Shore - That said: new and selected poems

Copyright 2012 by Jane Shore ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. www.hmhbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shore, Jane, date. That said : new and selected poems / Jane Shore. p. cm. Title. PS 3569. PS 3569.

H 5795 T 53 2012 811'.54dc23 2011036907 Book design by Greta D. Sibley Printed in the United States of America DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 MUSIC MINUS ONE is a registered trademark of MMO Music Group, Inc. MMO Music Group has not in any way sponsored, approved, endorsed, or authorized this book. They inflict on us a tremendous silence. Rainer Maria Rilke, Some Reflections on
Dolls: On the Wax Dolls of Lotte Pritzel

It didnt weep the way a willow should. Planted all alone in the middle of the field by the bachelor who sold our house to us, shoulder height when our daughter was born, it grew eight feet a year until it blocked the view through the first-, then the second story windows, its straggly canopy obstructing our sunrise and moonrise over Max Gray Road.

I gave it the evil eye, hoping lightning would strike it, the way a bolt had split the butternut by the barn. And if leaf blight or crown gall or cankers didnt kill it, then Id gladly pay someone to chop it down. My daughter said no, she loved that tree, and my husband agreed. One wet Sunday the rainiest July since 1885 husband napping, daughter at a matinee in towna wind shear barreled up the hill so loud I glanced up from my mystery the moment the willow leaned, bowed, and fell over flat on its back, roots and all, splayed on the ground like Gulliver. The house shook, just once. Later, when the sun came out, neighbors came to gawk; they chain-sawed thicker branches, wrapped chains around the trunk, their backhoe ripped out pieces of stump and root as if extracting a rotten tooth.

Im not sorry that tree is gone. No one ever sat under it for shade or contemplation. Yet spring after spring it reliably leafed out. It was always the last to lose its leaves in fall. It should have died a decade ago for all the grief I gave it, my dirty looks apparently the fuel on which it thrived. It must have done its weeping in private.

But now I can see the slope of the hill. Did my wishful thinking cast a spell? I was the only one on earth who saw it fall.

Sleeping alone in my Madison Avenue Upper East Side seventeen-by-seventeen fourth-floor walkup one night thirty years ago, I heard people arguing through the plaster and brick wall dividing my brownstone from the one next door. Id hardly given my neighbors a second thought except those Id occasionally see in the hall retrieving mail, struggling up narrow stairs with grocery bags, or leashing their dogs. I used to amuse myself by matching up faces with the names above the intercom buttons in the vestibule downstairs, but I never stopped for anything more than chitchat, never thought about the people living in the adjacent building until the night I hear a woman crying loud enough to rouse me, and a deeper voice, a mans, whose words I cant make out but whose angry bellowing bullies me awake. Perhaps theyre actors rehearsing a play, or hes her drama coach and shes practicing her lines from the scene where the man and the woman fight.

Im thinking I should dial 911 when through the white noise of my hissing radiator he shouts, Youve got to order your priorities! like a therapist on an emergency house call, which works. Shes whimpering like a dog. There follows a clearing of the moments throat, a sponging of tears, a charged silence, as if now theyre making love and all before was foreplay. And Im in bed with them. How many times have I had to listen half attracted, half repelledto strangers thumps and moans in the hotel room next to mine? Their dramas? The next morning, sharing their elevator (too bright, too small) to the lobby, I have nothing to be ashamed of.

My old boyfriends fortune cookie read, Your love life is of interest only to yourself. Not news to me. My old boyfriends fortune cookie read, Your love life is of interest only to yourself. Not news to me.

A famous writer once showed me the fortune in his wallet You must curb your lust for revenge slapped over his dead mothers face. After finishing our Chinese meal at that godforsaken mall, eight of us crowded around the table, the white tablecloth sopping up islands of spilled soy sauce and beer, the waiter brought tea and oranges sliced into eighths and a plate of fortune cookies. We played our after-dinner game each of us saying our line out loud, the chorus adding its coda: You will meet hundreds of people... In bed. Every man is a volume if you know how to read him... In bed. You have unusual equipment for success... In bed. And those with more delicate sensibilities, new to the group, blushed and checked their wristwatches.

We divided up the bill, and split. A few left their fortunes behind. The rest slipped those scraps of hope or doom into pockets and pocketbooks to digest later. Maybe one or two of us got lucky that night and had a long and happy life in bed. On the ride home, I absent-mindedly rolled my fortune into a tight coil, the way you roll a joint, and dropped it into my coat pocket, and found it yesterday oh, how many years later caught between the stitches of the seam, like one of those notes wedged into a niche of the Wailing Wall that someday God might read in bed and change a life.

The first time I got my hands on her, I took off all her clothesto see exactly where her voice came from.

I pulled the white plastic O-ring knotted to the pull string in her back, pulled it, gently, as far as it would go, and Chatty Cathy threw her voice not from her closed pretty pink lips but from the open speaker-grille in her chest. Chatty Cathy was her own ventriloquist! She said eighteen phrases at random, chatting up anyone whod pull her string. Tell me a story. Will you play with me?What can we do now? Do you love me? Did I love her? I loved her so much I had to be careful not to wear her out. Even though she always talked back, behavior my parents would have spanked me for, there wasnt a naughty bone in her hard little body! When shed say, Carry me. Change my dress.

Take me with you.Brush my hairshe always said Please. When shed say, Lets play school.Lets have a party. Lets play house shed flash me her charming potbelly. May I have a cookie? shed sweetly ask, in that high fake goody-goody voice. She wasnt allowed to eat or drink it would gunk up the mini record player inside her chest. May I have a cookie? Shed pester me while I combed her hair and buttoned her dress for a tea party. May I have a cookie? May I have a cookie? Finally, one afternoon I gave her one, squishing it into the holes of her grille. May I have a cookie? May I have a cookie? Finally, one afternoon I gave her one, squishing it into the holes of her grille.

After that, sometimes shed start talking all by herself, a loud deep gargling that shook her bodylimbs akimbo, skirt inching upshowing her panties with the MADE IN HONG KONG tag still attached. I HURT myself! she cried. Please carry me. Im hungry. Im sleepy. She awoke with two black marks on her leg and a crack on her back along the seam. Give me a kiss, she ordered, and I did. Give me a kiss, she ordered, and I did.

Id do anything to shut her up. Where are we going? bratty Chatty Cathy warbled for the last time. She stopped wanting to play. Stopped saying

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