What Words


What words could make this paper into a tree?
How can I coax its ridges back into bark, fold its creases
into nodules, flatten its already concave belly
for someone to carve there, initials, a note to the green
world that we have not intended such forest-sorrow
that we're merely lax, hungry people, unhappy but
curious. How could we have read the signs
from the tree-hearts and nesting when we made motors
and cut limbs, lit fires and lay one board over another
until we divided space from space to add more places
to put more things?  We raised our young to honor the housepets,
discplined for kicking the dog or dunking the cat
but we’re worried now there is no way back to when we were born.
The rivers are dammed and directed. Do bridges know global positions,
or buildings on each acre lot recall where once was an orchard?

We drive invisibles into the stratosphere. And hard to imagine
how we put missile systems into our prairies, our own
backyards. Can clouds define temperatures and will stars
vanish until we have nothing to read by but our own logo-lightning?
We chewed roots in an old dream, how they offered themselves,
promised knowledge we’ve mastered blindly but even the Tree of Life
has come down to someone’s vellum invitation, and  
living is lost in everyday chores.  Our hospitals offer oxygen but

there is no fresh air in the air. Tell me what spell to conjure,
my dear disposable-recyclable, to free you from words,
input and output and stacking and shredding.
What can I say to make you share your Soft and your Shelter
with flowering branches to hold us in shade once again?





Suburban Waterballet 1962


In Rose Marie Reid one-piece suits, the girls practice water ballet
all afternoon, backward kips through children’s screams; the pool’s
aquamarine ripples like arabesques of beveled glass
in the scathing August sunlight. When the ingenues
swarm the snack bar, dress their hamburgers with the crisp
cupid arrows of onions, scribbling boyfriends’ initials in ketchup
over sweathy mounds of meat, they chatter of last night’s
splash-party where parents and guests immersed themselves
in 14 carat rum—unaware of daughters and sons half-naked
amidst blue branches, sampling one another’s nubile jewels.
Every six tunes the girls roll over on their lounges,

rub Sea ‘n’ Ski on the backs of each other’s coppery thighs,
comb lemon juice in slick, wet hair. At four o’clock
they synchronously rise, in single file waltz toward the lockers
pink and tingling with bracelets of keys. Twisting into a single stall,
they stand four deep, cupping their hands to catch the shower
between them, soaping nipples, cooing Doo Lang Doo Lang,  
each in love with a pimply-faced sweet talker in bryl-creamed hair
playing Black Jack behind the clubhouse, gambling over who’ll buy
tonight’s malt liquor, take the risk with a fake license before crashing
the party while parents bar-hop downtown.  Later a sun-burnt girl
finds herself stranded in pansied baby-dolls as each of her friends

couples and blocks out a corner in the cellar, radio hollering
10 -10 W-I-N-S NEW YORK.   One shy bachelor chugging his brew,
swallows hard, look over each madras shoulder in terror
as the lone chubette in pettie-pants cha-chas over, mouth gouged
by a shade of lipstick too pink for her complexion. The young man
draws his breath,one hand searching his pockets; with a certain bravado,
tossing his crushed pack of Luckies  onto the bar.
Sussurus of some father’s Oldsmobile outside and the girls’
high-pitched laughter daring a few boys to linger, rookie
fingers fumbling under cotton, tongues unlocking
when the moment’s giddiness ascends the bulkhead stairs.

Outdoors the grass whispers its fantasies to the roses,
the sturgeon moon seeping liquids
down the long dark legs of  the sky.






Vézelay  
Basilique de Sainte Marie-Madeleine

The stone cannot hold her.  

It whispers and quivers
in the waxy-scented motes
of air. Like the tall blonde
candle-flame beneath her,
the wave of our postulant prayers.

She stands with her alabaster
vessel of nard to favor her master
in the ancient anointing
blessing his mission, the wedded
excretions between them,
fusion and fission of all that is—

sacred, profane— all displayed
here in the capital sculptures,
demons gargoyles  crouching
beneath Romanesque steeples,
Gregorian plainsong, tintanablum
celebrated a coté les anges,
their halos and wings . . .

. . .we are one with all of these
things— as we follow Marie Madeleine
throughout France, her mélange
of reverence and sin, we are
toutes Vierges Noirs, daughters
of the interred feminine, cathedral
mandorlas cooking our souls, facades

of the bays like the folds of a woman’s
hair. If I mention the lies of the fathers,
I must mention the fears
of ordinary men—must mention  
forgiveness, rushing blood

shed in the heart.  Both poles wounded
and human—suspending the tension  
like water on fire, the frozen
volcanic rock of the Haute Loire—

in this belle paysage
where six pilgrim women
this millennium year
stand before her in blue jeans
and sneakers, extolling
the Green Men next to Magi
stained glass  windows with sirens
and serpentine tails—

as she looks out at us
one hand on her book,
and one on the skull, witness
for thousands, les sorcieres, les malentendues—

*

Despite the shine of Auverngian sky
in this outdoor café, tiny drops  
rain down my page— broken chips
off an unclouded sun,  

her rainbow is here—

strong feminine bridge
at the dawn of an aeon.

Deborah DeNicola‘s 5th poetry
collection the chapbook Inside
Light was recently published
by Finishing Lind Press in
Fall 2007. Her spiritual
memoir  The Future That
Brought Her Here will be
published in 2008 by Nicolas-
Hays Press and a full poetry
collection, Original Human, is
forthcoming from Word Press in
2010. She is the author of two
other prize winning chapbooks,
Psyche Revisited  (Embers
Press)and The Harmony of the
Next (Riverstone Press), as
well as Where Divinity Begins
(Alice James Books).Deborah
edited the anthology Orpheus &
Company; Contemporary Poems on
Greek Mythology (University
Press of New England) and has
been an NEA recipient. Her
work has appeared in The
Antioch Review, North American
Review, Hunger Mountain, Green
Mountain Review, Prairie   
Schooner, Salamander &Orion
among other journals
Deborah DeNicola