A CRITIC WRITES POEMS

FIVE POEMS by PEG DUTHIE

Leftovers

(first published in Measured Extravagance [Upper Rubber Boot Books, 2012])

We talked about our mothers too damn much

at Thanksgiving dinner. Then the fresh guilt

clung to the days that followed, like the silt

of drippings refusing to leave the pan.

That’s what ghosts do, you told me: they stain

our lives with should-have-dones. I cannot touch

my father’s diaries to this day. No crutch—

not booze, not sweets, not framing the story

as someone else’s parents’—nothing can

bring to the dead the children or glory

they wanted for me to want for them. Their pain

isn’t mine. Yet it haunts the life I’ve built.

And so we talk, and keep on saying grace,

fumbling for the words that best fit our place.

Selection

In spite of knowing better, some days I covet

the girls who wear Greek letters -- their chants

and chosen flowers, the three-character charms

dangling from dainty chains -- their societies’ names

so much like incantations: Abracadabra,

Chi Omega, Delta Omicron, Tau Theta Pi.

But I have never been much of a sister

in fact or friendship, and there is no magic

that will make me so -- no wand to transform

this square into a willing peg

corresponding to a circle. Most days,

I give thanks -- my strangeness is my steel.

Still, I remember the monogrammed bags

that were all the rage at my junior high --

and the sorrow I stewed in, what

with my stub of a first-gen name -- so short

I was always being asked, “And the rest?” --

and not yet grown, not yet wise to the ways

of making my name and the rest of me mine.

To My American Nieces on My Daddy’s Side

If a man fishes for your Chinese name

and then wants to call you by it,

throw him back into the worldpool.

A man who would treat that name as more “you”

than the one that’s served you every day for years

is a man who expects you to be an easy answer.

You should wait for men who, asked to carry water,

will recognize which handles can be relied on

and which are for show, are gestures to tradition --

key to the shape, yes, but neither spine

nor skin nor skeleton. A grain of grit

surrounded by layers of nacre -- your suitors

should already know how pearls are formed

and how one setting cannot fit all,

not even gems from a single bed. Start

with that. You’ll have plenty of secrets

(even some of ancient Chinese vintage)

to share with the man who doesn’t presume

anything by or with your given names,

holding his tongue until he learns more

about the things to be truly between you.

Longer Than Tennessee

Sometimes it's a way

to describe a slip of the knife

or a slip sliding past the hem

or not being able to slip away from a meeting:

That gash was longer than Tennessee!

That lace could have curtained all of Tennessee!

That goddamned speech was longer than Tennessee!

Sometimes it's the night ahead -

too shallow to soak up all of your regrets

yet so, so long you don't know how you'll make it to shore

except that you've somehow done it before,

stumbling past sad mountains

and make-believe grace

and poison-laced songs

and heavy but hollow prayers

to return to that grove

where light slips in between the leaves,

where the day is a rustle of silver,

whispering, shining,

its dazzling train of possibilities

stretching out longer than Tennessee.

Goose Goose Duck

(first published in -gape-seed- [Uphook Press, 2011])

Years later, they couldn’t remember

if it had started over scallion pancakes

and plum wine at Moon Palace

or haloumi and harissa at 2 a.m.

in her best friend’s kitchenette

or ramekins of olives

on his father’s back porch

the day before Rosh Hashanah.

They’d been arguing, as usual,

about the chicken and the egg,

the rain and the sea,

the ball and the bat,

festivals and gods, and on

and on, but they always returned

to chickens and eggs and falling skies

and roads that were taken --

and before they knew it, it had become

how they knew each other. IMs began

with “goose goose duck” and

“grace of full, mary hail” and

“ye afore Scotland” and even

“bark wandering.” His dying

made widows of the questions he liked to answer

and stranded the answers she liked to question.

Before the undertaker arrived, she leaned

close to the lips of her love, as if she could hear

a phantom punchline within the absence of air,

and then she whispered, “Who’s there? Knock, knock.”

*****

Peg Duthie is a Taiwanese American indexer and copyeditor. She is the author of Measured Extravagance (http://www.upperrubberboot.com/measured-extravagance/). Her poems and photographs have appeared in Prime Number Magazine, unFold, and elsewhere.