Kim Addonizio - Three Poems
Prayer
Phantom Anniversary
Santuario at Chimayo
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Prayer
Sometimes, when we're lying after love,
I look at you and see your body's future
of lying beneath the earth; putting the heel
of my hand against your rib I feel how faint
and far away the heartbeat is. I rest
my cheek against your left nipple and listen
to the surge of blood, seeing your life splashed out,
filmy water hurled from a pot
onto dry grass. And I want to be pressed
deep into the bed and covered over,
the way a seed is pressed into a hole,
the dirt tamped down with a trowel.
I want to be a failed seed, the kind
that doesn't grow, that doesn't know it's meant to.
I want to lie here without moving, lifeless
as an animal that's slaughtered, its blood smeared
on a doorpost, I want death to take me if it
has to, to spare you, I want it to pass over.
First published in Tell Me, BOA Editions, Ltd, 2000
Phantom Anniversary
Imagine the marriage lasting,
the lilies blooming in the black vase
for years, the water still fresh.
The man and woman are looking at each other
as they fuck, blooming and looking,
and the angels are looking, too,
opening their beautiful abstract mouths
as though they are about to say something
neither difficult nor true.
The man and woman are oblivious.
They grow fainter and fainter without caring.
And the angels fold their wings flat
and plummet toward them like stones.
First published in Tell Me, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2000.
Santuario at Chimayo
It's so quiet among the carved saints,
the votives giving out, one by one, the old
Indian woman scraping wax and spent wicks.
Grief lights them again. Photographs
of the dead are tucked into the corners
of framed Christs, dogtags slung
from a punched-tin cross--Jaime Escalero,
his number and blood type.
And Catholic. Even the tourists are hushed
by so much evidence of faith.
In the room behind the altar
a small hole holds the dirt
said to heal. The blind
come here, and the broken-hearted.
They squat down
to take the earth
in their hands and let it run through.
Every afternoon
the old woman slips new candles
into their sheaths
and the random light from cameras
is like souls entering
or abandoning the world,
each with that same brightness.
First published in Italian Americano
Kim Addonizio is the author of three books of poetry from BOA Editions: The Philosopher's Club, Jimmy & Rita, and Tell Me, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. Her latest collection, What Is This Thing Called Love, was published by W.W. Norton in January 2004. A book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure, was published by Fiction Collective 2. She is also co-author, with Dorianne Laux, of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton). With Cheryl Dumesnil she co-edited Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (Warner Books).
Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award.
Her poetry and fiction have appeared widely in anthologies and literary journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Chick-Lit, Dick for a Day, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review, Poetry, and Threepenny Review. She currently teaches private workshops in Oakland, CA.
