A Voice and Six Objects in a Gold Foil Box

1.
“I feel guilty saying out loud
the amethyst geode is like
a drugstore urinal.” Does she mean Duchamp?
To me, the skin is spotted,
an outlandish zebra. I can’t see inside
but the random liver spots, on a hide
that ought to be striped, white and
black, simply isn’t. And a zebra inert
is simply too heavy to turn over, or lift.

2.
My mother’s best broach this one isn’t.
But I like it, whorled on the bosom
of her housedress. All pattern, swirls
of cream and brown where her breasts
-- is that the right word? -- would jiggle,
but don’t. Only the spiral pin she wears
catches this light from this window.

3.
Pumice! The caldera of the volcano.
A loofa for the bath to scrub off old skin. What ought
to feel bad feels good, all scratchy.
A tiny pillow to fit the soft spots
behind sore knees, on rough knuckles.

The cat spends hours reaching into the plant pots
for acorns, worm eaten, dropped from the pin oak
in autumn, before the pots come back in. So heavy
the pots, so light the lacy acorns she tosses up,
chases over carpets to the tile floor.
In summer, when the pots go back out,
what’s left will begin to sprout.

4.
A tinkle, the copper charm bracelet
ruffled in the drawer, stirred around
by fingers searching the silk scarves.
Look. Among the rainbow welter
a tiny top hat, a filigree bridge,
a sailboat with a moving jib, a bust of
President Lincoln fingernail size, and
a lamb. Fished out, circling your wrist, a
jingle as you fuss with my hair.

4.
Oh, open bowl on the piano shawl,
etched crystal, chrysanthemum, why are you empty?
The cold blue multiplies a diamond surface,
plush color the curtain
between what’s present, what’s
merely absent this season.

In a square state, let’s say Highball,
the folks come down to the river
to drink. They bring their cups
to ring on square stones on the bank.
Crashes. One falls.
She used to be pretty. Now she is a zebra
with spots, nothing human at all.

Chandelier, hung sideways, how will the light
quicken? Your prisms absorb all that heat!
So pretty the glow we can’t see by.
Who’s idea, big boy? Not mine.
I admire from below, listen for your bellow
as the silk cord let’s go.

6.
Can Eeyore be a lion, please?
I ask Nurse. She doesn’t answer
but I know the answer is no
no matter how much I want it.
My jaws are the firecrackers
at the bottom of the wooden crate,
1,000 LBS. stamped in red on the lid.
If we wait long enough, I promise him
under the coverlet. If only I can grow up.

7.
Put everything back into the box
under the silk lid, I am Pandora
ready to slam down the top.
Virtues and vices, who cares which?
I do, says the tin soldier with the red plush heart.
I’m not a pin cushion. I’m a defender.
Help me up! Let me out! Queen Bee!
The zebra with spots
has a jeweled heart, all glitter and roil.
The zebra with neon headlights for eyes
blinks on the highway verge,
all loopy possibilities, all mammal,
all explorer, all body. I’ll be his brain,
I promise him, pen writing
a house for him all gone
but conjuring fields from the copper jewelry,
the flensed skin. I promise him.

*Hilda Raz was born in Rochester, New York and educated at Boston University. She teaches in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln, where she is editor-in-chief of Prairie Schooner. Her poems, essays, articles, and reviews have been published in books from University Presses of New England, Scribner's, Longstreet Press, Story Line Press, North Light Books, and the Bench Press as well as The Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, Women's Review of Books, Judaism, North American Review, Literature in Medicine, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her last two books are both from Wesleyan UP Poetry Series, DIVINE HONORS and TRANS. Two of her essays have been accepted or are published recently in CREATIVE NONFICTION and FOURTH GENRE.