-
Mysteries
- Callaloo
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 24, Number 3, Summer 2001
- pp. 765-766
- 10.1353/cal.2001.0151
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 764
[Access article in PDF]
from Vol. 16, No. 1 (Winter 1993)
Framed
Claire Harris
She is in your painting the one you bought when the taxi
snarled in market lines you jumped out and grabbed
a picture of stilted wooden houses against the vivid island
even then there was recognition
She is the woman in a broken pair of men's shoes her
flesh slipped down like old socks around her ankles a tray
of laundry on her head I am there too but I would not
be like her at supper she set the one plate and the whole
cup at my place for herself a mug a bowl my leavings
they said I resembled her I spent hours before the mirror
training my mouth to different lines
At night while I read she folded the blanket on her
narrow board coalfire smooth on her face she boiled
scrubbed ironed musk of soap and others soil like
mist around her head often she dreamed I would have
a maid like her she laughed I studied harder harder
she grieved I was grown a woman I was grown
without affinity
For the calling her eroded hands cupped like a chalice
she offered me the blasted world as if to say this is our
sacrament drink I would not this is all there is I
could not I left school I left she faded
the island faded styles changed you hid the dusty
painting in the attic But I am still there the one in
middle ground my face bruising lines of soft white
sheets my hand raised as if to push against the frame
Reprinted from Claire Harris's Traveling to Find a Remedy (1986) with the permission of the author and the publisher, Fiddlehead Poetry Books and Goose Lane Editions, Ltd.
Claire Harris, a native of Trinidad, is a resident of Calgary, Canada, where she has taught high school English and drama. She began her writing and publishing career in 1975, during a leave of absence in Nigeria. A winner of The Writer's Guild of Alberta Award, she has also received the Alberta Culture Poetry Prize for her book of poetry, Traveling to Find a Remedy and the Commonwealth Award for the Americas region for her book Fables from the Women's Quarters. Her other books include Translation into Fiction, The Conception of Winter, Drawing Down a Daughter, and Dipped in Shadow.
...