5 POEMS Kathleen Peirce

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE A MAN In my hand, with my eyes, I find

my great grandfather on the side edge

of a hardwood chair, up on a hip

with his legs crossed, with his hat

pushed back, with his forehead torn by a fleck like a shot

had rung, but he smiles.

My own face as a child comes to mind

like light displaced on lake water by an oar

in my father's hand. And

I had read the sentence here we have a stone earlobe

absorbing the prayers of an ancient Egyptian

the day the couple came to fix the clock,

a grandfather, taller than. They moved, at work,

like fewer than two animals, more than one flower, his gentle

removal of the face, her hand holding the door away,

their one voice low, asking for tools across which

tools were passed, with the heartbeat stopped, her white gloves on,

his shoulder back inside, his hand so lightly

hitting the notes out of sequence wildly, with my son still

not speaking, not come home for years. Absorb, lobe of stone,

because we are first sensual, and then must be rich. __ SHE SAW Between a bird and a leaf sits death. —Yannis Ritsos She saw with one eye marked for lamentation,

white flower centered by a drain of blue

with gray that rose according as, according to,

like the brindled charms one hopes on, verdure

in order, a flux of barriers within a bush of barriers,

like a house one rents and hopes to weight

with an agile temperament by the arrangement

of low chairs. But always, beyond that,

her other eye was marked for flight

as the curve from thing to thing requires. __ AGAIN Again today I see my neighbor

has not been able to take

his golden dog in

whose legs fail

her not

him not

him __ THE AERIALIST It was the shoulders. Every

feather hurt. My souvenir?

Joy, swung out over the blades,

swings back, though in time it goes out

a little less far, joy demurred of itself

like down, or amazement felt receding

far below. It was always night for me,

me twinkling like the star we all

learned rhyme upon, love coming

to itself but as a different self,

like flying but not flying,

expensive, too far, though I was

sure I was a diamond in the sky. __ ELSE Who in the house, as always

without sentences?

Who cried her eyes out, missing her mom?

Who tapped the wrist where the bracelet

had been worn? Who pointed

to the drawing of the man? Who waved,

meaning say hello to your new girlfriend

who drew that, who made my bracelet

that I put away. __ The title “I Don't Know How to Make a Man” is a line from section 13 of Roberto Juarroz' gorgeous First Vertical Poetry. The italicized sentence is from an oracle called The Book of Symbols. The poem's last line is Emerson, from Man the Reformer.