USA

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FROM THE WELL,

                                    I call.
It is my breath traveling
from within: diaphragm,
throat, lips. 
                  What is dark
looking for light: Mama.

Our beginning,
                             a well,
pit of the gut, female
holding: womb. Like sisters
and brothers before me,
I hear you practicing
my name, summoning.
I believe
                  your voice
love

COMPOSITION

All my life I've been looking
for a man big enough to handle
me -- Paul Bunyan, Daniel
Boone, the Lone
Ranger. 
            Dangerous
women birth
gargoyles who hoot
and holler at their mother's
gates. 
         Sassy, smart, teeth
that gleam in the dark—when do
these daughters of Lillith
sleep? 
           Men on ladders
or elevator shoes
lose their balance,
can't love these Amazons
whose steeds in full
regalia snort and stir
the dust. 
              But you, you,
you—your stories throw
shadow puppets on the wall,
announce electrical
relays and forecast
doors of disproportionate
size. 
          Gentled and fed
by the sway of your voice,
the tilt of your head, I swoon
as you conduct the ancient
orchestra that practices
inside me. 
                 I hear
tambour, recorder,
viola d'amore.

NOTES ON DISARMAMENT

 She put on colors one step
removed from matching --
shades that would subtly
shake you, the observer,
from the complacency of vogue.
 Though it might have been the way
the tip of scarf floated after her
across a room crowded with people
whom she did not know well
but from whom she intended
to discover one more detail.
 You noted she fashioned a map
of everywhere she had been
listing those she had visited.
 Yet there was always a sense
in standing before her
of looking into yourself.
 Perhaps her pendants and rings
were secretly one-way mirrors
so you believed self-consciously
they were snapping pictures of you.

-- First published in Journal of Poetry Therapy (Florida State University,
Tallahassee, FL)

SONG AFTER LILITH

She was not a woman
born of bone, the earth
was her maker.  In the market-

place, she could converse
with any man.  She needed no
perfume, no pearls.  Her crown

of hair proclaimed her
dangerous.  Let the butcher
sell her unkosher meat

and her eyes like arson
burned through all men
who craved the missing rib.

-- First published in Jewish Currents  (New York, NY)

WHITE

         Swan, pearl, chalk, sheet in snow, bones on desert sand.  The
ghostly lady, alabaster white, from head to toe wanders the uneven walks of
foggy San Francisco like clockwork.  Blond bimbo turned hoary milkmaid, she
frightens all men; she startles all women.  With crooked teeth and quivering
lips, the white lady flashes a smile.  It fleeces the men in one glimpse. 
Throw down your coats, let a lily float.
         The women whitewash the interplay between her and their men. 
Bleach, cream, foam, maggot among eggshells.  Drawn to her albino eyes, the
women freeze, recognizing a grizzly prophecy.  Virgin, spinster, old maid,
nun, celibate, eccentric, freak.  She is bride without groom, wife without
husband, mother without child.  What she does not have comes out of the hides
of other women.
       Salt without pepper, aftershock without quake, death without birth.

--First published in Always the Beautiful Answer: A Prose Poem Primer (Kings Estate Press:  St. Augustine, FL)

© All Copyright, Karren L. Alenier.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.