Sample Poems by Wendy Wisner
Martha's Vineyard, 1980
It was the fall before John Lennon was killed.
Each night my father
sat in the hazy gray kitchen, lost
in the checkered tablecloth, the record
spinning, John’s voice
weaving through the waves
of the ocean. He could float—
the monster—he would
stay with us, hovered
near the smoke alarm, curled
like a baby under the stove.
He was red. Like the red
cliffs, sand, red seagull
eye, moon, reefs, rocking.
My father said he was born
in our house, and would die there.
What did my mother think
of him, sleeping in our attic
on his great red stomach? I saw her
down the curved dirt path
behind a counter
frowning as she held out
chunk after chunk of bread.
How well she knew how hard it was
to wait, the bread growing
stale in her fingers, her apron
spotted with oil, one thread
loose, stuck like a tick to her thigh.
Did she sleep on the ocean bed, still
in her apron? I don’t remember my parents
touching. Did she see the monster?
Did he love her? I never remembered
falling asleep in my father’s arms. I never saw him
carefully holding my body
together, rocking me against his soft blue shirt, the moan
of John singing I wanted you so bad, the waves parting
as my mother got closer.
Calculator
Abandoned in a dusty wicker basket,
on the kitchen table with my mother’s things:
nail file, melon baller, vitamins, scissors, tweezers.
I believed my father used it
privately, in the middle of the night, his fingers
on the hard black buttons.
Waiting for dinner, or for nothing,
I’d grab it, I’d use it.
I loved the slim gray screen
lit in deep red numbers, I loved
the numbers, adding more,
more, I’d fill that screen, add each full screen
to another, add and add,
there were that many numbers,
there was room for my numbers
in whatever it was—a brain, a heart?—
under the plastic, the dust,
ticking—soon
the buttons were damp, cold wind
thrust through the window.
It was stuck, it was over.
The small E pulsed
and I put it back where I’d found it:
against my mother’s vitamins, for my father.
December
Martha’s Vineyard. Paradise. The dark
living room. Sand and salt
in my mouth. Wanting water. Wanting
to ask for some. The words
he’s dead it’s John he’s dead—
Someone screamed them.
Then footsteps. My mother
holding a glass of water. Her fingers
slipping, falling, pieces of glass
and water everywhere.
Praying. My father. His back to me.
Leaning over the record player.
John singing.