.................................
University, Columbus Day Weekend, circa 3am
.................................

All the off-white doors are sealed like lunchmeat, their white
sausage hinges locked spread eagle. I am working,
trying to make the world fit into iambs, complex rhyme,
and finding nothing but a blonde with a pencil grey
T-shirt in the common bathroom, cutting herself.
I fix my hair, make sure no dinner is left between my teeth, pull
back the stall door, festively decorated with one-ply streamers
and pink plastic napkin covers. It won't lock, and I hear
the grey girl slip out without leaving the scent of iron,
the metallic mix of blood; at least no more than menstruation.
In the hollowed-out shoebox of a hallway there are two men
in heavy cotton hats papering the doors with flimsy flyers,
freshman invitations. I press past their almost uncontrollable
hands, past their pompous sweatshirts, into my textbook
of a door, circling twice, opening a window to watch
the courtship of two weaving girls, with their eyes smashing
into one another like British trains. One, with hair
like well-trimmed lawns, the other in crimped skirts and layered Ts.
They laugh too loud and the constant clockwork of the shuttle
travels in predictable positions, pulling to curb, flashing
both blinkers, carrying no one. Nothing, not even the sharp
click of heels in poorly padded corridors, rhymes.

 
.................................
Dragonflies
.................................

The fat snouts of traffic lights and the small
incandescence of you hangs the sky,
that tremendous blue hovering like dragonflies
with mother of pearl wings. I trace a single
cloud across your chest, pretending we are
an afternoon, a swimming pool, and that this
is home for more than myself and a hundred thousand other.

I wish I could be New York for you, with her long,
sagging mountains, her limbs pine and buds waking,
groggy in the mid-breath of June; where all that is here
is the brown tan of summer, and crisp lakes, pounding
like an ocean against dams. Just dragonflies,
with wings big as memory, but too frail to carry
away you or me, or the all of Carolina.

.................................
Erin Elizabeth
.................................

 
Copyright © Erin Elizabeth
February 2000

Next in ring: ...a poem in this room by David Bolduc...
Back to room: Story of Ms. Hair
Back to AgD: Return to Agnieszka's Dowry Welcoming Room


Copyright © 2000 A Small Garlic Press. All rights reserved.
Created 1998/4/29. Updated last on 2000/7/17.