ELIZABETH BARBATO
Elizabeth is an English teacher born and raised through her college
years in New England. She ended up in New Jersey, where for
fourteen years she has taught writing, drama and music to every
age from kindergarteners to high school seniors. She has pieces
in current or forthcoming editions of Apple Valley Review, Poetrybay,
The Litchfield Review, Foliate Oak, and Stride. The following poems
are from her manuscript Elpenor Falls.
G.I. Joes
Got divorce.
Got VFW date.
Got a plastic wallet
and a retinal scan.
No cell. No service.
Nothing but bronze.
Nothing but wet wool.
Four limbs, height?
Scoped eyes, narrow?
Notched belt, weapon?
Can't get a check, please.
Can't eat: diesel nostrils
and tongue, full gorge:
like cauterized stumps,
like a pale boy stew,
like a shorn neck,
like a yellow mama rat,
like boots, boots, gun,
like foreign mutton,
like burning all the shit,
like battle, unstrung sand,
like plasma pop-tart red:
and we lick Darfur stamps.
We spread electric thighs.
We lick like dogs, seated.
Are served salads,
Jim Jones dollars.
Stab at diamonds,
skewer brain kabobs.
Can't eat: hip bone.
Can't eat: acicula.
This is Assamawah.
Good Medicine
I am the awful clerk
of the dimestore shenanigan,
simple rolldown eyelids,
chemical chambers of the absolute.
Broke the dish, yes. Red glass and
I wasn't sorry. Glued it,
shellacked the damned thing till
it gave in and gleamed. Petted
you in the dark, slow burning,
your wrists must be awful sore
by now. Know that. Not sorry,
not listening to the dog, either.
Or the lights. Never listened
to the lights.
Paid attention to the smell, though.
Always saw the smell, heard it.
Saw it waiting in the corner, bent.
Saw your smell before you left.
Or came. Broke bones, yes, and
wished they could knit back up.
But they are bad sleeves, and blooded.
Sand smells like this, sometimes.
Machine
Turn my hot green handle
turn my sticklittle swizzle
a Snow-Queen lipstick splinter
this heart-organ in winter
Jump-cut life sighs
while lonely kings sit lame on thrones
like plastic crowns on prom girl heads
we wait
to slit the mouth
to tell the tale so none can reach
into the past where shiny frogs
lump flat and broke on slime-bit logs
I'll say
this element
Waiting for the Mail
It was my major job,
other than tadpole-or-
minnow catching, both
of which involved slowness,
patience, an awareness
of nets as collections
of serene holes. Drawn through
dark water, tea-stained bottom
of the pond, my fingers flashing
white like mysteries, secrets,
anonymities. I dreamed of letters,
of photographs, of news like
leaves in the air, like the desire
I pounced on in sleep, but
had no name for. Five in a drunken
row, the mail boxes leaned against
one another on the pebbled shoulder.
But I outgrew it, just as I outgrew
Ranger Rick, just as the invitations
to birthday parties stopped coming,
just as kids descended into basements
not to roller skate on rainy days,
but to hunch over their catch:
half-downed bottles of Bombay
or Old Grand Dad, a clutch
of cigarettes long gone stale
in a forgotten pocket, spilled
brown shavings, ash, sore bellies
in the doorway, mothers winking
at the obvious smell. I lived
down the street from Updike
in those days, and always hid until
after he walked out to get his mail,
never forgetting the way he flapped
the dark gray spread-wide wings of his
raccoon coat to show me the places where he'd
skinned the beasts and stitched them together.
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