And Four More Poems.
By SANDRA KOLANKIEWICZ.
•
Inner Critics
Look, you know they’re trying to help you.
After all, where they’re from, the worst that can happen
is you don’t belong, shunned at the grocery
store, cut from invitation lists, even your
children as unworthy as you. People tell
with raised brows, up and down
looks, little smirks, a glance over your
shoulder at the person making
faces behind your back, the quick
eye contact between the ones who will gather
together later to process you,
turn you into a pelt after having killed
your wildness, curbed your irrepressible
laughter, made you so self-
conscious you no longer dance in public,
your confidence undermined the way bullies do.
But, listen, turn off the dishwasher,
the radio, look away from your phone,
hang up the tv so you can hear
their growl is a baaaa baaaaa.
That wolf’s tail? Fake. If you search,
you’ll see the button barely holding
on! That fluff will hang there till
falling off, and you’ll be to blame.
Instead of finding a needle and thread,
wolves exert control over you,
lean at you with their costume fangs,
undermine your stance, for they are as
afraid as you are, often as young
as the lost part you are trying
to retrieve—that listens to wolves—
or becomes one. I’m trying to
protect you, he bleats, so you won’t be
rejected. I impose standards
so you won’t experience criticism.
I shame you into staying safe.
So, don’t listen once you’ve seen
his fur is tattered, that there’s a ewe
inside. Forget about that big
thing you did wrong in your attempt
to be more than mediocre, remember
as you’re sitting mindfully on a pillow,
the wolf is a sheep and part of you.
.
Justice
For the problem is never the dispassionate
nature of Justice but instead all the peers she
brings with her in ‘the having and doing of what
is one’s own,’ reason, spirit, and desire driving
a chariot down the highway, or piloting
a ship on the sea with a drunken captain and
a crew who would sail into the rocks, scuttle by
hysteria, instead of following the
route mapped by the navigator. Is what God wants
right because God desires? Or does God seek outcomes
because they are fair, Divine Command keeping us
all in the streets, shaking our signs, choosing our sides,
and for what, the polis? The individual?
What is the nature of man, and why does he feed
us with a spoon while he’s stabbing in the back or
claiming his humanity while posing as God?
The will of the strong, the mutual agreement,
the consequences and how they should be cleanly
distributed while we keep disputing with our
theory what we should be practicing, opening
a door and letting another pass through first—or
not—what is socially just or fair about our
property rights or our body, maximizing
our personal welfare, utilitarian,
retributive, restorative, Abraham as
he lays down a law, Solomon splitting up a
baby, friends sitting at the corner, waiting to
enter the courthouse and watch us win or lose, be
released or confined, Justice with her knee on a
neck, or offering a place to shelter in her
skirt, or as gun with serial number wiped blank,
hidden under her robe wound like a bed sheet or
a shroud, breast exposed to cold air, nipples erect.
.
The Manager
Now the manager sits down with nothing to do,
alone & taskless in a cold room, the anxiety
stirring, stirring her thoughts. After all, life is
the endocrine system, always trying to
compensate for both the reproductive & the
gastrointestinal, the latter closed in its own
biofilm like a universe signaling inside a complete
& independently functioning body. Over
eighty percent of neurotransmitters instantly
communicate to the brain from that microbiome,
so she obeys them: runs, lines up, mounts, reminds,
corrects, praises or critiques, embraces function &
predictable outcomes where the Model’s more
important than the Process, the phenomenon the
result of childhood damage & easily recognized by
the formerly traumatized through a secret language
never said, that distinguishes repressed pressure,
denial, the shifting of intruding thoughts about
self & others, acting on that desire to know &
judge, because, after all, someone needs to
be in charge, assume the data collection, become
askance by distraction when information doesn’t
appear on time or the shipment can’t arrive when
there’s so much, so much resting on an agreed
floor that only the few have fathomed, proactive
without the ritual, left facing this & thus, or let
down by when, by whoever did not do, he who should have
spoken up, or who’d like to undo & renounce but
cannot, this organizing to help us move on in the daily,
this avoidance in order to get done, this looking
just fabulous to the world, approved for high
standards, recognition, & achievements,
this self- immolating till the firefighters come.
.
Our Efforts to Stay
By that time, I no longer said what I
meant, the first step to the last gasp we would
lie together, the etcetera to
all recriminations, the voices in
my ear warning of footfalls behind
me in the darkness trying to push me
in a new direction, holding my tongue
become the fierce growling in the closet
even with lights on. Ever afterwards,
I’ve secreted my thoughts and dried desires,
spoken without saying, a language
learned from you and first perfected by your
mother as if everything wet deserved
a napkin, which were in endless supply
and perfectly placed to catch the every
day droplets caused by our efforts to stay
hydrated and silent in thirsty air.
.
Thirst, Knotted
I eavesdrop on the television’s
announcing what I do not want to
hear, pace room to room, unsure of what
I’m looking for, find the usual
game of plant and harvest wearying,
like thinking of a winter with no
snow, just endless grey and forbidding
wind hovering right at freezing, the
wetness disposing itself
through cold that penetrates us to our
sticky marrow. Am I a rod, I
wonder, and you a bar, bent by the
effort of trying to roll a stone
from the mouth of that tomb
we were saddled with ages ago?
We think life yet breathes on the other
side, want to ensure someone has not
been shut in alive, forgotten but
vital, burning with thirst, knotted with
longing, alone in the dark like a
lost soul waiting for a shaft of light
to come stir the indifferent dust
that ever settles without concern.
♦
Most recently, Sandra Kolankiewicz’s poems have been accepted at The Healing Muse, Galway Review, New World Writing and Appalachian Review. Turning Inside Out is available at Black Lawrence Press. The Way You Will Go and Lost in Transition are available from Finishing Line Press. Her novel, When I Fell, with 78 illustrations by Kathy Skerritt, is available here. She works promoting literacy and learning in Appalachia.
