Anne Kaier

Poetry doesn't curve the line

Poetry doesn't curve its line, doesn't
curl, like lemons, mangoes, pitchers.
Words fall off a cliff;
it's all sharp angles like a T-square, even if
you are Herbert and play around
with altar shapes. Poetry never looks elegant
like a bowl.

Oh, you will say it doesn't matter,
since poems fill the hollows of the mind,
and words pucker the mouth like candy when you suck
against your palate. There it is again, suck,
the hard, sharp k of it. Should I let it hang
over the edge or bump along the line, stuck
in the middle?

Making poetry is not a sensuous occupation.
The hands ache for mud, impasto,
the eyes strain for yellows, blues, magenta.
We deal at one remove; words sit up, recalcitrant.
We yearn to smooth raw wood, or smudge
the smutty chalk that lingers on the sketch pad.

Oh where's the thrust of brush across a paper grain
breeding watercolor vines?
Where's the potter's wheel, spinning wet
to her touch? The weaver's rough red fabric?
For us there is no dyer's hand,
no turpentine at nightfall.
We merely finger tiny plastic cubes.

But, you will say, a well-made poem can satisfy.
If the words drape, in silky metaphor,
shimmer with fireflies and winding streams,
with love and war and wandering leaves, then
an expiration moves up from the belly,
letting the spirit out
and all the warm love in.

You would say this and you would be right.

* * *

The clutch of narcissus

On a lark, I stopped in to your yellow shop at noon.
Traffic in children's books slows down in winter,
so I surprised you with a spill of daffodils.
For the first time, your shoulders leant toward mine.

       Will I find my body in your own?
Miles away, my fingers slide along
a ridge of skin behind my jaw to touch your neck,
gray and hard behind your ears.

Musing alone, I stroke your puckish hand, where
knuckles pop, fingers clench beneath themselves.
I rub the curve of your arthritic wrist,
feel the rush of your blood.

A Pushcart Prize nominee, Anne Kaier's recent work, in poetry and nonfiction, appears in The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Bellingham Review, Paradigm, Tiny Lights, Under the Sun, The Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Philadelphia Poets, American Writing, and other venues. Poems and an essay are included in Beauty is a Verb: An Anthology of Poetry, Poetics, and Disability, which is on the American Library Association Notable Books list for 2012. Her poetry chapbook, InFire, was published in 2005.Holding a Ph.D. from Harvard University, she teaches literature and creative writing at Arcadia University and Rosemont College in suburban Philadelphia.