Mary's Hysteria
Someone’s job it is.
Sweep out the barroom before the morning drinkers.
The wind, which sends the peanut shells back inside.
The beach, which wanders down the hill from there.
Sand churned up overnight, now hardened and cold.
Sandpipers scatter where the sand has some give,
closer to the worry of waves.
Up ahead plain as day—are you walking there?
I look. Are you? If I see you, I see you
as if in a cave.
Gloved. If I see you at all I can’t tell.
My mind’s eye remembers the sea and you and the swell of stony sky.
Someone’s job it is.
The first one arrives, named Mary, and she has a story for me
about the time she woke and could no longer see or feel, those two senses gone.
It was before the war, but the war was coming—
air raid sirens and black curtains and smaller portions all around.
The loss of sight and touch lasted a few hours—
father brought a doctor in—but after tea she began to recover,
the first face she saw her own in the ceiling as though in the clouds.
She drinks until sundown. Someone walks Mary home.
Birds scatter like bones in the rough weather, feathers roughed up.
Fathers blend into the old stories like ash.
A bright red blouse on the jetty rocks sharp with mussels,
the taste red with salt and new blood.
My fingertips trace your jawline, that ragged coast.
I miss all the gone people all the time, those people I never knew.
River Town Rising
From inside the room the rain.
A black spread of soaked branches.
A warm December play.
I can’t see my feet in the water.
The bones won’t come into focus.
In the water the rain, from inside the house.
The birds mostly want. The squirrels.
From the house the smell of cooking.
There you are. From you the rain.
The hills are veering. The ragged run.
One morning and the logging truck.
The brink of sun and then the road.
The river a new color and another each
time I call it river and the rain
that rose it high under the gun. There
you are. From inside the house
look at me and after the rain the man
climbs the highway with trees on his back.
From a distance the place. I’m certain.
From you the place remembers me.
You were a long time ago, in absence
and plaid scarf with rainboots
a small black leaf on your upper wet arm
after you take off your shirt the leaf
the scarf, the boots, after you the rain.
A hand on the slick muddied skin
A breath not deep enough but broad.
Sarah Davis has published in a number of journals, including Pleiades, Fence, Drunken Boat, the Antioch Review, and Epoch. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana.