November 17, 2008

Sophia Rivkin

CONSPIRACY

The husband calls from two hundred miles away
to say he cannot stand it, his wife is dying
in a rented hospital bed in their living room
and he must put her away, somewhere, anywhere,
in a nursing home and she is crying looking up at him
through the bars like a caged animal—
she is an animal with foul green breath
and buttocks burnt raw with urine—
he cannot lift her, he cannot change her often enough,
and she is crying for the children’s pictures on the mantle,
she cannot leave the silver candlesticks,
the high school graduation pictures.
And I say, yes, it is time to put her away,
I am the friend and I say it,
the living conspiring with the living,
death standing like a Nazi general or a stormtrooper
with a huge cardboard chest covered with metals,
and he leans over her and pins a gold star
through her skin and it pricks us,
pricks us through the brain,
through our skin
but we do not bleed
when death is pushing her
out of her bed, marching her away,
while everyone stands white-faced
among the white-faced crowd,
blending in, blending in.

from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
2006 Rattle Poetry Prize Winner

__________

Sophia Rivkin: “As I grow older I think more and more on mortality, my friends, my own. I think of poetry as a way to save my life, to shape, dress/address what is dredged up from that basket of old laundry—memory. Something to wash, starch, hang up, like a white lace dress to sunlight. But this poem is full of the muddle of being human, guilt and loyalty for both the living and the dead.”

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August 15, 2008

Sophia Rivkin

MAN, BOY, DOG

As a boy he tortured frogs, turtles turned
upside down so their feet struggled in the air
as they dried out.
My friend was his second wife.
He told her he ran away because his father beat him,
joined the Marines, later became a policeman.
They had a dog named Rudy who slept in the kitchen
and was slapped or not fed when he stepped over a line.
Rudy would stand quivering in the doorway
to the living room, his eyes bulging, body trembling
with the effort to disappear or be approved.
My friend’s husband was retired and framed his pistol,
mounted it on the wall.
He was the kind who crushed your fingers
when he shook hands.
He grew roses.
My friend and her husband had a baby boy,
a premature baby who weighed one and a half pounds.
The husband was eager for the boy to grow up.
He said the boy was maladjusted.
He sidled away on the couch when the boy sat down.
One day in the restaurant he made the boy crawl
under the table to get to the bathroom.
Then he ate the boy’s meal.
He gave the boy an expensive bike.
He said he was surprised when the boy learned anything.
One day when the boy was thirteen, he did not come home.
They looked in the garage, he was hanging by a rope
near the garden tools, the rose food.
His head was thrust forward like Rudy, his eyes bulging.
Later, they gave away the dog.

from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

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