Staring into the Sun

Jennifer Grotz

What had been treacherous the first time

had become second nature, releasing

the emergency brake, then rolling backwards

in little bursts, braking the whole way down

the long steep drive. Back then

we lived on the top of a hill.

I was leaving—the thing we both knew

and didn’t speak of all summer. While you

were at work, I built a brown skyline of boxes,

sealed them with a roll of tape

that made an incessant ripping sound.

We were cheerful at dinner and unusually kind.

At night we slept under a single sheet,

our bodies a furnace if curled together.

It was July. I could feel my pupils contract

when I went outside. Back then I thought only about

how you wouldn’t come with me.

Now I consider what it took for you to help me go.

On that last day. When I stood

in a wrinkled dress with aching arms.

When there was only your mouth at my ear

whispering to get in the truck, then wait

until I was calm enough to turn the key.

Only then did we know. How it felt

to have loved to the end, and then past the very end.

What did you do, left up there in the empty house?

I don’t know why. I

don’t know how we keep living

in a world that never explains why.

Self-Portrait on the Street of an Unnamed Foreign City

The lettering on the shop window in which
you catch a glimpse of yourself is in Polish.

Behind you a man quickly walks by, nearly shouting
into his cell phone. Then a woman

at a dreamier pace, carrying a just-bought bouquet
upside-down. All on a street where pickpockets abound

along with the ubiquitous smell of something baking.
It is delicious to be anonymous on a foreign city street.

Who knew this could be a life, having languages
instead of relationships, struggling even then,

Jennifer Grotz

2015

The Whole World Is Gone

Driving alone at night, the world’s pitch, black velvet
stapled occasionally by red tail lights
on the opposite highway but otherwise mild
panic when the eyes’ habitual check
produces nothing at all in the rearview mirror,
a black blank, now nothing exists
but the dotted white lines of the road,

Jennifer Grotz

2014

The Needle

        "When your eyes have done their part, 
        Thought must length it in the heart."
           —Samuel Daniel

 
. . . Thought lengths it, pulls 
an invisible world through 
a needle's eye 
one detail at a time,

beginning with 
the glint of blond down 
on his knuckle as he 
                              crushed a spent cigarette—

I can see that last strand of smoke 
escaping in a tiny gasp—above the table where 	
a bee fed thoughtfully 
                               from a bowl of sugar.

World of shadows!

Jennifer Grotz

2011

Poems

Staring into the Sun

More by this poet

Self-Portrait on the Street of an Unnamed Foreign City

The Whole World Is Gone

The Needle

Poems

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Staring into the Sun

More by this poet

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