Sample Poems by Deborah Bacharach

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Traveling Blues


Apollo, as an old man,
offers his arms. His frame's solid
like you'd expect from a god
or a man who's been dancing
his whole life, right arm in waltz hold,
palms pressing high and away.

I follow a few steps-shift, pause,
shift and then he dissolves
the space, bodies flush, hands laced.
He lifts and places on the nape
of his neck, my soft white willing hand.

He is pulsing with Bo Diddley I'm a man,
way past twenty-one. His thumb
caresses the edge of my thumb.
Ten white candles in small glass bowls
light their way down my spine.

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Admitted for Observation


My uncle, the dentist, announces:
I'll care for the plants.
He waters from the fifth floor to the first,
grumbling,
dry soil, dry soil, lack of sun.

In the front hall, a rubber tree
crouches by the threadbare couch.
He grabs a branch, shakes
the leaves so hard they
strike a psychiatrist. Who is in charge,

my uncle bellows, of this dead earth?
A nurse finds a clay pot, eases
the roots out under his random orders.
He leaves his muddy prints
for the night staff to clean.

By the next day, held by the state,
he plants red-centered coleus,
the leaves the waves at Brigantine.
If he stands at the window's edge,
bricks will crumbles, azaleas bloom.

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Hubris


I'm trying to learn things I need. This week
I am learning gods. Apollo answered
questions, drove his chariot daily.
I answer questions: easy ones-my zip
code, what I want for Christmas (a welcome
mat, firewood); harder ones-what I will
do for money. I can't file. I mean
I can; I have hands, I know "n" after
"m," but who will I be with paper cuts,
silent bent spine in a manila sea?

The story I tell of myself at twenty
has been cut into strips.
I know there was gelato, rain, a train
station where I screamed and cried.
I know I found Turkish Delight
abandoned beneath a bench.

I remember the first man to walk
the Uffizi with me, to see Venus
arrive from her shell; she is always
arriving with him and his long red hair,
his shy grin as we stand, touching.

Apollo stood the death of his son, death
of his lover, guilt. He cried for one day,
but back before dawn, slapping the horses
his bulging veins shoving blood to his heart.
The story he tells himself-he is what
the world needs, all lost, no fish, no fowl,
no slow opening flowers, if he gave
into grief, abandoned his job, lived true.

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A Month After the Wedding


We are standing on Aurora.
Cars slug past big box stores
behind their asphalt moats, exhaust
in the air like panic. John says,
I've been making a list for our
dream house. I say, oh, tell me.

He lists everything:

two floors; five sinks; four windows
in the front room light
that will fade our white couch-

faded already, the cushions
that slip, the ink stain-the couch
we never think to replace; light in a hall
spreading rectangles, long warm ones
for curling up and reading instead
of picking scraps off the floor,
my scraps, he tolerates.

He lists walls for the books we carted
Boston to Minneapolis (two copies
Brothers Karamazov, a full shelf
of future worlds), back to Boston
(add laconic detectives) to South Bend
(exchange fantasy for food science)
to Seattle (add in how-to).