"Bodiless" and "Permanent Address: 1956"

Two poems by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner

Author

Publish Date

Dec. 9, 2015

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner

Bodiless

You leave your signature like the atom
whose footprint is its only proof,
the pencil’s sharp point indenting
the paper next to my poems’
lines. With what voice
you have uncovered my concealed
intentions, presented my images
in bas-relief, and textures
I could not see until your hand
revealed the design — just as I mark
the pages of your book of poems —
a blade of grass, a faded ribbon,
a pressed leaf, a leather strip.
In the solitude of this house
I read your words aloud printing the air
with them. Like fragrance
the atoms dance,
disperse, escape,
as light as flight.
I roam through rooms of them.

Permanent Address: 1956

The leaves slick with rain from the afternoon storm,
the small, tough leaves mixed with grass clippings
for my doll’s salad, her tea laid behind the side hedge.

The tiny cherries ridged like pumpkins, sour,
the pits almost as big as the fruit, the juice sticky
on my hands, dripping down my wrists, the pits
a small pile in the grass mixed with dirt and ants.

Grandma’s anger flaring indoors, her apron thrown down.
The continual drone of mosquitoes seeking flesh,
and giant orange grasshoppers, poison-spitters, Grandpa says,
as he bends over his sprouting pineapple growing at
the back door, his coffee always warming on the stove,
ready for his back porch newspaper and his cigar.
His silence when Grandma slams the door.

I fit myself into corners of the outdoors, I wedge
into interstices, find freedom in small places,
the games more challenging the smaller the playing field,
the games unshackling blood bonds to anger foaming and burnt.

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner is professor of English and dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College. She received a PhD from Emory University and has taught at Valparaiso University.