Sample Poems by Dorothy Derifield

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Zero Plus Time

The old performers liked to end with a single spotlight.
Some let it fade, others simply stepped out-
no one seemed perturbed by the obvious-

life or death, black or white.
But time... time has different shades of darkness,
each with its own degree of cold.

A memory floats through the mind the way
clouds pass over the sun, with a slight chill,
as if a little piece of winter had detached from the sky,

the sound of an iron lung late at night
in the half-lit ward, the shush-squeak
of the nurse's shoes in the corridor,

in spring a sudden glimpse of green across
the parking lot-the day my body moved,
the day it didn't.

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Hunting Season

This is about the Saturday afternoons
with my father
in the green Chevrolet,
Minnesota football on the radio,
shotguns in the trunk.

Not about the pint bottle
under the driver's seat

the blood on the breast
the pellet in the flesh

or the woman alone
in the rundown farmhouse.

Here is the sun on the stubble fields,
that old blond color
going to gray,
blending into the gravel road
and the dust behind us.

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Solanum: The Bitter Nightshade

The passion-colored flowers, enticing fruit
could stain your lips, deep and final red:
its always sleep the poisoners

are after, the other life, every night
a hallowed eve, high school reunion,
Bates Motel under new management,

and memory stalks from room to room
muttering about the candy
and the broken broom.

The slit of light under the shade
is truth they say and also
that you lied in your memoir:

It is a twining vine, seductive to walls
and fences, hiding the evidence
of its true life, rooting in the dark

or leafing the light where
the beast comes not to your hall
and the clock makes no tick

or spurious tock.

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Freight Train, Freight Train, Goin So Fast

Why did Minski starve himself to death
in the house of frozen glass
and why did Olga give up the violin
after all those painful years at Juilliard?

When I was little my father liked
to watch the fast freights run
past the station, full speed, no stops.
Small towns blur, cars just melt together.

Minski in a small cold room I pass through
to other scenes of narcotic destruction,
Olga knew it was food that made them
grow louder, the needles break, whisper

what I didnt know. I was moving
too fast. The schedule came in early,
eighty cars, ten oclock, broken pint bottles
straight through to Fargo.