MY SISTER'S HAIR
Once I saw your hair as nearly
black as mine, that your nails
grew all that time inside mother,
(you scratched your face when you were born)
I took you on, I'd sneak in, wait out
endless, boring naps and watch
your miniature eyelids
twitch their baby dreams,
breath invisible, bouquets clustered
along slate-blue walls.
Azaleas in a carousel vase.
That year, the nuns said two things:
Khrushchev would siren us to shelters
and Protestants, like mother,
would go to hell. I watched
you in your crib and sobbed.
Fat men and ugly shoes,
mothers burning in hell---
you'd never hit seven.
When I as eight I decided
to protect you from the world.
Today, going through my room
I try to hone my life down
to a few possessions. A Polaroid
of you at two, a rosary from Rome,
a swatch, slate-blue, mother used
to match her curtains, the carousel vase.
I have trouble letting go, thinking
if I save the right things,
no one will die. Your letters,
which I save, come twice a year
and once a year we sleep
face-to-face in the four-poster,
our bodies now the same length, hair spread
on pillows. We try to speak before
we dream our separate dreams. Last time,
there was in me the fluttering of someone else---
her eyes perhaps beginning to know the notion
of dreams. I'm wondering today what she would
have looked like. Dark hair? Nails?
At night I hear her silent breath.
For your birthday I want to give you
my palm. It can be gentle, pressed
against the face, or mean. Today
it's a lake that holds your face and mine.
I hold it up, hand mirror, to show
us who we are: sisters, hello, good-bye.
I want to give you a little sentence
that will make you love me
automatically, like then, a little collection
of words like a string of beads,
not to pray on but to stay safe,
to frighten away what's bad out there,
a talisman for all our lives.
Julie Fay
I came home to yours,
to your absence
to the clatter and clamor finished
to your brush, your hair,
to your face, your mirror
to your robe
and climbed in
your bed again
and then all I had
of you
was me.
JULIE FAY
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¨ÙÅÕè à¿Âìà»ç¹¡ÇÕÍàÁÃԡѹ à¡Ô´ã¹¹ÔÇÍÔ§áŹ´ì »Ñ¨¨ØºÑ¹Ê͹¡ÒÃà¢Õ¹áÅÐÇÃó¤´Õ·ÕèÁËÒÇÔ·ÂÒÅÑÂÍÕʵìá¤âÃäÅ¹Ò ¼Å§Ò¹Í×蹤×Í Portraits of Women (1991)
VERMONT
for Carl John Otis 1948-1973
Much has happened since you left.
The world is dull and people
cut their hair again
I don't like the woman I've become,
her brittle eyes. She doesn't sing
like we did then. Today, I'd like to lie
with you, reverse time, have lilacs
swallow twelve springs
so we're all back
in the big white house
we called "Sore Tooth,"
so anxious were the neighbors
to extract us. An ordinance,
a dead cat or two
could not unwedge us
from between the country store
and the congregation's church.
You, defiant Dandelion,
doctor's son.
*
Half past three
and the drug won't quit.
I've had it, walk out
to the green, think I've invented
in the dead of the night
Feet attenuate: arrows. Hearts
of lilacs pulse and fuse obsidian
air. I snap
a dandelion, blow seeds to stars.
Just when things start crawling
you come out to find me,
and we ease back through the seam
of sane and in
to the house, up to the brass
bed where seasons don't exist.
Hundreds of pine-panel eyes,
your purple heart hangs over us
as we taste each other's
cruel explosions, hurtle
through this black, infinite
room above our friends
until the war behind your eyes
has both our bodies seething
and we climb down
over bodies strewn
through the living room
to the kitchen's calm gold voices.
*
Still, I keep going back.
Memory suspends us there
on the green, arms like shawls
keeping off the cold night air
keeping the future at bay.
And memory spins invisible
the contradictions:
you loved my body
but fought it like the enemy;
angry at the world,
we hurt ourselves;
drug-dead,
we were brutally alive;
you wound up the hero
and the villain too;
you did not survive.
Even before you died,
I'd left town. We both walked
into the next decade, lost touch.
Today, I've carried myself
much further than I could
before---past the green still-life
of us, past the church
and down the hill to you,
I'm older than you now,
past thirty, one of them.
This cobalt irony of spring and
Green Mountains
presses you. Flower
I want to preserve,
how quiet you've become,
at last conforming.
The name your father
once regretted giving you
is all his own
again, yours is utterly
respectable granite, collecting
May's light. I want you here,
goddamnit, to fight
with me, to fight the enemy:
these bastards who once
hated us so much
have pinned you with
the Legion's Medal-on-a-Stick.
I yank it out, lob it
into trees.
Please love, tell me
what to take to put away
this rage, to numb myself
again. Tell me what you know now
you didn't know then.
And tell me how to rid myself of you:
for years I've put your face
on other men's. Do I have to think
of your soft hair
and nails that spread
beneath my fee
to kill you off?
Will you be deader
for me then?
Tell me, tell me again,
Dandelion-gone-to-seed,
because the world's more frightening
than ever: the star, the stars, baby,
we'll make it through
this endless night together
Julie Fay
ANTRIM GRAVEYARD
Great-grandmother, New England roots me to a silence
that stretches, a mother lode
beneath this dowdy landscape.
All my life I've been told
keep quiet. But today I've come to
shatter hushed tones with flowers
for blood, for bones. Do you deserve this
regal spot, these open arms
of oak and peaceful moss?
What did you ever do but not talk?
You died when I was ten
more personage than person.
In our home movies, you click
and smile, the Queen Mother waves
to her subjects. You left us furs
and jewels. And, adding up the facts,
I see we got what you denied your daughter
who mismarried, who died before you
made amends or spoke.
What makes a woman cut off a child
who once owned her so much---
the blood given over,
the hair's shine gone?
You mutely did what your husband said
to do. Oh, Marie, I want to yank you
up and plop you down in front of me,
large doll, your best dress on
for tea. So refined you didn't even cry
the day she died.
Come, sit here. Your bones
must be cold after all these years.
Let's blow some warmth in them, breathe
so we're finally eye-to-eye.
We've all the time in the world.
Now, start slowly, silver-haired lady
groomed by all to please, kind
and kindly. Kindly speak to me.
Julie Fay
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