Three Poems by Heather Dubrow
Lake Monona on the Edge of Storm
the cream of song
curdles
the parallel universe of Cuyp’s golden cows
and napping lakes
trips on its frame
and runs for cover
blue ribbons
that festooned the lake
turn queasy and green
tangled
with cramps
the sky laughs the laugh
of a schoolyard bully
Thunderstorm
As abrupt as purple.
Answers that turn
Their backs on questions.
Couplets stumble.
Appetizers of conditionals
Swallowed up by
Now and I am.
Question
marks
(and Marx too, but that’s a different poem)
but above all, my children, question question marks:
they speak every language like natives
but never finish their sentences
Parentheses retire to the Ladies to refresh their makeup
and to text their girlfriends, all named Meg or Suzie.
Guys, take this loser back to her dorm way before curfew
and try to find yourself
a shapely question mark instead:
it’s a sexier parenthesis, a parenthesis with legs.
Question marks come in different types
and so many genders of course:
No nonsense, no roaming from Times New Roman font
(though after one for the road it bends over
and makes a pass at Garamond)
Helvetica qm’s have their act together
and their briefcases packed
but ah, the Mistral mark outfaces the staider and straighter
embraces all the other words
a flinger a singer dancing flamingo
the wrong type, the one you can’t bring home to mother
but long to meet, especially when you’re sixteen
The question mark as obsessive-compulsive personality:
1) hunched back because uncertain
2) needing to take maybe for an answer
3) feeding the repeat key of the computer
what ifs begin all sentence, what ifs are long sentences
belonging to a prison of barred yesterdays
The question mark as shepherd’s crook:
but these are the most determined of shepherds
they herd us onto shifting ground
seducing us away from resolution
hooking us on fusion cooking
with texts of undelivered letters
lost and found
blowing past our heels
The question mark as cat:
the claws that refresh
by catching rolling roiling spoiling doubts
before they can be swept under the carpet
(if cats had eyebrows, they would raise them frequently)
The question mark as? is? a? the? cross dresser:
it wrote the book on basic black and pearly cufflinks
It comes out when the rest of the sentence
has its back to the wall
and wants to go in.
These question marks curl don’t iron
(though of course they wrote the book on
irony too)
they resist closure
and open every door in the stanza
Copyright © 2013 by Heather Dubrow.