Poems of Realization

The two poems in our January issue describe unexpected moments of clarity. In Claire McQuerry’s “I Always Wanted a Wife,” the speaker has a gradual epiphany about her true feelings about her marriage. And in Rachael Petersen’s “Tassajara,” the lessons she learns at a Zen retreat come not from the monks or meditation sessions, but from a boisterous dog. You can hear the authors read their poems by clicking the Play buttons below.

Take care and read well,
Nancy Holochwost, Associate Editor

 

I Always Wanted a Wife
By Claire McQuerry

He took a childlike pleasure in devouring
good meals, in tearing the paper from presents,
in praise, in turning his back to me
so I could work out the knots. Sometimes,
entering the room where I read or typed,
he’d say in one of his funny voices,
I always wanted a wife, and kiss the top
of my head. He had many funny voices,
and funny faces he’d put on, funny
songs he’d invent. I didn’t mean to
eat your berries, he’d sing after eating
all the blackberries I’d been saving
for breakfast, and I couldn’t be mad then
because he’d made me laugh.
He had eyes like lacquered mahogany,
heavy lids, dark lashes, a mole on his left
clavicle—or was it the right? 
When he smiled, his whole face smiled,
like a lamp clicking on only for me.
He’d stay awake till 3 am,
reading Kierkegaard or René Girard and eating
pomegranates—the rinds and piths of which
he’d leave in a bowl on the coffee table,
along with a good tea towel he’d stained
red with the juice, and his absent-
mindedness was endearing enough
that I never kept mad for long.
He’d stay awake late practicing
the moonwalk in boxers and socks.
He’d stay awake learning card tricks
and vanishing coins. How I loved
his originality, his fine mind! How he’d
make me laugh. He’d stay awake flirting
with other women online. Or he’d stay
awake till four and come to bed
wanting sex, though I had to be up
for work at six. It pleased me
to please him. It took a long time
to understand about the anger
that I’d dropped like a bucket
down a deep well. I had to haul it up
hand over hand to see it, and even then,
when I saw what it was, it took a long time
for me to recognize it was mine.

Tassajara
By Rachael Petersen

The abbot declared your beloved pit bull had Buddha nature,
so you carried her sixty muscled pounds to the mountain

monastery, where we sat sesshin and she ate wool socks,
a box of chocolates, and eight pages of Robert Aitken. 

(All is impermanent, quickly passing.)

Creatures filled that weeklong silence—incessant Steller’s jays, your panting
dog, even our own graveled steps dancing down the valley’s furrowed brow.

I could hardly believe I once meditated the way I used to love:
from the neck up. But then you ruined me, how a koan ruins:

Kindly. By surprise. Seizing all surety. Even beginners
know not to mistake a finger pointing at the moon

for the moon. But I couldn’t distinguish
between your hand and what it summoned:

arrival, dissolution, a soft light to come—which I didn’t,
because your dog sauntered unseen to our low bed

and licked, with vigor, my left breast. The old teachers
used to hit their students. Zen is full of shocking sensations

and sudden laughter. My cackling roused a dozen monks
as you dragged your dog by the collar to a corner.

I wanted to kiss her back because the teachings
ask us to love what feels impossible to love.

Like our last night at the monastery, when she
trailed us to the hot springs and rumbled with a skunk.

In essential terms we are not separate from the skunk.
Still, we fought the stench of interdependence:

You mixed Dawn and baking soda in a bucket
while I slung open the sliding cedar doors.

Outside, the stars were pinpricks in wet denim,
the night dripping. Forgive me, Paul,

that I like to remember you this way: naked, hunched
in yellow kitchen gloves, scrubbing

your fetid dog between us while we kissed,
were kissing, and the moon overhead—

what use did the three of us have for it?—
went missing.