3 Poems by Holly Painter
The day will be beautiful
My knuckles itch and I wonder if you’ve been tested lately
if you parallel park correctly, in only three swipes
if you would know how many times to thump my sternum
and how to seal my mouth completely with yours
The day will be beautiful and it will be my duty to notice
Your father posts us baggies of knotted walnuts
already freed from their round wooden cells
We stay in bed all afternoon and don’t go out
until the hailstones stop plopping on our roof
The day was not beautiful but I didn’t notice
One night, a toothpick alloy bridge straddled the tracks
and was oranger than anything else on the island
We took pictures because we were together
while the streetlights jiggled like we couldn’t keep still
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Turn Back Your Clocks
An answer phone retrieves the voice
Ahem, the prodigal babysitter
Hi, this is Jenny. I’m living in Hawaii.
On an empty stomach
Glass-bottom boat
Maui’s face flattened to the fishies
Fill in the lines of her face here
House-paint white cupboard canvas
Kneel inside the bedsheets
Mandolin chin, feathered fringe
Bra slapped across the backseat
Was I your minder?
Six days in a psych ward. Stomach-pumped.
Just thought you should know
You should know everything about me
I’ll turn your clocks forward
and sell back the hours to
your lakeside castle children
Read off the name here
(Jenny’s boyfriend steals home)
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Save Radio New Zealand
When the radio deejay signs off
Good night you glorious country
he means us, he means
high heels are a turn off
keep your feet flat til he teaches
us to curl our toes
He means for us to break hearts
in succulent glass gardens,
planetariums, post shops
and the toilets at the rodeo
nowhere so obvious as a
corner café called MASH
He means for us to turn in now
dream of circus ladders, ourselves
at the top, turn ourselves in now
come whistling forward
when we realize we can’t
stay balanced forever
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Holly Painter is an MFA graduate of Canterbury University. She can’t decide if she lives in New Zealand or the US, so she lives in both. She is currently working on a book of poetry about Detroit and a novel about Antarctica. Visit Holly at http://adoptapoet.wordpress.com/.
