Issue 9… Carole Greenfield

Four poems by Carole Greenfield

How I Know He Loves Me

My husband cleaned the upstairs bathroom last night. Spent more time scrubbing

out the bathtub and cleaning the toilet than the housekeepers we used

to employ took to clean our entire house. That’s how thorough he is.

No one else takes a toilet seat off its hinges to get in where odors lurk.

He scraped round beneath the rim, dipped the entire seat under water

flowing from the bathtub faucet, rinsed down the bathtub yet again.

When he was finally, finally satisfied, he called me in, proudly, to display

his work, actually gleaming. He was naked from the waist down,

and I could not help admiring what I have known and loved

all the years we have been together, what still feels so lovely and yes,

even gorgeous, in my hands and in my mouth, what I cradle in my palms

as tenderly as I would anything more precious than my own life.

Directions to Their First (and Last) House
after Juan Felipe Herrera

Drive down
the interstate
until you see
nothing but
tobacco fields.

Take a right
onto the one street with houses.
Go into the first one on the corner.

Run your hand up and over
the chewed-up doorjamb,
gnawed by their Boston Terrier
in his desperate loneliness
during working hours.

Watch the husband and wife drive off
in opposite directions 100 miles each day,
traveling away from each other in ways
not traceable on maps or roads.

Walk through rooms where they tried
not to hurt each other,
where he gave up and silently threw
pairs of balled-up socks at her
until she told him in a whisper to stop,
please stop.

Adolescence Overseas

eucalyptus leaves, sword-shaped
and blue-green astringent, fringes
of auburn bark shredding in fingers

that held yellow wheels of farmers’ cheese
grated in thick slivers and dunked
deep in strong coffee, resurfacing
stretchy, glistening

while listening to opera in the small den
that was my father’s, one way to be close
to him in the hours he was home

in the mountains we drove up, walked up,
looked to from every point
in every part of a city thousands of feet
above sea level, where fires burned dark-orange,

nails lay in the streets and leafy branches
were attached to car fenders to brush them away

meanwhile, I climbed to the top
of a school building, considered jumping off,
rather than live with desire like nails
scraping trails across my silver-smoked heart,

altitude-dizzy, arias ascending and falling,
me with no broom.

Temporary Angels

I love the cold that keeps snow
from melting, the ground
from showing its worn winter face.

I don’t fear falling now, with all the drifts
around, not even with a recent diagnosis
in place.

I will fall like an angel, arms raised high
to grace
the brittle air with silent hosannas,
no sound

beyond the sweep and rustle-scrape,
that soft surround
of swaddled limbs a-swish in synchrony,
icy lace

of rhythms known since we inhabited
the space
as temporary angels, come to earth
and yet unbound,

blue-winged impressions pressed
to bless and leave a trace
behind, reminders of worlds we lost,
the love we somehow found.

Carole Greenfield grew up in Bogotá, Colombia and eventually returned to her birthplace in Massachusetts, United States. Today, she teaches multilingual learners at a public elementary school. During her journey, she has also guided and encouraged the homeless in North Carolina, to write about their experiences, to express their voices and be heard.

Her poetry and essays have appeared in Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Plentitudes, Amethyst Review and other publications.

Carole’s first book of poetry — Weathering Agents — is published and available from Beltway Editions, and may also be bought from Brookline Booksmith and Amazon. Autographed copies are available on her website… http://www.fieldsofgreen.us/carole/books

Read the Alphabet Box interview with Carole Greenfield by clicking here.

Photo credits: Alphabet Box thanks Mike Greenfield and Carole Greenfield for the family photos they provided for this issue.