Author: Janie Braverman

  • Spinning Steel

    barefoot
    in the kitchen
    he speaks to me
    of other things
    while he bends
    silver stalks to his will
                through    around    up    over
                snug to the hub
                tight to the rim

    not willow bark    comfrey    sage    sumac
                in leather pouch    
    but spoke wrench    sprocket    three way    chain ring
                in canvas musette
    a modern shaman
                spinning steel into
                            spider web
                            god’s eye
                            dream catcher
                            medicine wheel
    weaving metal to a perfect circle
                then true

  • No Tears

    I love
    the high plains desert
    crunch of boots
    along washboard gravel roads that
    slice through
    between sage
    piñon and prickly pear
    roads to nowhere
    and everywhere

    my grandfather would drive
    faster than I liked
    kicking up great plumes
    of dirt and dust
    sometimes brown
    sometimes grey
    more often red
    deep sandstone
    red

    where
    was he going
    so fast
    so loud
    so hard to breathe

    behind then beyond
    wheat fields
    barley
    rye
    alfalfa
    beyond wind dried ridge
    past remains of spring hightide
    where rain is a battering ram
    a plow to wound the landscape
    driving before it
    debris of winter

    it is hot today
    I walk
    I left the car
    not really equipped
    for the rocky ascent
    up the back of the mesa
    I left the car below

    I hear the grind of grasshoppers
    locusts of the high desert plains
    and ancient rusty hinge
    call of the redwing blackbird

    I hear my own breath
    ragged and too quick
    it’s been too long since
    I’ve taken this walk

    my grandfather never touched the sage
    either living or dead
    the scrape against rifle butt
    boot cracking down hard
    on a too dry branch
    klaxons to coyote
    rabbit
    antelope
    deer

    a trickle of sand
    down stone behind me
    rat
    marmot
    rattlesnake
    I would welcome the rattle just now
    wind in the dried grasses
    a whisper
    hint
    memory
    no more than that

    quiet
    it is too quiet
    the whine of the highway
    departing past the ridge
    a plane far beyond
    crop duster
    chasing
    grasshopper
    cornborer
    mosquito

    there is no water here today
    no brook
    no stream
    no river
    no ocean here for thousands of years

    no water here today
    no tears

    my heart beats
    thick in my ears
    hard in my chest
    rich with the salty iron of life

    I hear my heart
    I don’t hear yours

  • Moon Walk

    for Theo

    Menstrual flow shutdown
    moon cycle interrupted
    blood turns inward
    growing the stranger within
    wondrous little creature
    symbiont fed by and feeding
    my heart.

    That spring my son
    and my lungs waged war
    the struggle to draw in breath
    to exchange oxygen across the mucous-clogged barrier
    between pulmonary and cardiovascular
    my son grew his own lungs
    racing for mature-enough
    soon enough
    to support him
    if mine failed to support us both.

    Jettison the parasite, my body cried.
    Hold onto the child, my heart beat back.
    All the while the steady underlying
    asthmatic accordion wheeze
    inhale . . . two . . . three . . . hold . . .
    exhale-hard-out . . . two . . . three . . . rest . . .
    That spring
    it was harder to push air
    out of my lungs
    than it had been
    to push either of my daughters
    out into their future.

    Countdown
    hold on
    twelve more weeks . . . eleven . . . ten . . . major attack.

  • Prison Camp

    I was enchanted
    bewitched
    besotted
    baited
    trapped
    hooked
    run to ground
    run aground
    ground down.

    I climbed over glass teeth
    where broken bottle shards guard the wall
    scrabbled down ladderless brick
    with scraped raw elbows and knees
    crawled under the razor wire
    sprockets
    fish hooks and
    wood screws
    iron brambles
    dipped in blood
    gone to rust.

    Here
    where wire is barbed
    barbarous
    bearded
    blood-blackened

    these

    (not the wedding ring
    so easily removed
    but so long remembered)

    these

    are the binds that tie.

  • Rise

    Rise up rooted, like trees.
    Rilke

    We rise, uprooted like trees.

    I have a vast vision
    of oak, cottonwood, catalpa
    all leaves and boughs down
    root balls up dangling
    dirt clods and earthworms
    like sticks and twigs in my hair
    boughs down, roots up
    a thousand spears of broccoli
    on an ocean bound journey
    bobbing downhill, downstream, downside
    up and wave their way by as if
    they were going to Mardi Gras
    and not to splinters.

    An aspen grove is single,
    like a forest, a field, a flock, but not.
    Manifested as many,
    connected at the roots.

    One day, I’m single, working
    the ten year plan of getting my children
    to and through college,
    minding my own business
    and the next
    I’m married, retired, moving.
    My children leaving for college,
    I’m running out of reasons
    I need to do anything else
    but love them.

  • The Love Lives of Rocks

    Granite mates, below the dirt,
    then rises over time to bare itself to the kiss
    of wind and rain.
    Warm in the sun, cloaked in lichen, cracked
    by the cycle of cold,
    granite lies dreaming
    of the time before and the time to come.

  • Try It On

    And so I try it on
    like a hat or a scarf
    or a creamy new lipstick

    dip one shoulder
    wondering
    how might it feel
    to want this man?

  • Lists

    Cat. 
    Donkey.
    Cigarettes and dust.
    Smoke from the trash heap.
    Allergens.  Triggers.  Potential poison.

    Dolphin.
    Beach.
    Hammock.
    Not quite cold enough Corona.
    The light in your eye.
    Comforts.  Pleasures.  Aphrodisiacs.

    The sweet grace
    of the back of your hand
    on my cheek.
    Warm calves accepting
    of my cold feet.
    A shared bowl of yogurt and nuts,
    frittata on your plate and then in my belly.
    Home.

    Two years ago she started to tell me
    the story of the day she didn’t
    drown her children in the bathtub, didn’t
    starve them in the closet, didn’t
    beat them until they couldn’t scream any more, didn’t
    burn them with cigarettes, or the iron, or stove,
    scald them with water or freeze them
    with scorn.
    Two years since she didn’t
    leave them on their own to die
    on the top floor of the old house
    converted to apartments
    dried by the western plains wind into
    kindling, tinder, fuel.
    Two years and counting . . .

    Salt licks at my feet and I
    remember the smell
    of the sea, blown across the tidal pool.
    And sweat.
    Airplane sweat – tired, confined, medicinal,
    metallic.
    Just arrived in the tropics sweat – too heavy
    clothes, socks, long sleeve shirt thick with the
    smell of city and work.
    Sun sweat – open to the air, coconut
    with the scent of summers past
    lingering youth
    new beginnings.
    And the sweat of lust, salt rising
    sweet from your skin or
    is it mine.
    I sweat back the sweet salt of the sea –
    as you, too, lick your way up my feet.

    A crushed Coke can.
    Beach glass.
    High tide mark of broken shells.
    A streamer of plastic bread wrapper.
    Bottle tops.
    Sand.  Endless sand.

  • At The Office Of My Son’s Psychiatrist

    it begins with family history
    a gentle inquiry into the lives
    of my parents grandparents brothers and sister
    my ex-husband has come and gone already
    telling the story of his side

    any thyroid disease drug abuse alcoholism
    suicide successful or failed
    I wonder which is which

    eating disorders depression trouble with anger
    unstable moods
    I shake out the genetic map like a long unused tablecloth
    spilling deserted desiccated crumbs
    I share them with this young man, this bearded stranger
    I tell my father’s rage
    my mother’s silence
    my own profound depression beginning at thirteen
    a history of migraines ·
    suicide contemplated but never completed
    the most recent episode still raw like a rusty hacksaw blade
    chosen bits of the stories of my life

    you were a moody child?
    Sarah Bernhardt my mother called me
    with a penchant for high drama at dinner
    loud tears and slammed doors

    genetic history is a useful predictor of risk factors
    he smiles and says
    I think you are
    bipolar

    the word thumps to the carpet between us
    rolls gently in my mouth a metallic musical word a poet’s word
    bipolar
    he is naming me this pretty word
    his fingers steepled below his chin
    I think you should be evaluated
    he is naming but not knowing me

    you have a classic history all the indicators
    he leans back
    I think but do not say
    of course I am depressed because
    I know this analytical young man
    with his well polished loafers
    my son’s-not my-psychiatrist
    he’s thinking drugs to stabilize my mood, my life
    to close off the San Andreas fault of feelings
    to level like a condemned building a thing of no use
    he means to help with this lie of better
    better living through chemistry
    better not the lows so deep and dark
    better not the highs so bright so frightening to those
    who don’t know them who won’t or can’t embrace them
    better to be calm and dull and stupid
    he means well but his means would kill me

    let me ask you
    I listen carefully balance my need to be safe
    against my son’s need for me to be known
    genetic history may be a useful predictor of risk factors
    I listen carefully and I do not lie

    do your eyes ever play tricks on you
    I ask what does he mean
    do you ever see things that aren’t there
    as I think how to answer this, he goes on
    things out of the corner of your eye and you turn
    and nothing is there
    I resist the temptation to say Are you nuts? for this is
    what he does think, that I am nuts
    of course I see things
    I see poetry everywhere-even here-in this office
    and the auras I see are where I see them
    no I say and this is true

    do you ever hear things – things that aren’t really there
    in a crowd do you ever think someone is calling you but they aren’t
    or you hear the phone or the doorbell when they don’t ring
    of course I hear Mommie in a crowd
    and think the voice is calling me
    that’s not what he means
    he means the voices
    I consider-for nearly a heartbeat-telling him
    about the characters
    who live and breathe and walk with me
    the ones who tell me their stories when I am quiet enough
    to hear them over the chaos of my exterior life
    I almost tell him of course I hear voices voices
    of people more real to me than him
    but he is asking am I delusional
    I answer the only way I can
    I hear only things that are real

    I am not your patient
    sensitive to the universe not moody
    awake not bipolar
    human not nuts
    but because I am first a mother
    because telling these truths will not be useful and
    to help this earnest young man in tweed help my son
    I quiet the voices

    for now
    I listen carefully and do not lie
    but neither do I tell

  • Bing

    I hear the grind of grasshoppers,
    rusty-hinge call of the redwing blackbird,
    my own breath, ragged and too quick.
    It’s been too long since I’ve taken this walk,
    forever since we took this walk together.