#238: Three Poems by Lori Lamothe

~These poems were selected by Clara Jane Hallar, assistant poetry editor

~This poem previously appeared in New Madrid (2016).

Forecast

At the border between properties

a galvanized washtub collects falling

snow. Hours later, the white’s risen

so high it brims over emptiness.

I want to kneel down before it

and rinse my bare arms in its cold,

clean comfort. I want to let the idea of

an original, untouched world accumulate.

Because there are so many spaces inside me

waiting for renewal. The heart with its huge

barn doors thrown open in anticipation

of love’s galloping horses. The mind

and its attic of memories, or even the hands

held out for work, its solid, familiar tools.

Above me, the clouds open their trap doors

all at once and flakes sift down, blanketing

everything with a marvelous innocence

that will surely last long enough this time.

 

~This poem previously appeared in New Madrid (2016).

Glass Town

A shattered windshield woke us

out of no sleep, a night of trees

snapped in two. The woods

echoing with the sound of gunshots

or maybe just God popping some

supernatural version of bubble wrap. 

The world as we didn’t know it

encased in ice, everything shining,

blinding, melting before us.

Power lines glittered low 

or hissed warnings in tongues.

An entire neighborhood turned from wood

to crystal, its children imprisoned

in the storm’s snow globe gleam. 

You weren’t sure what to think,

eight being an age of wonder still.

Even the pine fallen across the roof

seemed dangerous in a way you couldn’t

resist. But there was fear, too.

Caught up in silence, you watched the sky

erase its work over and over,

saw how darkness spilt all the way to horizon,

blacker than anything you understood.

As for me, I wasn’t sure either.

The cold slithered over our coats,

sank its fangs into the furniture.

I studied the branches of your small bones

and conjured your skeleton scattered across death’s

frozen pond. I heard the jangled music

of the house falling in on itself

and covered my ears against imagining.

But that wasn’t all of it. Huddled

inside our circle of wavering light,

I felt the part of me I’d laid away

like an old nightgown at the bottom of a drawer

float out of hiding and reach across safety

to touch its sleeves to flame.

~This poem previously appeared in The Journal (2016).

The House

is not a shell, echoes ping-

ponging off every wall,

knocking lamps helter

skelter and shattering

orphaned wine glasses.

More like one of those

Russian dolls nobody

knows the name for

but is always using as

metaphor for the word

secrets the word depth

the idea of an onion

unfolding ugly petals  

in an impression of crying.

Open it, the house

and all its little painted faces.

Line them up across the years

in descending order.

Or, if you’d rather, stand

with your mind’s knife

before the cutting board

of the past and peel away

layers of wood of stone

until you reach love’s

coppery sheen or a life

blinking out. Remember

a man who sat transparent

on the edge of the bed

and spoke about threshing

sky for gold. See your

daughter streaming

in and out of selves

childhood blurring by

like the flip book she

made you in first grade.

At last recall the fingerprint

of the voice of the old

owner who told stories

about her six dogs rambling

in wild, unmown lawn

when you know for a fact

there were no dogs no ramblings no

unmown lawns only a black

cat and a carved

highchair for no infant

ornate in its silence.

*****

THE STORY BEHIND THE POEMS

“Glass Town” is based on a severe ice storm that hit Massachusetts in 2008. No one predicted its intensity, so waking up in the night to trees splintering was disorienting and spooky. All communication was down and we had no heat or water, so my daughter and I got into our car and set out to check on my mother, who lives in a nearby town. The damage the storm left was devastating but also beautiful—my daughter was enthralled by this world encased in ice. Almost nothing was open, downed power lines were live on the streets, and roads were nearly empty. I remember stopping at a Dippin’ Donuts and paying for iced coffee, which was all they had. In the poem, I try to capture the mix of emotions such extreme events bring to the surface.

“The House” is about the old Cape I currently live in. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but the reference to the ghost is true, as are all of the other events mentioned. At the time I was so unsettled by my ghostly visitor that I ended up researching the experience. A Harvard professor a friend met at a party assured her my “ghost” was a textbook example of sleep paralysis and I tend to think he’s right; that didn’t stop me, however, from joining a ghost hunting group for a few months. But there are multiple ghosts in the poem. All houses are filled with layers of the past that reach out to us, sometimes when we’re not expecting it.

“Forecast” is a snapshot of a moment when I was standing at my kitchen sink during a snow storm. It was one of those late winter storms that blanket drab landscape with beauty. At the time I was writing a lot of poems—nearly one every day—after not writing a lot of poems. The falling snow piling up in the washtub seemed to merge with the idea of words accumulating on the page (okay, the computer screen!). At that moment I felt a tremendous, almost radical, sense of hope and renewal.   

*****

ABOUT LORI LAMOTHE

Lori Lamothe’s third book, Kirlian Effect, is due out in September with FutureCycle Press. She has also published four chapbooks, including Diary in Irregular Ink (ELJ Publications) and Ouija in Suburbia (dancing girl press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse Daily and elsewhere. She lives in New England with her daughter and a Siberian husky born on Halloween.