Three Poems
Poetry by Eve Joseph
signal
At the edge of the forest I lifted the phone of the wind out of its cradle. Holding the black receiver in my hand, I had nothing to say. It takes practice to talk to the dead. To not sound as if you are talking to the dead. Even so, I held the phone to my ear and listened to the held breath on the other end of the line. Waiting for it to speak first. In a polite gesture rain dripped through the trees tipping the leaves like an old man doffing his hat. Borges loved his mythological beasts. In Imaginary Beings he placed an animal dreamed by Kafka beside one of Swedenborg’s angels. Two people who have loved each other on earth make a single angel. I listened harder. Soon, we were breathing in unison.
resistance
We travelled as if we were translating a poem. There were words we had to look up, some rusty as harrows. On narrow streets leafed with trees we couldn’t name we sought out cafés with tables half in the sun, half in shade. Our differences moved like shadows across a field, shifting into shapes we recognized before dispersing and leaving us with our own histories. Learning to love was an act of translation that turned over an entire field to prepare a seedbed. Each word was a shoot we had to till our minds to receive. I wanted to surrender completely. To lose myself. But the same old habits insisted. Wind strokes the grass, and the grass shrugs it off. A hand tussles a child’s hair and the child resists.
privilege
When I was a sailor on the MV Besseggen a wave swept me off the hatch. Another lifted me back. An albatross cross-stitched its way behind us opening and closing a seam in our wake. White terns signalled land on a landless horizon. It was Easter in Acajutla and boys in doorways were selling their sisters in sawdust-floored bars with corrugated tin roofs. The street was lit by candlelight and the sailors were getting drunk. One of the older men asked if I was for sale. In the parking lot, on the edge of town, a Ferris wheel carried its cargo of souls in little buckets that slowed and swayed precariously at the top. It never occurred to me that I could be bought or sold. It had never entered my mind.