» Poetry

Two Poems

Charlotte Pence

ODE TO IRON

It swings our doors.

unlocks our homes,

scuttles our oxygen.

Yet, we don’t think to thank it.

Only when it breaks,

blows, bleeds do we

know what we’ve loved

and simply haven’t called

by name—like the red

bird at the feeder.

Not ours, never ours.

And isn’t that why we point

and ask whoever is near,

Do you know what it’s called?

It isn’t the name we want

but to slash the theoretical

line known as the horizon,

break forth a new ocean

that flows like red,

and that softens the iron

between us.

MISJUDGMENTS

As a child, did you also

find yourself hiding

too long, too often,

in closet or clavicle, above

portico, below patella,

happily cobwebbed

under bed and attic hole?

And did you also, before

the thrush and toilet flush,

before the robin’s chirp

and coffee pot growl,

believe your mother would

enjoy it if you imprisoned yourself

behind the skinny dining-chair legs,

determined never to be found?

Underneath the white tablecloth,

you became a liminal being:

the space between

someone’s daughter

and someone’s lost daughter,

delighting too long

in your mother’s cries,

your name changing,

chambering, pulsing anew

as she pumped it each time.

And not that you knew who

was Demeter, you witnessed

a mother’s grief that day, delighting

as Greek gods do, in spinning

a moment like a China plate

on their fingertips,

marveling how swiftly life can go

from good to crash.

                                   How quickly

her relief ripped around when you

jumped out, laughing. How

the hug you had imagined

slapped your face. How you

couldn’t blame her, not

even then. How, you knew,

you’d do it again.