Five Poems
Rachel B. Glaser
Old nylon underwear
with a nickel-sized hole in the lining of the crotch
you expect nothing of me
handed down by my mother
and her mother before her
you’re so big and loose
you don’t care what happens
while it snowed in the ‘80s
you sat in a drawer
during the fall of the Berlin Wall
you sat in a different drawer
you reach my belly button
you fading beauty
my husband makes fun of you
you are so synthetic
I could totally see you lost
in an abandoned disco
like a time capsule
I will never get rid of you
you connect me to something
you were alive during Vietnam
do you know words or just sense things?
There’s a face behind the door
I can feel it
vines curl around whatever
I can’t see the face
but I can almost hear it
waterfalls race through the night
flowers wilt in vases
there’s a face behind the door
a crab in the shell or a pearl or whatever
submit to it!
I can’t
I sit in my idling car
I finger the internet
everything corrodes
I join the strangers in the message boards
there’s a face behind the door
someone in the light
we recycle our plastic in vain
we cower in the empty truth
we try vegetarian meat
machines whirr
therapists cry
I am called by a force
from inside a closet
I am sick of people
but what is a person?
an annoyance of love
a hustle of nerves
a walker of needs
a hand grabbing more than it can hold
Whenever I’m dealt a queen I’m always pleased to see her
a prominent nose
a rounded chin
a solemn look like her soup’s gone cold
often there’s another in the flop
looking at something across the room
vague disappointment in her heavy eyes
like someone’s about to be hung
two help my odds
a third makes me money
queens make me feel good
a woman in power is tantalizing
admired then cut down
she invented all of this
she birthed you and raised you
she loved you and pushed you off the doorstep
it’s an ancient game
that ruins lives
and makes us happy
queens are always in it
but they’re not really smiling
they lose to a king every time
Aces under
it doesn’t guarantee anything
but you’re flying
high above the table
like a butterfly they landed on you
and now you’re holding two candles
you’re white-hot lava
the gate is open
the aisle clear
your eyes lit with obscenely good news
aces under can get you into night clubs
they cut through metal
they clear up rashes
they nod to the moon
summon a sleeping god
make contact with the dead
they build a castle out of clouds
but then the clouds go poof
when aces get beat they can’t admit it
they’re insistent like religion
folding them feels like throwing out a whole pizza
still they must mean something
two swords floating in purgatory
rare flowers that open at night
I let you talk on about the world as if I were your student and you were right
all talk is vanity
and all writing in vain
you wave hello in the nightmare
years before when I still see it as a dream
I read D.H. Lawrence’s landscape descriptions
waiting for the sisters to disrobe
I’ve seen this grassy meadow before
the stream
a pond
I turn the page
philosophy is foreplay
and the foreplay lasts for hundreds of pages
get nasty with me, D.H.
I know you could describe it so well
the grass is impossibly soft
the sketchbook falls into water
you only want me every seven years
you lay in your grave
on your stomach
typing
I’m less lonely when I see a moon out the window
when some dead freak is telling me her story
while lives pass invisibly on all sides
the baby curls its hand in its sleep
the child plays the game again and again
the 14-year-old is dressed like she’s 25 and pretending to be 29
make my boredom luxurious
lay me on a piano
strip me like a bed
or just take me back to the field
and talk about free will
and the downfall of man
I’m listening but I just hear the ocean
the grass waves in the wind in the meadow
a stream trickles past wet rocks
the mind is a diary
and God wants us to fuck
Rachel B. Glaser is the author of the poetry books, MOODS and HAIRDO, as well as two books of fiction.
She lives in Northampton, MA and teaches fiction at the low-residency Mountainview MFA.