The Poetry of Janet Buck
No Paint Remains
This is the seat of black eclipse;
the body warriors are tired.
Blankets seem like bandages
that aren't enough to heal the wound.
A dining room of people fixtures
hanging by the fraying wire.
Walls are gray imperatives
of a dawn-less world so near
the tomb they taste the sand.
I push your wheelchair down the hall,
dream of nicer exit cones, tunnels
saving windows of your sagging eyes
from bullets of the coldest rain.
A warehouse for the almost dead
is not where blossoms ought to drop.
My visit seems a paltry gesture
much the same
as coating broken fingernails.
Still devotion claws the screen.
No paint remains on
picket fences of your bones.
At 92, a grave is close.
So close each second shovels you --
cell by cell, smile by smile,
touch by touch, pain by pain --
toward moors I wish were pillow lace.
A moment stretches to an hour.
I want to lift the shutting lid,
fill your socks with Christmas gifts
you might not live
to tear the fragile ribbons from.
I put my chin in cradles
of your open palms,
wish I were the flower you need,
not some plastic toy of hope that squeaks
when teeth of sadness bite.
My hands, my love,
their wringing, fisting overtures --
feckless, shaking signatures
minus the ink to change the book.
"No Paint Remains": First Published in Recursive Angel
Copyright by Janet I. Buck
The River's Scowl
"Just get me home" is all you say,
dodging the leather ears of a bitchy nurse,
callous yet acquainted with
this plea to leave a graveyard's spell.
I hate this place that sucks
the color from your cheeks.
Cardboard food is brown and green,
a summary to match the bile --
this blackened stage around a rose
where thorns insist and blossoms don't.
"Two more weeks of therapy,
we'll blow this joint" --
I quip and hear the echo
of perhapsing lie.
This is where those feckless palms
put the going out of sight.
My fisting overtures at walls
neglect to change the river's scowl.
Rabid rapids win, of course.
Denial's muzzle doesn't fit
when teeth are bared this close to flesh.
I'll lose you to awaiting earth;
I know that much.
But please, not here.
Where faces are asbestos masks --
frozen to their drooling pools.
I pat your hand, roll you down
these haunted aisles
like chambers in a 45
my fingers hesitate to twirl.
Blankets are thin. Pillows are hard.
Soldiers of your bones effete.
The bed, a shovel poised on dirt
too ready for the heel tap.
"Let's sit," I say, "Don't fall asleep."
My knuckles cramp.
And I refuse to tuck you in.
"The River's Scowl": First Published in Tapestry
Copyright by Janet I. Buck
Sitting Spoons & Sulking Forks
"Let us go in; the fog is rising."
Emily Dickinson (1830-86)
I roll you down slick haunted aisles
like chambers in a 45
my fingers hesitate to twirl.
A country band sings tune-less
in the dining room.
They're skinny as their long guitars.
It's funny and appropriate
since bones are disks too full of grief,
record-skipping bumpy things
that cry for mercy from the pin.
Your food tray sits.
The fork is sulking by the spoon.
They bib you up and call you "Babe,"
which pisses off your dignity.
All the faces carved in stone
surround your waning cherry cheeks.
I can't admit you're 92,
knocking knees against a tomb --
that plasma is an ebbing stream.
Truth makes noise, a washer's clot,
a shifting of old heaviness between
trite words and wringers of the way it is.
You ask me once and then you beg:
"Sneak me in a glass of wine
to drug the swelling albatross."
The trench coat and the flash, of course,
prepare to sting me in the night.
Rivers of your pulse are weak
and we are at the ocean's end.
I'm dreaming of a Clairol box,
to dye your ivory tresses dark.
The waterline is shrinking
in the blackened vase --
drooping daisies tip their crowns
and bow into a garbage sack.
You have your lipstick on for death.
"Sitting Spoons and Sulking Forks": First Published in: sendecki.com
Copyright by Janet I. Buck
The Lost Scent
I imagine Father splayed
on the closet floor --
its gritty carpet, possum fur
after the wide-eyed wreck --
mixing a bottled tear with
the lost scent of your blood.
Shoveling through broken-backed shoes --
tongues still promising toes.
The sandal there. The summer gone.
Grabbing the white-toothed moon,
sleeping on sore red gums.
Shepherd of lost leaves,
stricken wish, lamenting
the way the pollen just goes
and the burlap stays.
Tripping on empty sweater sleeves,
on the end of the dance.
Hanger's point in cornea.
"The Lost Scent": First Published in: Retort Magazine
Copyright by Janet I. Buck
The Rummage Sale
The IT had finally come to pass.
All we had to hold of you --
brass or silver, wood or china,
stacks of curled sepia.
A photo marked with 1936 in France.
Someone scribbled femme fatale,
scratched a smile in fading ink.
Your house was cold
even in this August oven
burning fingers as we looked.
We vacuumed cat hair off the drapes.
Mother swore at dusty cupboards
packed with jars of cardamom
left so long it qualified as antique sand,
made us laugh between black geysers of our tears.
Residue of character came crawling out
of every drawer. One whole chest
of silken scarves you tied
around a sagging throat
until you hit that knowing age
when wrinkles seem
like creases of the intellect.
Your husband's fluffy shaving brush --
that must have been a horse's tail
with mud and flies
of wishing fate had left him here.
A forty-year-old diaphragm --
in case you fell in love again.
Time to split your sets of dishes,
rows of Wedgwood, Staffordshires,
mounds of books, and mugs of pens --
these gospel tunes of poetry
that met the tragic at the stairs.
All the so-called valuables
were plates of dry, dismissed dessert
someone licked the frosting from.
It was the wrong day for sticky rain,
meager in its douching rites,
sweaty in the armpit's curve.
We needed some effacing wind
to shanghai contraband of grief.
"The Rummage Sale": First Published in: Pig Iron Malt
Copyright by Janet I. Buck