Response to Galway Kinnell’s “Rapture”
I was trying to get dressed.
It was early and the room still dark. I heard him stir.
I think my hand went to my breast.
Then I think he reached up an arm
seeking me, or the hand. The vein down his bicep.
A shudder drummed my belly. The sheets still warm.
Not now, I thought, holy Christ not now
yesterday’s coffee grounds are still
in the machine and I’ve got to gas up
the car before I go to work. Tell me how
you do this, how is it that your need
slices through everything, like Solomon
who said you can have half a baby oh Christ
the sky still gray, the sheets still warm,
he pulled or I fell, they felt the same.
Finished I got out of bed again.
The light was now spilling around the blinds.
I was still trying to get dressed.
Things Feel Universal
After Diane Seuss’ “Things Feel Partial”
Things feel universal; the trivial is universal; this is to say,
the plum at the bottom of the fruit bowl, so cold and delicious,
is the only one anyone will ever sneak away to nibble and suck.
This is to say, too, the old woman in the hospital bed is the only mother
and I the only child, to say that strolling past my neighbor’s yard
is a holy trek, a pilgrimage; that the stone in my shoe is every stone
and mine every limping foot; and also those dandelions
erupting through the pavement cracks are the insistent pain
of life birthing itself everywhere, despite everything. And to say
the thought of the setting moon, the sound of a chord fading
once it’s played, the left-over leaves that need sweeping from the patio,
all these are every flavor and facet of the silence everywhere
the old woman frets against, the musician strives to fill,
the green shoots defy from their dark den below the pavement.
Liz Grisaru works for New York State in renewable energy policy and is based in Albany, New York, the State capital. She grew up and went to college in Boston, Massachusetts and lived in New York City and Brooklyn for sixteen years before moving to the capital region, where she and her wife raised two children. After not writing for many years while busy with family and work life, she started writing again a few months before the pandemic hit and has been at it ever since.
The Marbled Sigh 