Two Poems
The Name of This Gun is Vespers
Did I get your eyes right
in yesterday’s poem? All
slashing pencils and film
on fire. Or could I have
done more with your hair?
Arranged it with something
less than fists? This pistol is
more dangerous than I can
make it: the sloped handle
as polished as your wife’s
best cane. The face with a mouth
like a shark. Who wouldn’t
want to pull that trigger?
Now you step into the fever-dream,
little swan. The cicadas will not
taunt you this year, this summer
of poisonous rooftops.
Your steady hour is green
as diamonds, slick
as the surface of storms,
with a crowd too stewed
to search for shelter. Maybe
I should have done something
about your shoes, the black
patent leather and buckles fit
for wedding. When you’re
out of print in America, don’t
come running for me. Don’t come
fit to my kingdom asking
for another prayer. That gun
will always point in one direction.
Ache instead with that idle
crowd at the edge
of your city. Or listen to it
after midnight on the all news
radio while the massacre
sleeps, still as matches
in the face of the bomb.
The Morning of Our Stillness
It all starts with words too small to read,
requiring measurements.
I’ll let you be the hero,
reaching for the jar of pancake flour,
while I pick the stems off blueberries.
Someone looking at us
through the window
might call this devotion,
the way your watch reflects the sunlight,
or where my hair, slick from sleep,
curls in the place your whispers
tend to linger. The skillet
sizzles with heat right before I burst
into tears again. For months
I was almost a mother, hunched
over a crib in the darkest corner.
Now I am only a winter, fondling
useless berries, their indigo
skins, sweet wreckage.
We are no longer expecting.
Maureen Daniels was raised in Northern California and England. She has won awards for visual art, Equestrian riding, and guinea pig breeding. She likes watching reruns of Absolutely Fabulous, cooking for her teenage children, and going to baseball games. She dislikes country music, Barbies, and writing author biographies. Maureen continues to live in NYC with her daughter and a Dalmatian named Pink.