|
|
|
||||
|
Make a Gift to the Arts & Letters
Endowment Arts & Letters Editorial Staff Learn about the MFA Program
at GCSU |
|
Parts of Speech
By: Andrea
Hollander Budy |
|
Look,
how tiny down there, look: the last village
of words and, higher, (but how tiny) still
one last farmhouse of feeling. Rainer Maria Rilke,
“Exposed on the cliffs of the heart” 1. That first
cruel day when my father gazed into the
bathroom mirror, steam
condensed enough to make him believe it a window,
did he fear the proximity
of that other face glaring wildly at him through the glass? Did he wonder
if it came to taunt him, or—worse—to
take him, part by part, first memory, then language, then the body
itself? Where does the
consummate self exist? Or are there
parts, like parts of speech, each with a
separate purpose, a single
aspect of the whole magnificence?
Are there separate births, separate passings? He no longer
fits meanings to
words, mere sounds similar as the
cars he watches from his chair
at the living room window, no longer
Oldsmobile or Dodge, names he taught my
brother and me, now only a hum passing through the scenery. 2. Though hair
whitens and skin lets go, wisdom is
supposed to accumulate, gather kindling, add to the small fires that make up a
life. But some minds
smolder. My once-wise father now reaches for
only a few certainties (that once he studied
French and fought in World War II) and holds them
like lit candles he is afraid to walk with. Like him, they
diminish as they burn. When you greet
him he salutes you. Parlez-vous français ? Parlez-vous? Vous? 3. Which word was
first to fade away? Which spark failed again
and again to ignite? As if the
stars, one by one, shut down. Night comes
and comes, gently at
first, but all day long and stays. 4. He’s like the very
words he no longer
remembers, the words
themselves elders we shun with whole
histories on their tongues, but no one
asks them anymore what they know. They shuffle to the well in bedroom slippers. They drink
from a tarnished cup, remnants of
insects’ wings floating on the surface. 5. Today my
father will not bother to look in the
mirror for that other man who has grown so stooped and silent. Neither
speaks. Twins, they lean into their
aluminum walkers, inch across the bathroom toward the toilet. When the
mirror ends, one of them disappears, as
always, into the invisible world. |
||
|
Still
Life with Jonquils The usual bowl
of fruit, yes, and at
attention in a blue porcelain vase wands of
jonquils not yet bloomed, gray-green
buds like
translucent cocoons, their wet and
yellow wings stirring
against the thinning threads of gray, about
to give way— the way a
woman whose wrist has been
lightly touched beneath the starched
tablecloth recognizes a man’s
invitation, its promise, as the chatter
of dinner guests blurs into nonsense
and she begins to feel the invisible
tug on the knot fixed at the
body’s center waiting to be undone .
. . The painter
knows what not to
execute, knows we bring our own heat
to the canvas, knowing
exactly how these jonquils
would look if open. But not
letting them. |
|
Arts & Letters Campus (478) 445-1289 al@gcsu.edu |
|
Arts & Letters accepts submissions
from September 1 to March 1 (postmark deadlines). For complete information, see submission guidelines. |