My Dead Friends by Marie Howe

I have begun,
when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question

to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.

Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,

to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were —
it’s green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,

whatever he says I’ll do.

Labels: Marie Howe

Practicing by Marie Howe

I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade,
a song for what we did on the floor in the basement

of somebody’s parents’ house, a hymn for what we didn’t say but thought:
That feels good or I like that, when we learned how to open each others’ mouths

how to move our tongues to make somebody moan. We called it practicing, and
one was the boy, and we paired off – maybe six or eight girls – and turned out

the lights and kissed and kissed until we were stoned on kisses, and lifted our
nightgowns or let the straps drop, and Now you be the boy.

Concrete floor, sleeping bag or couch, playroom, game room, train room, laundry.
Linda’s basement was like a boat with booths and portholes

instead of windows. Gloria’s father had a bar downstairs with stools that spun,
plush carpeting. We kissed each other’s throats.

We sucked each others’ breasts, and we left marks, and never spoke of it upstairs
outdoors, in daylight, not once. We did it, and it was

practicing, and slept, sprawled so our legs still locked or crossed, a hand still lost
in someone’s hair … and we grew up and hardly mentioned who

the first kiss really was — a girl like us, still sticky with the moisturizer we’d
shared in the bathroom. I want to write a song

for that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant desire
just before we made ourselves stop.

Labels: Marie Howe

What the Living Do - Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil
probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty
dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday
we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight
pours through

the open living room windows because the heat's on too high in
here, and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the
street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday,
hurrying along those
wobby bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down
my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This
is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called
that yearning.

what you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the
winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss -- we want more and
more and then more of it.

but there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself
in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a
cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that
I'm speechless:
I am living, I remember you.

http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/3120698.html

Labels: Marie Howe