Poetry |

“The Plum The Plum” & “The Cup”

The Plum The Plum

 

 

She held (very carefully) a plum in her memory. She held it

in her mind in her hand. She carried the plum and its pit its

impermanence and stroked the cleft

of its breast

 

with her thumb.

Pummeled, plum-lit, she loved

to touch it:

 

When she stood in line with a watermelon

she held in mind

the plum.

When she studied the corpse

in an oil painting, she stood

behind the plum.

 

The plum became

the whole of her head — set on her neck,

she nodded it yes, freed of need

to self-assess, admiring only —

the plum.

 

She placed the plum

inside a cup, and the plum became

her pain.

She held it high

through corridors, acutely angled

inner rooms, where someone, a neighbor, was frying onions —

 

she hates, but loves, the smell of them.

 

The house after three is a suburb. She grows there

duller, and gropes. All her thoughts — they take too long, coming around

 

the plum’s dark bulk — right up to the rim

of oblivion.

 

A wide flat stump squats on the edge,

and upon that stump, the plum. It’s knitting now, in the garbage dark:

an elaborate shroud around its rot.

 

Must be the “soul” or something

 

dull

translating plum to plum from plum —

 

Could be the soul, something dull,

a few hairs, some tears.

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

The Cup

 

 

Yes, still at it —

the table, the window. The lamplight,

low, seems to — increase — as evening

presses down. What I see from here

seems downcast — your eyelids —

proof of — perhaps —

it’s the cost of your thought. It’s clear

in there: you’re sitting in pain —

“scribbling by glint of a gold-rimmed cup.”

I’ve held that cup. Wide and thin,

it holds — itself —

one fine white crack — a razorblade, a wire

hair — white

sustenance, pure

despair: behind you — see?

The cell you keep neat

as the “script on a postcard of Mt. Rainier.”

I can see it there, that teacup

between us. Slip-cast of grit, it’s torn

your lip — little bloody smear.

Now turning a page, now looking up,

when you take a pill, a sip, a note —

when you tuck your hair behind your ear —

“The trick is to take the pain cup / up.”

 (Swallow the blade. Follow the cut.)

The cells — selves! — divide — & shrug.

We know nothing, no one, only­ — of.

Contributor
Kary Wayson

Kary Wayson is the author of two collections of poetry — American Husband (Ohio State University Press, 2009) and The Slip (Burnside Review Press, 2020). Poems have appeared in The Rumpus, The VoltaBennington Review, and the Poetry International anthology, among others, including The Best American Poetry (2007) and Pushcart Prize XXXIV: Best of the Small Presses. She lives in Port Orchard, WA.

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