Liz Robbins

May 29, 2019

“Bingo Caller” by Liz RobbinsPosted by

Liz Robbins

BINGO CALLER

We’re all electronic now.
Gone, the wire globe and
crank, the worn-out goddess
to turn it. Some call such
games gambling, and it is
addictive, hope. Players
with their numbers
in rows, as if order
were the only good and
goodness makes luck.
Some thumb a silver coin
or cross their fingers,
eyes closed, whispering.
They lose much more
than they win. But it’s
the randomness of chance
that keeps them returning—
how unknown fate may turn
and treat their numbers,
ones they’ve known since
they were children.
That thrill, so close to
fear, like news of a death.
And the ending, familiar—
rarely what they’d hoped for
or pictured, but with the grim
satisfaction of closure.

—from Rattle #63, Spring 2019
Tribute to Persona Poems

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Liz Robbins: “The greatness of persona poems lies in their double nature: the poet uses an alternate voice to—through metaphor—communicate her own discovered truths. The poet is speaking and not-speaking, like a ventriloquist. The satisfactions are plenty—the research to accumulate details about the real or imagined persona, the striving to weave an unknown world to a known. In these poems, I looked for interesting and unusual occupations that seemed to hold possibilities for metaphor.” (web)

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November 3, 2013

“Drive-In Church” by Liz RobbinsPosted by

Liz Robbins

DRIVE-IN CHURCH

My mother wakes early every Sunday, pulls on black
hose even in June, and drives forty minutes to put on
a choir robe and sing in a crowd for a crowd. Such is
the nature of her faith. Mine was held for too many
years thrashing under water, burbling, silent-screaming
for air. My faith may be, however, growing toward that
church in Daytona Beach, where you don’t even have to
get out your car and therefore your pajamas, just tool
right up with your ciggies on the dash and a 12-pack
of Krispy Kremes, reggae on the tape deck. Where you
can snooze mid-sermon, curl up with a blanket and
nobody’d see. With only your license plate showing,
you’d still get credit for going. That’s what I mean, it’s all
about the redeemer card for me, where 999 church visits
means a trip to heaven is free. My mother says, It’s not
for God you go, for you. But I’m still that teen in black
eyeliner and dress, scowling in the back pew, stinking
of last night’s beer, wondering what’s in it for me. Which
doesn’t add up, if my mother’s to be believed. Here’s what
I think. One day I’ll die and maybe it’ll be true, my mother
wearing wings, drinking martinis, laughing in the golden
sun beyond a big locked gate, and I’ll be staring in, feeling
sorry and alone, yet knowing I’m exactly where I’m meant
to be. And my mother says, How is that unlike now and
how you’ve felt your whole life? Maybe if you’d go to
church, you’d feel different. And I say, Doesn’t someone
have to be the crazy, the heathen? What if everyone went
to church? She sighs, Oh if I know God, He’d just find
another way to up the ante. To which I think, the next
time I go looking in the paper for drive-in times, it’ll be
to see what film’s playing. But she knows I’m listening.

—from Rattle #39, Spring 2013
Tribute to Southern Poets

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Liz Robbins (Florida): “One of my earliest and fondest memories—and earliest recording—is of me and my twin sister at age four? five? singing loud and proud as my dad (an organist, choirmaster, and composer) pounded out sea chanties on the piano (‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?’ was a favorite). Our parents filled our lives with music all the time, from singing hymns in church and letting us take piano lessons, to Cole Porter on the record player and singing with us on bike rides around the Berkshires. My sister and I were influenced early and consistently with the power of language through song—the importance of repetition, rhythm, and rhyme—for which I thank my folks! My sister went on to become a speech pathologist and I became a poetry professor. She and I both help people articulate thoughts through the music of language.” (web)

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September 6, 2009

“Three Rivers Meet, Become Falls” by Liz RobbinsPosted by

Liz Robbins

THREE RIVERS MEET, BECOME FALLS

In the documentary film about the famous architect
and his buildings, the lesser architect tries
not to sound bitter and fails; in the interview,
he describes why he’s the naysayer in a chorus
of yesses for the famous one’s work:
I hate to say he’s overrated, but…
He sits there, buttoned up, talking high
and wounded in his throat, as though in a moment
the humidity of his pride might devolve into a river,
slip in trickles past his own pressed buttons.

Fear courses like a river as he watches himself
projected on the screen at the film’s premiere,
winnows slipping like voices up his bloodstream.

His friends come round to congratulate his debut,
and in his workroom, to the only one he trusts,
he begs, I wasn’t terrible, was I?
Grief nearly slips over the stones of his eyes,
a river so familiar, it goes by many names,
each source of grief named by its sufferer,
like what the architect gives his unfinished buildings.
And his friend says nothing, thinking of the many
forms of descent, of the toy-like models
on the desk behind them, each roof designed
to tilt down, to deflect rain.

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

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