Sara FEMENELLA

In Saint Petersburg It Is Night
 
I meant to have only one glass and look,
the Bordeaux’s half-gone, though that’s
like saying only one piece of chocolate,
isn’t it, or promising yourself you’re not
going to call or not going to smoke all day,
we never believe these vows, the heart’s
just a figure of speech, might as well say
root vegetable, light bulb, tube sock, any
one of life’s personal things, familiar,
well-worn organs.
 
Slumming it solo down icy streets,
an inclination for opera and bronze-cast
history shoaled up for a hundred winters
in a hundred marble palaces, those verbs
of motion, so difficult one prefers to stay
indoors— two phosphorescent orbs
pulsing under the skin.   That was lost
then, this is lost now, the way she clears
her throat before she says: it was good
to talk to you tonight.
 
What a great many lengths of alone
there are, at night nothing but silence—
and beyond Petersburg, nothing. 
 




 
Less Careful
                         For Amy King
 
That winter moon Manhattan feel. 
It was a good night for drink
and indiscretion.  Through poor posture,
a benevolence between women.
 
You said I was too careful,
so into my dreams I’ve invited
childhood friends to come and go freely.
 
Little by little I’m earning my milk
and bread.  Living a sedated heart’s
airplane protection.  Subsequently,
I suppose we could be poets,
or we could be fools.  But I’d dance
your language obsession for hours.
 
Lady, the next round’s on me.  You’re granted
one dramatic exit, my soft spot for blonde
ambition and women who drive.   
 
I’ll night-ride passenger-side
of your speeches.  Shared conspiracy
of right turns until my front door,
months from here. 
 




 
Make No Mistake
 
We are careful in bars. The pint glasses held in front of our chests, all those kissing girls make us forget who we return to when the night ends.  As if karaoke could save us, singing the heart out of our fugue weathering winter.   
 
Alone we sleep in socks with the blankets over our heads, warming our hands
between our thighs, exhaling along the beaches of half-sleep, heart bleating
a light-house beam all night. 
He says, “Wild ones in our wilderness are sometimes distracting.”  I say
we’re better off without them.  It’s hunting season.  The hounds come running
home, our dead pheasants in their bloody jaws. 
 
I dreamed of a house with a fountain and a grand staircase.  I had a bay window,
a canopy bed and a gold-gilded birdcage spinning sunlight geometry.  For those sculptures of water and light I left everything behind.
 
In his eyes a sudden burst of road, shot of pavement through trees into stone blue and clouds.
 
As if there were places to go with him.  I’d put my cheek to his shoulder,
echo him counting sheep all night.  
 





“Russian Poetry of the Soviet Era”
 
 
Anthology of skeletons.  Family
history drawn in skin and bleeding
from the wrist.  Pressed-tin Joan of Arcs
gaze down from the walls as Mandelshtam
broke Nadezhda’s final promise
and ascended into the dumbstruck fingers
of modern poets to build his greatest
castles there.  Russian’s a duplicitous
language of too many consonants. 
Lover’s peel potatoes in kitchens
and borrow little flames from each
other’s palms.  Grammar teachers would
trade a lifetime of proper syntax for that one
poem where the city is plucked from the country
like a fruit from a tree— Akhmatova, your blessings
turned hard, bitter inside us.  We’ve grown small
enough to fit onto the pages of our world atlas. 
I’ve been stalking my own disappearances
for a while now, thumbing the windy streets
in an imaginary red wool coat.  I try to guard
my little head day and night but all sorts of things
creep into that cranium.  With half a drawer full
of serrated knives for protection, I’m learning to speak
again, stumbling on young words, barely a century old.    
 



 
You Might Have Warned Me 
 
My poem’s box, my red square,
my euphemism, that is,
how I love you, or how missing you
is like being in a very small room
or freezing outside for one
quick smoke, burnish the limbo state,
dilation of the breast-bone.  Suffering
a red sphere about to burst into pieces.
 
You’re easier to love than
you know, a whiskey and Budweiser
special, a dollar-off deal. 
Strictly speaking, I have a pretty
conventional heart, watching you
without me, a tremulous gauge
for every crowded room,
and a landslide injury worth the wait.
 
 








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