Poems

Borrowed
The Decision Is Made
Desire - Punctuated!?
The Door Slam
Fragility

Poem in Lieu of a Conversation
Hermanus
If I Could Drink the Stars
Lucky Train
Oneness
Roadmap to Love
Spiral
To Be Out of My Mind
Unbroken Home
When Edges Fade
Copyright Notice

All poems by Melanie Votaw and protected by copyright law.

See full Copyright Notice below.

BORROWED

The beeper goes off
on my electrical bone stimulator,
jolting me for an instant
back into the car at the moment of impact.
I replace the battery
and get an ice pack from the freezer
to mother the throb in my fragmented shoulder.

I put on my sling and
stagger downstairs for the mail:
thankfully nothing from the IRS,
a catalog from the beef sellers
who don't know I'm a vegetarian,
an air mail card from the Robertsons
who hosted me when I was a 21-year old
exchange student at the University of London.
The card tells me that their handsome son, John,
(the one I almost met again last year
when he visited the States)
was killed in a car crash over a week ago.
I shiver and remove the ice pack
when I recall that just two nights ago
I had fantasized about visiting him in London,
imagining he was a lot less shy at 32
than he was at 18.

The throb in my shoulder rushes down my back
and becomes a prayer.
I inhale
and the air graciously fills my body,
shaking as it travels down to my feet.
I hold it
until it demands I be brave enough to return it,
reminding me that everything is borrowed.

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THE DECISION IS MADE

so young --
what parts will remain in hibernation
and what part (or parts,
if we're one of the lucky ones)
will walk with the eyelids up

even if the windows remain closed.

Locked behind our darting pupils,
we flail our bodies forward
as idle chauffeurs of our minds,
while unchained animals
and rapturous children hide
in dark corners spiralling
farther and farther inward
into the wondrous bottomless pit
in which we store our wholeness.

And we never know our infinite possibility.

And we never know our greatness.

And we never know the true expanse of our hearts.

(Previously published in Offerings, Lebanon , Missouri , 1996)

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DESIRE - PUNCTUATED!(?)

the first time i saw you...you looked like an exclamation point and everyone's eyes grew when you entered the room...the next time i saw you...you looked like a hyphen pointed toward me with purposeful intent...and no matter how hard i tried to be an ampersand...i still looked like an apostrophe...the next few times i saw you...you looked like a question mark...and i felt redundant in parentheses...the last time i saw you...there were quotation marks between your eyes...but you looked like a period.

Now I know
what I really want is a comma.

(Previously published in Folio, American University, Washington, DC, Summer 1994)

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THE DOOR SLAM

The door slam remains a relentlessly piercing sob.

If I could stay immersed
in the vivid orchestra of your ascending laughter,
the shine of teeth that formed deep little pools
in your cheeks for my delight to swim in,
and your spirit like an unflinching trapeze artist
which - unlike me -
never seemed to need a net...
but I will soon be kidnapped by time
to fly like a hijacked plane
watching my memories disappear in the distance
to become mere objects in a box
faded like your face will someday be
on the papers which embrace your expressions
forever frozen in your twenties
but flatly forsaking the spectrum of your dimensions.

Perhaps the thrill of your heart's example -
which will always remain in mine
as a lesson quietly assimilated -
will gently coax me back
from my hopeless wishing that this impassable door
could be the swinging kind.

(For Keith, 1964-1993)
(Previously published in Peckerwood, Toronto, Canada)

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FRAGILITY

I trust the fragility
of our relationship
most,
our standing on a pinhead
and how far we tilt.
I have learned to love
the fear that sneaks up behind,
gobbles me up and laughs
as I struggle to climb out
of its voracious stomach
like a mountain climber on icy rocks.

You can pull me out
in the kiss of a fingertip
or the tickle of a breath,
or throw me back in
with a word
that rearranges on the
game board in my mind
mixing with childhood pictures
until my head vomits alphabet soup.
And we throw letters at each other
like Wheel of Fortune gone mad
until our minds empty
and our bodies collapse,
filling once again
with each other.

My faith lives by this
building and tearing down
of webs,
riding on the foam of tides,
breathing the oxygen
of change.

(Previously published in Double-Entendre, Plano, Texas, Winter 1996 and Sivullinen,

March 1997, Helsinki, Finland)

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POEM IN LIEU OF A CONVERSATION

Twice
I stopped myself --
dialing every number but the last one.
I have to wait until I can hide my intense need
behind high-pitched nonchalance and
a believable excuse to call you again.

I pretend you're in town and we're watching the news,
commenting on the early Spring
and the apartment building that collapsed in Harlem,
how sorry we are for the families of the dead
and how grateful we are to feel safe.

The phone rings: it's
not you.
Dad wants to know if I heard something
about somebody. I hold the photo of you
I stole from Jackie --
the one with your eyes closed
and the same smile you had when you lay beside me.
You actually grinned all through your sleep
while I stayed awake to make sure I wasn't dreaming,
trying to memorize your sweet face
that looked almost too boyish to be legal,
and would have stroked your
sun-streaked bangs fringed seductively
over your thick eyebrows
but for the embarrassment of getting caught.

"Yes, Dad, I'm listening."

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(Winner, second place in poetry contest.)

HERMANUS

Remember that day on Hermanus
when we came upon a sea lion on the sand
headless
and cooked by the sun?

We stood
and stared
and contemplated,
but we said nothing.

After an elongated moment,
we continued our walk,
breathed in rhythm with the tide
while the hiss of the waves hung over
the silence of the lagoon
draping us like a crisp sheer curtain.

It almost feels a sacrilege to speak of this now,
to carve that silence into symbols,
to post a wooden sign on something
that needs no punctuation.

And yet human that I am blessed and cursed to be,
I can't resist the exclamation point.

And so I write of this moment

when death leapt into our eyes with such assurance
and we shared the definitive
glorious
horror of nature.

(Previously published online by Gloria Mundi Press)

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IF I COULD DRINK THE STARS

If I could drink the stars,
pour them in a glass and swallow --
their points dancing down my throat --
I could know
everything.

Having tasted every moment in time,
chewed every wondrous galaxy,
thoroughly digested every question,

I would look up at the black
empty sky,
collapse into the mouth
of the much more ravenous earth,

and beg her great teeth
to close.

(Previously published online by Gloria Mundi Press)

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LUCKY TRAIN

At 5:30 p.m.,
we are greyhounds of every
color, shape, size,
racing onto the 6 train,
then slinking like dead snakes
into the seats,
squeezed together in the protective
separation of anonymity.

In an instant,
four shimmering dark faces
transform our car into a playground.
At age 14 or 15,
the innocence of childhood beams through
the transparent promise of manhood.

Accompanied by the drumming track,
they clap and rap,
each one taking the lead in his turn,
changing the tempo
without one of them missing a beat.
(They cleverly include rhymes
about donations).

The entire car smiles --
suddenly united by the pulse
of shared pleasure,
as one of the boys
brings our dollars to his puckered lips,
exclaiming to another,
"I told you this was a lucky train!"

(Previously published in Sophomore Jinx in Woodside, New York, Autumn 1995)

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ONENESS

There's a complexity
in the simplicity
of finding everything familiar:
when glancing in one-dimensional mirrors,
gripping comfort in the illusion
of the different
finally loses its hypnotic seduction.

Then you venture like Alice
into the horror
and the ecstasy
of expansion
in all directions,
the rapturous calm of understood chaos,
the assumed madness
of a love affair with both poles

where nothing is less
than a beloved spouse.

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ROADMAP TO LOVE

From a clear vision
of your tiny self in the mirror,
take a deep breath and turn your back,
bury yourself somewhere
near your childhood home,
and now that you are completely lost,
begin your journey
through the house of mirrors.
Strap on angel wings
or hand cuffs
and prepare to jump onto
or below pedestals
as you may deem necessary
from moment to moment.
Turn left at puberty
even though everyone tells you
to turn right.
Swing to the other end
of the pendulum,
following the wrong people
as often as possible,
and destroy your ability to love
over and over
until you are almost convinced
of its indestructibility.
When you have finally found love,
sigh into the arms of your sanctuary
until the loneliness volcanoes
into your throat.
Then go back to where you buried yourself
and dig as deep as you have to,
get as dirty as you have to
until you find yourself there
barely breathing
and waiting to be loved.

(Previously published in Epicenter, Vol. No. 23, Fall 1996, Newhall , California )

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SPIRAL

When the spiral around the heart
finally unsnakes itself,
you fear you are unravelled --
a skein searching for a weaver you never find.

Then somewhere,
within the grief of questions answered
and destinations met,
you turn and follow the thread back
to where it hangs
gently swaying with the current of deep breaths.

And there,
in your own great arms,
the ancient drumming
lulls you awake.

(Previously published in American Writing: A Magazine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, #15, 1997)

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TO BE OUT OF MY MIND

My mind has drawn intricate lines,
its own geometry
way beyond a spider's divine imagination,
and in an effort to dissect
itself into carefully boxed pieces,
it has spun a dense black hole.

One day,
after years of Promethean hauling,
it will be prostrated by its weight
under a vertical door plunging
through the darkness
like a thumb through
a rotten plum,
viewing finally
with the eyes of a bird
its geometry splashed against
the walls on each side of the door,

every dimension
painted red
with freedom.

(Previously published in Prairie Dog, Aurora , Colorado , 1997)

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UNBROKEN HOME

The television was a constant blare,
but fragility
was the loudest sound in our house.
It hung in the air
like Strauss waltzes
played flatly
by a deaf orchestra
with skeletal faces
that would disintegrate if touched.

My brother wore that fragility
like a crown of rebellion
against our father's
masculine bravado --
a bungling-toreador-like bravado
that could switch seamlessly
to a slump of performed tears.

My father's kisses were
as frequent and sticky
as the ice cream and root beer
he slurped out of huge bowls.
In spite of a stomach
pregnant with sugar,
he seemed to hang from the ceiling
a 2-year old suspended
by animal-shaped balloons,
his cavernous smile
betrayed by droopy eyes
always braced for rejection.

My mother trudged
through the mud of the earth,
submerged from the knees down,
and with Promethean strength
balanced the house with a
defeated resignation
strong enough to prevent us all
from being tornadoed to Oz.

And I,
sheltered by the outside,
straddled the roof like a jockey
on a wooden horse,
while they all looked up at me --
eyes thick with the syrup of hope.

Because I was the last perhaps
they thought
I would finally have the courage
to break something.

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WHEN EDGES FADE

When edges fade
and you are searching vainly in the dark
for openings and closings,
the inner hurricane
becomes the dance of the Dervish,
its eye the center of all familiar and strange universes,
as tranquil and still as an infant's dream
held invincibly within a whirlpool of hungry tears.

When you reach out
and your arms begin to melt
like fog disappearing into a lake,
all eyes become a solitary lighthouse
reflecting boundlessness.

(Previously published in New Voices, Shreveport , Louisiana , Fall/Winter 1993)

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