Dreams By No One's Daughter

Pitt Poetry Series

Leslie Ullman

• Publisher: Open Road Distribution
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781504029469
• eBook ISBN: 9781504029360
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Leslie Ullman traces through her speaker one woman's attempt to find herself and then to live that discovered self within an alien wilderness that ranges from the indifferent to the frankly dangerous. This volume edges toward the growing certainty to plain chance and lucky or unlucky coincidence. Perhaps in response to the uncertain nature of the external world in Dreams by No One's Daughter, Ullman's are very much poems of metamorphosis, of becoming rather than static being." —Stephen C. Behrendt

II

PEACE

Keep your voice down, my husband

hissed this morning across his plate,

then knotted his tie

to a fist that would hold

all day. Wedged in our thin

walls against the silence of neighbors

we haven’t met, I folded

my napkin, shoved the last word

back in my throat

and later jogged extra laps

as though my feet could make

some mark on firm ground,

could make everything clear.

I remove my damp

sweatclothes, shivering now

in the best boutique I can find.

An older woman shrugs out of a fur

soft as fog and gathers up jade, silver,

apple-green silks, all hushed

and viciously expensive.

She wraps herself in a gown

the color of doves, a shadow body

that follows no husband. I’m sure their house

holds a room where she dreams,

sends letters, while someone downstairs

seasons the greens and filets

and a reasonable hunger warms her like firelight.

If her children should quarrel

on the darkening lawn she drifts outside

to soothe each with a story, her voice adding

girth to itself like the wine,

open, breathing by his plate.

I want to ask for my size

in a gown like hers. I want to fill

a gown with breasts like hers, and move

through our rooms like a boat

through any water. I finger aqua silk

made for real hips and shoulders

I, too, could have after twenty seasons—

it turns a whole room blue

where I enter myself as I dress,

where my garments turn overhead light

back on itself like fine paintings.

Downstairs he slices meat striped with fat

and pink flesh, while I finger each

pearl on the choker he gave me when money

was tight. The blue folds drift

over my body, that house

filled with rooms left by daughters

and sons, that house given over

to pale silk and stone, its silence

my secret, my eyes raised

to meet hers in the triple mirror.

THE RAPIST

—for P.

You do not know how long

he sat by the bed

moving the hidden

parts of your body

to another mattress

in his head.

You never saw his face.

Later, police found

bits of the kitchen window

tracked with damp soil

through every room.

Your first lover was

a large man, soft

from years of longing

for extraordinary women,

and had small hands.

His skin burned easily in the sun.

That first night,

pleased and desperate,

he licked parts of your body

you’d never seen,

then shuddered, settled,

and drifted in your arms.

You were too pleased to sleep.

You arranged yourself carefully

over your sore parts.

All night his eyes moved

under soft, blue lids

as though seeking

the other women he’d leave

asleep. Awake, you would

ease him into daylight.

Inside your body, the doctor

found hairs

with tweezers

and a pinpoint

of light. “The police,”

he said, “will keep them

for evidence.”

You keep telling yourself he

was not a large man.

His body in each hot bath

loosens from yours like paint.

Night after night your breasts

are weightless in the water, neither

plants nor animals, are laced

with stubborn blue veins.

All night your eyes move under

dark lids, as though seeking

a familiar woman inside yourself.

AMERICAN DEAF DANCE COMPANY

They mark stress

as the sting of landing,

swif...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Contents
• I
• II
• III
• Pitt Poetry Series
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Page