Martha Rhodes
Them All
You must resist my calls, urgent as they sound,
for I will call you, rouse you, easy sleeper.
You should not follow or evenly step with me
across the plains of my sleep terrains where
I’ll wade through the carcasses of those I’ve never
met though I’ll know them all, for I am them all.
You should not stray from your own territories,
though still I’ll beg you, Join me.
Seen through glass,
the eyelash magnified. Also, sperm. Swimming, like all of us,
I thought, I thought, nowhere—hamsters on a wheel.
Husband’s seed speeding away from me. I saw
the barren-ness of my future when at that time
even the word “my” coupled with daughter, son, house,
plate, headache– “my” over and over again was plunged scalpel-sharp
into the heart by well-intentioned friends— as in, My Ben turns 10 today—
sending me to the inner skull’s roof, a cliff to leap from,
yes, until, I suppose, after decades, I just became
deafened to, and by, the word. And when I look at the world
through the glass of the microscope on the loved one’s curious desk,
to discover what the dampness of a paper towel reveals,
the mind is flat as a jellyfish fried on Miami Beach sand.
I was once there with parents in the 60’s, wealthy enough for the Eden,
its Shirley Temples and umbrella’d virgin drinks all for me,
and that wondrously glorious pool, empty at noon save for Father
who we all watched through the surprising glass wall at our first buffet
there, along with other guests, pointing, laughing, then ready
to harpoon him as he, oblivious, pulled off his trunks and performed
that underwater dance. A few teens jumped in, saw, and raced away
from the excited milky water (I’m imagining that detail).
What brings me to the microscope today—certainly not sperm.
Peanut butter smeared, just peanut butter. Drop of diseased blood,
white cells unreadable to me. A dead cat’s whisker retrieved from safekeeping.
Dull, perhaps, I never see anything more than what’s evident.
Martha Rhodes
Martha Rhodes is the author of five poetry collections, most recently “The Thin Wall” (Univ of Pittsburgh Press). She is currently working on a New and Selected collection. She teaches at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and is the publisher and executive editor of Four Way Books. She lives in New York City.