THE LAST GIRL: Poems - Softcover

ROSE SOLARI

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0984832955 ISBN 13: 9780984832958

Synopsis

A shimmering girl who disappears in daylight. A boy who goes to war and comes back forever broken. New landscapes in which old ghosts appear, telling their bits of stories. Lovers and losses, visions and dreams―such are the people, places, and images who fill Rose Solari’s third collection of poetry, The Last Girl. Moving beyond the often-narrative constructions of her previous collection, the poems in this collection tell their truths slant-wise, in spiky, inventive lines that sing their way under the reader’s skin. Solari’s whole-hearted lyricism of her elegiac moments, linguistic inventiveness, and range of tones sweep the reader from dark to light, from pain to joy, from unbearable loss to giddy delight. The poems in this collection represent a writer working at the peak of her powers, possessed of technical mastery, fierce perception, and a tender but unsentimental heart.

About this title

About the Author

Rose Solari is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Difficult Weather and Orpheus in the Park; the one-act play, Looking for Guenevere; and a novel, A Secret Woman. She has lectured and taught writing workshops at many institutions, including the University of Maryland–College Park, the Jung Society of Washington, and the Centre for Creative Writing at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Her poems and essays have appeared in various magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and the Columbia Book Award. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Last Girl

Poems

By Rose Solari

Santa Fe Writers Project

Copyright © 2014 Rose Solari
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9848329-5-8

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
I. Then, 
Tree House of the Dream Child, 
Math and the Garden, 
Persephone at the Train Station, 
Young Couple at the County Fair, 
Boy on a Cross, 
Desert Light, 
A Prayer, 
Another Shore, 
Spell for Vanishing, 
Rochelle's Movie, 
To the Wine-Taster, 
Elegy for Her & Me, 
The Death of the Old Gods Is Not, 
Another Ending, 
II. Some Islands, 
Song for the Pitons, 
The Name of That Island Still Makes Me Sad, 
Island, With Goats, 
Greedy, 
My Expatriate Life, 
Once an Island, 
Hymn to Her, 
III. Now, 
The Last Girl, 
Somewhere Between Four and Five A.M., 
Scavenging, 
That Day, 
In Which Rochelle Realizes That Her Ex-Boyfriend Is the Devil, 
Sister Goat, 
Making, 
Fire Pit, 
To the Scholar of Mary Magdalene, 
Another Country, 
Who, What, When, 
Women in Translation, 
Myself When I Was There, 
Visiting Dora, 
Next Time, 
Stargazing, 
After All, 
Notes, 

CHAPTER 1

Then

Tree House of the Dream Child


    It has been here forever. Who
    built it, nobody knows. Time itself

    might have pressed these boards
    into rows, hammered home

    the nails. Nobody plays here.
    Neighborhood boys once hung

    their pennants from its windows,
    while girls slipped hand over hand

    up the rope ladder. How high
    the grass grows — no one lives

    around here anymore. Come
    with me as I walk the perimeter

    of this field, and don't be afraid.
    Though the earth is wild, nothing

    can hurt us here. And if we're lucky,
    if the light is good and a thousand

    other elements conspire, we might see,
    moving inside the one high room

    of the tree house, the dream child. Hear
    the floorboards singing her step, see

    her old, new face. Safe in those walls,
    plying her solitary art, she is a word

    for keeping and losing, a talisman
    against this sky, which is red-black,

    now, and terrible, and our own.


    Math and the Garden


    It's all a matter of threes or fours,
    like when my father died and it was
    him and me and what he called god
    and what I called whatever it was

    that was next, only please not yet.
    God won, which means that even if
    he doesn't exist, He does. And Dad does
    too, as river or beagle or five-year-old

    prodigy writing his serious stanzas
    in Latin. Which means, I guess,
    that meaning is already here.
    But I'm losing track. What I wanted

    to say has something to do with
    the dogwood, its four-petaled,
    center-white blossoming that I want
    every year to be more extravagant

    than it is. As if the garden could be
    compensation for some self-rising sap
    that thins, the green seasonally less
    insistent under the bud, despite all

    that fertilizer and mulch. After the last
    light rain in somebody's yard, the stars
    disbelieving themselves, what I saw
    on his face in that light was judgment

    and then some. Please, I'd ask him.
    Tell me again. I'm listening now.


    Persephone at the Train Station


    Pale from the indoor life
        of winter, she glides to the top

    of the moving stairs, blinks back
        the sun. A bag in each hand —

    one small, one heavy — she makes
        her slanting way to the concrete

    island, where other travelers shift
        and mutter. She'd forgotten how

    the daylight world, here, spins
        swiftly by. Beside the fountain, where

    nymphs and goddesses pour water
        from jar to jar, a pair of teenagers

    strum guitars and sing something
        about a hill, about climbing high above

    the city. Grab your things, the chorus goes,
        I've come to take you home. The word

    charges her heart two ways at once. In between
        is where she lives. When the white sedan

    rounds the circle, her shoulders lift, then
        fall, as if pulled by sky-strung cords.

    The door swings open, a woman's voice
        glints out, My girl. My girl. She is swept

    up and in. As they pull away,
        her eyes return to the young couple,

    who, above the roar of pouring
      water, begin another song.


    Young Couple at the County Fair


    They've already passed the pregnant woman,
    crouched and pleading, trying to bribe
    her sulking toddler with funnel cake.
    They've left behind the shooting gallery boys,
    aiming their toy rifles at a plastic sky.
    Inside the bubble of their delight, they sway
    through the crowd, sleek, and snagging
    the envious eyes.

        If she were any
    other girl, she might think it's fate,
    how easily she fits under his draped arm.
    If he were another boy, the night wouldn't
    gleam, as now, at the turn of his head.
    He is all of his body, while she has at least
    two minds — one here, one leaning
    a little away to watch the spinning moment,
    rimmed in lights, as it settles in the air
    around them and passes by.


    Boy on a Cross

    Street Performer in de Vargas Park, Santa Fe, New Mexico


    Out here, the desert pours in all directions
    from its center of infinite, dry love. To the east,
    the blue agave surrenders its thick blades; turn north,
    and the cooler air tumbles between the pines
    like a running boy. In this park, you might once
    have surprised your own reflection in the creek,
    now only a raveling memory of where water
    used to be. You prefer to look up, anyway, leaping
    to ride a metal cross into the sky.

        Did you practice for this
    on the football field, swinging your new-muscled body
    up to pull the goalposts down? Did you hurdle
    the living room couch, no one at home? Now,
    in this city of dust and yellow light, you work selling
    incense and tin icons, spend afternoons in the park
    with friends, or at least, people who dress
    like you. But you've got something over the other boys,
    strumming their windy lyrics.

        Surprise is part of it. First
    you're here beside us, letting the tourists gather. Then
    you crouch and spring high into the thinning air.
    Your whole weight catches on your clawed hands
    and you hang, trembling, your face turned away
    like a child's from an unwelcome adult embrace. Look,
    somebody says, it's the boy who crucifies himself.
    On the ground, clumps of sage scuttle by like pilgrims
    toward the promise of healing water. Above us,
    the clouds shift to let the pitiless sun come down.


    Desert Light


    In the 19th century, Western settlers in the United States advertised for
    two kinds of women to join them: potential brides to share their labors and
    bear their children, and potential nuns to teach them.

    1.

    In place of memory, silence
    that grows inward until the heart
    is hollow. A receptacle. This

    is what she wants. Once
    there had been a houseful
    of things — servants and silver,

    her mother's needlework, soft
    carpets, the shining surface
    of the piano. There had been

    young men, with bright,
    self-loving eyes. It had seemed
    to strangle her.

        She imagined
    the nuns in their solitary beds,
    their cool white robes, their
    clean-swept lives. She thought,

    That, for me?
        Then she said, Now.

    2.

    Her family loved her, they did not
    know what was wrong with her. They had
    ideas — humors, aversions, female

    trouble. They did not listen. As a child,
    she had been the most obedient, had
    entertained herself with books. And now

    this willfulness. She will not ask
    permission, she will go where everyone goes
    who fits nowhere else.
        She goes west.

    3.

    In place of appetite, an empty
    cup. A sky big enough to hold
    whatever it was she was waiting for.

    4.

    This light is mercy, though it twists her
    like a wick. At night, a chip of ice
    to the lips is ghosted with the old
    green world. There, her mother slices
    peaches into a bowl, stirs in the cream,
    a shower of sugar. Here, she kneels
    on a stone floor, says her novena. There,
    the gray Atlantic rinses the shore
    outside the window. Here, she must cross
    the square each morning with buckets
    of heavy water. There, the sun is a silver
    muted slant. Her mother draws the blinds.
    Here, there is light that could score
    the soul. She has come to find if
    they might match, the inner life
    and the outer.

        Both dry. And both ablaze.

    5.

    In place of self, a scoured hollow
    as the sun burns out her weakness. The desert
    is made for this — first the body sweats
    itself out, then the will. Christ our Lord
    spent forty days in the desert, tempted
    by the devil.

        She was twice past that
    when it happened, knew the lightness
    of no self, the state of grace, they call it,
    fullness of an empty heart. This is the place
    she knew existed before she saw it, a child
    of sun born wrongly into a land of rain. Crossing
    the square she cannot help herself. She stops
    at the center, spreads her arms in the light, and spins.


    A Prayer


    Learn to love the square
    of sky you see each night
    through the cloister window.
    Let it stand for all
    the world you cannot
    have, and love that, too.


    Another Shore

    It is essential to imagine
    one thing as another — as when
    the small hard winter apple becomes
    a globe for the dollhouse schoolroom

    where the rubber children learn
    their geography; as when a pan of mud
    is really quicksand, and in it G.I. Joe
    is sinking, sinking, until a buddy

    pulls him out in time; as when the old
    round wooden drying rack, with all
    its bare arms up, is your helicopter,
    rising over the shores of Okinawa,

    where you will find your brother,
    not yet broken, and carry him home.


    Spell for Vanishing

    That clatter of plates is her
    warming up to the old story. The house
    in Hawaii that wasn't. Pineapples
    growing on cartoon trees she'll never
    see. Brad is the name of the ghost,
    and you already know his sea-color eyes,
    the size of the ring, but still
    you keep listening, wiping the same pot
    over and over.
        Then, just like that,
    she's wished you all away — four kids
    not born, your father dispensing
    the sacraments in a parish by the bay.
    You're his, not hers, you've always
    known it. Which means,
    right now you don't exist.


    Rochelle's Movie


    Sometimes when it's hard to get out of bed,
    she makes up a story to pull her through her day.
    Today, she decides, she's not really a waitress —
    she's a movie star playing the role. When she walks

    into the kitchen, Dave, the line cook, is her director.
    He says, "Table 27 up." She hears, "Great work,
    baby. You really sold it." She checks her lipstick
    in the coffee maker's dented metal surface, which

    becomes a makeup mirror rimmed with lights.
    One more take, and she and the leading man will
    retire to her trailer, make camera-ready love
    on rose-colored sheets. It all falls apart, of course,

    at the end of the shift, when she counts her tips.
    Movie stars don't get paid in piles of bills and change
    stuffed in a pocket. They never worry about the rent,
    the gas, the lights. But here in southern Maryland,

    life depends on the will of plump, rib-eating men
    who have their own ways of calculating performance
    and reward. Take, for example, the used-car salesman,
    with an untanned line from the wedding ring he's slipped

    into his pocket, who takes three olives in his gin and gets
    big laughs from his lunch companions by joking
    with Rochelle about what he'll give her, while staring
    at her cleavage. "I'm afraid I'll have to deduct that

    from your tip, honey," he'll say, if the crab soup sloshes
    a little from its bowl, or if she's not quick enough
    with the water, the desert tray, the fourth martini. "Unless,
    of course," he'll add, "you're planning on making it up

    to me. Maybe later?" Just once, she thinks, she'd like to go
    to a fancy restaurant, have this guy as her waiter. She'd send
    her steak back twice, accuse him of serving rail whiskey
    instead of top shelf. She'd stare at his ass until his stomach

    burned. By the end of the meal, he'd be weeping
    in the kitchen, while she took slow bites of chocolate mousse,
    counted the sorry pile of coins she'd leave behind.
    Now that, she thinks, would make one terrific movie.


    To the Wine-Taster


    Dionysus would slap you silly
    if he could see you now — sniffing
    and twirling and sipping and, dear god,
    spitting it out. What mortal arrogance,
    the mess you've made of his gift. Now,

    let's start over. Throw back your head
    and drain this puny glass with one loud gulp.
    Then send — no, roar — for a cup carved
    out of animal horn, deep enough that
    when you reach the bottom, you'll see

    two horns, two hands, two mouths. Then
    you'll be worthy to grab the woman
    on your left — who feels, as you do, now,
    the rush of sweet blood to the brain and to
    the thighs — and put your grape-stained mouth

    to hers. We are, all of us, nothing more
    than empty vessels that the god can fill
    with his heart-made, heart-poured wine. Drink,
    you fool, and love. Become divine.


    Elegy for Her & Me


    Three winters now without you,
    girl, you'd think I'd cease to mark it.
    But that's me, sentimental up against

    your green-steel edge. No, that's not
    right. We were both both-and, hard-soft,
    pissed off at our sabotage-families

    who left us dangling without a net.
    Then we found us. Naïve as teenagers,
    we thought that we could never lose

    each other. And we made plans. Outliving
    all our men, we'd buy a ranch in Santa Fe,
    get two fierce dogs, two leopard-print canes

    to poke cute waiters carrying shrimp
    and sparkling wine, a '50s movie in which
    we'd just keep switching roles — leading lady

    with her glamour-head in the clouds,
    wise-cracking sidekick — 'til we ran out
    of breath or time. Damn, I miss you, girl,

    and all the brilliant selves we made
    each other. Into the wake of your
    marriage splash, I toss a silver cuff,

    engraved with our motto, a blessing
    for whatever might be the flip side
    of our love. Be well. Sometimes, miss me.


    The Death of the Old Gods Is Not


    really death. We unhouse them,
    lifting ourselves up off our knees.
    From that new place, your mother's
    cancer, terminal, is just that, not
    retribution. And the loss of half

    the garden to midsummer drought
    is drought, not penance. See how
    the coral bells rise up, despite
    the weather. Note how the mums,
    gone leggy, can still flower. Look

    how wide the world is now, no
    hell or heaven, just us creating
    our own darkness, our own light.


    Another Ending


    Here is the place where memory
    shivers. Here is the hand
    in the mirror. Here's where

    the apple of somebody's eye
    went definitively to seed.
    Here's where your shadow

    sharpened itself, the long steel
    hissing its temper. Now,
    on the cusp of one thing

    or another, the soul takes
    its down-breaking time. Let it
    break. Let it dissolve

    into the lake you were promised,
    shaped like a body, its surface
    stung with light.

    Walk into it, beloved hard-lost
    boy. You will be, at last, all right.

CHAPTER 2

Some Islands

    Song for the Pitons

    St. Lucia


    Sometimes they are mothers-in-law,
    stout, proud, and unforgiving. Other times,
    they shadow themselves, snag the clouds

    like giants of legend, grasping our thirst
    in their hands. Some nights, I am sure
    they conceal a ship as big as Achilles' and
    as full of music and death, and I want

    to shiver under a bed of sand, crab-woman,
    making for home. After the rain,
    they rose today as themselves, rinsed,
    a history lesson crouching in each
    green crease, the lava rock beneath.
    We take home a cheap wooden carving
    of them, our names punched in underneath.


    The Name of That Island Still Makes Me Sad

    Martha's Vineyard


    It was there that all our elaborate
    imagined happiness came crashing
    to earth with a vengeance. A tent

    in the sand, five-minute showers
    in a tin shack for a quarter, and him
    needing me to impress his memory-friends

    and wind the ambition clock one more time.
    No good. No good. The broken parts rubbed
    all the wrong ways. When he bought me

    the tweed lilac suit, just right for
    his previous woman, I should have
    known. Instead, we had one last fight

    back on the mainland, a nice piece
    of drama for our hosts in Provincetown
    who adored him but thought him

    impossible. It was by the ocean
    of my childhood that I knew he was
    a problem I could never solve. I was

    so much younger, of course,
    and by then, the love was gone.


    Island, With Goats

    Coral Bay, St. John


    The hard-hooved, thick-furred bodies packed
        so tight with themselves there is no room

    for doubt. The dark tulips of heads, holding
        the otherworldly eyes. Three points

    of an open arrow they cross high grass, bending
        the wind on their silken ears, or wrestle

    in pairs — forelegs raised in friendly threat — then
        collapse into each other, their small horns

    touching. Unable to see the failure in myself,
        I thought the world had let me down. Only

    the goats, in their indifference, helped. For almost
        thirteen months, I gave myself to them

    as you, entranced, might sacrifice days and nights
        to a newborn child or a foreign city. I mapped

    their devouring search for weeds and water; I memorized
        the ancient shapes of shadows their bodies cast;

    I lulled myself, when I could not sleep, with
        the sweet and sober music of their footfalls.


    Greedy

    St. Croix


    Sun junkie, lover of reggae and blue water,
        I missed all the signs, grabbed ten free days

    on a 14-foot boat with a woman not quite
        a friend. The man she loved had just

    dumped her. My role, I thought, was to bring
        the fun. But while I bought joints

    from the dreadlocked bartender, she was asking
        his contractor friend what it felt like,

    raping the land. I wanted dance clubs, sunrises
        caught from the nightside. She wanted

    history tours, rituals in which we'd share
        our deepest fears. By day three

    we were barely speaking, the sheen
        of the place all gone. What waste.

    I took to sleeping on deck alone, letting
        the boat rock me each night a little closer

    to home. The water was kind, but the stars?
        I swear, I could hear their laughter.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Last Girl by Rose Solari. Copyright © 2014 Rose Solari. Excerpted by permission of Santa Fe Writers Project.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0984832955
• ISBN 13: 9780984832958
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1