wicked alice| fall 2009


current | archives | guidelines | blog | dgp| sundress

 

 

 

Julie Marie Wade

 
 

Gala Court, Sunrise

 

 

As I first undressed her, I thought of swans.  Wings the colour of candlelight.  Dark feet parting the waters.

 

We had never kissed, only the flicker of her hand against my back.  Broken open, beads from every string—mercury seeping its vial.

 

Tongues like wings.  Feathered hair and hands.  A rapturous sound of ascent.  Trumpeting triumph.

 

Naked, I opened my parasol limbs. 

Naked, her harp strings, her music.

 

I plunged in.  No bleeding.  No honey-hot stream of our blood.

 

It was the very early morning of our swan song.  Early, I say, not easy.  And yet it was.  I flowed into her like the first, warm wind of a season.  No one overtaken, and we both succumbed.

 

Outside her window, singing and splashing.  The sudden flare of the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Headlines

after Robert Creeley

 

Early this

morning

Reno wakes us

winds clashing cool

against warm

 

A hint of

hunger in the desert

your eggs over

easy

coffee sweetened

with cream and a

news-paper

spread across

our table

 

Words will be

bread, you said

 

Here in

the Little Big City

we learn we

are legal

(twelve months into

Love

 

Someone in politics

thought fit to

bless

this

which he could

not have

known

to discuss in

confidence

the pros and

cons

and tell us

on the front page

 

        center

 

their findings,

their verdict,

their vote:

 

By narrowest

margins

 

To kiss you

no longer a crime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Falls

 

Snow, certainly—

soft culmination

                                                (or)

deafening anti-sound

the wish to remember: silence

red face in the clouds

                                                (or)

my father, who cannot

be comforted

 

Bless him, George Bailey.

 

Surreptitiously, snow—

your particular blush

                                                (or)

a bottle of cheap champagne

Suggest alternatives to driving.

 

Staying home

                                                (or) (and) (equals)

Suicide

unlikely

                                                (or)

out of the question

 

Damn you, George Bailey.

 

Enter the questions:

 

Will there be snow there?

 

Black ice?                            

And what of the turtles—

 

Will they freeze on the road?

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Nexus

 

 

In the Catskills

 

a woman dances

 

to keep herself

 

alive

 

 

Niagra

 

a neighbor willingly

 

descends

 

 

And this morning

 

snow in Cincinnati

 

brought a bristled hush

 

to every spinning wheel

 

on the road

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Starlight

 For Angie

 

 

 

To say what has been said before,

                though more exactly, and with a tongue

                more expert in its twist, its kiss.

                What has been consumed becomes

                consuming, impatient as August

                for the rain.                                                          

 

 

 

                                                                                What roses ratify,

                                                                                will not explain

 

 

 

In pain I have unfolded the Rapunzel

                rope of my hair and you, the deep

                sockets of your diligent palms.

                A window, latticed or curtained—

                we have climbed out of it.  A wall,

                trellised or tempered with ivy—

                 we have climbed over it.  In joy,

                the yeast of the heart endlessly rising.

                In sex, windmills softening stone.

 

 

 

                                                                                Begin again, at the

                                                                                apex, a long-lashed

                                                                                ingénue.

 

 

 

 

The needle sticks—see this—iris, cornea, lid.

 

Another song—

blue, with a fleck—

               begins.

 

 


Born in Seattle in 1979, Julie Marie Wade completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh.  She has received the Chicago Literary Award in Poetry, the Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, the Oscar Wilde Poetry Prize, the Literal Latte Nonfiction Award, and 6 Pushcart Prize nominations.  She is the author of 2 collections of lyric nonfiction, Wishbone: A Memoir in Fratures (Colgate University Press, 2010) and In Lieu of Flowers (Sarabande, 2011), and a poetry chapbook, Without (Finishing Line Press, 2010).