sheik
of Changing Table
and Tub.
In the middle of
the day he sighs,
wriggles his fingers,
and waves his arms
hello and goodby
while his bare
feet kick in the air
and his pink toes
flutter. Pure
semaphore of flesh,
plumped in lambskin
like Baby Genghis,
Little King of Piss and
Drool, he
rules all that
is real,
elemental, and
free. Kisses
and poop are his
subjects;
so are we. Willingly,
full of our deaths
we live
for him, for he is the
verb
of our household
and when
he lies napping,
we sing.
When the table is lit
with daffodils
in their cobalt
vase,
Josef will announce
his intention
with gurgles and
ahs
that blossom like
blue roses
in a sultan's garden
until we have forgotten
we are old.
Reaching beyond
the sound
he finds the cold,
determine spoons
at rest upon their
simple napkins.
The first he raises
into air
as if from the dead,
and in his tiny
grip
it matters, mothering
his sole
desire to influence
the world
of table: scepter
to banish winter,
and rule,
the shimmering
spoon held high
as it will go toward
heaven.
In the glow of
his round face
he practices perfect
relinquishment
the second it falls
into the blue lake
of linoleum,
a lure for the
bones
of salmon, hook
for Kwan-yin who
cups
all the abyss
in the shine of
the kitchen
where swims a sperm
or a frozen flower
at home with the
sun.
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