from Old Stranger
When my lost carbon steel
knife turned up as if
it had never left the drawer—
dark haft, trio of nickel silver
rivets like moons of Pluto,
thin blade stained as before—
I breathed, spoke to the empty room,
reached for the old stranger. Touched
its whetted edge. Alive, it could
change tomatoes to glistening
discs, basil to little hills, draw
blood from meat. It raked
joy onto my plate while the gauze
that wrapped my cut, reddened.
(From Old Stranger, copyright © 2024 by Joan Larkin. Published by Alice James Books, New Gloucester, ME. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
It started with Being and Nothingness
and hiding a pack of Luckies in my schoolbag,
tucking a matchbook in front without tearing
the cellophane. I risked taking the streetcar
downtown late at night—did they never hear me?—
and basked in the gleam of Herb Pomeroy’s band
and the tang of underage vodka in orange juice.
I quit sleeping in metal curlers, told everyone
I was an existentialist, though I kept
wearing my Peter Pan collar and “gold tone”
circle pin, almost right up to the night
of the abortion. I gave up on the straggly
pageboy. I think that was part of what Mother
meant when she screamed, Where did I go wrong?
(From Old Stranger, copyright © 2024 by Joan Larkin. Published by Alice James Books, New Gloucester, ME. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
Face resting in my palm,
I stretched out long
on the green lawn, listening.
Not listening so much as
loving how air shivered
and sorrow was a tune, a light
index finger downstroke,
a sly joke, a note that repeated.
My mind twanged with it,
grass trembled and shone,
banjo, dulcimer, fiddle
singing my story.
Hush, listen, this
song has a thousand verses.
(From Old Stranger, copyright © 2024 by Joan Larkin. Published by Alice James Books, New Gloucester, ME. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
from Blue Hanuman
I was larval. I dreamed myself
downstairs in pj’s, still in my coma.
Bach, he said, and I lay next to the radio.
Dark amber spread through my girl-brain.
Eye of newt already nestled there, an egg
glued to a twig. My pale, bespectacled brother
set me on a leaf and watched me fatten.
Franz Kafka, he said, and my new, long feelers
brushed the wall. Girl Before a Mirror
was tacked there, torn from Life,
her twin pear-belly worm pink
as my own. Half curled, half crawling,
I burst through skin after skin. Art, I said,
and my wings fanned slowly open.
(From Blue Hanuman, copyright © 2014 by Joan Larkin. Published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
In barlight alchemized: gold pate, the bellmouth
tenor, liquor trapped in a glass. The E-flat
clarinet chases time, strings shudder,
remembering the hundred tongues. Here comes old
snakeshine, scrolls stored in the well, here comes
the sobbing chazzan. O my lucky uncle,
you’ve escaped the czar’s army. Thunder
is sweet. Here comes the boink, boink bossa
nova slant of light. Snow-dollars
dissolve on a satin tongue. The river
swells green, concrete trembles, and we
sweat, leaning toward mikes and wires
as the last tune burns down to embers. Ash-
whispers. We were born before we were born.
(From Blue Hanuman, copyright © 2014 by Joan Larkin. Published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
I fell from sealmother’s
liquid womb onto fast-ice
and she suckled me with her thick
milk and kept me, fifty days.
We lived in the wind.
Under the ice in no-light
trills, buzzes, thumps
filled the water and rang in my body.
I scraped breathing holes with my teeth,
held my breath, slowed my blood,
sank deep, breathed out
bubbles to flush the icy fish;
devoured silverfish, squid, octopus,
giant toothfish, bald notothen.
A male bit my neck and gripped me.
A cub curled inside me. I bore
many cubs and let them suck. Left them
when the time came. My teeth
worn to nubs, skua will make
quick food of me when I starve
above the ice. Or if my carcass
drops to the sea floor, red
sea stars, worms, and flesh-eating
amphipods will slowly cover
me and devour my meat.
I’m standing in wind,
seal flesh still warm.
(From Blue Hanuman, copyright © 2014 by Joan Larkin. Published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
from My Body
When they cleaned you and gave you to me,
long legs and fingers, red glow
rising from creased flesh,
eyes already awake, gaze steady,
I shook for three days
in my knot of hospital sheets.
Tears came later—
cries, fears, fierce holding.
The ways you’d shake me off.
Your well of rage. Over and over
you bloomed in your separate knowledge.
Yesterday, you offered tender words.
I remembered gorging on teglach Fanny made,
thick knots of dough shining with honey.
I’m filled and wanting more—only to taste
that heavy gold on my tongue again.
(From My Body: New and Selected Poems, copyright © 2007 by Joan Larkin. Published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
I wasn’t the only drunk reaching
for Kleenex as short Arnold
on the foot-high platform
choked the wild sound
rising in his throat. He was filled
and pouring joy like anguish.
Tears drew light to his face.
Two hundred of us in the room
and none coughed or shuffled
or scraped a metal chair
as he said how he saw
clear sky spreading above him
and a thing like a lead band
that snapped and freed his chest.
I didn’t drift for once or argue
or make lists for later.
I let the hush wrap me,
felt how John was near me,
Steve across the big room.
I saw how Mary lifted her chin,
how Sybil suffered in her bloated flesh,
her unreadable lipstick smile.
For a moment all was as it should be.
Everyone in the room knew it.
I think so. It wasn’t some dream.
Harsh blues, heads nodding
amen—not even that. How
to explain it. I wish you’d been there.
(From My Body: New and Selected Poems, copyright © 2007 by Joan Larkin. Published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
I’m older than my father when he turned
bright gold and left his body with its used-up liver
in the Faulkner Hospital, Jamaica Plain. I don’t
believe in the afterlife, don’t know where he is
now his flesh has finished rotting from his long
bones in the Jewish Cemetery—he could be the only
convert under those rows and rows of headstones.
Once, washing dishes in a narrow kitchen
I heard him whistling behind me. My nape froze.
Nothing like this has happened since. But this morning
we were on a plane to Virginia together. I was 17,
pregnant and scared. Abortion was waiting,
my aunt’s guest bed soaked with blood, my mother
screaming—and he was saying Kids get into trouble—
I’m getting it now: this was forgiveness.
I think if he’d lived he’d have changed and grown
but what would he have made of my flood of words
after he’d said in a low voice as the plane
descended to Richmond in clean daylight
and the stewardess walked between the rows
in her neat skirt and tucked-in blouse
Don’t ever tell this to anyone.
(From My Body: New and Selected Poems, copyright © 2007 by Joan Larkin. Published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
from Cold River
We’re using every bit of your death.
We’re making a vise of your mouth’s clenching and loosening,
an engine of your labored breathing,
a furnace of your wide-open eyes.
We’ve reduced you to stock, fed you to the crowd,
banked the pearl of your last anger,
stored the honey of your last smile.
Nothing’s left in your mirror,
nothing’s floating on your high ceiling.
We’re combing pockets, turning sleeves,
shaking out bone and ash,
stripping you down to desire.
Your beloved has folded your house into his—
I’m wading the swift river, balancing on stones.
(From Cold River, originally published by Painted Leaf Press, New York City, copyright © 1997 by Joan Larkin. Reprinted in My Body: New and Selected Poems, copyright © 2007 by Joan Larkin, published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)
One who lifted his arms with joy, first time across the finish line
at the New York marathon, six months later a skeleton
falling from threshold to threshold, shit streaming from
his diaper,
one who walked with a stick, wore a well-cut suit to the opera,
to poetry readings, to mass, who wrote the best long poem
of his life at Roosevelt Hospital and read it on television,
one who went to 35 funerals in 12 months,
one who said I’m sick of all you AIDS widows,
one who lost both her sisters,
one who said I’m not sure that what he and I do is safe, but we’re
young, I don’t think we’ll get sick,
one who dying said They came for me in their boat, they want me
on it, and I told them Not tonight, I’m staying here with James,
one who went to Mexico for Laetrile,
one who went to California for Compound Q,
one who went to Germany for extract of Venus’ flytrap,
one who went to France for humane treatment,
one who chanted, holding hands in a circle,
one who ate vegetables, who looked in a mirror and said
I forgive you,
one who refused to see his mother,
one who refused to speak to his brother,
one who refused to let a priest enter his room,
one who did the best paintings of his life and went home from
his opening in a taxi with twenty kinds of flowers,
one who moved to San Francisco and lived two more years,
one who married his lover and died next day,
one who said I’m entirely filled with anger,
one who said I don’t have AIDS, I have something else,
one with night sweats, nausea, fever, who worked as a nurse,
one who kept on studying to be a priest,
one who kept on photographing famous women,
one who kept on writing vicious reviews,
one who kept going to AA meetings till he couldn’t walk,
one whose son came just once to the hospital,
one whose mother said This is God’s judgment,
one whose father held him when he was frightened,
one whose minister said Beth and her lover of twelve years were
devoted as Ruth and Naomi,
one whose clothes were thrown in the street, beautiful shirts and ties
a neighbor picked from the garbage and handed out at a party,
one who said This room is a fucking prison,
one who said They’re so nice to me here,
one who cut my hair and said My legs bother me,
one who couldn’t stand, who said I like those earrings,
one with a tube in his chest, who asked What are you eating?
one who said How’s your writing? Are you moving to the
mountains? who said I hope you get rich.
One who said Death is transition,
one who was doing new work, entirely filled with anger,
one who wanted to live till his birthday, and did.
from A Long Sound
from Housework
How can I tell you I’ve been
stealing. Stole from you.
Hid memories in my skin
of what we did, we do.
Your mouth, my sibling mouth
were printing histories
of children without milk,
predictions of a drought
and long winters in exile—
my poems all the heat, my smile
a code for hurt, a lie
I told you, learning how to spy.
How can I tell you I’ve been
spying. Looked at you
as you lay sleeping, blue
jacket by my bed, sin
our dead religion—there’s no sin
but shame, shame, for shame
I touched you; from your skin
I stole my photo, papers, name.
(From Housework, originally published by Out & Out Books, Brooklyn, New York, copyright © 1975 by Joan Larkin. Reprinted in My Body: New and Selected Poems, copyright © 2007 by Joan Larkin, published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)