- This Bell Like a Bee Striking
Exactly, thought. Here she is having a mind.A moon ghastly light on a person. To sufferemotion, throat stiff, child grown. Larger.A whole. Summoned so one can have a look.Summoned to husband what's happened.
The light challenged the powersof feeling: frightening, exhilarating, surprise,shame. It was over. Plaster and litter alone.Five acts that had beenover and over. A strange power speaking.
Some concern for the half-past. Ring after ringlike something coming. It is thought,this bell like a bee striking.The future lies in a patter like a wood drummed.A sensual traffic: what, where, and why.
Three emotions. Shutters and avenues.The red burning. A lizard's color in her eyes.Evening wearing the fringes in the windows.The light wavering in the darkness streets.Atoms turned. Thinking like the pulse—
punctually, noiselessly silk-stockinged.Ridiculous. Her mother grown big.She, like most mothers, a swept shuffleof traffic and dress and nothingexcept the flutter of absolution. [End Page 58]
Such are things merged. The cupboard outlinebecomes soft. A table. Cigarette smoke.A baby bright pink. Daring with being.That dog. Lots of coldness. Yet, some powerto preside with her head, with her shoulders,
through dinner. A sort of maternal politics.Her dress disappearing. Sweeping off for bedwith headaches. Still, the sun. The squirrels.Pebbles to the pebble collection. She blinksat the crack of a twig behind the bedroom walls. [End Page 59]
Mary Jo Bang's sixth collection of poems, The Bride of E, will be published in fall 2009 by Graywolf Press. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.