December 23, 2006

  • Shellie Leggat’s Summer Poems

    From the Seventh Floor.
    1977

    Even at this height,
    the city casts brittle
    light over our shadows,
    which move with us,
    slithering, over lamps
    and chairs.

    Beneath the light
    at dinner, always when
    we are together
    with the lights on,

    our shadows move secretly
    someone else’s memory
    moving overneverything,
    changing everything.

    We are just shadows - -
    our bodies off somewhere
    only partly filled in,
    the children who began
    to color us grown now,
    gone now.

    Insubstantial,
    we move inside larger forms
    which are more and more
    hollow until finally even
    our room is only what two
    fragile stars remember,

    an old man and an old
    woman whose bodies
    in our room are beaded
    with fever, and smeared
    with finger marks.

    Parrot’s Ferry

    The fish are shadows
    flying in the air
    between my eyes
    and the river.

    Tiger Swallowtail flicker
    just under the surface
    of the water:

    They are the same color
    as the fish before the
    air transforms them
    into bright things.

    Beneath our Window

    branches rattle.
    The trees are girls wearing
    thin green sweaters that the
    wind cuts through.

    Beneath our window
    they try to shake the snow
    off their shoulders;

    even though it is
    California, even though it is
    midsummer, even

    though we say,
    sometimes,
    that we are in love.

    Lunt’s Hotel

    We twitch like serpents
    each on our own
    side of the bed.

    Our words
    are indifferent ravens
    that flap away from us
    in opposite directions.

    In cubicles up and down
    the hall the inmates lie
    in narrow beds.

    An old man
    shouts in his sleep,
    another curses himself.

    In the morning
    we are the only ones
    who leave.

    Stopping at the Junction

    Sage and wind
    take our feelings from us
    as easily as breath.

    Everything is invisible.

    The darkness is a mouth,
    yawning:

    It takes even tenderness
    into its teeth
    and closes on it.

    The Yellow Widow

    True, she was a big spider:
    but I was looking up at her
    through her shadow
    on her web.

    I think we look at Death
    like that.

    1987

    The Dew

    They came, more
    softly went. How we
    shine in the arms
    of our tormentors.

    Only the dew knows
    where they've gone.

    Where they lay down
    he is not.

    1990

    Sue:

    My sister and I have made our bed
    from the forgotten wigs of the algae
    women. I would wish that she could
    hold me, but she has no arms.

    Instead, I will lie along her back.
    I will stroke her belly as she feeds
    among the willow roots. When the
    shadow of the fisherman’s net
    falls upon us, I will be entangled in it.

    I will go to His house, wear His clothes,
    get stickers in my feet.

    The Catfish :

    The sun is warm along my spine.
    my sister’s body is curled about me.
    I long to touch her, but I have no
    hands. Instead, I will buck
    when she tries to ride me.

    Instead I will leap
    into the Fisherwoman’s net.
    I know She will not take me.
    She never takes me.
    “Catty,” She will say,
    “the problem with you is
    you don’t know
    you’re a fish.”

    Then She will kiss me and throw me
    away out into the middle of the river.
    Sue'll be cussing and rattling the
    sides of the Woman’s basket.

    I don’t think it’s fair.
    She should take me.
    I want to live in a house.
    I want to go about on two legs,
    I want to ride upon
    the backs of the
    four-leggeds.

    I’ll tell you something else.
    If the Woman does take me,
    I won't forget my river friends.
    I’ll go to the river bend
    every morning.

    I'll wade into the shallows,
    bread crusts between
    my toes.

    KMW