Sample Poems by Michael Daley

Original Sin

My mother waited till now
to hand down this gold razor
her father let slip
in the washbowl.
In a hurry to teamster the horses,
soap on his earlobe and nostril,
he climbed the fire-wagon.
When she poured the wash water
onto pebbles, hard gold
sluiced at the bottom
with the whiskers.
A gold razor, small for travel,
beside the soap,
I wipe a circle in the foggy mirror,
my face doughy and wet,
the age I always am,
burrs sprung on my cheek,
chin, under my lip.
Sister Josephine chalked dots, sins
born inside the circle, the soul.
Death camps originated in Eden.
Abel, the shepherd, was murdered.
I scrape my chin.
Already our baby sees me
as a dot, translucent
on the slippery wall,
shadow on the fetal eyelash,
a whisper, “shit,” like my father,
not often, but when he nicked his jaw.
My parents met
packaging Blue Blades
at Gillette’s plant on a river
for workers to smooth
their Hellenic chins in the war,
for prisoners and jailers to swap,
for cold fingers sawing the wrist.
I was afraid too.
For me it was sex.
Not the delicate way
I unbutton your dress,
and huddle over the body
inside the body, but once
I saw my parents on their lunch break.
Having merely opened the blouse and pants
like secret lovers, they kept laughing,
and then they whispered when they came.
They went back to work. That was my sin:
shadow in shadow, riding the dark water,
I didn’t know my father and mother

were in love, and young, happy,
skinny like me.
 

After That

When Kadee was a kid and didn’t talk,
I used to rock her in the dark
between our parents’ bedpost and the crib
to hear her breathe. Now I hold my breath
as they bring her to the mike,
as the singer turns, smiles to the keyboard,
and my mother’s lips at the dim table move,
a pink streamer tacked up to the ceiling
already free of its tape,
an inch of tattered crepe
dangling from the last “E” of her name.
She’s embarrassed, not by the song
(Jesus—that brightened the whole rotten night),
but that neighbors could see her—
relations, waitress friends from years
at Blinstrub’s, The Beachcomber, The Pony Room,
strangers could touch her hands,
smile across tables spotty with beer.

A month ago, a black stitch still down her back,
my mother was crying in the dark a small
night nurse told me, and I had never, all
my life never seen her tears. Housing
had come to tear the old house down.
But now my sister is grinning,
the brushes pass over the drum.
The moon comes through a corner window.
She sings YOU on the air, and
LIGHT UP full of breath, pauses
to brush away smoke, MY LIFE just right.
The drummer’s cymbals hush,
gold leaf spilling from a dish.
Near the top stair once she jiggled from the knees,
her right eye opened and closed, and closed
and she spilled. These days she says ,
“I’m not retarded, I have a damaged brain.”

None of their eyes are on me
when I take my whiskey over to the door.
After that I wanted to watch
the moon on Wollaston Boulevard
and small waves along the pebbly beach,
but some of the women have twisted round
at tables in the rose haze
to peek at my mother
and the rows of their faces
keep beaming.

My Sister Is A Flight Of Birds
 
I’m standing on ice, a flight of geese
fleeing the moon, skimming the roof,
dampens the air. Seven quiet birds.
I have been saying their names so long
and now I can’t remember
what their sudden rising means.
They call on the chill air
and let me be. When I slept, I hoped
never to wake and write these poems.
I’m not the man for this.
I wanted fire whispering over pages,
glowing in cloud. Instead,
I have spent my life as a man ice-fishing.
My line jigs down a hole
and sometimes in winter dawn
I draw up one freezing fish, and I’m surprised
holding it out, my glasses fogged like Dad’s
under the small brim of his hat
on mornings he tightened our skates.
Can you remember anything from childhood?
I only know how ordinary we were,
sliding on the snow.
All night I kept these words beside my head,
white faces of skaters, a few haunted birds.