MARY BONINA
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Poems from 
​Clear Eye Tea

To listen to a recording of the author reading "Mountain Road from Roseau," go to the View/Listen page in the top menu.

Two of the nine poems in the series “Dialogues with Mum”:

6. Receiving Guests
She remembers when
my brother saw a crow
perched on the metal
frame of his hospital bed,
his brain inflamed, making him talk
through his hat about phantoms;

but it's her brain all fired up now:
she thinks she has visitors — my sister — 
perched at the foot of her bed,
my brother and his wife
waiting in the living room,
sitting in the antique wing chairs.

She must throw off her silk comforter,
what she has always called her puff,
get up, get dressed or else
they'll think her rude or worse
worry there's something gone wrong
that she's taken to bed
in what she thinks is daylight.

When the word hardware comes to her
she remembers where clothes are kept,
knows the ornate brass drawer pulls
will be cold to the touch:
but she must make herself presentable,

tug and pull to get into the mahogany bureau,
rummage around in lingerie, choosing
a flimsy faded pink camisole — no bra — 
she isn't going out today — some silk 
fancy pants trimmed in Raschel lace.

But the armoire choices prove most baffling:
blouses, sweaters, no slacks — she never wore 
slacks — but there are dresses in six sizes.

A mad shopper, she is lost in the racks
trying to find just the right skirt to Wow,
while the wire hangers put up a good fight,
intertwined on the pole. Now where is that
Nile green gown?
 the one she wore
just once in the forties to a dance.

Struggling for balance she manages
to dress herself, pulls through
her wispy fine white hair
the familiar soft bristle brush
she used grooming all four babies.

Ready, down the corridor she goes,
expecting to find her visitors waiting.

But her roomy house is eerie,
just full of night missing its moon, and
she is alone, the clock ticking away
on the Governor Winthrop desk,
time illuminated in a dark corner
of the next room.

9. Doubt
Some days she lives
in neighborhoods where
she can't get lost:

at the corner house
she finds her aunt and cousins,

then at Fine Point — 
No
, (she makes the correction),
Pine Point,
all her summer friends live
on a mound of sand
(she means the beachfront).

and off the country road
there is what she calls
the homestead. She'd been there
visiting she thought, out all day,
enjoying spring, the wrong season.
She says the trees along the way were
a full-leafed canopy to pass under.

Sometimes though, a question
escapes when she opens
the refrigerator, empty
of everything but doubt,

or when she surveys faces
in the living room — someone
in the wing chair — and who
are those two on the couch?

Where is everyone,
the people she knew
when she couldn't get lost?

In nine decades she has found
her way to lost. She says, I
haven't seen my mother
or my father in so long.
I don't know why,
don't know what's going on.


When I call to say I'll visit
she says: Do you know
where I am now?
I'm not in the old place.


It isn't spring at all
when this is happening --
the harvest is already in — 
the flower shops have
chrysanthemum. The temperature
dips lower overnight.
Wheels of Queen Anne's Lace
dry up, turn inward
into tight brown nests.

--First published in Istanbul Literary Review 

Sorcery
On this island hummingbirds drink
from blue banana flowers, and orchids
in the cloud forest attach themselves
to every tree, making you fall for them,

leading to confusing and forgetting
who you are you begin to think:
am I a flower, a bird,
or maybe I'm a tree?

On this island you will find
The Valley of Desolation and also
the sometimes dried up Boiling Lake.

You will hear, too, the dove,
it's awful sad cry, because
in the rainforest even the sadness
of a dove has more muscle.

And the pigeon with a red neck coos,
comforting the trembler,
and the pearly-eyed thrasher.

Mary Bonina

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© Copyright Mary Bonina
  • About
  • Publications
    • Books & Chapbooks
    • Literary Magazines & Anthologies
  • Excerpts
    • Fiction
    • Memoir
    • Poetry >
      • Poems from Clear Eye Tea
      • Poems from Living Proof
      • Poems from Lunch in Chinatown
      • Other Published Poems
  • Calendar
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events >
      • 2021
      • Archive >
        • 2020
        • 2019
        • 2018
        • 2017
        • 2016
        • 2015
        • 2014
        • 2013
        • 2012
        • 2011
        • 2010
  • View & Listen
  • Links
  • Writing Help
    • Workshops
    • Tutoring
  • Contact