POETRY MONDAY: September 6, 2010
Elizabeth Haight
Every once in a while I come across a poet whose work is barely known at all but who shows the kind of promise that I think will bring her wider recognition eventually. The term we use is “emerging poet,” which sounds to me a bit like a chicken pecking its way out an egg, but really means someone who doesn’t yet have a book out or perhaps only one or two books, not enough to be called an “established poet.”
Elizabeth Haight, whose smiling face you see here, is emerging. Her poems have been published in a number of small-press venues, both print and online, such as A Small Garlic Press, Gravity, and Snakeskin, as well as in Zephyrs 2010, a Millay Society chapbook of work produced during the 2009/10 Steepletop Poetry workshop, which I had the pleasure of leading. What impressed me about her work was its rootedness in place, its use of telling details and its emotional openness – which pretty much describes Elizabeth herself. Below are three of her poems, including the one from Zephyrs.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
MECHANICVILLE, PAPER CITY
There were paper mills
upriver, downriver—
their tall stacks emitting odors
that 50 years later cannot be described
as entirely unpleasant—
odors once longed for
to know where a man is while someone at home waits
for him to undress at the door of the mudroom.
Post World War II, in a small city of one-square mile,
existed the largest book paper maker in the world
and proof that history repeats itself—
union strikes, recession, ethnic discrimination,
war.
My father worked in quality control
in the mill at the south end of town.
He brought home to me discarded stationery
in psychedelic prints with matching envelopes.
I wrote long letters to his parents.
In the mid-70s, he was comptroller
in the defunct mill at the north end of town.
I asked him to bring home the 15 Mexican men
disassembling papermaking machinery.
We played pool and ping pong and passed
Tabasco sauce around the dining room table.
Once the men returned to Mexico,
I began receiving love letters.
Sometimes when I hear metal rattle along the river,
I remember how I counted the cars of a train
as it rolled through town, crossing an overpass
on its way to dock at the mill.
As a teenager, I walked between the rails above the road
in fear of my life.
The smokestacks are gone and the trains re-routed.
Most of the men who worked in the mills
are dead.
TELL DAD
Some days it’s like you’re with me—
if I believed that—
driving through Blackinton.
There’s gossip I slip into the mental file—
Tell Dad I’m in love.
My brother says he has things to tell you, too.
Your oldest granddaughter is trying
to have a baby. A psychic who channels the dead
saw you laughing with two thumbs up,
giving her hope.
Your great-granddaughter is talking now.
Pa is working. Pa is sleeping.
Pa has a cough.
The brass pot of small toys gets dumped out
to be worn on the head.
Remember the yellow ball?
It rolls around on the floor by itself.
She visits you with Great Nan.
Pokes a rose in the ground
at the foot of your stone.
Dances in fresh dirt or new snow,
leaving her footprints like it’s her own Hollywood
Walk of Fame. She gives you a kiss,
touches every passing spirit,
calls out, Goodbye, Everybody!
My mother’s hands are old,
the way she arranges the flowers
in a tall vase at the kitchen sink.
We each take one for you when we go.
And when they die, she pulls the petals
and spreads them over the ground
like her own ashes.
Like she might lean over
and you would pull her face to your face,
kiss her and call her Honeybun
as you lay down for your nap,
like you always did.
Later, you come to the table
and light a cigarette.
She pours the coffee.
Bergman, Peter, ed., Zephyrs. Austerlitz, NY: The Millay Society, 2010.
OCTOBER’S DRESS
Tonight the rain and wind excited me,
coaxing October’s dress from every tree.
Each golden leaf falls and floats
to the floor at the foot of the bed—
it starts with the beautiful voice
that sings of a sad and beautiful life
the kiss that misses the lips
the strap from the shoulder
the breast from its cup—
the branch that falls into the rain-swollen furrow.
It’s not a wild storm, this.
It happens
when the wind undresses the tree—
the tree tremors and sighs
and then sleeps.