Rumpus Original Poetry: Four Poems by Cate Lycurgus
[I cannot bear]
heat of triangle pose
another episode of Friends
the super-sized box of Depends delivered to the porch & which I rock end
over end to the carport for keeping
to thin arugula up from seed
leaving brownie bowls unlicked
fruit—clustered oranges, candy-cane figs, pomegranates, a dangled persimmon—like ornaments,
bowing to rot
with the finished quilt across my lap, to pull the basting out at last, slip by mysterious thread
to re-spool the twinkle lights
most Wednesdays
the news. to witness to another my baby face down with the red/blue lights, bleeding
another blown save and pennant miss
the gargle thick in daddy’s throat that chokes the whole house
madrone, now as smooth stump at the asphalt’s lip
to sling blazin sauce on a bucket of wings, their pink-pocked elbows like mine
emaciated polar bears shuffling nowhere off-screen, my own face in its darkening
in the closed-down dark of a dinner party, to blow the candles out
to go. stay.
to take you in my mouth or
mamma’s face turned aside
deleting all the texts
to race through the novel’s last pages, arrive at a final line
a child
mine without life after life
Everybody’s Hero
I am not waiting
for my father to die
just forking waffles
takes a long time
watching for swallow
the rough descent
& clear-throated
I must convince him
I have nothing else
to garnish with zest
each mourning
decades as he has
I try not to show
through endless surrender
any burnt edge
means he will not
take another corner but
have wasted away
with this sticky plate
for naught—only
maple 100% pure
syrup will do—
he assures me even
he genuinely believes
his heart will fail
his days are shot
but I repeat
shot in the arm! to all &
how he champions me—
halfway this soaks in
& I do not know if
we are our chronics
I am done or
waffling & so
live not yet
begun
[Dear Lord if this is all there is for us]
to do: start our left-right blinker-ing sidle
up to gain a car-length (make the green-to-gold-to-no-
going-any- where-quick lights)
accelerate to slam on brakes
please break in insist on space
where none exists and fumes’ mirage
is all we have
to go on why now gain a lane just for it to dis-
appear ahead Lord let me over in
on how to drive to ease the clutch
smooth what asphalt
offers up and thrive just like this
oleander blowing through the median with semi-drafts
not semi but—in all parts toxic—total
shock magenta white knuckled now
I inch along against
accident how to not be accidental and if the point is death
to self help me buckle up knuckle
down count
the hours the idle ours the stall out I’m calling
from my blind
spot so wide that I might
crash if highway trash is what I’ve got
plastic lids and tire strips mattresses
by noxious blossoms don’t mistake me
I’m not asking diamond lanes
to take me home to lay me down
to sleep to wake another
drive another shift don’t make it
faster but un-clutch my chest
it’s so stuck
Lord shift me so
I love this
Point Perspective
I drive in double vision but am told there’s one white line. To follow, though it
perforates, or splits, from mile to mile. Where potholes moonlight as bright
slicks, two possibles reside. In one I’m flagged for slightest weave, the other
sirens strobe for me and my back left tire. Flat. One silhouette gets chalked
roadside while who, me? unzips who she be from a purse’s hide. Knock-off. &
though I try to cut it out, can feel my leopard surface in a thousand darkened
eyes. Which spot the stare in grocery aisles though lightweight me lifts peach
lip gloss, gets yanked to first in line. I watch the queue around the block and so
the stigma widens. An elevator opens both to lobby and to laundry sides, on
dirt-streaked tile I’m mop-waltzing; on black marble, smelling lye. Get advice
to patch one eye so the other clearly sees. But I’ve been pirate and diseased,
each—changes how you’re seen. In stereo or ghost. Cannot blame this on dry
eyes since mine are cataracts of tears that do not blur but make the hurt hurt a
painful clear. That the clapper rings against each lip of bell and just as easily, I
could hail from the 5th or 95th percentile. Or that within a storm’s pupil, one can
shut out entirely the iris of nearby. The cries. The PBJ I bless, divide, sucks
apart to one limp slice, the other berry-butter thick—I beg to not do the halving,
not to have to pick. On rest stop benches I lean back—a glutton for the light and
yet there’s blind inside that bright, to find it—floaters multiply. Let’s keep
passing loaves and fish—one, two, old, new—picnic with our stunner shades
but no one stunned and no one choked, no one broke or broken, done with
everybody woke—
***
Photograph of Cate Lycurgus by Frances Lacuzzi.