click book

Face Cells

Babies have "face cells" in their brains, whose purpose
is to recognize their mothers' facial features.

You come into the world seeing
only as far as my breast and face

for your life depends on knowing me
and there are cells in your baby brain

just for recognizing—
out of the chaos

of shadow and light—my face.
You scan me, shape me,

memorize the feathered sweep of hairline,
almond curve of eyelids,

movement of irises
looking back,

a flesh moon
rising in the room's outer space

(lips—dark, plump—
kiss, smile, coo).

You see me see you,
make me as I made you.

Purple Crocuses

Seduced by El Niņo's eastern balm, they bloom early.
One morning they appear, sudden like shining wet paint
splashed across the newly green lawn.

They've naturalized, their opulent purples
each year more abundant with drunken bees
buzzing between six pointed petals.

Purple crocuses with shocking orange centers
were here before I stuck my shovel in this dirt,
perhaps before the old widow, Elvira Lockwood,

who dug here before me and left a wind chime
for her ghost to breathe against
while the red-throated house finches warble,

who, a neighbor woman told me, loved birds and flowers
and planted the climbing rose of pale pink and milk
that never bloomed for us until our daughter's birth.

Even as the hands touch wood, say this house is mine—
the barn, the fence, the rose trellis my love built
for the warm-petalled Joseph's coat to climb,

the dirt tinder my feet—these purple crocuses
spread under the fence to share themselves with neighbors,
unownable fleeting musical notes for the eye to hear.

ALIKI BARNSTONE is a poet, translator, and scholar, whose books of poems include The Real Tin Flower (introduced by Anne Sexton), Windows in Providence, and most recently, Madly In Love. She is the editor of Voices of Light: Spiritual and Visionary Poems by Women around the World from Ancient Sumeria to Now. Her poems have appeared in Agni, Boulevard, The New England Review, New Letters, The Southern Review, The Southwest Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She is Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Purple Crocuses" first appeared in The Southern Review.  These two poems are taken from Barnstone's new book of poems, Wild With It (The Sheep Meadow Press 2002)

ForPoetry