Getup
How
he forks from the bowl, bar breath, stern son, still doe-eyes and buck jaw,
stabbing gnocchi at the counter. Her love is all over him, but really: Are you
finishing that? O she loves him, she’s freaking, the meat can be frozen, dishes
washed, Dawned, and drip-dried—ho! No, no. Monsieur Moisture Particle patrols
the party. Poor Mother. Poor Bambi. Where is her will? Where is the world? She
scours the water of Lake Katherine, clobbers a batch of scones. Appled,
walnut-littered, these muffins, these biscuits, these pupbones, lookee look—she
flaunts the powdered milk. Have you made a pumpkin pie with real pumpkin? All
morning, the phone’s bacteria on her cheek. No, she shouldn’t have gone to
vote. Hacking, like her boy at the bar. Shooting Bora Bora Fireballs. His
quadrants of influence, the squares of his nature, the spiky crown of a virus.
To be lonely. To be close. Close enough to come home. To start upset, worsen,
get worse, to pile and pile. Her son held his grandmother’s hand when she died.
Mothering all on her own. Empty seashell: ventilator. And this morning on the
phone, she hunted for a credit, $50 back on her Nordstrom. Finally a price-drop
on the funeral dress.
Willows
Dust
in his ears, dust in the earth, dust on the brush, dust on the blow, dust I
loved, dust the sky, dust imperil, dust throughout, dust the curio, dust the
cage, dust the animals, dust the cork, dust the scrape, dust the paws, dust the
mutter, dust the snout, the grape, the musk, the shore, the row, dust autonomy,
dust along, dust at night, dust of morn, dust for purpose, dust for joy, dust a
plot, dust in weeds and dust in wine, dust the fly and dust the mole, dust the
memory flooded with mud, dust suspected, dust expunged, dust I work, dust the
mores, dust a box, dust a map, dust a boot red and green, dust I lived, dust I
wanted, dust the crust, dust the story-crinkling corners, dust the mole
snickering in the garden, dust the veins and dust the roots and dust the cracks
and dust the nerve, dust the father’s bearded flannel, dust a scripter, dusty
gospel, dusted hominy, dusting meal, dust of greens and dust of hocks and dust
of yams and dust of purply pie, ube, last chapter.
JoAnna Novak is the author of
the novel I Must Have You and two books of poetry: Noirmania and Abeyance,
North America. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris
Review, The New York Times, the Washington Post, The
Atlantic, Fence, Guernica, AGNI, BOMB, and
other publications. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook
publisher, Tammy, and teaches in the MFA program at Mount Saint Mary's
University in Los Angeles.
