TWO POEMS

LOVE SONG

SYLVIE BAUMGARTEL

That did not happen in my house. Oh yes, it did. I pace the house at night Talking in my sleep. Don’t blame me, I don’t know anything. Oh yes, you do.

My grandmother’s teeth in a glass Of peppermint water By the sink at night. She beat my mother’s backside With a hairbrush for singing Dreidle dreidle dreidle, I made you out of clay.

My grandmother sings: Bed is too small for my tiredness Give me a hill top with trees Tuck a cloud up under my chin Lord, blow the moon out, please.

THE HOUSE ON HOLLY STREET

SYLVIE BAUMGARTEL

I go through my grandmother’s Closet looking for things I want when she dies.

I open a can of wax beans & find a preserved Black & orange Grasshopper.

My grandmother tells me About when she & her Friends carried the coffin Of their dead six-year-old friend Who died of typhoid. They wore white dresses.

The more you sweat in peace, The less you bleed in battle.

We play house in our secrets.

A shard of broken glass did not Travel through her blood stream & pierce her heart like she Worried it would. & the Orange seeds I swallowed Are not growing trees inside me. Fear of death is fear of life.

She grows orchids on the Kitchen windowsill. Their silver roots curl. She starves them, They thrive. She Feeds me, I starve.

In the dark, I brushed out her hair. I pushed the veins in her hands. Stop playing with my body, she said. But I love how you feel.