Excerpts from U.S. 1 Worksheets, Volume 44/45
David Sten Herrstrom
Winifred Hughes
Edvin Sugarev / Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman
Elizabeth Danson
Linda Arntzenius
BJ Ward
Barbara Daniels
Peter Murphy
Searching The Quiet Dark
The pain would make and unmake his bed, prod him
awake like a fall in a dream
as he dozed on the sewing room sofa or drifted fitfully
in shallow sleep downstairs
on the couch or on the ripped recliner listing
in the basement like a ship.
The night endless as leviathan’s belly, he wandered
the quiet dark of the house
climbing the stairs again, revisiting empty
rooms, the cancer ache
inescapable, and trying another chair
as if it were many chairs.
Down through the human house, no resting place.
In the living room he’s drawn
to a window, darkness lapping his feet, and peers out
onto a snowy beach
radiant in moonlight, the trees casting
crisp indecipherable shadows.-David Sten Herrstrom
Martial Arts
In the dojo we are novices
of the body—block and kick, tension
before slack. Each thrust or punch
balanced by pulling back
the string of the invisible longbow
our bodies carry. Each held pose
an ideograph, our limbs
the brushstrokes as they inscribe
high block, front kick, knife hand strike.
We think past wood, a hand
or foot on the other side
of splintering
-Winifred Hughes
Erotica VII
flesh
has nothing to do with it
our bodies
undress each other
I leave my skin
to hang on the chair
you throw yours
casually in the corner
I find
my stolen rib
you let my heart
fly out the window
you make an ashtray
of my skull
I use yours
as a glass
the part left
loves recklessly
carelessly
and from this passion's
ashes
we both rise
radiant
-Edvin Sugarev • translated from the Bulgarian by Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman
Curglaff
[n.] Scots dialect. The shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water.
At first I try to gentle my way in
to pool or lake or ocean,
seeking to avoid suffering curglaff
but that’s a hopeless notion;
the only way to get into the sea,
the pond or swimming hole,
is all at once, not inch by shivering inch—
curglaff’s a thing to thole.*
* archaic, still used in Scots dialect: endure, put up with
And if you’ve ever tried swimming in the North Sea off Scotland, or in any of that country’s lochs or rivers, you’ll understand why there’s a word for the shock involved. But surely we also need a word for the little zigzag scraps of mud that sneakers track into the house; for the precise putrid smell of neglected water in a vase of flowers; for the stiffness and dryness of modern pork chops (not the same as the tough chewiness of an inferior steak); and for the bliss of turning off the light after a day in which you’ve had to thole many such indignities.
-Elizabeth Danson
I should have known
then
when you could not resist
the stream
that skeltered off the mountain,
rushed in frantic panic
round rocks and crevices
until, broken by a hollow,
forced to pause,
where beaded bubbles rose through aquamarine
foam at the brim,
as you flung off your clothes and plunged into the froth,
wondering how I could resist,
tempted but cold.
Then, when you were done
and gripping me naked and shivering,
I fully clothed,
the contrast so thrilling
we rode the mountain long
as sheep looked chastely on.
I should have known then
when you told me: good as it was
it didn't compare to your icy dip.
You spoke your truth
while I, schooled in metaphor,
deciphered the calligraphy of waterbeads
patterning your thighs
and even now hear the rush
of mountain water
in my ears.
-Linda Arntzenius
4 Metaphors, Nothing More
There was one moment in my father’s life
when he tried to hug me—
It may have been the suddenness of it all—
the usual handshake with keys in its ignition,
revving up into an embrace—
a collision of our bodies
after the wreckage of my childhood—
He approached—a bear
I had grown comfortable near
with a new, irresistible idea
in its bruin brain—
raising its paws toward me—
and I stood still
but must have shivered slightly away,
as if I were a city
trying to move
its locked-straight buildings
with all their hollow, echoing stairwells
away from an encroaching tidal wave.
-B.J. Ward
Time waits for no man, I remind my daughter.
O, I am sure he waits for his wife, she retorts,
snapping her clever tongue like a jump rope.
It used to be that I was the quick one.
Now this child with thin, athletic legs
which balance the makings of a woman,
has leaped ahead. Time wounds all healing,
she says, and she’s right. The last time I dribbled
a basketball my knees hurt for two months.
Don’t worry, she says, soon you’ll be dribbling
without trying, and I’d kill her
if only I could stop laughing.
Time has accelerated as I redo parts of my life.
It no longer hurts to say what I said I would never say,
exploding into her blasted room where SONY
meets GUND in a technofuzzy collision.
Turn that music down! But Daddy, it’s the Beatles!
I don’t care! and I don’t, knowing the Earth
just sprung from the orbit it’s revolved around
since the Sixties.
The sun moves quietly in this winter sky, quietly
and slow, its brief show more sketch than performance.
All things must pass to come again, and I spin Louie
and Ella on the turntable. They swing so fairly, so evenly,
even I can catch it, as she dances out of her crib
dressed for the elements in boxer shorts, tights, plaid Converse,
lumberjack flannel shirt. She sings along, Birds do it. Bees do it.
I’m going out so you and mommy can do it . . . But I’m ready
this time, snap her off her feet, wrap her in my arms, dance
her to the foyer. I plant my lips on her lips, movie style,
Forties’ movie style, look into her startled eyes, and slow,
beautifully slow, open the front door and put her out
until curfew.
-Peter E. Murphy
The Purple Glove
Frost gathers first on abandoned houses,
windows boarded, nailed shut.
At Coppy's Cones & Shakes,
a sign says "Jesus calls out to you."
It's the off season, snow tight over Coppy's lot.
Above white buildings the moon flares,
hole that opens to light. A woman has gone
as far into darkness as she cares to go.
She's tired of blue shadows on snow,
tired of openings in people's faces, mouths
mothers tap with filled spoons so their babies
will eat mashed pumpkin and soft ice cream.
The dark centers of eyes. Absence,
coffee from a dropped paper cup,
hand from a lost purple glove.
She wants to lie down in the snow.
The past has dropped into darkness.
A froth of slush leaps toward a passing car
and falls back. Everywhere people call
and cry, making their mouths into open 0's.
-Barbara Daniels