Rita Dove

(Independence Day, 1964) On her 36th birthday, Thomas had shown her her first swimming pool. It had been his favorite color, exactly—just so much of it, the swimmers’ white arms jutting into the chevrons of high society. She had rolled up her window and told him to drive on, fast. Now this act of mercy: four daughters dragging her to their husbands’ company picnic, white families on one side and them on the other, unpacking the same squeeze bottles of Heinz, the same waxy beef patties and Salem potato chip bags. So he was dead for the first time on Fourth of July—ten years ago had been harder, waiting for something to happen, and ten years before that, the girls like young horses eyeing the track. Last August she stood alone for hours in front of the T.V. set as a crow’s wing moved slowly through the white streets of government. That brave swimming scared her, like Joanna saying Mother, we’re Afro-Americans now! What did she know about Africa? Were there lakes like this one with a rowboat pushed under the pier? Or Thomas’ Great Mississippi with its sullen silks? (There was the Nile but the Nile belonged to God.) Where she came from was the past, 12 miles into town where nobody had locked their back door, and Goodyear hadn’t begun to dream of a park under the company symbol, a white foot sprouting two small wings.

After IVAN ALBRIGHT’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida She arrived as near to virginal as girls got in those days—i.e., young, the requisite dewy cheek flushed at its own daring. He had hoped for a little more edge. But she held the newspaper rolled like a scepter, his advertisement turned up to prove she was there solely at his bidding—and yet the gold band, the photographs ... a mother, then. He placed her in the old garden chair, the same one he went to evenings when the first tug on the cord sent the bulb swinging like the lamps in the medic’s tent over the wounded, swaddled shapes that moaned each time the Screaming Meemies let loose, their calculated shrieks so far away he thought of crickets—while all around him matted gauze and ether pricked up an itch so bad he could hardly sketch each clean curve of tissue opening. I shut my eyes, walk straight to it. Nothing special but it’s there, wicker fraying under my calming fingers.

Back when the earth was new and heaven just a whisper, back when the names of things hadn't had time to stick; back when the smallest breezes melted summer into autumn, when all the poplars quivered sweetly in rank and file . . . the world called, and I answered. Each glance ignited to a gaze. I caught my breath and called that life, swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet. I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names? Back when everything was still to come, luck leaked out everywhere. I gave my promise to the world, and the world followed me here.

In the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor is more elaborate than the last. The alleys smell of cops, pistols bumping their thighs, each chamber steeled with a slim blue bullet. Low-rent balconies stacked to the sky. A boy plays tic-tac-toe on a moon crossed by TV antennae, dreams he has swallowed a blue bean. It takes root in his gut, sprouts and twines upward, the vines curling around the sockets and locking them shut. And this sky, knotting like a dark tie? The patroller, disinterested, holds all the beans. August. The mums nod past, each a prickly heart on a sleeve.

I was ill, lying on my bed of old papers, when you came with white rabbits in your arms; and the doves scattered upwards, flying to mothers, and the snails sighed under their baggage of stone . . . Now your tongue grows like celery between us: Because of our love-cries, cabbage darkens in its nest; the cauliflower thinks of her pale, plump children and turns greenish-white in a light like the ocean’s. I was sick, fainting in the smell of teabags, when you came with tomatoes, a good poetry. I am being wooed. I am being conquered by a cliff of limestone that leaves chalk on my breasts.

I acknowledge my status as a stranger: Inappropriate clothes, odd habits Out of sync with wasp and wren. I admit I don’t know how To sit still or move without purpose. I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees. But this lawn has been leveled for looking, So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green. Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids? My feet are the primitives here. As for the rest—ah, the air now Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing But news of a breeze.

In the sixth grade I was chased home by the Gatlin kids, three skinny sisters in rolled-down bobby socks. Hissing Brainiac! and Mrs. Stringbean!, they trod my heel. I knew my body was no big deal but never thought to retort: who's calling who skinny? (Besides, I knew they'd beat me up.) I survived their shoves across the schoolyard because my five-foot-zero mother drove up in her Caddie to shake them down to size. Nothing could get me into that car. I took the long way home, swore I'd show them all: I would grow up.

1. The Cane Fields There is a parrot imitating spring in the palace, its feathers parsley green. Out of the swamp the cane appears to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General searches for a word; he is all the world there is. Like a parrot imitating spring, we lie down screaming as rain punches through and we come up green. We cannot speak an R— out of the swamp, the cane appears and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina. The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads. There is a parrot imitating spring. El General has found his word:perejil. Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining out of the swamp. The cane appears in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming. And we lie down. For every drop of blood there is a parrot imitating spring. Out of the swamp the cane appears. 2. The Palace The word the general’s chosen is parsley. It is fall, when thoughts turn to love and death; the general thinks of his mother, how she died in the fall and he planted her walking cane at the grave and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming four-star blossoms. The general pulls on his boots, he stomps to her room in the palace, the one without curtains, the one with a parrot in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders Who can I kill today. And for a moment the little knot of screams is still. The parrot, who has traveled all the way from Australia in an ivory cage, is, coy as a widow, practising spring. Ever since the morning his mother collapsed in the kitchen while baking skull-shaped candies for the Day of the Dead, the general has hated sweets. He orders pastries brought up for the bird; they arrive dusted with sugar on a bed of lace. The knot in his throat starts to twitch; he sees his boots the first day in battle splashed with mud and urine as a soldier falls at his feet amazed— how stupid he looked!— at the sound of artillery.I never thought it would sing the soldier said, and died. Now the general sees the fields of sugar cane, lashed by rain and streaming. He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth gnawed to arrowheads. He hears the Haitians sing without R’s as they swing the great machetes: Katalina, they sing,Katalina, mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows his mother was no stupid woman; she could roll an R like a queen. Even a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room the bright feathers arch in a parody of greenery, as the last pale crumbs disappear under the blackened tongue. Someone calls out his name in a voice so like his mother’s, a startled tear splashes the tip of his right boot. My mother, my love in death. The general remembers the tiny green sprigs men of his village wore in their capes to honor the birth of a son. He will order many, this time, to be killed for a single, beautiful word.

Snow would be the easy way out—that softening sky like a sigh of relief at finally being allowed to yield. No dice. We stack twigs for burning in glistening patches but the rain won’t give. So we wait, breeding mood, making music of decline. We sit down in the smell of the past and rise in a light that is already leaving. We ache in secret, memorizing a gloomy line or two of German. When spring comes we promise to act the fool. Pour, rain! Sail, wind, with your cargo of zithers! November 1981

Safety First. Never point your weapon, keep your finger off the trigger. Assume a loaded barrel, even when it isn’t, especially when you know it isn’t. Glocks are lightweight but sensitive; the Keltec has a long pull and a kick. Rifles have penetrating power, viz.: if the projectile doesn’t lodge in its mark, it will travel some distance until it finds shelter; it will certainly pierce your ordinary drywall partition. You could wound the burglar and kill your child sleeping in the next room, all with one shot. Open Air. Fear, of course. Then the sudden pleasure of heft—as if the hand had always yearned for this solemn fit, this gravitas, and now had found its true repose. Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it— squeeze between heartbeats. Look down the sights. Don’t hold your breath. Don’t hold anything, just stop breathing. Level the scene with your eyes. Listen. Soft, now: squeeze. Gender Politics. Guys like noise: rapid fire, thunk-and-slide of a blunt-nose silver Mossberg, or double-handed Colts, slugging it out from the hips. Rambo or cowboy, they’ll whoop it up. Women are fewer, more elegant. They prefer precision: tin cans swing-dancing in the trees, the paper bull’s-eye’s tidy rupture at fifty yards. (Question: If you were being pursued, how would you prefer to go down— ripped through a blanket of fire or plucked by one incandescent fingertip?) The Bullet. dark dark no wind no heaven i am not anything   not borne on air   i bear myself   i can slice the air   no wind can hold me   let me   let me go   i can see   yes o aperture o light   let me   off go off   straight is my verb   straight my glory road   yes   now i can   feel it the light i am flame   velocity o beautiful body i am coming i am yours before you know it i am home