April 3, 2012

Elizabeth Volpe

RAIN

star-splashes the lake,
our boat so small. What is
the part of me that wants to be
capsized? I think I’m living
a great fiction, not quite
Dostoyevsky but maybe
Pirandello. Okay,
Agatha Christie. But not
the murderous second-cousin
or the body in the library.
I’m one of the guests at the endless,
damasked table, the one who
doesn’t quite know what to do
with the third fork. The one who speaks
little, fingers her pearls and steals
glances at you across the dowager’s bosom
as lightning throws its wickedness
into the room. After dinner we all traipse
onto the lawn as the clouds fizzle.
I would like to steal
the champagne flutes from that table,
arrange them along the rim
of my bathtub, as a grand
candelabra spills its ghostly
shadows on the tile floor.
Well, not champagne flutes
with their insistent lines,
but wine goblets, Cabernet
swishing along the sides.
Or very still like a lake
after rain. Perhaps the candelabra
is too Transylvanian, so maybe
a Chianti bottle with a snubbed candle,
a hundred years of wax clinging
like old dreams to the wicker basket
while I settle into the warm music
of bath bubbles, you at the other end,
our knees bobbing like life buoys,
our boat so small.

from Rattle #25, Summer 2006

__________

Elizabeth Volpe: “I can hear the hum from the highway as I write, and I think about the man I saw yesterday driving with a thick book propped open on the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the page each time I passed. The car seemed to be driving itself somewhere—home to a wife that forbade reading or to chattering children holding out Dr. Seuss or Captain Underpants, the TV on in the background and the cat mewing against his ankles. I wanted to honk or alert the police, but more than that I wanted to be in his rusty Impala or reading over his shoulder, risking this life with him for words, just for words.”

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November 1, 2011

Elizabeth Volpe

BREWING IN EDEN

Okay, so it shouldn’t be a huge deal
when I open the cupboard and notice
the coffee lids not quite secure. But
both lids have sidled practically off the cans,
like toddler twins scampering off their beds
on the way to mischief.

I no longer want coffee.

Rather, I no longer want
this coffee. My husband looks at me as though
I have grown a tail and patiently assures me
that the small animals I envision breaking into our cupboard
while we were away for the weekend—oh
how they had bided their time, rubbing their small paws
in anticipation—could not possibly have pried
tight lids from Costco 3 lb. coffee canisters. See, he says,
sifting through the grounds, making the coffee
even more unacceptable, there’s not a single thing
wrong with this coffee.

But at this point it has become a matter of aesthetics.

The coffee no longer pleases, and I choose
not to have any. Yes, I agree, it will be a waste to throw away
mostly full cans simply because I have let my imagination poison
my morning coffee. I don’t know how long we stand there,
me disgusted by the thought of the coffee, he disgusted
by my squeamishness.

It is the kind of battle we wage.

The Coffee Wars. The That-Milk-Is-Still-Perfectly-Good
Wars. The Do-You-Really-Need-All-Those-Lights-On
Wars. I scowl and he growls. I notice he’s chewing
his corn flakes more noisily than usual, so I rattle the morning paper,
as if shaking snakes from the newsprint. Then I inch the pages over
until they are ever-so-slightly on top of his placemat,
just barely touching his plate.

from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

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September 11, 2011

Elizabeth Volpe

LOAVES AND FISHES

          Santa Catalina Retirement Villas, April 2008

Rebuttering the roll I’ve torn into pieces, I smile across the table
at Gladys and Walt, recruited to make Mom and Dad

feel welcome. When the popcorn shrimp appear, they could be anything,
tiny balls of deep fried anything. The residents are tucked into

their tables—overdressed ladies curled like shrimp
into their upholstered chairs, in the refrigerator chill

of the dining room. A man here and there, shirt buttoned to neck, negotiates
with his meal in deep concentration. I can’t get anything to move

to the back of my tongue. I’m a child again, moving the food to and fro,
trying to make it look as if I’ve eaten. My husband’s the life of this party,

jokes rolling off his tongue, but I see he, too, has broken his bread
into enough pieces to feed everyone in the room

and hasn’t touched his fish. I reach under the table, clutch his knee,
marveling at the miracle of his good cheer, at my father’s determined

chewing, at my mother’s plate, her “shrimp” nearly gone, though her rice refuses
to be coaxed out of its gummy ball. “Ice cream sundaes for dessert,” Gladys beams,

as if at the blessing about to be bestowed on all, “every single day!” Forking his peas
onto his spoon, Walt seems to be hurrying the legumes into his mouth

in anticipation of this very reward. We’ve been seated at the “best” table,
by a corner window, the sky a delicious Arizona blue, orange trees

in the manicured courtyard around a tiny, turquoise pool, and out beyond,
in the gritty wilderness of the desert, loom the Catalina mountains,

saguaros propped here and there like discarded dressmaker dummies. Now,
Gladys and Walt have tucked into their sundaes, and there’s a wisp of Cool Whip

on Dad’s chin. I look out the wide windows, praying for one of those desert monsoons
that rocket over the mountains and flood the streets until the water pours

into the wash, taking with it everything without sufficient ballast: saints, sinners,
silverware, red-rimmed Hello nametags, all this ludicrous damask.

from Rattle #34, Winter 2010

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