Patricia Brody
(USA)
She Was Doomed to Lose Her Head on a Cold Morning
In a walled garden, closed field.
Mary, her red wig just so
her last-dash toilette —
Did she who gave the order
think of Anne, her mother
young, high-colored, in the end ignored,
on that other morning,
the monster already racing to mount,
huge on his bumpy pony
the new lady.
Truth is in the details.
The little dog, under her crumpled skirt
released to yap & yowl as his mistress
Finally finally
The strength of her sinew
the first blow, the second —
They had to lay her on the ground
plump as she was, lay her down —
Stretch her out to do the job.
The executioner unsure
A 3rd, a 4th – how many did it take? They say —
& whack her again
& whack her again — —
Until at last — purple with sweat & rue
the sheepish worker lifted up the globe — streaming —
What say the eyes — the neck with its —
the hazel eyes before they close — windows – Quick, Quit
& stories of the mouth, moving working —
dog howled , ladies sobbed —
This is the scene of the cousin queen.
Who had, we have to see, toddled off at two
to greet the morning, her tiny robe dragging in the dust.
Unsteady but determined, to get where she would go.
To cut her way.
Following her own mum’s — equally raw departure —
Earlier, that same kind of day.
MONUMENT
100th & Riverside
In the snow the mother
holds a fallen still-warm
child who is a man
his throat bared to the snow.
Snow falls on his naked arm
the hand
dangles to snow, heaped around her feet.
Her pieta, draped over
his mother’s frozen skirt.
Snow fills the cracks
his fire-protective
heavy gear split by heat
scorched by the flame
that claimed him.
Evening gown sky
bare branches bridal lace
snowing in the quiet.
Silent wedding
snow the veil.
The woman’s face called sacrifice
her jaw stern, her eyes north-gazing
into the night of falling diamonds.
Behind her, another age’s bronze:
the engine horses draw the men to fire.
Her boy is one of them
“in a war that never ends.”
She too is bare from the waist up
her breasts of stone
her breasts of frozen milk
he nipples hard and icy as her stare.
Under the lacy, muffling snow,
her young girl’s hair.
Previously published in Junctures: Journal for Thematic Dialogue, 2008.
NOT TELLING ZAK
when I heard about those boys,
how they were seized from their mothers in freezing
night , marched by the guards
into the gasp of hell. They must have tried
to be brave — — in the fog,
if that could save them,
boys your age dragged from bed there are pictures
of the fathers — herded into the public square
the fathers with their last breath
covering their sons’ eyes with still-warm hands
so the sleepy boys would see Death only
from the inside.
Here they come your friends
learning how to show nothing.
You would kill me if you saw me watching.
Is it time to go
into the bush to kill your first lion,
time to step out
on the cold surface of the moon? How will you know
which air to breathe?
— I used to breathe you, the powder smell
of your neck.
I’d tuck your bunny beside you:
Hush – – – We’d read in the lamp’s yellow circle,
Goodnight Moon, we sang against the dark.
Now you have to walk the cool walk.
Previously published in Adanna On-line, January 2012
Battle Scene with Cherries
Susan and I sit in lavender light, talking.
Since Saturday when we said they were peaking
the cherries have exploded more, drenching
the air with Heavenly Punch we’d like to drink
or be reborn in (my birthday, I won’t say I was peaking).
Pink blossoms tint the children’s skin, the light
air, with heavenly punch we’d like to drink,
rose-fruit, mauve, rose-gold, dusk. Prayer light.
Pink blossoms tint the children’s skin. The light
quiets their play. But we don’t give thanks,
for fruit, gold, dusk. In prayer light,
cherry scent, our people are falling.
The children quiet, we do not give thanks.
Again, the world says, again. You are the cause.
We curse your fruit, your scent. Your people fall.
You are to blame for the world’s whole evil.
Again, the world says. Again. You are the cause.
Susan frowns, not saying her lover’s people
are to blame for the world’s whole evil,
for the people turn on themselves.
Susan mourns, not saying her people,
their grief, will keep her childless.
People turn on themselves.
In petal-light like this, people fall.
Grief will be their only child.
What are we to do. Bury our faces
in petal-light like this, while people fall.
We breathe in these cherries, sighing.
What are we to do? Bury our dying
while cherries explode, drenching
the air in heaven we can’t drink.
Let us sit in lavender light, talking.
Previously published in Pedestal Magazine, Political Anthology, October 2004.
BROKEN EDGE
“No prayers or incense rose up in those hours/ Which grew to be years,
and every day came mute – “ More Light! More Light! Anthony Hecht
Try to forget how they stood like a sketch
against their neighbors’ sky.
Middle of the modern century — —
Informed, informal: Einstein, jazz.
No dark-haired girl claimed to be chosen first.
No hurry to marry her mother’s has-been culture.
Her boyfriend just wished he could row the Danube
beside the other dreamboats in the club.
Crazy —- one day summer dresses,
in the window, risky necklines.
Paint, wet brushes, twirled, ready.
Natural bristles in the sun-drenched studio.
Doctor, social climber, sleek swimmer
Bodies, work — “what’s for dinner…”
Each transformed, say — — this afternoon?
Swallowed Hollow
WHHOOSSH
Night. Eyeless night.
Yellow paint, yellow star.
Forget them, in the fog.
They stand where they are.
*See accompanying photo : Shalekhet – Fallen Leaves –by Menashe Kadishman
« Terror, » flip-phone photo by Patricia Brody, 2012
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Installation Shalekhet (also spelled Shalechet) – Fallen Leaves —by Israeli artist, Menashe Kadishman at Judisches Museum, Berlin: “10 000 [hollow-mouthed] faces punched out of [burnt-flame colored] steel, heaped on the ground of the “Memory Void,” (the “voided” space).
Kadishman dedicated his artwork not only to Jews killed during the Shoah, but to all victims of violence and war.
Visitors are invited to walk on the faces and listen to the sounds created by the metal [leaf-slabs,] as they clang and rattle against one another.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Museum,_Berlin
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BIO:
Patricia Brody ’s first poetry collection, American Desire, was selected by Finishing Line Books for a 2009 New Women’s Voices Award. Her second collection, DANGEROUS TO KNOW, came out from Ireland’s Salmon Poetry in 2013. Many of the poems are in the voices of “forgotten women writers.”
Barrow Street, Western Humanities Review, Paris Review, and online on Poetry Daily, Istanbul Review, and BigCityLit.com are some of the journals where Patricia’s work has appeared. Other poems appear in WOMPO Letters to the World and Chance of a Ghost, as well as in “non-lit” journals: Psychoanalytic Perspectives and International Journal of Feminist Politics.
Patricia would like to revive Survival of the Soul: Artists Living with Illness, an anthology of contemporary writing and art.
Currently teaching SEEKING YOUR VOICE: a Poetry Workshop, at Barnard College Center for Research on Women, http://bcrw.barnard.edu/about/courses/.
Taught English comp and American Literature for many years at Boricua College in Harlem. Lives mostly in NYC’s Washington Heights with art-director husband Tom Kostro and Siamese beauty, Tango – and – hopefully-frequent visits from three generous children.