poems
branda c. maholtz
The Borrower (for Michael Burkard)
At the midpoint of exchange,
the moment when the books rest in both our hands
I know that I should tell you something.
But I don’t.
I say thank you instead.
Put the books in my bag,
and rush back to my apartment
my cat
my cigarettes
my coffee.
And by the time I am satisfied,
I have not read the books you let me borrow.
I should have told you.
Everyday the books follow me around,
or rather I bring them along for company.
From the bag to the coffee table.
From the coffee table to the bureau by my bed.
I fall asleep writing in my journal, and they are left
unopened
unread
unthumbed and unowned.
I have dreams that they read to me from their own pages,
they make me forget and dog-ear the pages,
marking what should be favorites.
The books aren’t mine,
but they want to be loved.
In the morning, their demand makes me guilty.
Back to the bag, carefully placed
so the covers aren’t damaged.
Ride against my hip;
they know how I move.
I should tell you
that this goes on for days.
More likely—weeks.
I ask for extension:
I am not done with them yet.
I should tell you that I haven’t started.
I can’t tell if the small penciled checks
marking poems I think you mentioned
were made by you
to make sure I read them.
It’s been so long, I am afraid to ask.
Maybe the book made them.
Maybe I really was reading in my dreams—
my unconscious trying to make the conscious
remember something, like tying string
around my fingers and forgetting why.
I read the poems,
they don’t seem new,
I think I have read them before.
And now.
I should tell you.
I don’t want to give them back.
I live in the pages.
They fit my hands.
There are pieces of me in them—
hair in the pages,
skin in the seams.
They smell like me,
my cigarettes
my coffee
my cat.
But, I do not want to make you
the fool who lends books
to someone who never intended to
give them back.
Instead, I make myself the fool.
I return them to you.
At the midpoint of exchange,
when the books rest in both our hands,
I know that I should tell you something.
I should tell you that the books are mine.
You borrow them from me.
You can’t keep them for too long,
because I know you
won’t read them right away.
Nesting
I pick up small sticks and twigs and grass, tie them together with string—a nest is made. A place to go when there’s no room in the night; when there’s no light to sleep by. Sometimes there are eggs in the nest but no memory of laying them. The eggs are never the right color, but they seem familiar. I won’t keep them warm enough to hatch because I don’t want to mother them. I fear that they will come out as new wet birds without feet. Without feet, they can learn to fly—but landing becomes impossible later. Guilty for giving them the gift of flight without rest, I slam my eyelids shut. It’s this tension of the body that makes the shells crack too soon. Moist beaks break through for the first breath. A near quiet peep that screams—hold me.
history of love in salt
we are the strangers we've always been. despite hands held, late night conversations on static phones, tears saved in tiny corked bottles mislabeled: hesitation, jealousy, paranoia, lusting, desperation, even love. the bottles have mostly evaporated, leaving behind tiny crystal reminders--salt to be used on meals eaten alone, with new lovers, and close friends who know exactly the strange taste of this past.
we are the strangers we've always been. in recent reaching out to say, "no, i do not think of you, but i have called to hear your voice." we have nothing to say and everything to share between re-imagined futures, a purposeful forgetting, but we both know that the more we try to forget, the more we remember, and fictionalize the separate memoirs of what happened. transtromer prophecies: write down and forget. all the sketches want to become real--i believe these words with closed eyes. this text becomes anew with each visit, each reading--remember it now, i insist. there are flowers left in footsteps, pennies that say i love you. and tears that no longer fall from lashes in your honor.
enveloped.
within the text of poems are words, sealed like love letters in sleeping envelopes. we keep them: the same folds of eyelids and lips pressed softly after moistening the stamp. we know the movements, the habits of these letters and we carry them with us for days before mailing. we carry them with us upon arrival and reception, anticipating some passionate revelation, some declaration already heard but the permanence of text on smoothed paper means something beyond the lake where we sat and cried and felt and left and came back to the other again. there, we fall together and fall apart--looking towards the water for a reflection but it's always too late. there, letters are remembered in sentence fragments and desperation and the poems starting with a singular word become many, more than one. and we could rip the letters into small pieces, each page--each drawn heart and each cursive m-i-s-s-y-o-u can be thrown into the air and float down upon the lake like autumnal leaves--a message from the trees (their own love letters come in crisp golden envelopes that glint on the journey) a poem that says simply: look now, i've let go.
Reading: Sensations In St. Petersburg
Electric wires divide the space of the white night sky. An energy suppression, a hum barely heard over breath.
Every so often there is a spark and a snap.
The heart reacts quicker than the mind; startled to a stop at the end of an eloquent sentence, even in translation; the period
unwanted,
unexpected.
A controlling element—we passively succumb as servants to the text for entertainment.
The recognition of living, the essence of loss.
Before the next moment of pause: full lungs, eyes alert—noticing something new, and then—
another quick slight death.
The escalator ride
down to the metro: too fast, too steep, unable to see the bottom.
The back tightens to keep balance; body no longer upright. Leaning into the page with the desire for slowness,
a single fetal comma.
But it’s the white cylinder lights,
like slender glasses of milk,
that pass with an instant of comfort.
Soft pulses of sensation, the ellipses,
fractions slower than the heart beating.
Pulling us into recognition: warmth, warmth, warmth.