POETRY MONDAY: May 7, 2012
Roberta Feins
Poet Roberta Feins was born inNew Yorkand lives in Seattle, where she works as a computer consultant. She received her MFA in poetry in 2007 from New England College. Her poems, one of which received first prize in the 2010 Women in Judaism Magazine poetry contest, have been published in a number of other fine journals, including Five A.M., Antioch Review, and The Cortland Review, and are forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review. She is editor of the e-zine, Switched-on Gutenberg.
One of the three poems below, “Becoming a Legend: Lament of the Mink,” was first published in Umbrella Journal. The other two appear here for the first time.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
Becoming a Legend: Lament of the Mink
Of the Great Lakes Mink Association
BlackGlama band, my litter’s natural life
was nasty, brutish and short (Hobbes). But,
pick of that litter, I was shipped to New York
wedded into a black-brown coat,
with silver guard hairs. Full swirl skirt,
gathered at the waist. Lined with satin.
I tried to work my way up, but was marked down.
Mildred, who bought me at Alexander’s
in the Bronx, forbade her family
to reveal my discount origins. As Alger says:
If you’ll try to be respectable you will.
Oh, weekend nights in 1960’s New York.
Golden chandeliers rise to the opera-house ceiling,
theatre scrims lift, ballerinas pose on point.
Then on to Sardi’s cloak-room,
shooting the breeze with cashmeres,
perfumed hankies wadded in my pocket.
In the circle of the coat-check’s arms,
pressed against her breasts, whistling Verdi –
given to desire. Out of the steamy restaurant
into cold air, swaying on high heels,
night a glittering sable pelt. In 1972,
I was appraised at three thousand.
Then came darker decades. (Fur is Dead).
Sometimes spat on, I weighed Mildred down.
Twenty plus years in the cedar closet,
then the basement, threatened by moths and mildew.
Today, I am being shipped overseas. Auctioned
to the highest bidder on eBay, sold for three
hundred and fifty degraded American dollars;
what can I do but sigh and quote Pushkin?
Our days still linger, slow and rough.
At least in Moscow, women still appreciate fur.
As dusk settles over the river, I will learn
the words for glamour in yet another language.
A Sliding Top, a Latch or Key
We worshipped a silver heart
containing the sacred idea of family.
Savor the slap of martyrdom,
sweet hot coal in the skull’s censer,
bringing balm and tang, bitter slang.
I no longer believe, but still
adore relics – a handkerchief
redolent with White Shoulders,
found crumpled in her raincoat pocket.
I have lived my whole life
in an ornate box with bitter scent
as if I too, were merely a relic
of her martyrdom.
What is under that hammered shine–
rubies bleed through the filigree –
rotten tooth of a disappointing child.
I am a portable altar,
adorned with gold-couched shards.
Fold me, lay me in a box lined
with velvet, clasp shut the vermeil hasp.
Carry me, rigid, to the next hour of prayer,
the next unveiling of memory’s face.
Points West
Eye in view-finder, Dad directs us to emerge again
from the knotty pine guest cabin, shading our eyes, blinking.
What are his themes? Family, history, compliance;
our subtexts are distance, and defiance.
We drive hard every day to leave ourselves behind.
Damp swimsuits sprawl in the Plymouth’s back window.
Dad’s wearing pointy sunglasses and driving gloves;
he only smokes on the longest trips.
Hannah scorns me from her half of the back seat.
I annoy her by walking Barbie over the line.
Mom’s purse is loaded with lifesavers,
admonition. We hate the way she nibbles
at her ice cream, making it last
until none of ours is left. Speed
livens the two-lane’s measured white dashes.
New American heroics await. You know the way
under the covers with a bed-time story,
you are not really in bed at all, but
some place bright “in Living Color”?
No matter how blinded by morning, we are always
imagining the fun of a summer trip,
or running black and white reels in a darkened room –
surprised by our strained refugee smiles.