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The Red Blouse
Across Kansas on cruise control
he drives toward a woman's body.
Stubbled fields flush orange
in the final light. He squeezes
the pedal . . . 75 . . . 80,
a mad organist playing his deepest note.
Ahead 200 miles, a woman
crosses a room, sweetens
her tea, meets with students. But
something's off. A humming
like bees, like tires over darkening roads,
patrols her mind.
She searches the mirror for clues.
A coil of hair, loosened, hangs
like a bell-pull. She pins it up. No
use. Nothing is any use.
She touches her breast lightly
through the red blouse.
Originally published in
The Yale Review;
also in Poetry: An Introduction (4th ed.),
edited by Michael Meyer. NY, St. Martin's Press, 2004
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Wave
A trick of October light
made festive the trek we
took to the empty beach,
the four of us (five
counting the box
tucked in the knapsack).
You to thank, Mother,
for my bare feet in the sand,
brother beside me, wives
to the right, the sea's
blue cylinders rolling up,
rolling slowly away.
We fought open the lid,
looked at each other,
and waded in, two brothers
for once shoulder to shoulder
in an enterprise. He
dug in first, flung fistfuls
into the wind, flecks of
crushed bone sinking at once,
finer granules riding
in little cloud puffs, as if
from a last cigarette.
Then I joined in, gripped
by a wild, grieving joy,
till the thing was done. I let
receding water run
over my numbed fingers,
and stared out: blue, blue.
Lovely to turn, then,
and see the women
waiting on higher ground,
windblown and waving us home.
Originally published in The Paris Review |
Mozart's Pigtail
I was braiding Mozart's hair,
morning sun
filling the room (Con-
stanze nowhere to be seen), when
all at once (you won't
believe it) the man
jumps up and makes a run
for the piano. I trot
behind, still holding
his pigtail, mind you, even
when he sits
and starts in. I know some
who'd have taken offense.
Not I. I remember once,
I was doing Frau von H.,
I abandoned an elaborate coif
at a whim (I can't call it
anything else), and went
for swirl. She loved it. "You
are an artist!" she cried.
He's the same. In fact,
so lovely a largo
it was that I
let go, although
the braid unwound
and I had to begin again.
Originally published in Western Humanities Review
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The Silk Dress
You have been going down
dawdling when suddenly she
sweeps up the staircase, her
loose hair streaming, her dress
an avalanche of lost
messages. Turn
on you heel. After her.
In a moment reverse
a lifetime of error.
All poetry on this page
Copyright © by Roderick Townley, 2006
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