Poetry: Selections from Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

Philemon and Baucis

Milkweed twirled around us like sprites in feathery tutus.

Gently squeezed, snapdragons opened their mouths

like baby birds for worms, or when, decades before,

we tickled the cheeks of our infants so they’d root for my nipple.

 

Standing beneath the embrace of a willow,

I told you the myth of Philemon and Baucis, the old couple

who, gracious to gods disguised as beggars,

were granted their wish—to die at the same moment

and be turned into trees.

 

You in your straw hat, me in my long, floral dress

and parasol must have looked like a Victorian couple.

A woman asked to take our picture.

 

That was before your left hand began to tremor,

your face began to stiffen. “Smile,” I’d beg.

 

Looking at that photo on your wall

in the nursing home where you’re bedridden,

I feel you walking next to me

with your long strides, your wide smile.

You lead me past jewelweed, rhododendron,

the perfect geometry of mountain laurel.

The Desk

My mother found it roadside,

hauled it into our black Mercury,

got my father to help her lift it

up the steps of the old mansion

carved into apartments where we lived

on the third floor and carry it

to the toy room, where my older sisters

slept in twin beds.

 

Mother sanded the desk and lacquered it red.

Mornings, I’d climb out of the crib

I was too big for in the corner

of my parents’ room, sit at that desk,

my slippered feet still not touching the floor.

Our feet had to be slippered. My father

believed the dead could come up,

grab your bare feet, and drag you

down to Gehenna.

 

At that desk, I’d draw a sideways princess,

one lidless blue eye staring straight at me.

As my tongue slid over my smiling lips,

I knew her eye wasn’t the einhoreh, the evil

eye that my father warded off by spitting

three times, ptui, ptui, ptui.

 

“You still live in the dark ages,” Mother cried to Father.

“I only want to keep you safe,” he hollered.

 

The desk reminds me of the years

when Mother was sober,

before valium and Dewar’s,

when she found that abandoned

desk, brought it home, sanded it,

and lacquered it red.

By the Sea

I was born by the sea, twin suns

blaring against my closed lids as I floated

in the amniotic sac of the ocean.

I was born with the haunting lullabies

of gulls, their swooping. I was born fully formed

from a seashell, my hair rippling past my shoulders.

 

I was born to speak the stories

of my grandmother, carrying her candlesticks

and feather bed, leading her six surviving

children through the Black Forest.

I was born smelling the stench of smoke

from her burning village.

I was born to leave their ink prints on the world.

Red State

Ruby, in the girls’ room at P.S. 215, we showed

each other the stinging stripes on our arms, thighs,

even our butts, delivered by our fathers’ leather belts.

Ruby, I keep you close though you voted

red. I remember how years as a single mom

in the city shaped you. When your subway stalled

between stations, pre-cell phones, you couldn’t

call daycare to tell them you’d be late to pick

up your little son, who would wait and wait,

and, stomach roiling, knew the scolding you’d get

from the director when you got there, which

made you bitter that you had to work

while you imagined lolling welfare mothers

going for manicures with their public assistance

checks that you thought the Dems gave out

unchecked. Because twice you were mugged

at gunpoint, had to hand over your cash

and driver’s license, when Giuliani became

mayor and crushed crime by any means,

then said the election was stolen, you believed him.

Ruby, I won’t let go of you, though each time you

spit out, “You liberals!” I feel the lash.

Murder

On the second-story porch of a peeling summer mansion

carved into apartments where they lived year-round,

three sisters in age-order wear makeshift plastic capes,

heads bent as they fine-comb nits out of each other’s parted hair.

 

The mother stands behind the oldest girl,

searching her thick curls for the nearly invisible

tiny claws that grip each strand

and for the eggs that stick.

 

In her concentration, the oldest sister hasn’t a thought

of murdering the middle one, the beauty of the family

as she’s called by everyone in their beachside town.

 

The middle sister, the beauty, hasn’t a thought

of murdering her little sister for being born

and taking her place as the youngest.

 

The youngest picks at the stiff hair

of her Toni doll just to fit in.

 

The mother, dunking the fine-combs

into a jar of alcohol to drown the nits,

hasn’t a thought of how sick

she is of raising three kids

with a husband who smashes his fist

on the kitchen table, making the dishes

jump, and thinks money can only be spent

for escaping the country,

and being displaced as the beauty

of the family by her middle girl.

 

While killing nits near the soughing sea,

for once, we are one.

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro’s poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary magazines such as After the Pause, BoomerLitMag, Brief Wilderness, Brushfire, The Courtship of Winds, Figure 1, La Presa, The Midwest Quarterly, Mudfish, Mudlark, Neologism Poetry Journal, Packingtown Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Westview, The Iowa Review, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Stone Path Review, Frontier Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Stand, Carbon Culture Review, Cider Press Review, Cutbank Literary Journal, Doubly Mad, Edison Literary Review, Evening Street Review, Euphony Journal, Inkwell Magazine, Amarillo Bay, Bayou Magazine, Poet Lore, Crack the Spine, Compass Rose, and others.