Sample Poems by Barbara Daniels
This Is a Practice Planet
On God’s bruised lips he tastes the metallic flavors
of regret. For him we’re like family, too much alike,
men especially, their size wrong for the spaces
next to cribs, their arms so high they must bend
cumbrously to lift wet dishes from the dishwater.
God reaches for the reset button. He sees
the massive darkness, bursts of color and
the slow ticking over. This time he’ll check
the systems. But regret stays his hand
in the humid air. A single finger, knuckle
swollen, points at nothing. Then God
folds his fingers into his armpits and leans
slightly toward us. He’s fond of men, the way
they stand at altars in their white vestments,
the things in their hands—axes, dayplanners,
Nintendo games. He knows their desire
to raise an axe, wield rage like a tool,
heavy, shining dully. He knows his face is red
with grief. He wanted everyone to act
in the world, violet-green swallows knifing
through transparent spaces, spiders lifting
and dropping their own bodies, dogs systematically
patrolling lawns, women starting meetings,
calling them to order at the right time.
The Woman Who Tries to Believe
Beneath the tin roof of a stone porch a woman listens.
Rain clicks on tin, creating time, minutes in a row
like garnets knotted on a sturdy thread.
She believes a rose turning in its moment
of near perfection does exist apart from its dead self,
the mat of rotted petals like a hole stabbed by crows
in the side of a dead raccoon, crows that remember
and seek the dead heart. When a car passes on the gravel,
their beaks return to the blood before the splashed water
flattens itself. To the woman the rain on the roof
sounds like frogs she hears marking their need
for each other, ticking, awake when she is awake
in the night. Most mornings she lifts a dead frog
from the pool with the rescue hook. In the night,
blue light rising out of the pool charms the frogs
from their muddy slough. She believes they must hurl
themselves in, leaping on gigantic legs, purposeful,
eager, dying already. Everything ends, she knows this,
but she tells herself it happens in a different blue pool,
in a different, less insistent, kind of rain.
What Saves You
A bowl of dark oil
stands on your table.
You dip your fingers into it,
cover your whole hand.
You call your feeling sadness.
It is despair. People say
you choose your sorrow,
that truck parked on your chest.
You don’t have the strength
to sweep through a store,
buy a stark new lampshade.
huge ovals of purple soap,
white sheets that would bloom
in moonlight. All the utensils
of the heart. You don’t paint
a blue sun on your forehead.
Remember prayer?
You squeezed each finger,
gently, eyes tight shut.
It was only an attitude.
But surely it saved you,
didn’t it? Didn’t it teach you
strangeness? The florid colors
behind closed eyes?
Snow clots the grass outside
your window. If you look
directly into it, can’t you
remember the idea of light?
During the Prelude
By nine fifty I’m hunched
in a pew, scrutinizing
the bulletin down to the names
of the greeters who touch
each person at the main door
and the other couple,
plopped in their seats
like balloons filled with sand,
the ones who chose the altar flowers.
They judge their bouquet,
compress their lips, and nod,
finally, willing to pay. God
is motionless on these spring
mornings. The salaried organist flips
to her last page. The choir
steps off from the back. I do not
turn. I know the ministers
have synchronized their watches
like referees before a swim meet,
slender, already suited up.
Together, they pace to the front.
I sweat in my decent dress.
My husband arrives
at the lectern. He is about
to speak. The white tab
in the center of his collar is
plastic, cheaper to buy
than cloth, cheaper to clean.
I study the nubs of stocking
that pimple my ankles, hymnal
heavy on my thighs. If only
I were holding The New York Times,
blackening my fingers,
smearing my face with the ink.