1703: Shame | Minnie Bruce Pratt
“Shame”
Minnie Bruce Pratt
1.
I ask for justice but do not release
myself. Do I think I was wrong? Yes.
Of course. Was wrong. Am wrong. Can
justify everything except their pain.
Even now their cries rattle in my ears
like icy winds pierce in cold weather.
Even now a tenderness from their cries.
The past repeats in fragments: What I
see is everybody watching, me included,
as a selfish woman leaves her children,
two small boys hardly more than babies.
Though I say he took them, and my theories
explain power, how he thought he'd force
me to choose, me or them, her or them.
2.
How I wanted her slant humid body,
that first woman, silent reach.
How I began with her furtive mouth,
her silences, her hand fucking me
back of the van, beach sand grit
scritch at my jeans, low tide.
The boys yelling in myrtle thickets
outside, hurl pell-mell, count hide-
and-seek. The youngest opens the door.
What I am doing is escape into clouds,
grey heat, promise of thunderstorm
not ominous, not sordid, from ground
to air, like us flying kites in March.
But to him it's July, and I'm doing what?
Curious, left out, he tells some fragment later
to the father, who already knows. The threats
get worse, spat curses: He'll take the children,
I can go fly where I damn please in the world.
The muttered words for scum, something rotten,
flies buzzing, futile, mean.
If I had been
more ashamed, if I had not wanted the world.
If I had hid my lust, I might not have lost
them. This is where the shame starts.
If I had not been so starved, if I had been
more ashamed and hid. No end to this blame.
3.
At times I can say it was good, even better
for them, my hunger for her. Now that we're
here, they've grown up, survived, no suicides,
despite their talk of walks in front of cars,
smashing through plate glass. Despite guilt:
The long sweating calls to the twelve-year-
old, saying Hold on against the pain,
how I knew it from when I left, the blame
inside, the splintered self, saying to him Walk
out, remind the body you are alive, even if
rain is freezing in the thickets to clatter
like icy seeds, even if you are the only one
plodding through the drifts of grainy snow.
Now we've survived. They call to talk poetry
or chaos of physics. Out of the blue to hear
their voices, a kind of forgiveness, a giddy
lifting of my heart:
As they appear today in my city,
old enough to come by plane or train to be with me
and my lover, sit in my kitchen, snug, but a feeling of travel.
Their curious eyes on a life that widens in a place
little known, our pleasure without shame. We talk
and the walls seem to shift and expand around us.
The breaking of some frozen frame. The youngest jokes
lovebirds at our held hands. Late evening we stir.
Goodnight: They expect me to go off to bed with her.
4.
All the years between now and then, the nights.
One December when I thought she would leave me,
was weeping her hand’s loss, her body’s weight
lifting away, and thought: I will lose her
like I lost the children. I will lose her.
and I knew my body’s secret thought, endured
as a voice creeping on my skin, a buzz,
a sandfly’s bite of pain, a grain of sand
caught in the sheets, abrading my skin. Loss,
said the voice, love is loss. Don’t forget
the children, how pleasure brings pain.
Don’t forget you’re to blame. Don’t forget
how pain digs in your hands, like thorns stuck
and broken off, invisible ache you feel
whenever you touch. You lose what you touch.
You’ve learned it. Don’t want too much.
Think of her arms as nothing: blowing foam,
drifting cloud, scudding caress.
Reality is flesh of your flesh taken.
What you want to last is fantasy, imagination,
said the voice creeping my body, pain.
5.
In one hand, the memory of pain.
I re-read one of these poems and begin
again (again, it's been fifteen years)
to cry at the fragmented naked faces,
at the noise of the crying, somewhere
inside us, even now, like an old wind.
In one hand, the memory of pain.
In the other hand, change. When
did it begin? Over and over. Once
we all were walking on the street,
me and her, hand in hand, very loud
singing sixties rock-and-roll, shake,
rattle, strolling, smiling, indecent
(but not quite illegal), escaped
out with the boys in a gusty wind.
The youngest sang, the oldest lagged,
ashamed? But we waited for him.
It was a comedy, a happy ending,
pleasure. We kept saying Spring,
it's spring, so the boys brought us
to their lake, its body-thick ice thinned
at the edge to broken glass splinters.
The new waves widened and glittered in the ice,
a delicate clinking like glass wind chimes.
And now, sometimes, one of them will say: Remember
the day we all went down to the lake? Remember
how we heard the sound of the last ice in the water?
This poem is from a fantastic poetry collection called Crime Against Nature by Minnie Bruce Pratt. There are few poetry collections that I truly admire as collections and not simply a book of poems, and this is one of them. (Others include Crush by Richard Siken, The Blue Dress by Alison Townsend, You Remind Me of You by Eireann Corrigan, and The Rape Poems by Frances Driscoll.) If you like this poem or find the story compelling, I urge you to check out her book. That goes for any of the poets I post here; if you like their work and you have the means, please support them by purchasing one of their books (or requesting that your library purchase a copy) or going to a reading.
I wish I had a roof over my bed/ to pull down on my head when I feel damned/ by wanting you so much it looks like need.
Minnie Bruce Pratt
1.
I ask for justice but do not release
myself. Do I think I was wrong? Yes.
Of course. Was wrong. Am wrong. Can
justify everything except their pain.
Even now their cries rattle in my ears
like icy winds pierce in cold weather.
Even now a tenderness from their cries.
The past repeats in fragments: What I
see is everybody watching, me included,
as a selfish woman leaves her children,
two small boys hardly more than babies.
Though I say he took them, and my theories
explain power, how he thought he'd force
me to choose, me or them, her or them.
2.
How I wanted her slant humid body,
that first woman, silent reach.
How I began with her furtive mouth,
her silences, her hand fucking me
back of the van, beach sand grit
scritch at my jeans, low tide.
The boys yelling in myrtle thickets
outside, hurl pell-mell, count hide-
and-seek. The youngest opens the door.
What I am doing is escape into clouds,
grey heat, promise of thunderstorm
not ominous, not sordid, from ground
to air, like us flying kites in March.
But to him it's July, and I'm doing what?
Curious, left out, he tells some fragment later
to the father, who already knows. The threats
get worse, spat curses: He'll take the children,
I can go fly where I damn please in the world.
The muttered words for scum, something rotten,
flies buzzing, futile, mean.
If I had been
more ashamed, if I had not wanted the world.
If I had hid my lust, I might not have lost
them. This is where the shame starts.
If I had not been so starved, if I had been
more ashamed and hid. No end to this blame.
3.
At times I can say it was good, even better
for them, my hunger for her. Now that we're
here, they've grown up, survived, no suicides,
despite their talk of walks in front of cars,
smashing through plate glass. Despite guilt:
The long sweating calls to the twelve-year-
old, saying Hold on against the pain,
how I knew it from when I left, the blame
inside, the splintered self, saying to him Walk
out, remind the body you are alive, even if
rain is freezing in the thickets to clatter
like icy seeds, even if you are the only one
plodding through the drifts of grainy snow.
Now we've survived. They call to talk poetry
or chaos of physics. Out of the blue to hear
their voices, a kind of forgiveness, a giddy
lifting of my heart:
As they appear today in my city,
old enough to come by plane or train to be with me
and my lover, sit in my kitchen, snug, but a feeling of travel.
Their curious eyes on a life that widens in a place
little known, our pleasure without shame. We talk
and the walls seem to shift and expand around us.
The breaking of some frozen frame. The youngest jokes
lovebirds at our held hands. Late evening we stir.
Goodnight: They expect me to go off to bed with her.
4.
All the years between now and then, the nights.
One December when I thought she would leave me,
was weeping her hand’s loss, her body’s weight
lifting away, and thought: I will lose her
like I lost the children. I will lose her.
and I knew my body’s secret thought, endured
as a voice creeping on my skin, a buzz,
a sandfly’s bite of pain, a grain of sand
caught in the sheets, abrading my skin. Loss,
said the voice, love is loss. Don’t forget
the children, how pleasure brings pain.
Don’t forget you’re to blame. Don’t forget
how pain digs in your hands, like thorns stuck
and broken off, invisible ache you feel
whenever you touch. You lose what you touch.
You’ve learned it. Don’t want too much.
Think of her arms as nothing: blowing foam,
drifting cloud, scudding caress.
Reality is flesh of your flesh taken.
What you want to last is fantasy, imagination,
said the voice creeping my body, pain.
5.
In one hand, the memory of pain.
I re-read one of these poems and begin
again (again, it's been fifteen years)
to cry at the fragmented naked faces,
at the noise of the crying, somewhere
inside us, even now, like an old wind.
In one hand, the memory of pain.
In the other hand, change. When
did it begin? Over and over. Once
we all were walking on the street,
me and her, hand in hand, very loud
singing sixties rock-and-roll, shake,
rattle, strolling, smiling, indecent
(but not quite illegal), escaped
out with the boys in a gusty wind.
The youngest sang, the oldest lagged,
ashamed? But we waited for him.
It was a comedy, a happy ending,
pleasure. We kept saying Spring,
it's spring, so the boys brought us
to their lake, its body-thick ice thinned
at the edge to broken glass splinters.
The new waves widened and glittered in the ice,
a delicate clinking like glass wind chimes.
And now, sometimes, one of them will say: Remember
the day we all went down to the lake? Remember
how we heard the sound of the last ice in the water?
This poem is from a fantastic poetry collection called Crime Against Nature by Minnie Bruce Pratt. There are few poetry collections that I truly admire as collections and not simply a book of poems, and this is one of them. (Others include Crush by Richard Siken, The Blue Dress by Alison Townsend, You Remind Me of You by Eireann Corrigan, and The Rape Poems by Frances Driscoll.) If you like this poem or find the story compelling, I urge you to check out her book. That goes for any of the poets I post here; if you like their work and you have the means, please support them by purchasing one of their books (or requesting that your library purchase a copy) or going to a reading.
I wish I had a roof over my bed/ to pull down on my head when I feel damned/ by wanting you so much it looks like need.