THREE POEMS BY BRONWEN TATE



                                     ODIOUS


                                                                               after Sei Shonagon

          One sees one’s boat released from its tether drifting towards a different
          kind of realization. This is alarming, if not quite odious. One’s boat is
          not the boat of one’s neighbor, and one cannot skirt so casually with
          realization. Realization must be tethered to a release of some kind, even
          if it does not involve another person’s boat.

          To repeat calculated things with spoons, to repeal unprecedented
          sharpnesses, to dull good kitchen knives with too much stropping, to
          unchurn yesterday’s better ideas - truly odious.

          When a rabbit uncouples, or a practical circle becomes overly satisfied
          or when the contours of the vertebrae assume a different imprecision,
          one finds it odious in the extreme.

          Infinitely odious are the inconsistent yarding of the nightjar, the
          obligatory weighing of pears, the insincere calcification of metrics, the
          coating and layering of the pill under duress.

          One wakes up, opens one’s armoire, walks through one’s boudoir,
          obtains one’s desired degree of attrition. One listens for the soft
          rumbles of one’s vernacular, re-construes one’s boudoir, unfastens
          one’s peignoir, ripens into fashion like a bitter melon. And still there is
          no sign of one’s negligee fashioning constraint. What could be more
          odious?



                AFTER THE SUCCESS OF YOUR FACE

          You began
          didn’t reassess shades
          enlarged till scratchy
          it covered T-rex
          then there was something else
          or maybe it fell.

          I thought to turn
          to other parts
          after the mysterious appearance
          of oregano aphids.
          Pulling off dry leaves
          not quite crushed verbena.

          Despite the fallacy
          of cling-wrap
          the unexplained lack
          of extra-small rubber gloves,
          she tries to break an uncooperative thing
          in half.


                                  BALLAD OF BACKYARD

          My acquiescence built
          dumbly from the first principles:
          if we leaned the sunflower would
          fall and my smile reveal gaps.
          Sweatpants and chickens
          sometimes stared me back.
          Fortunately the turkey did not swallow
          her pearl though it pecked.
          My ascent built step by step:
          if you wake up early
          we could call that matins.
          Walk the dog or the vacuum.
          Not understanding mechanics I was in
          no position to bargain.

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Bronwen Tate just recieved her MFA in Poetry from Brown University. A native of Portland, OR, Bronwen now lives, writes, and bakes strawberry-rhubarb pies in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word For/Word, How2 Journal, Lungful!, and horse less review.


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