Diorama of Ignorance, Sweet Lorraine, and The Darkest Wettest Winter on Record

by Gina Williams


Diorama of Ignorance

How to write about Africa:
he says you start by
washing the elephant

You never use quote marks.
Each morning a bitter
swallow.

Desire is a yellow leaf, is
a silk-webbed larval case
caught in thin breezes,
cornered.

How to write about Mexico:
she says you begin
with chocolate and votives

Commas should be dashed.
Each day a violent
struggle.

Passion is a pink bloom, is
a cicada raking midnight
trapped by the sea,
lost.

How to write about Russia:
they say you begin
with bullets and grandmothers

Apostrophes must go.
Each generation a lost
cause.

Hope is a crushed seed, is
a golden-feathered songbird
blown off course,
silent.

How to write about America:
she says you begin with
toy guns and lost boys

Sentences must be avoided.
Each dream a terrible
curse.

Freedom is a falling sky, is
is the last wolf
searching for a mate,
hopeless.

In the bush, on the street,
ordinary love escapes us,
the poetry of things
hidden by grief.

 
Sweet Lorraine

She never said goodbye.
Now the sink is stacked with dishes.
All the clocks in the house are set
to a different time. Even the rooster
has stopped crowing.
The babies won’t stop crying.

In the bathroom, Mom’s stockings
hang from the shower rod, still damp,
as if they have soaked up all
the sadness of the world
and are dripping it slowly
down our drain. I try not to
smell them, but can’t stop, push
one toe to my nose, then run outside.

Now that I’m grown and they’re gone,
I can only imagine what dad was thinking
when he drove her to the sanitarium
where they shaved her soft
red hair, taped electrodes to her scalp,
tried to zap the demons and despair from her brain.

“I have no mind left to do anything at all.
Is this what they call grief?” I can hear
his tired voice repeating, a scratched up,
smashed up record. “All the music,
even the sweetest melodies,
have turned against me.”

How many times did he send her
away before they finally said,
“We have no cure for that.”

Never trust a happy song.
That was such a long, long time ago.

 
The darkest, wettest winter on record

This morning the weather man said that we have had forty-nine days of rain in the last fifty-seven days. When the squirrels chased my tires like dogs back in September, I already knew we were in for something. Winter is like a drinking contest. Who will be the last man standing? At times like these the only hope is to pick fleas and pretend we are Russians, bundled in piles of fur and drinking vodka by candlelight, selling secrets to the Nigerians, and digging holes beneath the snow, just to keep warm. We’ll have beans and caviar again for supper. We have just enough money left for milk chocolate. The coffee is getting cold. On the news a stranded calf is being blown by the force of rotor blades across the ice to the lakeshore. We sit on the couch and cry. It’s too wet outside and cold, and we have to keep the squirrels in the house to keep the fleas off. I will find them eating the crumbs in my kitchen. It is cold and damp in the ringlets of my favorite wig. By midnight, we will have sixty days of rain to mourn and the vodka will be gone. Where is my fur muff? Where will we go from here? Let’s plant the beans, fry catfish for dinner, listen to the branches, tuck in the worm ball of children, kiss the weather man goodnight, and sleep it off until a later time, hope that we wake in spring.