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Drinker of Ink, an excerpt
Friday, February 15, 1991 | 7:27 p.m., Café des Palmiers, with an éclair
Today made up for the fact that I spent Valentine’s Day researching descriptive-meditative poem structure in the library.
Prior to workshopping in Poetry earlier, students turned into journalists firing questions at Peter Breznik as though he were St. Valentine reincarnated.
Though Peter always seems to cringe at personal questions—Ummmm . . . haven’t you asked that already? You really want to know that? No. Not answering that. What???— he typically relents to answering most inquiries and must feel some zing of pleasure, or at least a gentle wash of gratification, knowing that he is of such spirited interest to one small classroom of humans.
Today’s Q & A went approximately like this:
Q: Did you do anything for Valentine’s Day, Peter?
A: What? No. That’s not a day in Yugoslavia.
Q: But you said you’re American. Wouldn’t your girlfriend expect you to celebrate the holiday?
Q: Wouldn’t you at least give her flowers?
A: Who? My Valentine? Possibly. If she were American and expected flowers.
Q: So she’s not American?
Q: And you’re not romantic?
A: Who’s not American? I think I’m romantic. Are you guys ready to workshop?
Q: Is your girlfriend Yugoslavian?
A: Let’s arrange the desks for workshopping. What time is it, anyway? Look—we’re boring Vivienne.
I sat up so fast, a poem I’d been working on flew to the floor. My heart started up with its nervous pumping. “Wait, no. I’m not bored. I’m just listening.” My eardrums throb from listening so hard, I could have added. And do you have a girlfriend, Peter Breznik?
from Sycamore Review | Runner-Up for the 2018 Wabash Prize for Poetry
I’d like to say a few things to the world—
like World, I waste too much time. I keep reading about creams
for my crow’s feet, the ones at my eyes, the ones they say you acquire
by smiling, but World, I said recently—I was deadheading coneflowers—
I don’t smile like I did in the old days. In the old days, for the kids,
I’d shred crayons to bits with a cheese grater, and then iron the bits
between heart-shaped sheets of waxed paper. We’d tape them
to the kitchen glass door so that shards of pink stars would spill through.
Pink makes me think, World, what is happiness? Once
it might have been cherry blossoms, but the cherry tree roots
grew into the house’s foundation, so we chopped them both down.
We turned them to mulch with a stump grinder, and one daughter
went silent for days. She was longing, so I taught her that word: I said,
Does your heart feel pulled tight as a kite string? World, what’s the ratio
of longing to happiness, of the number of inhabitants longing
to the number of inhabitants singing around the fires of their villages?
Or are they also longing? Years back, my people used to sing
around a fire so big you could not see the stars, our horses blanketed and tied
to the pine trees. After the fire, we would walk a ways out
on the mountain road—you can’t imagine the stillness. You could hear
the drawn breaths of spirits hovering, stars like shattered glass jars
in the sky. World, do you ever at night just look up in a clearing?
Certain angles I can never forget: Orion spread out
upside-down diagonally; nights when the sky seems a clear bowl
set over us. It all goes so fast. One minute you’re on a hill calling after
your children, the next you’re in an overstuffed chair in the dark,
imagining yourself addressing the planet, your life like the light
through a window fading. World, what’s the ratio
of present moments to passing? Even these stars are memories.
from Sugar House Review
She Asked Her Husband to Buy Her a Dog
after the Last One Died Unexpectedly
I’ll take any dog you can find she said
just make sure it will curl up at my feet
when I pray on my knees like the last one did
but passing a dull wiry-coated dog
in the village she realized appearance
was paramount so she said find me a dog
with a coat soft as goose feathers
a deep Irish red and see that his eyes
are caramel and since she’d said “his”
she felt a male would be best and most natural
in case he ever turned into a real boy
as the last dog was so close to doing
she had always wanted a son
and on second thought she wanted the dog
to be large I want him like a bear cub
she said but without any claws or instinct
to sleep in a snow cave and then later
she said she’d prefer for the dog to be silent
or maybe to know a few words like
that’s perfect or what can I do for you
because he would be doing so much
making up for the last dog who was brilliant
even if he had hidden under her bed
at the very thought of fireworks he had been
the most intelligent dog in this or the last
century until the new dog she kept calling
her husband about and when he said
what if what you want isn’t out there her life
lit up in her mind like a shoe-box diorama
their children and the flowers sculpted
from that homemade salt play-dough
she had loved as a child she remembered
each detail a bench under a tree a blue pond
yellow birds always perched where she set them
from The Red Wheelbarrow
From What Might Be the Middle of Her Life
By now she wishes someone would just tell her
how to love the children and the animals
better how to stop killing peonies they all long
for something should she have been a banker’s wife
or a painter’s lover she falls in love everyday
John Donne paper cranes wisteria should she
have lived now or in the seventeenth century
those houses in a row that glow like honey dull needles
white aprons she hasn’t had a big thought
in years as when one of the children paused
at the glass door to the kitchen and time
rammed into itself a hundred little girls
through history looking in at their mothers
holding knives over peppers she changes
her mind like handwriting block letters long
wisps she falls asleep in the lectures there is
no remedy she’s asked for it her heart skips
and her ovaries are expiring she likes stories
of women who hear voices in the temple
who give the last cruse of oil to the prophet
though heaven knows she keeps the roundest loaf
for herself she loves a pale sky a red maple
its lush arms beckoning like a great aunt
on the hillside but she’s afraid of the insects
sharp things burrowing in