| The Moon Inside by Ruth Daigon | ||
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1 Women know how to wait. They smell the dust, listen to light bulbs dim and guard the children pale with dreaming. They hear danger tapping along walls, sidewalks sinking and edges of the city bruising the landscape. Down long corridors they whisper to each other of alarm bells and balanced crosses, of shrouded eyes and empty stars while the moon inside them takes a slow, silver breath. 2 She keeps pulling him up from the bottom of the Red River in stop action or slow motion and replays the splash blooming around his hips. She corrects his dive, restores the promise of his form, each movement clear in the instant of falling. The moment reversed, she reels him up to where he's still sitting on the bank. Now, mother covers her scalp with hair torn by its roots. Screams sucked back into her mouth become soft syllables again. Her shredded clothes rewoven. The table set for his return. 3 As the body's laid out, she stands at attention waiting for the clearest light and then sharpens her instruments. First, the eyes removed to see what was seen, ears probed to hear what was heard then the heart dissected to find what was missing. It takes time to cut tenderly into the bone and sinew of the past, each knife stroke a loving incision. There is no entrance. Only entering. When the body's exposed, she climbs inside, pulls closed the flaps of skin and slowly heals herself. 4 In her kitchen, she knows each blunted blade, worn handle, broken tip, the past compressed in steel. Along with sacramental noise of cups knocking, lips smacking, she hears carving knives and cleavers splitting days into edible proportions. Skillful at the cutting board, she pays her vegetable tithes to the crock pot, the salad, the wok, slices and slices into the heart of things. Familiar knives carve her into chunks served up for family supper. From the scraps and bones she makes a broth and feeds herself. 5 She lay sprawled on the table between a pitcher of milk and stained napkin. A giant sponge swept her crumbling parts over the edge. Before dis- appearing into the dust pan, she remembered how simple life had been between the curved fork and serrated knife. 6 Nineteen-thirty was a long, cold childhood wedged into a scar and food that filled half the cupboard. She'd lick the pencil stump and make her lists. Each item considered, written, erased, rewritten according to what jingled in the broken tea pot. At six o'clock, she always listened to the news and groaned, her body a vast burial ground for victims of plagues, revolutions, wars, each groan another corpse. She stood ironing, every stroke a preparation for the burial, a straightening of limbs, a smoothing of features, a final act of love. 7 a convention of women facing out into the lens picnics birthdays all swimming to the surface of the acid bath a procession of cardboard moments poorly focused with here and there an empty space like a prediction RUTH DAIGON won the Ann Stanford Poetry Award in 1997 and the "The Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award in 1994 and in 1995. Prior to her career in poetry she was a professional singer: a Columbia Recording Artist, a guest artist on CBS's Camera Three, a soloist with the New York Pro Musica. In the late seventies, she made the transition to full time poet, editor, performance artist. She was founder/editorof the poetry publication (click title) Poets On. Daigon is the author of three online chapbooks at Web Del Sol, Pares Cum Paribus (Chile) and The Alsop Review. Ruth Daigon's PAYDAY AT THE TRIANGLE (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Ruth Daigon's Between One Future And The Next, (Papier- Mache Press), was published in 1995. Her latest book, (click title)The Moon Inside, has just been published Gravity/Newton's Baby. A selection of her poems, entitled Ruth Daigon's Greatest Hits, is forthcoming from Pudding House publications as part of their Gold Chapbook Series. |