What He Said

I have a wife, my wife
loves me like a child. She is
eighteen and the beauty of it all
let me tell you is seeing her
whole life like one good day
in my hands. There’s late shift,
no luck, her mother’s house—
but I count ten and hell,
the night stops, moonlight
pours through the windows.
Her arms are flimsy; she sleeps
hugging her knees. I’ve watched
for hours the rungs of silver
climbing the curtains. I believe
if the world slept days, I could think
what worked and what didn’t.
I’d get somewhere. But let it go.
We’re goners. The moon anyway is
false light, another face,
one more, done for.

:: Janet Kauffman, Where the World Is (1988)

Spearing

In August he speared tobacco, the long stalk,
like a girl in green skirts, lifting her,
balancing her—then the hollow crack
through the marrow as she came down.
On the ground, the velvet leaves wilted
like difficult tropical things, lopped
for the tourists to poke and hold to the light.
Late in the day, when I drove the tractor
into the field, I watched him shift his weight
and lift each lath to the scaffolding of the wagon.
There was an awkward moment, unmistakable,
when he held the leaves in his arms,
against the length of his body, setting his hand
for the last handling; and he breathed in
the leaves’ dust, his mouth on the leaves’ hair.
Many times in August, the hottest days,
I saw him embrace, like a father who knows his crimes,
these withering girls.

:: Janet Kauffman, Where the World Is (1988)

Round Lake

I tell an easy story, all lies,
at parties. Ask me what I like,
I say digging pits, scrubbing sticks.
Ask me am I married. Easy.
I say no, divorced. You wonder
do I work. Sure, I drill two exact
pinholes in a block of steel.

You I’ll tell two things: the summer
I was twelve I saw the rich men from Detroit
without their wives unravel sails
with the care I’d seen them count their cash.
Their hair was white and gray and brushed.
Their big sails hooked a wind and then two boats
with even-handed men slipped by,
slipped straight in a hush into blue.
I knew that they were making deals out there.
I thought I’d swim sometime to check
but everybody else said, oh yeah,
they’ll hack some waves and yell,
back to your shack, girl. Git, git, git.
But I was sure the men would simply be precise:
Look, we’ll tell you this, and this.
I learned to manage pretty well. And next:
when I was seventeen and pregnant, I saw fire
spread across the lake in whorls,
the flames low, swirled, a richness
like embroidery, or golden robes.
I saw this for myself. And again
that winter, looking down through ice
in calms, in paths of blackened fish,
the sparks careened. A few like mica
flecked at the shores of eyes.
The lake steadied itself with lights
every season after.

Without leaving home
or reading anything I understood,
I knew what traveling could do.
And here I am with square knots tying lies—
when all along it was the lake,
in blue and white and gold geometry,
that dressy fire, that took me in.

:: Janet Kauffman, Where the World Is (1988)

Mennonite Farm Wife

She hung her laundry in the morning
before light and often in winter
by sunrise the sheets were ice.
They swung all day on the line,
creaking, never a flutter.
At dusk I’d watch her lift each one
like a field, the stretches of white
she carried easily as a dream
to the house where she bent and folded
and stacked the flat squares.
I never doubted they thawed
perfectly dry, crisp,
the corners like thorn.

:: Janet Kauffman, Weather Book (1981)

The Prison Guard

In the morning, his trousers fresh from a dryer,
his windbreaker on a hook, he is the foreigner, poor man.
He’s had breakfast, his bacon in strips, on the sunporch,
and he’s brushed his teeth. As he leaves for work
his wife pours bleach from a white plastic jug
slowly, in spirals, into the bowl of the sink.

My darling, my darling, my darling, she says
when he wakes her up in the middle of the night
and breathes on her shoulder, diesel and paint.
A darkness flares, collapses, small-calibre shell.
He’s soft as a smuggler, this stranger. He’s clean.

:: Janet Kauffman, Where the World Is (1988)