Brock-Broido - A Hunger

Also by Lucie Brock-Broido
Trouble in Mind, 2004 The Master Letters, 1995 THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF Copyright 1988 by Lucie Brock-Broido All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry Some poems in this work were originally published in the following publications: THE ANTIOCH REVIEW, GRAHAM HOUSE REVIEW, IRONWOOD, THE MISSISSIPPI REVIEW, NER/BLQ: NEW ENGLAND REVIEW AND BREAD LOAF QUARTERLY, NEW LETTERS, SHANKPAINTER, THE SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW, and THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW. Autobiography and A Little Piece of Everlasting Life were originally published in THE AGNI REVIEW .

After the Grand Perhaps, Domestic Mysticism, Magnum Mysterium, and Ten Years Apprenticeship in Fantasy were originally published in PLOUGHSHARES . Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Sheep Meadow Press for permission to reprint the poem In a Landlocked Time by Lucie Brock-Broido from A CELEBRATION FOR STANLEY KUNITZ by The Sheep Meadow Press. Copyright 1986 by The Sheep Meadow Press. Reprinted by permission of The Sheep Meadow Press. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. I. I.

Title.
PS3552.R6145H86 1988 811.54 8746036
ISBN 0394563379
ISBN 0394758528 (pbk.) v3.1 FOR MY FATHER
JOEL GREENWALD
WITH LOVE

In thrice 10,000 seasons, I will come back to this world In a white cotton dress. Kingdom of After My Own Heart. Kingdom of Fragile. Kingdom of Dwarves. When I come home, Teacups will quiver in their Dresden saucers, pentatonic chimes Will move in wind. A covey of alley cats will swarm on the side Porch & perch there, portents with quickened heartbeats You will feel against your ankles as you pass through.

After the first millennium, we were supposed to die out. You had your face pressed up against the coarse dyed velvet Of the curtain, always looking out for your own transmigration: What colors you would wear, what cut of jewel, What kind of pageantry, if your legs would be tied Down, if there would be wandering tribes of minstrels Following with woodwinds in your wake. This work of mine, the kind of work which takes no arms to do, Is least noble of all. Its peopled by Wizards, the Forlorn, The Awkward, the Blinkers, the Spoon-Fingered, Agnostic Lispers, Stutterers of Prayer, the Flatulent, the Closet Weepers, The Charlatans. I am one of those. In January, the month the owls Nest in, I am a witness & a small thing altogether.

The Kingdom Of Ingratitude. Kingdom of Lies. Kingdom of How Dare I. I go on dropping words like little pink fish eggs, unawares, slightly Illiterate, often on the mark. Waiting for the clear whoosh Of fluid to descend & cover them. A train like a silver Russian love pill for the sick at heart passes by My bedroom window in the night at the speed of mirage. In the next millennium, I will be middle aged.

I do not do well In the marrow of things. Kingdom of Trick. Kingdom of Drug. In a lung-shaped suburb of Virginia, my sister will be childless Inside the ice storm, forcing the narcissus. We will send Each other valentines. The radio blowing out Vaughan Williams on the highways purple moor.

At nine oclock, we will put away our sewing to speak Of lofty things while, in the pantry, little plants will nudge Their frail tips toward the light we made last century. When I come home, the dwarves will be long In their shadows & promiscuous. The alley cats will sneak Inside, curl about the legs of furniture, close the skins Inside their eyelids, sleep. Orchids will be intercrossed & sturdy. The sun will go down as I sit, thin armed, small breasted In my cotton dress, poked with eyelet stitches, a little lace, In the queer light left when a room snuffs out. I draw a bath, enter the water as a god enters water: Fertile, knowing, kind, surrounded by glass objects Which could break easily if mishandled or ill-touched.

Everyone knows an unworshipped woman will betray you. There is always that promise, I like that. Kingdom of Kinesis. Kingdom of Benevolent. I will betray as a god betrays, With tenderheartedness.

for Stanley Kunitz My father calls me Wolf. for Stanley Kunitz My father calls me Wolf.

He says that I will see things other people will not see at night. When he holds me, heat comes out of his big arms & I belong to him. In the cold of Christmastime he rocks me in his deep lap in the great shadow of a comforter. We are wool on wool, back & forth, singing these songs whose words I cant even say out loud. I think theyre about God who keeps us in his paws. My mother watches, standing at my window, arms folded to her chest.

One fingerbone of moonlight reaches in, tapping on the lock of her face, restless, not like a mother wolf but lit like she is going somewhere else. But when I wind my arms around him, put my face into the dimmed scoop of his neck, he smells like good warm fire like dark sweet dreams.

I sleep on the roof now. She has taken me away from him. I sleep thinking of his face tucked next to mine like a big black bear. There are other children now.

We run like wild animals. We let our hair go into puzzles which will never be unraveled. We let our teeth go fierce. We leave dirt in our palms & sleep without nightclothes. We pee in the yards & eat raw things. In the dark we watch the traffic lights blinking from our sleep in the cold night air.

Sometimes I talk to the stars & the stars keep the traffic in the sky from bottling up. Each person gives off a little torch when they sleep & mines the softest one.

I am Birdie now I dont know why. I squat at the edge of the top of our rowhouse & Im without wings I think. Philadelphia isnt gentle now. Bad things echo up & down our neighborhood at night.

I think we wound the people of our street. I am hurting myself. I cant tell time you know.

All the Africas live here like a family of fire. My mother always wears the bone of moon across her face. I peer at her like through a keyhole & I dont know why.

She never touches me. The grownups eat cooked things & we go foraging, carving our designs in trees & benches in the park & cedar picnic tables left out in the trash, we never leave our names & we cant read. I am the clean seed of a new race springing from the dark continent of America. God keeps me pure & savage here before Moses before the gift before TV & toothbrushes before the alphabet.

The man with the megaphone warns Vincent Leaphart to get out. He stays on, we stay here with him.

From up top of the bunker, the city is our karroo dotted with colors of light. In the dark, we are swept down to the belly of our house. They turn water on us like a devil. We stay on. We are flooding, there is no light left. Then the fires & we huddle in the basement under wet green blankets.

Everything smells bad. My mother stops twisting & I dont know why. Everybody wailing. I am Birdie & I dont know how. Then a quiet like Ive never heard before. Ramona Africa pulls me outside to the alley & I burn there with her, naked on the stones in the sweet jungle of the city.