4 Poems by Jeanette Lynes
The Inner World of the Orange
My mother’s most beloved trick: take a simple orange,
turn it into pure sorrow. She did this in the manner
of a spell, a story (the same story over, over). The dark
handkerchief of her words whisked away, and presto—
the dour ’30s, a girl whose teeth vibrated with ache, who
walked barefoot in snow. Who received one orange each year
in her Christmas sock. The story really began here—with her
hand rolling the cool pebbled flesh across her cheek
in that farmhouse so bitter she could see her breath.
With her inhaling its sweet citrus rodeo, wheeling it
along her sill. Sketching it with her last stubby crayon
for posterity. Telling her diary about the sunny supple star
from which it travelled to her. Positioning her thumb in its
softest point then stopping herself, praying for strength
to resist. Truth was, this is a modern girls’ story (the moral:
defer, defer) more than a saga of peasants rising from the
dead
fires of their own hungers, as martyrs. After all, consider
the inner world of the orange—labial, lush, lost,
utterly lost at the first fissure in its pulpy stockade.
More fallen, even, than the common apple.
This all happened prior to me, which must make me
the logical conclusion, the sequel, if you like, to
the orange story, the sad document of a woman’s ultimate
defeat,
the daughter who, like the wedding guest, must stop her life,
must listen.
Fundamentals of Oxygen in Intimate Situations
The land languished.
The Inseminator parked his small truck,
its doors painted: We spread the seed, we meet your need.
The cows were lined up. I was told:
weed the peas (knowingly, I
plodded the shrivelled green).
He was a joyless man with a syringe.
A country boy drove me away,
asked: would I care for an organism? Like he
wondered if I’d fancy beef dip (or like
my mother pouring The Inseminator tea after his work, grilling him:
did he feel like God, life’s germ in his very palm?
He shrugged—there were worse jobs
than shooting seed).
Scorn was my middle name. I set my date straight—
“It’s orgasm, moron, and asking can’t give me one. Do you take
me for some mute bovine?” He was hurt so I let him
kiss me until his Volkswagen windows steamed, until
we were fogged, suspended in an enormous droplet, trying to recall
our science book—could we suffocate like this? (The book
was silent on fundamentals of oxygen in intimate situations.)
The boy had eager saliva.
We were still breathing in the slowest
kind of rain. He asked: what was I thinking? I said, “Nothing”—
then felt the sudden press to say
something: “Wouldn’t it be bitchin’ if they found us here—
two dead organisms—tomorrow?”
He laughed and when
he forgot to show off learning he
didn’t possess, I liked him. We let science go.
I closed my eyes, thought not
of the queen but the heavy, swaying
cows back home, my mother’s tea sloshing in the stomach
of the grim seed-shooter bumping back
down the lane in his truck, the man for whom it was just
another working day.
Twiggy’s Prayer
Excuse me, Supreme Slender Deity—
You’ll know me as Lesley Hornby of North London. Here’s
what happened—
I was rinsing a shampoo in the salon, this bloke says, “Follow
me, Miss.”
For not eating they gave me a Mustang. I earned it—bloody
hard,
holding my eyes wide open with three pairs of false lashes
weighing them down.
I haven’t had monthlies since 1962 (I don’t miss those
Alcatrazes of the torso). I became the Face of 1966. They
called me names:
Waif, Kindling, Punctured Marionette. North America likes
names,
concave women. I made the cover of Vogue four times—
more than the Queen!
Newsweek called me four limbs in search of a body (clever).
I don’t mean
to brag—it’s just I heard you’ve a reward system—I’d like the
points
coming my way. O Wispy One, I ask for one thing alone—a
simple memory—
the taste of chocolate. Dark. Semi-sweet. Not the real thing,
merely the idea
of the thing. Amen.
Summer Waitresses, Bucko’s Resort, 1986
We were fat. Our midriffs wobbled, our twin chins
debated with each other. Pecans vaulted from pies
right to our thighs. The one we called Bones said
saying “pecan” cost 100 calories. Bones rose
above things. We were circuses of the flesh. Our
hair stranded under red triangle scarves, we cursed
the pulp mill’s early shift, each flapjack plate clattering
onto the counter. The Skidders pinched us, they dug
love handles, abundant butts. They toured us in their
muscle cars, made “You Shook Me All Night Long”
the soundtrack to our lives. They gave us stuff to inhale
that smelled like pine but wasn’t. Lavished Singapore
Slings on us, asked for our cherries, laughed long
after this was funny. We had big blurry bashes on purpling
lower ridges of Rockies behind the motel where
we worked. Someone sometimes wondered, if she
wasn’t too gone, “Where’s Bones?” Someone might reply
if she wasn’t too wasted, “Try the pool.” Sure enough
Bones would be swimming there, laps, a lone bulb
on a pole lighting her watery way. Some mill boy still
possessing the gift of words would ask, “What’s with her?”
We, the fat ones, understood: she’d swallowed a pecan or
worse, a whole brownie. We saw right through her
strokes: full-tilt penance. We knew dawn would reveal her
stick-arms still slicing the aqua correction, slower,
slower. This was the summer an ordinary plump girl could
marry a prince. We called to Bones in the early hours:
“Bones, come inside, watch the wedding.” We were coming
down, crowding the tube by the patio doors while elk
snuffled through our lawn and the princess towed her
ivory train up the aisle and Bones just kept
taking on water out there. Slapping the promise of herself
through drenched sky, lighter ever after.
