Diane Lockward
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Diane Lockward is the author of What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006) which was awarded the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Eve’s Red Dress (Wind Publications 2003), and a chapbook, Against Perfection (Poets Forum Press, 1998). Her poems have been published in several anthologies, including Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the Worlds’ Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poetry International, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, featured on Poetry Daily, and read by Garrison Keillor on NPR’s The Writers Almanac. She is the recipient of a 2003 Poetry Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. A former high school English teacher, Diane now works as a poet-in-the-schools. Please visit her website: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Missing Wife
Wife and dog missing
Reward for dog-Bumper Sticker on a pickup truckThe wife and dog planned their escape
months in advance, laid up biscuits and bones
waited for the careless moment when he’d forgot
to latch the gate, then hightailed it
They took shelter in the forest, camouflaged
the scent of their trail with leaves
Free of him at last,
they peed with relief on a tree
Time passed. They came and went as they pleased,
chased sticks when they felt like chasing sticks,
dug holes in what they came to regard
as their own backyard. They unlearned
how to roll over and play dead.
In spring the dog wandered off in pursuit
of a rabbit. Collared by a hunter and returned
to the master for $25, he lives
on a tight leash now.
He sleeps on the wife’s side of the bed,
whimpering, pressing his snout
into her pillow, breathing
the scent of her hair.
And the wife? She’s moved deep into the heart
of the forest. She walks
on all fours, fetches for no man, performs
no tricks. She is content. Only sometimes
he gets lonely, remembers how he would nuzzle
her cheek and comfort her when she twitched
and thrashed in her sleep.
Pastiche for a Daughter’s Absence
It all comes down to what’s physical,
this missing her – her face, voice, and skin.
I imagine my daughter dancing in Madrid, Barcelona,
and Seville, climbing the mountains of Andulasia.
I had not imagined how far away faraway would be.
Happiness, unhappiness – the same,
my sweet Zen master says,
and I wonder if the top of my head
supports heaven, or is this a migraine
coming on?
I circle back to the place where precision
and ecstasy meet, remember how I carried the tadpole
of her body, long before the first flutter, holding her
like a secret inside me.
I wake in the night missing
a body part, my arm stretched across the ocean,
hooked to the past, and I wonder,
as Achilles’ mother must have,
which part of you did I not dip in the water?
Heavy with absence, I hang curtains in her windows,
yards and yards of delicate Irish lace.
I hide behind the door, ear pressed to the wood,
and watching my daughters life – her evening paseo,
late dinners in Saragossa’s village square.
The room fills with the smell of gazpacho, paella, sangria.
Something like grief washes through me, something like joy.
I slip into the waves, feel the ebb and flow of her,
my water sprite, my sea nymph, remember the way
she glides through a room, the low-tide
of her voice, how she leaves us,
breathless, all fish at her feet.
PYROMANIA
The heart wants what the heart wants,
and what it wants is fire.
My friend Roz, six months into a relationship
with a seemly man, dumps him
and says, There’s no fireworks.
Roz wants a full scale Grucci display –
her lover a licensed pyrotechnician,
Roman candles manually fired,
multi –color scenes, a barrage
of illuminations, the sky pulsing,
and always the Grand Finale.
Think of that woman in Colorado,
a forest ranger, who goes into the woods
a letter from her estranged husband
clutched in her fist, a firestorm in her heart.
She reads the letter one last time,
strikes a match and kindles his words,
watches them shrivel.
Think of the entire forest in flames,
the blaze billowing and consuming,
Trees surrendering to fire,
skeletons of timber, and charred remains.
And now I learn that silicone in the breasts
must be excised before cremation
or it blows up, liquefying to a dangerous substance,
destroying the crematorium.
I’d like to have breasts like that-
Round and full, earth-tipped and tilted
Heavenward, the kind that ignite and explode.
I’d like my breasts to burst into flame,
spreading like wildfire,
tongues of scarlet licking the walls
I’d like breasts just that white hot
as once they were under the touch
of my lover, so recently departed.
I’d like to burn the crematorium down.
Please visit my web site: www.dianelockward.com dslockward@Aol.com
