Two poems by LIZ ROBBINS
Haunted House
In the evenings, we drink
spirits. And in the day, if
we can get away with it.
Like sipping from clear jars
of moonshine, we close
our eyes, consume the dead.
On the center table, a book
of old pictures for us to leaf
through. In every room,
chairs split from dead trees,
chosen by others long ago.
If you feel cold in a doorway,
if you wake to find your bed
full of blood, it's happened
before, perhaps it's time to rest.
You move the dead, with your
red planchette knocking in
your chest. They speak most
in rooms of books. If you hear
them, perhaps it's time to go.
If you hear them, it's only as
true as your mistrust of the
living, and outside, the hills
are deaf with snow.
191 The Paris-American
In the evenings, we drink
spirits. And in the day, if
we can get away with it.
Like sipping from clear jars
of moonshine, we close
our eyes, consume the dead.
On the center table, a book
of old pictures for us to leaf
through. In every room,
chairs split from dead trees,
chosen by others long ago.
If you feel cold in a doorway,
if you wake to find your bed
full of blood, it's happened
before, perhaps it's time to rest.
You move the dead, with your
red planchette knocking in
your chest. They speak most
in rooms of books. If you hear
them, perhaps it's time to go.
If you hear them, it's only as
true as your mistrust of the
living, and outside, the hills
are deaf with snow.
191 The Paris-American
So
––a one-beat song
I'm down. So there
are ghosts in this house. I can
make them crawl in holes
with this small brown bowl
of pills like stars, this glass
of red fire. My love is a horse
in a field once green, now
dead, now gold. As they turn,
I ask the ghosts where their
mouths have gone (the bells
mute). They eye the clock,
the bones, the door. They need
to go, now I want them here.
I change minds out of a warped
self, a brand of shame. My horse
is clay, breaks if it goes too far.
My hope is dry as fear is wet.
The small brown bowl is a well.
I climb up its side. What I trust
are stars, that a horse will toss
me clear and free.
192 The Paris-American
––a one-beat song
I'm down. So there
are ghosts in this house. I can
make them crawl in holes
with this small brown bowl
of pills like stars, this glass
of red fire. My love is a horse
in a field once green, now
dead, now gold. As they turn,
I ask the ghosts where their
mouths have gone (the bells
mute). They eye the clock,
the bones, the door. They need
to go, now I want them here.
I change minds out of a warped
self, a brand of shame. My horse
is clay, breaks if it goes too far.
My hope is dry as fear is wet.
The small brown bowl is a well.
I climb up its side. What I trust
are stars, that a horse will toss
me clear and free.
192 The Paris-American
Liz Robbins' third collection, Freaked, won the 2014 Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award, judged by Bruce Bond. Her second collection, Play Button, won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith; her album Picked Strings is a recording of various poems from that collection. Her chapbook Girls Turned Like Dials won the 2012 YellowJacket Press prize. She won the 2015 Crab Orchard Review Special Issue Feature Award in Poetry, and her poems are in recent or forthcoming issues of American Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Cream City Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Kenyon Review Online, and River Styx. She's an associate professor of creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla.
