Mary Jane White: Summer in Waukon, Iowa
The curly-haired cherub, maybe
Eleven, if that, seated on a concrete step,
In his grey t-shirt, blazoned with the
Slogan “Virginity Rocks” is plucking
The late dandelions and rolling them up
Into spit-wads…
Mary Jane White: Rain, In Riverview Cemetery, Martins Ferry, Ohio
The rain
Already hangs a grey shawl in front of the blue domes of the Ohio
Greek Orthodox church, standing cheek by jowl by an industrial dairy.
Mary Jane White: When Was I Ever So Happy
No, I agreed with you, soberly,
It would not be good if I fell. To wind up
In the hospital in Venice, when, yes,
I had just escaped the hospital at home.
Mary Jane White: Axe
Always the trapped smell of sunlight
& the oiled axe to split the last of the kindling
& the bank’s rippled edge & the heavy suckerfish
Sandy Solomon: Metaphoric
Like leaves to sun, people in the room turned
toward her when she appeared at the door—
plain as metaphor—beaming.
Mary Jane White: Lindeman
you led me alone
into the sandhills, told me how you were named
for the lindens that grow like smaller oaks
or elms in Europe’s parks
Mary Jane White: Friend, You Count Yourself Faithless,
…the Sea and all her ships
are women you are too certain of —
who would not marry you for love.
Mary Jane White: “Dear Friends” by Marina Tsvetaeva:
Dear friends, who’ve passed these nights with us!
Miles, and miles, and miles, and dry bread . . .
Mary Jane White: “A Late Reply” by Anna Akhmatova
Distract me, my native fields,
From all that has happened to me,
The abyss that swallowed my loved ones
Mary Jane White: “For You” by Marina Tsvetaeva
For you, I dissolve a handful of
Burnt hair in the glass.
So you will not eat, not sing,
Not drink, not sleep.
Mary Jane White: Friend, Tell Me, What Can I Know
…always the sun failed again
for the evening, and the short grass fell dull
in the shadows, out of the slant-light.
Mary Jane White: Why, Friend, With Surprise and Awe
I weep easily and often
now for the world.
Marina Tsvetaeva: Thank God for the Rich
For their root, putrid and loose,
For their weeping-wound from the cradle,
For their perplexing habit of taking
More from my pocket into their pocket.
