Essential Tremors

Essential Tremors

Margaret Menamin

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The following poems originally appeared in Iambs & Trochees:

Insomnia
The Harpy
This Week’s Top Tune on WBLU
Fairy Tale
Treadmill Ballade
Gluteus Maximus


Copyright © 2005 by Margaret Menamin


Cover art: “Studies of Feet” by Edgar Degas


Published by The New Formalist Press


XHTML & CSS design by Leo Yankevich

Insomnia

I wake at midnight in a state of shock,
unsure of where I am or why I'm here.
I can't remember. Did I set the clock?

And did I hide my money in the sock
behind my back brace in the chiffonier?
I wake at midnight in a state of shock

And wonder if I heard somebody knock
or dreamed a prowler breaking in the rear.
I can't remember. Did I set the clock?

Forget to load the shotgun? Would a rock
discourage anyone from getting near?
I wake at midnight in a state of shock,

not knowing if I thought to check the lock
before I turned the lights off. Numb with fear,
I can't remember. Did I set the clock

and will it tell the neighbors on my block
what hour I met my doom? Oh dear, oh dear,
I wake at midnight in a state of shock
and can't remember: did I set the clock?

Her Birthday

I have survived by habit, and grown old.
I have borne children, and have cringed from God’s
own malice, having borne them. I have told
the rattling beads of fear, and faced the odds
of dying without ever having made
a difference to anyone. At length
I am to know, and I am not afraid.
I shouldn’t think that dying takes much strength.

I’ll go without a fuss. For fifty years
I’ve walked my body up the narrow stair
and closed the door against imagined ears
and pulled the scattered hairpins from my hair
and slept and rose at daybreak, having said
good morning to the stranger in my bed.

Villanelle by a Formalist

Predictable as oatmeal, that’s my curse.
I’m not too difficult to second-guess.
I measure out my life in formal verse.

An editor can think of nothing worse
than being too damned easy to access.
Predictable as oatmeal, that’s my curse.

My critics range from voluble to terse:
“For God’s sake, Menamin, unrhyme this mess.”
I measure out my life in formal verse.

It hasn’t put much money in my purse—
those years of measured syllable and stress.
Predictable as oatmeal, that’s my curse.

Though Eliot used coffee spoons, I nurse
no hope of a rhymed epitaph unless
I measure out my life in formal verse.

And when I take my final ride, the hearse
will rattle in heroic couplets. Yes,
predictable as oatmeal, that’s my curse.
I measure out my life in formal verse.

Death Watch

I am afraid—afraid of ending things,
of losing the absurd delight of waking
to unscarred sounds of summer in the making,
the simple peace that sharing breakfast brings.

I fear the last-ditch stand of stems that harden
to unscorched winter twigs, the vanished joy
of morning laughter from an unbruised boy
ribboning through a neighbor’s backyard garden.

How can I keep it safe, the quiet bliss
of putting out clean towels, washed and fresh,
unstained with blood from persecuted flesh?
How can I make the world remember this?

The earth has grown too fragile. Must it break,
Along with all things loved for beauty’s sake?

The Harpy

I think there is a harpy in my brain.
She spoke to me again the other day.
I wonder if perhaps I’ve gone insane.

At times I’ve tried to lose her in the rain,
scream myself empty till she flows away
but still there is this harpy in my brain.

The other day she spoke to me again
and taunted me with news of my decay.
I wonder if perhaps I’ve gone insane

or someone’s stuffed my airways with cocaine
and mingled quicksand with my DNA.
I think there is a harpy in my brain

who hollows out dark avenues of pain
inside my skull and paints them headache gray.
I wonder if perhaps I’ve gone insane

or whether I should simply slit a vein
and let her find another place to stay.
I think there is a harpy in my brain.
I wonder if perhaps I’ve gone insane.

Kate Soffel Writes to her Husband from Jail

On January 30, 1902, brothers Ed and Jack Biddle, both convicted of murder, escaped from the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, PA, with the help of saws and revolvers smuggled to them by warden Peter Soffel’s wife Kate. She fled with the Biddles, one of whom had written love letters to her. The following afternoon both brothers were fatally shot by members of a sheriff’s posse. Kate was wounded but lived to serve a prison sentence.

Dear Peter: It was not the silly stuff
I could have written better, not the praise
of two doomed brothers; well I know the ways
men purchase favors. No, I’d had enough
of being an appendix to your life
like some benign unnecessary growth
on your cold, clumsy flesh. I took an oath
that time should not speak lightly of your wife.

I heard the children, now no longer mine,
mouthing your priggish morals, heard them whine
your cheap complacent catechisms, saw
my future lost to joy and crushed in law
by men who know their beasts’ and bankers’ lives
far better than they ever know their wives.’

A Sequoia Burns

Hands lifted to the sky, face to the wind,
she pleads for charity from old, old gods
who do not hear, who recognized the odds
and fled the forest, leaving her behind.

Her long toes feel the hot red devil’s breath
licking and leaping upward to her limbs.
She knows it is too late for prayers or hymns,
and stands with dignity, awaiting death.

Now, clothed in martyr’s rags and flaming, she’s
beyond all torment as her dark skin blisters
and drops away. She takes leave of her sisters
and quits her spirit. She-Who-Lives-in-Trees

falls forward, her face shattered by the stroke.
Her raven hair flies upward with the smoke.

O Country! My Country!

(With Apologies to Walt Whitman)

(Written upon the United States’ invasion of Iraq March 18, 2003)

O Country! My Country! The shameful deed is done,
The bombs descend, the tanks advance, the screaming soldiers run.
The casualties are tallied up each day on either side
As politicians cast aside pretense and sell your pride.
     And O shame! shame! shame!
         O the need to understand
             Why now my country’s honor lies
                 Fallen in the sand.

O Country! My Country! Where once your flag flew proud
It stands at half-mast as the blood of young men cries aloud.
The noble eagle on your shield is now a bird of prey
Attacking lesser birds for spoils, and just as small as they.
     And O shame! shame! shame!
         O the bullets and the death
             Where now my country’s honor lies
                 Bruised and stripped of faith.

My country does not answer, but hides its face in shame
As greedy statesmen hasten forth to blacken its good name.
The ship of state has run aground on some unfriendly shore
And owes a debt to piracy from this day evermore.
    And O shame! shame! shame!
         O the sickness and the hurt
             Where now my country’s honor lies
                 Fallen in the dirt.

Virtuality

Our Father who art now in cyberspace
hath cloned the perfect female of the species.
Press Enter and on several million PCs
a virtual virgin with a screen star’s face
discusses only subjects you select.
When your attention wanders, move your hand:
She is unrealized at your command.
She is immune to anger and neglect.
This is for real, thy kingdom.com true,
and this bright vision is your faithful muse
who brings you baseball scores and market news,
then Exits from your consciousness and view.
    Outside, unseeing butchers stalk the street,
    Force random violence on faceless meat.

This Week’s Top Tune on WBLU

I always knew you were a hopeless cheat
but never thought I’d live to see the day
you’d leave me for some woman on the street.

I knew that you were sneaking out to meet
some bimbo at the Grits ’n’ Grub Café.
I always knew you were a rotten cheat

but couldn’t you at least have been discreet?
My next-door neighbor telephoned to say
“He’s left you for some floozy on the street.”

She loved it. Cotton candy’s not that sweet:
“I thought you’d want to know her name’s Renée.
I always knew he was a lousy cheat.”

They say a cur will chase a bitch in heat.
Well, now you’ve slipped your leash and run away
to sniff around some mongrel on the street.

Baby, your middle name should be Repeat.
You’ve gone again, and this time you can stay.
Goddam! I always knew you were a cheat,
But leave me for some hussy on the street?

Fairy Tale

It isn’t ever once upon a time.
The witch is in the nursery right now.
She taps three times and chants a secret rhyme
and leaves stigmata on the baby’s brow.

The years go on, and Daddy makes the rules:
some idiotic contests, macho races;
the girl grows pubic hair, and Mama schools
her clueless victim in the social graces.

The suitors swarm around like bees to nectar,
putting out feelers, sizing up the bait,
and out of every hundred who inspect her,
Daddy gives ninety-nine the castle gate.

Then who gets Papa’s princess for a prize?
The prince who is a reptile in disguise

Treadmill Ballade

You’re born by chance, for better or for worse.
You’re quickly tossed upon a greasy-tracked
slow treadmill, and you have to run the course.
Life is a standstill dance, a rerun act.
With every forward step you find you’ve backed
up two steps, and you wonder what became
of all the bound-for-glory bags you packed.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

You buy a tip-off from an inside source,
for in the past that’s all you really lacked.
You put your money on a losing horse
that hasn’t run since Custer was attacked.
Well, you and Lady Luck had no contract
and you’ve nobody but yourself to blame.
Life is a card game and the deck is stacked.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

You fall in love, you marry and divorce.
Before you’ve said “so long, kid,” you’ve been whacked.
She takes you for your stake with no remorse.
You’re single now and how do you react?
You curse the ill-starred day you ever shacked
with such a ruthless, moneygrubbing dame,
then out you go, more leeches to attract.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Envoy

Buddy, it’s time you faced a simple fact:
Life is a roulette wheel, a well-rigged game,
and you’re the croupier’s mark, to be exact.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Gluteus Maximus

Butt of all jokes and undeserving seat
of early punishments more rightly blamed
on my less evident mind, unfairly shamed
for breaches socially indiscreet,
recipient of stabs by vicious nurses,
unmentioned in the best of company,
allowed no meager shred of dignity,
and not once honored in my selfish verses,

Yet I have long compared you to the moon,
have marveled how unfailingly you shine
as, uncomplaining, you uphold my spine
while I spin out some mediocre rune.
Accept my thanks, old friend, and do not sit
in judgment on my lack of grace and wit.

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