Deborah Bennett

 

Home Is Where

Soaked at the root, fossilized ferns
dilate their veins. Pregnant clouds
scrape sawtooth peaks. Pines
pepper the air. Run-off lances
stone and root. Memory’s
ecosystem, static as evergreens.

It is already high season. Where
children should be dowsing
corn dogs in condiments, a flaming
corona licks stadium steps as cows
graze on scorched straw. Hoarse
hens sing a fire song. I backburn
every chamber of my heart.

I have tried to make this fist-sized organ
an immutable place. I flank the protean
force of fire with souvenirs—spoon
dipped in the borders of my state, ragged
north, square south. Bridge of the Gods
cleating sandy soil. The whole Gorge
hollowed, a dugout canoe.

Then, on the third day, a woman
unlocks the paddock, unharnesses
the beasts. Horses, save yourselves.
 

Tonight

after Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can’t write a thing, sad or otherwise.

For instance, I can’t write, “Leave me beneath the bruised cluster of stars, wound of light!”

Tonight I can’t write a canto, no ode, no sonnet of love.

There are nights when the ocean wave is a dull thud in my ears.
Other nights my eyes reflect nothing, the Southern Cross a dark pit.

There is no sound of nature or man that can penetrate the fester of flesh.

My soul, what does my soul know of satisfaction?
Of loss? I never possessed myself or another.

Tonight I can’t write in terms you’d understand. I can’t say, “The wind soughed in the pines
above the rocky shore.”

I could care less if you no longer love me, if you ever did.

If only these were the last lines I would ever write, to you.
If this nest of memory, nettled with broken twigs, did not sag with dark swallows.

A graduate of the Creative Writing program at Boston University, Deborah Bennett’s poems and translations have appeared in Salamander, Tupelo Press, Connotations Press Online, La GuaGua and elsewhere. Her prose has appeared on Only a Game, Cognoscenti and Edify, among others. In addition, she recently attended the Bread Loaf’s Translators’ Conference and Colrain’s Poetry Manuscript Conference. She teaches language and literature at Berklee College of Music and lives in Boston with her family.