Seeker Magazine - April 2005
Monica Doorhy
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I am a tutor, I have always written fiction, since the time I could hold a pencil.
Recently published in Walt's Corner/The Long Islander...
Master's in Journalism, '90, Northwestern University.
Red Cloud Descending
A red cloud descending when ponies shed
brindled rocks and mountains at dusk
dipped in wine with drunken prairie dogs
the bad red land blinks its eyes
the cherries turn black
foreshadowing the hemorrhage
the great white bloodbath
October ponies are fed their bridles
the new heaven and new earth
have the same bloodstain smell of ghosts
in the Moon of the Dying Leaves
Top of the Page.
The Powers that Be
We are who we are, now tell us that we're god
we are your brother, your lover and your son
we are your mother, your sister all in one
we are on television, we never grow old
we are power, we are money, your pearls and gold
we are the future, we are the past
we are the first, we are the last
we'll give you voices, we'll give you choice
landscape the front yard or wax the rolls Royce
If you'll just agree, could be all yours one day
just give us our way,
what do you say?
You are who you are and do what you do
from the bottom of the food chain
I must listen to you
you don't give me diamonds or anything fine
but you'd give me the option to work in the mine
you barter my future, disparage my past
you've purchased the present, I hope you don't last
So I pick up a newspaper late in one day
and lo and behold, god's been taken away
By God, I take it, and continue to read
heaven or hell, gosh that's swell, you can tear up the deed.
you were who you were, but now you are dead
tomorrow's the funeral, who says death's not fair?
(but thanks to the Style section, I'll know what to wear.)
Just some obituaries, it's nothing new
You always did tell me it could happen to you.
Top of the Page.
Too Soon
So now that Keat's sad day is done
perched on a window seat, when is John coming home
wilting roses outside the glass
hands grasp twelve, I am late for mass
Eggs break in the kitchen late in the day
scrapbook memories late in the page
frame over the fire that traces my youth
laughing crackling and some obscure truth
Left alone now, all my chances are past
all the sweets are gone, all my curtains drawn,
all life's flavor lost
all brought about before the hands touched noon
flame is out, alive but dead, it all happened
Too soon.
Top of the Page.
The Bride On Whom the Rain Doth Fall
The gulls flew back one day
with the asphalt morning
overcast mesh with their wings
and with the leaves the color of stale blood
being hurled and flung in brittle, little bunches
it makes her think of a dapple spread
hung out to dry somewhere
from some invisible line
salt hill is cut open in her mind
the damp warmth and the camel smoke
woolen arms around her
all gone now
and she counts
her fresh wounds
thin spittle drizzle starting up now
and a line she read somewhere
the bride on whom the rain doth fall
Top of the Page.
Homing
One evening, a glowing thaw came to melt
the white-gray of winter's last days away
she'd seen the birds flying back in sky-arrows
as if they'd all designed to make some invisible point
and make up some un-made-up mind
sometimes, during the evenings of these days
she'd hear what she thought was a hoot-owl
but which she knew was actually a mourning dove
his round dark notes rising like a delicious smell
of spiralling smoke from one of the chimneys of the old farmhouses
she'd seen on one her long drives
but rising instead out of his stout wrinkled neck buried deep in a feathered coat
there was just the one, fat, round, note
and it had been sent by a dove of an unfamiliar color
that made her wonder how he'd come to have become so lost
then a pause and she is brought back to this place
which is far from where she came from
and it registers without notice to her
she is one of the many who've been lost
and the dove is the one who's come home
and as another note descends she can feel its soothing fullness again
it's like a warm glass of milk on a table
and she wonders again if she'll ever get back
Top of the Page.
Girl Like a Moth
He used to shine like a pure spark of sun
caught in a jar and set on the back stoop
or bouncing from the pavement off the head of a fresh dime
she would twist and flutter around him
and his mother would prod her head out the window
and tell him it was time to come in
his father with his heavy hands
salt-bitten face and grave manner
had in his hard low voice of gravel
pronounced her flighty
and a showy yet stylish little bit
of a thing like a little twist
of silly nothingness and just
a waste of his time
and she had no place else
so he said on his way to the back room
and hs father had gone to work that day
and his mother had put her head in the wash
and said that girl's just like a moth
Top of the Page.
The Heart of the Caldera
He was as still as a halcyon pool
that in cool silence would shut out the skylight
she would arrive in high style as she flourished
her beautiful flutter of color
she'd arrange herself into a dainty perch
and then she'd drink by his side
her brilliant notes warbled through his wet folds of silence
but they'd enter it together
with the drowning of the sun
one day, she took flight with a zephyr
he'd scan the horizon in his silence for her colors
from the corners of his molten eyes
but she never returned
his rage stirred thick and black
as mud pots
and an anger brewed inside him
that turned more colors
than she had ever known
as he searched his heart
a spectral burst
the chambers explode
his thick, splattering fury erupts
rhythmically pumping, pouring out
and seeping
sealing off every breath
until nothing's left
and it was as if in one blink
of his molten eye
he's recovered
the heart of the caldera
Top of the Page.
Catch as Catch Can
Catch as catch can
Loose tufts of red hair and a whirly blur
Without thought of love, or money, or being a man
All for a firefly scaling leaves in a jar
Then without worry, without stories, without when
Only father and brother and mother at the door
No fences, just chances, and catch as catch can
and pencils and classes, but really, what for
Little girl and a gravel road, he didn't know her before
Much later, lovely shoulders, catch as catch can
All sweetness and light now loved from afar
The Bell Jar in her purse and he's with her again
Decades later, his children, it's never again
She'd left in a furor, an impure, dizzied stir
Anniversary clock, opportunity knocked, catch as catch can
Clanging now as he sits with her letter
Death and worse without an answer, crazed laughter
Life in the Bell Jar, and needles and lines
He's forgotten that he loved her, crumpled paper, maybe later
Clock strikes ten, old big ben, and it's catch as catch can
Top of the Page.
(Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved by Monica Doorhy - No reproduction without express permission from the author.)
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Letter to the Author: Monica Doorhy