MARIEL NORRIS - POEMS

Mariel Norris lives in the Pioneer Valley, Massachusetts in an apartment filled with cacti, crystals, and poetry books. She teaches special education and sneaks poetry lessons into the curriculum whenever possible. A Bard College graduate, she received the Academy of American Poets Prize for Bard in 2013. You can find her Spanish poetry in La voz and English poetry in Slink Chunk Press and TreeHouse.

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                          WINGED SYCOPHANTS

winged sycophants
feathers studded
with real diamonds
that refract faux stars
against a reluctant milky way
violent zigzags
with every turn of the wing
feather-strobe lights
a thousand seizures
 
winged sycophants
skin white as the kind of tooth
known to slice through every soul
in sight making halves
of halves of infinitesimal halves                                              
the keys to whiteness are
a) sunlessness
b) drinking pure gold
from the master’s blood-red lips
 
winged sycophants
sneer for hours
at chained nobodies
in muddy robes
streaked with tears
paper skin faces lined
with blue-black veins
hidden in hoods
one endless moan
 
winged sycophants
stretch mechanical wings
over empty highways
over vacant shops
over leafless forests
where trees are crooked spines
broken vertebrae
where branches sag
beneath the weight of absent birds
 
 
 
                             YOUR WINDOWS

Sidewalks yawn and stretch,
dry as worn-out lips
beneath passersby
who pass by
like nameless shadows.
 
I watch their little legs
that move in blurs
and their top hats
like thumbtacks
and their petticoats
like eraser smears.
 
Who are all these people, anyway?
Are their footsteps light,
or do they drag their boots against the pavement?
Are their vocal cords tied in knots?
Are they feeling dismayed?
Have any of them just fought with friends?
No, they’re too little to have any problems.
 
But then the rain begins
and drives them away--
sending them shivering
to their homes.
 
Now everyone is gone.
No one will notice if I leap
from my window
and brave the falling waves
and ring your doorbell
and hand you my letter
or read it out loud
right then and there
with your contorted face framed
in the door
and pull you outside
and hold you
and embrace you
and wait
for the downpour to wash us clean.
 
You’re so close—right across the street
I see your bedroom windows light up:
two glowing squares through the downpour.
I pretend they’re your eyes watching me.
I watch them back.
I watch hard, very hard and for very long.
 
And then I see a flicker of you
just a flicker of you maybe
maybe it’s you, I’m not
sure, for you’re smaller
even smaller still
than those passersby
who were on the street.
You’re grayer than everyone.
 
I want to stay and watch,
but I must turn away, I have no choice--
I can’t let this go on.
As my neck moves it creaks
below my skull, creaks.
My muscles
tense like steel
in times like these.
 
It’s a heavy-breathing night
with water panting down,
but my own breaths are shallow
with hope. Warm and dry,
it wraps around my shoulders,
tingles down my spine,
scratches lightly at my vertebrae
in its familiar way.
 
 
 
                                     LA VIDA DE UNA ABUELA SOLA                     

New day.
She gets up slowly    so
slowly and puts on her slippers.
Without thought    with movements of routine,
she boils water for tea.
It is early, and still her world is blurry    so blurry.
Fruit covers the kitchen counters    she sees the colors--
the reds and greens of the manzanas,
the oranges of the naranjas, the yellow plátanos--
But     she     doesn’t     see     their     forms.
 
Each week she buys 23 apples, 17 oranges, and 14 bananas
even though she lives alone.
Each week she smells the sugar of the fruits melting
and becoming a syrup of decay.
Her grandchildren would always eat fruit,
fruit after every meal, and would run, run a lot
through the house, animated
by sugar. They’d leap into her arms   with light   and energy.
But now.
Now her arms are as weak as the limbs of a barren orange tree,
and her grandchildren have moved to America
where they are very busy, very, very busy
and don’t know much Spanish anymore, not much at all,
except “te quiero” (“I love you”),
words they tell her through the phone
every now and then.
They are far away with their new language,
and she lives alone, alone
with her kitchen and her table with many chairs
and her heaps of fruit
and her mirror that she neglects because she does not want to see,
does not want to see her fragile body,
too weak to take a plane.
 
New day.
She gets up slowly    so
slowly and puts on her slippers.
Without thought    with movements of routine,
she boils water for tea.
It is early, and still her world is blurry    so blurry.
Fruit covers the kitchen counters    she sees the colors--
the rojas and verdes of the apples,
the naranjas of the oranges, the bananas amarillas--
But     she     doesn’t     see     their     forms.
 
 

                             WHEN YOU LEAVE

blond tendrils
stuck
to my forehead    ocean-curled
salty skin   
         seaweed legs
sun
      slips beneath
a royal sky
into a sailboat moon  
     sea deeply breathing
waves
fire pit on the sand
beers
        popped
whispers      
         shouts   
belly laughs
       crooked cartwheels
 
when twilight takes a nice long sigh
the sky turns starless black
and everyone goes fast to sleep
everyone except me    lost
roaming through
yet another neural
        labyrinth
 
Happiness--
when you’re here
you’re familiar as my childhood
       blanket
soft
       as Mother’s fingers
on my forehead but
 
Happiness--
when you’re gone
I forget your face
forget your name    long for you
beneath cold sheets
as the waning moon eyes me
through half-closed curtains
my stomach    my jaw    
my hands    clenching
       nothing
tension    clenching
and then
       nothing
I wake up sore   
        hurt
needing something
or someone
        to hold
 
Happiness--
when you leave
       I wish
I could mark on my calendar
the date of your
       return
for counting down days
months      years
is easier than
       not knowing
if we’ll meet again
 
 
                                BEAUTY V. LOVE

Beauty is a tomato sliced in two.
Red, sweet, and wet,
pulsing like hearts.
The pink pearl-seeds
seem as wonderful as love.
But I have yet to learn about love.
 
Some girls know love well.
They’re drawn to round things
that are whole like tumbleweeds
or the world or pregnant bellies.
These girls fall in love with a seed,
help it blossom with their tears.
 
Some people have love in and out
and all around them.
Others are gray and brittle
as driftwood.
Some people wanting love
mistakenly search for beauty instead.
 
They think love and beauty are the same.
But beauty is thin to the touch
and perishable as a crocus petal.
Love is thick as rope bound to a boat,
wrapped round and round,
round and round.
 
Love is round. At night, I curl
inside my comforter, tight as a snail
or a ringlet in my mother’s hair.
Sometimes I wish I were still a fetus,
a tiny seahorse in the waves,
a rocking horse in the dead of night.