Trying to Speak

Anele Rubin

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780873388474
• eBook ISBN: 9781612774541
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2004 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize

"The voice [in Anele Rubin's poems] is so new, and yet the movement is so artful, subtle, and modest—there are never any theatrics in these poems. They never yowl, Pay attention to me! . . . Rubin is on the same wave-length with Tomas Tranströmer and Yehuda Amichai. . . . The emotional range of her poems, like theirs, is enormous, as is the range of locales, many of which I know well, and yet in Trying to Speak, they appear with a clarity that had eluded me."— Philip Levine, Judge

"Anele Rubin's poems illuminate an astonishing range of emotional experience. Visual, tactile, simple and complex, her words lure you from poem to poem—sometimes exquisite, sometimes austere, always original."— Ruth Stone

"This is a powerful and beautifully lyrical book of great wisdom, whose theme is emotional resurrection."— Toi Derricotte

II

WITH CHILD

The sun sets red
over the old wood house on Vicaro Lane.

I hear Dead-Eye and Hebert
playing with their puppies in the dirt.

I see the grass growing
in the empty lot,
waist-high in a week.

Lying on the rug
with windows
and doors opened,
cotton dress sticking to my thighs,

I can hear a car
every now and then
out on Highland Road,
hear it from far away coming,
and then for a long time, going.

Finally the gentle swoosh
turns to silence
and silence turns
to crickets rubbing their legs together.

I’m hand stitching pillows
as the glaciers melt, moving
across warm continents,
filling little pools.

The fine blue lines are rivers:

See how carefully I carry the world.

EARLY AUTUMN

The peahen sleeps
on the wooden steps,
done with laying
and setting.

There’s the calmest kind of sky.

From out of the dirt, a little boy
plucks peacock feathers
and sticks them in his sweater.

Ducks leave double trails in the water.

SHE COULD NOT RECKON

She could not reckon what would be lost in the fire
only what was safe in her arms
wrapped in a blanket, leaning up against some stranger’s car
4 a.m. in darkness under stars
near the ocean in Jersey
where the poor could live at low year-round rates
in a beach-front motel,
though nothing in her life was cheap,
not the child pressed close,
not the child’s father
whose confusion and dismay
had sent her back to herself,
her own voice locked inside in the dark.

She could not be hurt
as long as the baby was whole.

She girded herself against the wind.

Purse, sewing machine, food stamps
could be replaced.

What else to lose but a few old thrift store toys and clothes?

With necessity, strength—a simple formula
having nothing to do with feelings.

Later maybe she’d try to explain
if ever she could remember how it was
being numb and triumphant
as the fragile walls collapsed
and the steel beams glowed.

I DON’T MIND

I don’t mind so much
first of the month bank lines,
cashing the pale green government check
for a rent money order,
one to pay a bill,
taking the ten dollars left
to Monarch Thrift,
finding a blouse that just needs a little bleach,
new buttons, a wooden puzzle for my son
with only one piece missing.

I don’t mind so much
the hot and cranky children
on the food stamp line that winds around the corner,
the girl with heavy blue-black hair
pinned back on one side,
deep dark eyes like wine in a chalice,
her brother beside her,
his finger in his nose,
babies sweating in Pampers,
thighs red with rash,
mothers wiping nipples of dropped bottles on skirts.

It’s worth the wait—$88!—
chicken and ice-cream tonight!

And I like pulling my grocery cart to the store,
holding my boy’s hand
looking for worms on the sidewalk,
and I like the feel and smell
of the people on the bus.

I don’t mind so much anymore
the librarians discovering where I live.

I’m used to the smirking men
who cruise down Ocean Avenue
in white Lincolns with CB antennas,
the family men who don’t look in my eyes,
young boys offering reefers and beer.

And I love the potted begonias
in my apartment window,
their fat pink flowers,
the piggy-backs, jades,
the little jelly glass
of phlox and buttercups
pulled from a vacant lot.

If rents go up, we’ll have to move again,
but I don’t mind too much.

Yet sometimes I pass a little house,
an old one, wooden, white paint peeling, a swing,
grass, spots of dirt,
a broken toy.

I stop and stare
and wonder what it would be like
to have a tree

I’d planted myself and could touch
every morning.

The backs of my thighs
would get to know the feel
of warm smooth wood
as summer after summer

I’d sit on the porch reading to my son
or writing letters.

And if I had a hundred dollars,

I’d buy a bicycle with a baby seat.

We’d ride to Manasquan and Sandy Hook,
but I don’t mind too much,
though one day

I was sitting on a grassy riverbank
near the Matawan railroad station
as my son threw small white petals dow...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Philip Levine
• I
• II
• III
• IV