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Poems from the Limited Edition of Maureen F. McHugh's Mothers & Other Monsters.Squared Away
Les Brown's Band of Renown
Ephemerata
Alternate History
The Fat Girl Dreams of ParisYou say you are squared away.
Perhaps you are. Feral
boy your gaze as level and self-contained
as the sapphire eyes
of the wild fox kit
denned behind the house.
It, too, on the brink of adulthood,
leggy adolescent, languid in the sun.The fox mother is ragged, sinewy hips
and hollow belly. Time tells on her, that
and single motherhood and the
ceaseless treadmill of provide, provide
provide for four kits now
too old to keep inside
and who spill out, mornings and evenings
into the wide room of the world.She trots off, leaving them unsafe,
assuming that when the lawnmower starts up
or the Golden Retriever barks
or I walk to the back of the yard
and look over the fence, they
will have the sense to hide.
Semper Fi, Jason.We are handing you over
to the rough authority of the Marine Corps.
And you, sure and unsure buffeting you in waves
regard us, the adults of your self-made family,
pleased and a little abashed
at the swells of emotion, eddying around you.
But I can see, you are already gone.+++++++++
My mother is a pocket with a hole.
She loses nouns, whole decades, connections.
What is that? she says
and I say, truck? cloud? What do you need?
A quarter? Seven cents?My mother is a ruined city.
My map of her, never complete, grows out of date.
That's Glenn Miller, I say.
Benny Goodman. Your favorite song is on.
Stardust. She smiles for mebut where the map says swing music
is an empty field. A few pale stones and grass
bending in the wind.
She danced with my father on the deck
of a paddle boat. Les Brown's Band of Renown.A slim girl, motherless herself.
Auburn and white, she stood so straight.
I have a faded snapshot
of her memory. I could say, Ôonce you told me'
but who would I offer it to?Even Troy, where no stone stands on stone,
is still a place. So you, my mother,
stranger to me.
Location and history and one breath
after another. Only air.
+++++++++
A tiny tower of white Styrofoam
coffee cups, each with a half moon of red
hung on the rim.
Ephemerata.
Foil, string, old pens.
As if they were points in a game of gin.
Who keeps score? Some people
collect skyscrapers of newspaper
tied up in string. Boxes in the basement.
Magazines in the attic. Anchors
to the past. Jettison it all.
Throw away photographs. Burn
them, their corners curling tight
in the nearly invisible tongues.
It won't matter.Still, like me
you will awake before dawn.
The clock will smolder steady on
the bedside table. The attic
in your mind will open
the steps unfolding down
out of the mouth of the dark.
It will all come back to you,
whether you want it or not.+++++++++
No one in fatigues has ever walked point
Down Chestnut Trails
Between the carefully mown lawns And swingsets, ducking not to snag
The barrel of a rifle
On my neighbor's ornamental cherry.
The sound of helicopter rotors
Has never roused me from cold sleep.
Planes at night don't rumble --
Wait the concussive shock
Of cluster bombs. Nor do I
Wonder if my son, digging a bike jump
Will find a landmine.
The grocery is open and hums the florescent purr
Of a refrigerator. The shelves are full
Of honey Dijon salad dressing, Pop Tarts
Cheetos and Fritos and Cheerios,
Cold yellow butter.
I have never stood in line
For canned milk and clean water.
The heat always works in winter.
Boys in fatigues never knocked on my door,
Walked through my house,
Pointed to my husband and son, said,
"Come with me." I have never
Watched them walk my men across Tinker's Creek
Towards the baseball diamond
Straining to see the light
Shine on the fine blond of my boy's hair,
And listened for the distant
Firecracker pop pop pop
Of gunfire.
+++++++++
The fat girl dreams of Paris.
She stops at the ice cream drive-in
orders vanilla cone, chocolate dipped with
a sickly smile because she does not care what the boy
behind the window thinks about fat girls eating
ice cream. But she gets a small.
When she is thin, she will shop
the arrondisements, buying pretty clothes
from gamine French clerks who would cut
the fat girl dead with their eyes right now.She dreams of comas, and waking up
with ribs like the flying buttresses of Notre Dame.
Cancer makes you thin. She should smoke.
Smokin' in tiny black cocktail dresses
and visible to men. Adipose is
camouflage, that makes her disappear. The polite
let their gaze pass over her, rude
to stare at the grotesque. The fat girl livesin an Adkins future, in the diet
she will start tomorrow. The present
is a small place where she, so big
can barely turn around.+++++++++
About the Author
Maureen F. McHugh has spent most of her life in Ohio, but has lived in New York City and, for a year, in Shijiazhuang, China. She is the author of four novels. Her first novel, China Mountain Zhang, won the Tiptree Award and her latest novel, Nekropolis, was a Book Sense 76 pick and a New York Times Editor's Choice. McHugh teaches writing at John Carroll University in Cleveland and at the Imagination and Clarion workshops. She lives with her husband and two dogs next to a dairy farm. Sometimes, in the summer, black and white Holsteins look over the fence at them.
Publication History
These poems were previously published as follows:
Alternate History, Asimov's, August 2003
Les Brown's Band of Renown, Say. . . . Why Aren't We Crying?, May 2004
Ephemerata, Whiskey Island, 48, Fall 2004
Squared Away and The Fat Girl Dreams of Paris appear here for the first time.