Farewell, My Lovelies

Poems

Diann Blakely

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780820350707
• eBook ISBN:
  9780820350691
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Paying homage to the hardboiled crime-noir writing of Raymond Chandler, Diann Blakely's second collection of poetry plays on the dark desires and lusty appetites that motivate and move us. Originally published in 2000, Farewell, My Lovelies delivers unflinching truths harnessed in musical eloquence. Within these poems, Blakely visits funeral parlors and lovers' trysts; backyard barbeques and class reunions; the markets of the Yucatan and the death of Kurt Cobain.

With expert precision she is able to expose the soft underbelly of the American experience, laying it bare, displaying our vulnerability, old wounds, and still jagged scars. Her phrases burn brightly, touching on the outer boundaries of our shared sensory experiences—referencing the sacred and the profane, the banal and the extraordinary.

III

DESCANT

Beneath the sidewalk’s iron grates, those ice-slicked portals

to an underworld of trains

whose tunnelled rush became a woman’s voice—

how easy, in that long Manhattan winter, to hear Persephone

mourning sunlit earth and its maternal warmth,

also mourning the taste

of those sweet red seeds. How easy now to hear

her whisper through chill wind,

a thousand miles south from a man who whispered love

deep in his throat as snow-pocked obsidian windows

turned violet then crimson.

Beyond my empty classroom’s rattling panes,

a tree clings to its few last gaudy leaves; from the parking lot

of this girls’ school, some muted rock-and-roll rises

with forbidden smoke.

Who wants to study when her winter prom

is just a week away?—

by then more letters will crowd my gradebook’s pages

in a well-ordered train. But what chaotic gods

the heart has always worshipped;

and would my students gape in disbelief

if I told them how quickly I undress when someone whispers love,

shed my clothes on floors that seem to cleave

beneath my feet? Outside,

those almost-naked trees surround a fountain

like the mythic one

that virgin goddess vanished by; its chitoned girls

shyly bend their heads as Cupid grins and clutches

his bow, graffiti scrawled

on one plump leg: Virginia

Harry.

Aren’t all women Persephone, lost to the dark allure of sex

between parted sheets, waiting for flesh to warm them

while invisible mothers

tear their long robes, cry to the chilling earth

and cloudy deaf heaven?

Clasping that man’s body, once I whispered the name

of a daughter as longed-for, and even untouched,

as the body mourned

by any woman who’s lost herself again,

a daughter whose first sounds would silence the parking lot’s traffic

and rustling trees outside, a daughter like me

whose cry said I’ll love you

till trees turn red with fruit and dying leaves,

till your sweet eyes are closed

with pennies; I’ll leave you for love for love for love.

HISTORY

It’s blood, and generals who were the cause,

Shadows we study for school. In Nashville, lines

Of a Civil War battle are marked, our heroes

The losers. Map clutched in one fist, my bike

Wobbling, I’ve traced assaults and retreats,

Horns blowing when I stopped. The South’s hurried

And richer now; its ranch-house Taras display

Gilt-framed ancestors and silver hidden

When the Yankees came, or bought at garage sales.

History is bunk. But who’d refute that woman

Last night, sashaying toward the bar’s exit

In cowboy boots to drawl her proclamation?—

“You can write your own epitaph, baby,

I’m outta here—comprendo?—I’m history.”

THE OLD SLAVE MARKET, CHARLESTON

—May, 1992

The cracked bricks have loosened with age, with two earthquakes

rivalling any that collapse skyscrapers elsewhere;

with twenty hurricanes, the last whose devastation

left in its wake scaffolds around the pastel walls

of stately columned houses and breeze-front piazzas;

around the steeple of St. Michael’s, the oldest church—

or is that St. Philip’s? Words like “first” and “oldest”

spark arguments here, though surely not on this gift

of a spring afternoon. I finger baskets made

by plaiting sea-grasses, an art which may die out

with women who sell in this tourist-crammed market

on weekends, weaving new holders for bread-loaves,

dried flowers, or jewelry. “Basket ladies,” they’re called,

& a few feet away hang Christmas ornaments

that resemble them: black wooden silhouettes

wearing real bandanna headrags. A founding father

gave this land to the city, a permanent marketplace

for anything but slaves, natives are quick to tell you.

Its name comes from the field hands used for hauling barrels

of rice & indigo, ripe-to-exploding peaches

& tomatoes, from plantation wagons; or stacking

cotton bales between brick pillars while the auctioneer

took bids, his voice echoing through salt-heavy air.

Now, two thousand miles distant, the glass shatters

from Los Angeles storefronts built to weather nothing

but daily traffic, the quick glances of passersby

en route to bus stops or street corner deals, at worst

the usual burglaries, with metal grating drawn

at closing time, with alarm bells & triple-locks.

“Our first multiracial riots,” a newsman proclaimed,

voiced-over shots of whites, blacks, & Hispanics

who carried armfuls of wrenches & clocks, sparkplugs

& a butcher’s fat hams. They rushed through streets littered

with broken liquor bottles, foam-spewing cans of beer

dropped by those running from police or store owners.

Or each other. Lawn sprinklers, cartons of Twinkies

& cigarettes, rhinestone necklaces in gutters,

on sidewalks, in hands trembling with adrenalin

& greed. The woman’s hands before me are steady,

sinewed from generations of slaves’ hardscrabble,

the continuing lineage of taking in laundry,

diapering white babies in bay-windowed nurseries,

polishing silver to grace meals eaten off china

passed down from mother to daughter, except for

those dinner plates dropped too hard in sinks, tea cups

allowed to smash on floors always swept clean before

the bus ride home. Ignoring signs above her cashbox,

her newspaper folded beside it, the woman lights

a cigarette, tosses the match too near the grass

piled at her feet, as if wanting conflagration,

as if wanting to see huge flames weave their bright orange

& red together, then lift their work toward a sky

today unclouded with judgment, perhaps waiting

another century before darkening with flood-rains,

before loosing winds which may or may not blow

these famed houses & churches, these old brick walls, down.

HOUND DOG

Lapin ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• I
• II
• III