Issue Eleven
Poetry
by Ann Goldsmith
THE EVENING PRIMROSE INVITES THE BEE
How is it that my pheromones fail
while she simply
uncurls one petal, dangles
another
shrugs a drop of incense
from her pollen-laden lap
and instantly
he is there
flamed out of sleep
in the darkening garden
burrowing in
drenching himself
and the heavy sun
sunk under its own weight
while the tranced
garden
drowses in pearly
indolence deliciously
open to witless
iridescences
having to do with
night coming on and
here I am waiting with night
coming on
COUNTDOWN
In the large waiting room
she wanders around
taking inventory:
Smudges and erasures
Rusting thumb hinges
Shapes of kisses
Textures of plums
The voices in snow
and lightbulbs
The meaning of chimneys
How the light makes half
the flower
Redundancies of journals
Stagecraft of letters
First and last resolves
Kinds of wrong turns
The holes in floors
The new pain: transitory
or indicative
Questions of green
How the wings of nighthawks
diving
are a kind of speech
The dream’s twelve horses
How many feet in a mile
Questions of punctuation
Things given over
given away
Where it all goes
where it all went
How to keep warm
WASHING WINDOWS
As when a woman sees
and doesn’t see
the man’s intention
pacing on the lawn
or the gaze is far away
when the terrible thing
happens in the same room
or at the edge of the road
or the green hair
and slavering tusks
mask the Halloween child
ringing another doorbell—
so the men who came this
morning to clean the windows
scraped and swiped
at the small brightening
panes while indoors
we drank coffee
and chatted, watching
and not watching them
as October burned out
in copper and gold
and all the candy was gone
and the men would not
look in at us although
film upon film washed away
between out and in
until you could put your hand
right through, right
through the thought
to the thing itself, and
whatever it was, you could bear it.
Ann Goldsmith teaches creative writing at D’Youville College in Buffalo, New York.