The House On Breakaheart Road

Poems

Gailmarie Pahmeier

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780874173130
• eBook ISBN:
  9780874174526
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

This breathtaking collection of poems by award-winning Nevada poet Gailmarie Pahmeier explores the many facets of a woman's experience. Told largely through the voice of a fictional character, "Emma," the poems display a range of moods, from tender to wry, ironic, tough, lyrical, reckless. Pahmeier's voice is uniquely her own—strong, profoundly wise, rich in humor and subtlety, utterly feminine. She understands how women live, how they love, and what they need. Ultimately, she teaches us "what comes of it, of love."

PART I

For Men Without Sons There Is Always This

Photograph of Her Parents, Dancing: 1956

A blond woman in the peopled background

is smiling, her curls hugging her face

like ivy. My father holds my mother

against his chest, a calm and grateful

twist to his lips. His hand is knuckled

around hers, the lace wedding dress

burning upon his shirt. My mother’s eyes

are open large, her lips drawn thin.

Her light-filled face contrasts his shadowed dark,

as if she is aware that in a mere

few hours, she will be a mother in the most

elemental way, that three months later

she will pull this man from a pool hall, say

I thought you knew.

What she doesn’t know is that over thirty

years later she will still find some ways

to love him, that she will happen upon

the occasional day when she can say

out loud, I like this, living with him.

What she doesn’t know is that the child

will be an only, silent and tearful,

that the house will ache with this child’s angry

fear and desperately lovely dreaming.

What she doesn’t know is that a day

is coming when she will sit in the thick

Kentucky air placing bets on horses

she chooses for name, she chooses for me, for her

distant daughter, for all the hope and luck

and fury she owned in the blurred still

of the photograph. She chooses Wild Girl,

Angel of Energy, she chooses Eager Love.

She doesn’t know, she has no idea

that I will turn out this bad, so like her

in her darker, picture-perfect heart.

Fathers with Daughters

Watching this one now in her painless sleep,

you imagine your eyes, her mother’s limbs,

an odd mesh of familiarity.

A director with only an actor,

no script, you’ve a definite job to do.

Be precise, be consistent. Hold her head

in your lap in the late afternoon,

tell her she’s lovely as soon as you’re sure

she understands somehow what that might mean.

Your daughters are a perilous treasure,

an uncertain pleasure, a certain wish,

a work to be criminally proud of.

For men without sons there is always this.

Barbie, Ken, and Emma’s Daddy

Other girls have friends to share their dolls.

Here in the closed air of an afternoon

at the lake, Emma has her daddy,

sun-browned and deliciously worn

from the early hours of setting trotline.

He drinks beer after beer to cool him, dabs

at the fat drops of sweat along his neck,

his chest, his brow. Other girls have mommas

to sing them songs, to wash the dried day off

their unedited skin. Emma’s momma’s gone,

three weeks already into Idaho,

and Emma, who has waited near lifetimes

for toys ordered off the backs of cereal

boxes, knows that eight weeks is eternity.

But it’s okay. Barbie’s here and Ken’s come

along. They’ve been to the store and gone

skating and gotten lost in the deep woods,

Ken built Barbie a house, they have children

made of sticks, two rock dogs and an acorn cat.

Later they will take their wickedly smooth

bodies to bed where Ken will snore and Barbie

will turn from side to side, choose moonlight,

not sleep, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes.

But first there will be dancing. After supper

Emma’s daddy plays the radio,

takes Ken in his big hands. Emma leans Barbie

near and nearer and they rock and roll

their way to weary. Every night.

This is all Emma knows now and close

enough to what she needs. There’s comfort

in this honest life: sunshine, water,

a place to play, a little music,

her daddy’s heavy footsteps on the dark

porch, loud as loneliness and brutally

beautiful, just like Barbie, just like Ken.

Emma Remembers Something of the World Series

Game 7, October 12, 1967 / St. Louis, 7 Boston, 2

She remembers the schoolboys’ envy,

how her father’s worn hand wrapped her own,

maneuvered her through mote-filled halls

swallowed in possibility, some hope.

She remembers her legs, how she’d pluck

them off the plastic car seats, how the hot

thick air rolled against her face,

how his cigarettes left her rich and dizzy.

She remembers the dusty smell of peanuts,

how the old man selling them on the street

winked, said lucky doll, told her father

eats is gettin’ outrageous inside.

She remembers the sweet, wet smell of men

in suits, how they stood and shook their arms,

how someone spilled, something, on h...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part I - For Men Without Sons There Is Always This
• Part II - When You Love Someone for a Long Time
• Part III - Take This Advice
• About the Author