Nee | writermelissakemp

I want to tell you about myself.

I have always wanted to.

I open my mouth,

utter trills like robins,

blue birds, whip-o-wills

mourning. They hide

me under wings

from my black self.

If they give me feathers

blue or green as your eyes,

if I sew them to my skin,

will my burden lift light

burst from my breast

into the sun like Icarus?

I am the daughter

of a Harvard lawyer,

just light-skinned enough

not to cause trouble.

Born to be intellectual,

a talented tenth, exceptional;

this is no armor.

Raised outside Jim Crow,

spared the nineteenth century,

1880; this is no shield.

I can tell you about myself,

but I could never keep a journal.

Something about it is too personal,

more than I can ever admit,

like the first time a new maid collects

my stained underwear for washing.

•

A marriage license, inauspicious,

ornately penned, the letters

a latticework of permissions

has been issued to

Archibald Henry Grimké—

a zenith acknowledged

by respectable people.

He strides down the sidewalk,

smile crisp,

like nothing could

crack his façade—

and Miss Sarah Stanley—

crazy some people said,

a reckless adventurer from Minnesota,

audacious, marrying a black man,

daring to accompany him

arm in arm, arrant—

who were quietly married yesterday—

at Tanglewood, home of the groom’s aunt,

Angelina Grimké Weld—noted abolitionist.

Only a newspaper announcement,

ancient matriarchs, lop-sided family

in attendance. A spray of rice,

rhythm to fertilize.

•

*I am nine, pressing

through olive underbrush.

Unafraid of worms and squirrels,

I push on to granite boulders,

stagnant in warm, moist air.

Sheltered, lady-slippers hide.

Alone, leave me,

or I'll make you disappear

like Genie's Magic Blink, l

ike witches do,

or trolls on toadstools.

Climbing over these boulders i

s like climbing searchlights

on Poor Mountain that don’t find

me when I’m lost.

Pristine flowers hide there,

named for women's garments,

with shapes like peace lilies.

I'll show you my A-cup breast

and the hair on my legs, but it's a secret.

One afternoon I see a spider have babies.

She squirts them out of her back.

She shivers like she is autumn.

My mother says, get back,

she might sting me. But I don't hear

and run, skipping, to the train's whistle.

It's hooting makes wild turkeys start,

flushes them shrieking

from the low field.

Lady-slippers can't live long

once you pick them. I

know the fairy who plants them there.

All girls’ shoes should fit

like lady-slippers, except those

that fit the fairy's feet, pointy and keen.

I wonder what it's like

to jump off Poor Mountain and fly.

Sometimes I am a chicken hawk,

six-foot wings fanning diesel air.

I wonder why my dog Queenie

ate her babies; it scared me. I

hear voices trapped

inside beer bottles. I could run

away and disappear. The wild azaleas

grow to the road's end. Almost to Craig

County, almost to the sky. Momma said

once she never wanted me, an accident

of youth that happened in these woods,

where I play and hear echoes.∗

•

Can I be contessa?

Should I be decoration,

drawing accolades

from approving matrons?

If I am an ornament

Will my sparkle—art deco,

rococo—fade like sundown?

Maybe a lawyer like my father,

in the first female law office

on Newberry Street,

my name in gold on the door.

Or the first woman to fly;

I could say hello to the blackbird

that landed at my feet yesterday.

I could inquire about his family

and whether the neighbors

were expecting. I could escape

marital bliss and ride a camel

in the Sahara, or drive

a Sprint car in Indianapolis.

At 12, I will dress my last doll.

I will take up tennis. If I must

be a teacher, I’ll teach sports,

movement, always away

from the shadow chasing.

•

A cotillion is compulsory.

Miles of bobbinet intricately obscure

my nubile hips, the modest dip

of my neck, my practiced glance.

Something about my willowy frame suggests

a need for muscles to protect it.

Standing in this receiving line,

I am recommended,

my hands kid gloves, delicate.

I St. James Bow to my future;

this is compulsory.

Father, is that you?

And beyond that, Father told me order, regulation,

to exchange my guts, show them to the sun.

Feather breaths slip my soul away,

the headstone sprouts.

And if my marriage vow starts as obligation,

what successful outcome is possible?

And Love, despite austere admonitions,

plans for this year’s flower garden,

raspberries hanging fat and low,

refined enough to live anywhere,

and some lemon

and wisteria to surround me

with flowers and no mother.

She left one day. She swept out

like shells cracked and discarded,

got tired of dressing me in toile.

It seems our house had too much dust,

not enough porcelain, no Tiffany lamps.

In pair we part though angel’s skein binds us.

What is it that haunts, tortures

sleep, leaves grainy streaks?

You covered with powders?

Nightmares would be

welcome visitors.

•

I woke to pink waterfalls from rain

clouds that held up umbrellas. I stretch

one arm from my eyes to pull my hair;

I have nothing to do other than watch

as pine trees sprout from my toes.

My portrait looks at me with eyes wild,

sees the hole in the back of my head

where I store lies told to me an imaginary friend.

We should go to the Fenway!

The ducks will be cursing

because the pink rain pelts them

like golf balls. We should quack

at them. They will quack wise tones

that explain our mistakes, teach us

why women put girl-imagination behind them—

play tag, splash in pools, comb hair.

We should make collages, glued with

Starlight Mints and gum we don’t swallow.

I’ll go to the Fenway alone. I don’t know the way

to get there on the path I walk everyday.

I’ll watch for a braid extending from my portrait.

It has watched me get lost on my way

to the bench at Fenway that has my prints in it.

Everyday of my life, the portrait extends a braid

out the window all the way to where the ducks toss

their eggs into the air, watch them burst open as flight.

•

*∗Earth bouquet mingles with church bells

that stir a breeze around hyacinths.

We stood on the stone platform at the church

side door. You unbuttoned the neck

of your dress, loosed a purr that brought

prickly heat to my cheeks.

A goldfinch calls a mate in the boxwoods.

You murmur my name, melodious on your tongue.

Martha and Mary Magdalene, why didn’t I plug

my hearing, listening only to the sea in my head.

Better you had said “narcissus, narcissus!”

I would have known you meant devotion

that submerges, drowning the risen dead.

•

Reeling Freeman maple leaves surface

to bottom and back again, moved

by eddies of duck feet that disturb

the sewage they drop. All is brown

for so long. Spring will only come

under duress, averse to save us

from so many shades of decay.

Mourning babies born too soon, fooled by

false spring followed by blueberry winter.

They toil at icy breath, gag the frozen worm

or mite, so precious little.

Spring won’t be so brutal four hundred miles south.

The return to life forced through ice shorter,

multitudinous escapes from serrated earth, life

no longer entombed. The icy grip will loosen faster,

my heart ease its thundering, nerves release

with the japonica unfurling.

•

I adapt my morning schedule

the newspaper, tea and toast,

a conversation with Father

about an obscure tenet of law.

It never occurs to him

that I comprehend

its intricacies.

Would a proper

Washington lady

think the same?

•

A little note

bare, cheerful—Dear Father . . .

disintegrates alongside a small

portion of my innocence.

Smile affixed, lips quiver, full.

I must keep happy, do anything

but bring you trouble.

But doleful spirits, demons

can’t be avoided. Taking

my morning leave is the only path.

I shall never do anything desperate,

naive in the noonday sun.

I can never show a true face,

gain riddance of this monster.

I sigh abomination, die daily, survive.

•

I tell my father’s ghost

sentiments, regrets

for which I construct a small cottage

form bricks from each impossible longing.

I waited for your death. Watched perspiration

and feather breaths slip your soul away.

Earlier in the day I thought to tell you everything

I’ve never spoken, that I sacrifice us on Love’s

clamorous altar. While comatose your mind

might accept the truth in it, might recollect

moments when you chose me unconditionally.

Perhaps your brain could reroute trauma.

Avoid a last stress disorder. I expect that if I speak,

some uncensored gasp might escape. My last breath

with yours. I killed myself, held back truth, exploded.

_________________

∗ After “Venus’s Fly-Traps” by Yosuf Komunyakaa. In Magic City. (1st .ed). Wesleyan Poetry Series,1994.

**After Kathryn Stripling Byer’s “Trillium.” In Wildwood Flower. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State, 1992

University Press, 1992.