Waiting For The Lame Horse
By Joan Burstyn
Published by Belle Mead Press, 1987
Excerpts
Below each poem title is a sound clip of that poem being read by Joan Burstyn. If you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed, music player will appear. Otherwise, you can click the link to play the poem on your computer’s default audio player.
Fresh Laundry
Fresh Laundry
(Read by Joan Burstyn)
Tear open the curtains rip aside the blinds
make it daylight and struggle
to straighten piles of laundry
thoughts washed
folded
ordered
in a painting class
bright cameo among the etchings
a psychiatrist's wife
speaking for her husband
he says you can always tell the state
of a person's mind by the state of her room
I recall his words she spoke
across the years
twenty years strewn across my life
clean laundry folded into a curriculum vitae
and three bundles neatly parceled
but odd socks half-seamed thoughts
lie on the tables and chairs waiting for daylight
Respite
Respite
(Read by Joan Burstyn)
Stretched long
with feline strength
I arch my back
and contemplate
the day,
toss the hours
from hand to hand
juggle tasks
in the air
and with the luxury
of indecision
bury my head
in your flesh.
Animation for Respite created by Dan W. Jacobs, set to Joan’s reading of the poem.
Borrowing
Borrowing
(Read by Joan Burstyn)
| I | II | III |
| Blown in the misty air your hair falls at your cheeks, you are the elf-child again your lips and eyes laughing I would borrow your shirt to capture for me your form to share the wildness of your untamed spirit |
For once, just once, may I, please, please, put on your high-heeled shoes?And as you sort your drawers I prance before the mirror, I am you, my mother, poised and calm, I feel you through the cold soles of your shoes, I smell you through the musk scent of my borrowed slip I am poised and calm as I twirl |
I borrow your cup surreptitiously, sharing the feel of you without permission, because you would withhold it if I asked this once, just once, to share the wildness of your spirit buried deep beneath the cold soles of your sheer white shoes instead, we search beaches for your discarded shells and scavenge them free to feel you through the torn sleeves of a cast-off shirt, its pattern trumpeting your wildness tamed into rows of hunting hornswe share you only through the skins that you have shed |
Three Pictures
1. Birds at Twilight
(For three voices in unison, followed by solo voice)
Voices (Group One)
-----
Great that! Great that Great that!
-----
day day day
Voices (Group Two)
Pip- ette! Pip- ette! Pip- ette! Pip- ette! Pip- ette! ----- -----
Voices (Group Three)
Bread, Bread,
-----
wat- er ch′ ee′se! wat- er ch′ ee′se!
-----
Solo Voice
French horns answering strings; shrill phrases repeated staccato in the dusk. A flock of birds settles in the trees.
2. Rock Music
(For three voices in unison, followed by solo voice)
Voices (Group One)
hot dry hot dry hot dry hot dry hot dry hot dry ----- -----
Voices (Group Two)
----- ----- sly fox sly fox sly fox sly fox sly fox sly fox
Voices (Group Three)
-----
I love I love I love I love
-----
me me me me
Solo Voice
In the house, summer nights, urgent beat, flashing lights, voices loud, music louder, every muscle, working harder, tension rising, temper fraying -- Hold it! while we pace the floor, love is all we're asking for.
3. Spider’s Web
(For five voices, sequentially, followed by a solo voice)
Why should I do that when you don't? I want to buy some shoes We always end up arguing I want to go to a concert Sneakers are cheaper You didn't answer my question I want shoes not sneakers I thought I'd explained that Why not go to the theater? It seems to be we always So you don't care what I think? Let's go to the mall Where shall we go? Why not the city? Let's stay home I want to read I want my shoes Can't we agree? To the city Shoes can wait Listen Stop now It's me Who? Me
Solo
Around the table sharing food between soaps and newscasts, webs of conversation, hang in the unswept air latched onto, elaborated, in the months, the years of wintering.