Trying to Speak
Anele Rubin
- 60 pagine
- English
- ePUB (disponibile sull'app)
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Trying to Speak
Anele Rubin
Informazioni sul libro
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
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Informazioni
II
WITH CHILD
over the old wood house on Vicaro Lane.
playing with their puppies in the dirt.
in the empty lot,
waist-high in a week.
with windows
and doors opened,
cotton dress sticking to my thighs,
every now and then
out on Highland Road,
hear it from far away coming,
and then for a long time, going.
turns to silence
and silence turns
to crickets rubbing their legs together.
as the glaciers melt, moving
across warm continents,
filling little pools.
EARLY AUTUMN
on the wooden steps,
done with laying
and setting.
plucks peacock feathers
and sticks them in his sweater.
SHE COULD NOT RECKON
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.
as long as the baby was whole.
could be replaced.
having nothing to do with feelings.
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
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.
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.
chicken and ice-cream tonight!
holding my boy’s hand
looking for worms on the sidewalk,
and I like the feel and smell
of the people on the bus.
the librarians discovering where I live.
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.
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.
but I don’t mind too much.
an old one, wooden, white paint peeling, a swing,
grass, spots of dirt,
a broken toy.
and wonder what it would be like
to have a tree
every morning.
would get to know the feel
of warm smooth wood
as summer after summer
or writing letters.
but I don’t mind too much,
though one day
near the Matawan railroad station
as my son threw small white petals dow...