Excerpt from Too Bright to See & Alma

THE GIRL I CALL ALMA

The girl I call Alma who is so white
is good, isn't she? Even though she does not speak,
you can tell by her distress that she is
just like the beach and the sea, isn't she?
And she is disappearing, isn't that good?
And the white curtains, and the secret smile
are just her way with the lies, aren't they?
And that we are not alone, ever.
And that everything is backwards
otherwise.
And that inside the no is the yes. Isn't it?
Isn't it? And that she is the god who perishes:
the food we eat, the body we fuck,
the loose net we throw out that gathers her.
Fish! Fish! White Sun! Tell me we are one
and that it's the others who scare me,
not you.

AT THE SHORE

Naked women are being dragged
down the sandstone shelving
on their backs, very slowly.
With ropes tied to each foot separately
so the legs close and spread open
as they are moved.
When they cry out or shout down
at the men sitting in the lifeguard chairs
looking at them through the gun sights,
the sounds, no matter how angry or foul,
curve and billow like a wave: coming
to the men on a soft wind
caressingly, like sirens singing.

SUMMER IN A SMALL TOWN

When the men leave me,
they leave me in a beautiful place.
It is always late summer.
When I think of them now,
I think of the place.
And being happy alone afterwards.
This time it's Clinton, New York.
I swim in the public pool
at six when the other people
have gone home.
The sky is grey, the air hot.
I walk back across the mown lawn
loving the smell and the houses
so completely it leaves my heart empty.

THE WOMAN ON HER KNEES AT THE RIVER

She is washing clothes,
her body moving forward
and back in its two positions.
Suppliant giving. She grinds corn
with stone on stone the same way
and makes the round flat bread.
All this in a place filled with
the weight of death.
Life would stop in this poverty
if she got into a boat that moved
away by itself full of flowers.

NO MORE MARRIAGES

Well, there ain't going to be no more marriages.
And no goddam honeymoons. Not if I can help it.
Not that I don't like men,
being in bed with them and all. It's the rest.
And that's what happens, isn't it? All those people
that get littler together. I want things
to happen to me the proper size.
The moon and the salmon and me and the fir trees,
they're all the same size and they live together.
I'm the worse part, but mean no harm.
I might scare a deer, but I can walk and breathe
as quiet as a person can learn.
If I'm not like my grandmother's garden
that smelled sweet all over and was warm
as a river, I do go up the mountain
to see the birds close and look
at the moon just come visible, and lie down
to look at it with my face open.
Guilty or not, though, there won't be no post-
cards made up of my life with Delphi on them.
Not even if I have to eat alone all these years.
They're never going to do that to me.

Copyright 2002 by Linda Gregg. All rights reserved.