Poetry
Second Labor (The Lernean Hydra) Wendy Carlisle
Today my friend told me about the tree house in her dream, the one with the windows that wouldn't close, and that put me in mind a house we lived in when the boys were in high school that was made of stucco with Safeway cartons nailed to the studs and wallpapered over. In winter there was ice on the inside of the windows. My youngest son lost his boa constrictor down the toilet. When the caretaker tried to molest the eldest boy, we got the jump on him. The three of us weren't born yesterday. There were nine kinds of problems in that place and when we solved one, a new one showed up. We moved when a pipe broke and crap seeped prosaically down the drive and under the wheels of the Volkswagen my ex-mother-in-law bought us out of guilt because her son left us in that house with no car. We were on fire. The snake never came back.
Fifth Labor (The Augean Stable) Wendy Carlisle
If you want a different story, you swing the mop. How I remember it is- a weight of nights and their particulars, mornings, a mist before the day slid over us, rising like a blue and white balloon, luminous, striped to amuse the limbic part of the brain that sees through the window you, gone up the path with the laudable rattle and crunch of a serious journey, canteen swaying. But for me there's something prissy about talking like this without saying the word dirt or listing the other residue-a greasy knife, wine- stained linens-especially when I know later, if I want the place cleaned up, I divert the river.
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First Labor (The Nemean Lion) Wendy Carlisle The man I love doesn't think I'm animal-dumb so much as he believes he's the smartest one in the family, quotes statistics into my mane while he calls me puss. But I'm thick skinned, don't pay attention to his taunts about reality TV. I don't listen when he states I'm geographically challenged and blind to the niceties of physics. I don't label him an insensitive lummox. I know love obliges me to capitualte, roll over and stop showing off my white teeth, flaunting my impermeable pink hide. His claim-- he wants to meet me halfway, only desires some token willingness. From here, it feels as if I'm battling to hold on to his affection, to my own rosy skin. |
Wendy Taylor Carlisle's book Reading Berryman To The Dog, was published in 2000 by Jacaranda Press. She has just finished a chapbook, Nine Parts Water. She and her husband, David, and their literary dog live quietly in east Texas.
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