Dora Malech
4 poems
**
SPEECH! SPEECH!
What luck even a happy beginning
If anyone asks we can say we were praying
Sea legs ready steady rudder
First foray to impossibly softer
Apple of my apogee
Landlocked island’s delicacy
Sunday punch boxful of squashes
Buttercup Carnival Delicata
Spell called for chrism and husks of cicada
For pinch the pods from Mama’s catalpa
And scrap the stratagems one two three
Admit without question the question begged me
Here’s my dear a redder riddle
Heads and legs but where’s the middle
Where’d you find time to dry your eyes
Christen our little alibi
Scratch the sunset clause and finder’s fee
I want you watching when the sun slips into me
**
Can't Get There From Here
On car trips, word games—
Love into glove into globe, lobe, lose, lost, last.
Refusal of the helmet and the wind spins tangles
through my hair. The highway eyes my body,
lolling its black tongue.
Congratulations to the doctors
who discovered a low flat organ in the belly
whose only function is to ache upon leaving.
Follows that they then absolved the heart,
brave little engine. That the function of trains
is transport, not sadness, and the whistle’s pang
is simply some dark sleight of hand.
Flight and in-flight meals, condiments, commitment—
slather mustard and muster courage for descent.
What goes up must adjust its cabin pressure.
What goes down must go down gently or burn.
**
Getting Cold, Eh?
Across the street at Lensing, the first hearse of the season scudded past the pillars. I was napping in the orange porch chair, startled from the stage of a dream peopled with the old jokes’ cast: the lollipop manufacturer, the rabbi, plus-size bunny, someone’s momma, a passel of fair-haired ladies, dead baby, bee and wasp, two gay Irishmen, repeat offender molester, the well-endowed. The others looked on as Patrick Fitzgerald told Gerald Fitzpatrick, “the love is gone and any chimp could kiss my shoulder blades at night.” The others made suggestions: standardized testing, a Dance-a-Thon, enforced bird watching, shorter skirts for schoolgirls, a cake fight, a modicum of decorum, legal adoption of homunculus and incubus. Gerald claimed claustrophilia, begged the crowd to hold him tight. I surfaced as the rabbi shouted that purpose is a porpoise, click and blowhole, because it speaks does not mean that we understand. Then the mourners with Midwestern accents: “roof” like the dog’s bark, “root” a road’s undoing.
**
Director's Cut
Opening shot: morning. Mid-May. Mid-maybe,
misgiving, mistake, mid-take your time repeating after me
so long, so longing, lost and short of breath. Start
to finished lines means each between-the-line by heart
where hem reacts to haw—close shot—the big to-do list,
lights and stunts, month and mouth made-up to fit
the ending. Try the goodbye on for size. Lather, rinse,
repeat sweet nothings, catch phrase and a slow release.
The shower scene fades to soliloquy, last forwarding address
on the saloon soundstage, fired blanks, ketchup on a blouse,
then aftermath and ever after. I have to say,
the camera loves you when the credits roll and you play
dead. Fast forward and you flail out like my marionette.
Rewind, you ride right backward toward me out of that sunset.
**
return to sawbuck 1.x
**
Dora Malech has just spent a year in Wellington, New Zealand as a visiting lecturer for the MA Creative Writing Program at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, The Yale Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and other publications.
**
SPEECH! SPEECH!
What luck even a happy beginning
If anyone asks we can say we were praying
Sea legs ready steady rudder
First foray to impossibly softer
Apple of my apogee
Landlocked island’s delicacy
Sunday punch boxful of squashes
Buttercup Carnival Delicata
Spell called for chrism and husks of cicada
For pinch the pods from Mama’s catalpa
And scrap the stratagems one two three
Admit without question the question begged me
Here’s my dear a redder riddle
Heads and legs but where’s the middle
Where’d you find time to dry your eyes
Christen our little alibi
Scratch the sunset clause and finder’s fee
I want you watching when the sun slips into me
**
Can't Get There From Here
On car trips, word games—
Love into glove into globe, lobe, lose, lost, last.
Refusal of the helmet and the wind spins tangles
through my hair. The highway eyes my body,
lolling its black tongue.
Congratulations to the doctors
who discovered a low flat organ in the belly
whose only function is to ache upon leaving.
Follows that they then absolved the heart,
brave little engine. That the function of trains
is transport, not sadness, and the whistle’s pang
is simply some dark sleight of hand.
Flight and in-flight meals, condiments, commitment—
slather mustard and muster courage for descent.
What goes up must adjust its cabin pressure.
What goes down must go down gently or burn.
**
Getting Cold, Eh?
Across the street at Lensing, the first hearse of the season scudded past the pillars. I was napping in the orange porch chair, startled from the stage of a dream peopled with the old jokes’ cast: the lollipop manufacturer, the rabbi, plus-size bunny, someone’s momma, a passel of fair-haired ladies, dead baby, bee and wasp, two gay Irishmen, repeat offender molester, the well-endowed. The others looked on as Patrick Fitzgerald told Gerald Fitzpatrick, “the love is gone and any chimp could kiss my shoulder blades at night.” The others made suggestions: standardized testing, a Dance-a-Thon, enforced bird watching, shorter skirts for schoolgirls, a cake fight, a modicum of decorum, legal adoption of homunculus and incubus. Gerald claimed claustrophilia, begged the crowd to hold him tight. I surfaced as the rabbi shouted that purpose is a porpoise, click and blowhole, because it speaks does not mean that we understand. Then the mourners with Midwestern accents: “roof” like the dog’s bark, “root” a road’s undoing.
**
Director's Cut
Opening shot: morning. Mid-May. Mid-maybe,
misgiving, mistake, mid-take your time repeating after me
so long, so longing, lost and short of breath. Start
to finished lines means each between-the-line by heart
where hem reacts to haw—close shot—the big to-do list,
lights and stunts, month and mouth made-up to fit
the ending. Try the goodbye on for size. Lather, rinse,
repeat sweet nothings, catch phrase and a slow release.
The shower scene fades to soliloquy, last forwarding address
on the saloon soundstage, fired blanks, ketchup on a blouse,
then aftermath and ever after. I have to say,
the camera loves you when the credits roll and you play
dead. Fast forward and you flail out like my marionette.
Rewind, you ride right backward toward me out of that sunset.
**
return to sawbuck 1.x
**
Dora Malech has just spent a year in Wellington, New Zealand as a visiting lecturer for the MA Creative Writing Program at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, The Yale Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and other publications.
