Plastic Bag
I am not making this up—not the woman, not
the pink twin set, not the riding mower: she blazed
a trail through a field of dandelions; she took
the middle stripe first; she wrote a green aisle across
an acre. Look, I know how close she is to camp,
to kitsch, to schlock. I saw. Cliché could swallow her
and never have to chew. So it is not enough to say
I am not making this up, but it is also impossible
not to say Look!, not to say I saw. The thing is
art cannot leave freak beauties be; its rule is written
everywhere: you render or you render unto
posh women halving yellow meadows, cutting bounty
to the quick. You render or you render unto:
my dad had no choice but to paint the lake, the clouds,
their dark threatening only cold—stratocumulus,
a curtain the late light sneaks beneath, candling
the tips of pine trees across the water. Soon
he will add the canoe and the boy, the blot, a passenger
carried by a red umbrella full of wind, half kite,
half sail. My dad is not making it up, but art cannot
leave freak beauties be. He will have to add more—
a plastic bag snagged on a sapling’s ankle—
lest the painting look too fanciful, lest it look meant
for a calendar, for a stamp, for a thousand
pieces. Am I rendering or rendering unto? I am
a comedian explaining a joke. It is impossible not to.
Look! I saw a dame in punch pink. She was driving
a chariot of knives. Consider this poem a plastic bag.
The Gateway Arch
It was awkward climbing inside the egg
with Eric; we could not keep our knees
to ourselves, and he, embarking, arms
locked at the elbows, led with his backpack,
holding it out as stiffly as if it were
not a bag but a soiled child.
But what else
is there but kinship for five people bound,
in a loose tooth, for the sky? The boys
my husband and I had herded before us
were not so tidy either, yet Eric called
himself their uncle. And, yes, he liked
Star Wars and, yes, he thought the capsule
that we rode inside could be likened
to an escape pod crashed, two droids inside,
once on Tatooine.
And, yes, he had practice
being an absentee uncle; his nieces
were teens, their mom was a mess,
and, no, none of them knew he was stuck
in Saint Louis for the night or even that
he was traveling by bus, hoping to get
to Hawaii,
because for now this was enough:
to look at Missouri from its shoulder,
to watch the Cardinals bat and the river
run, to be able to see a long way out
the clerestory windows cut into
the city’s silver strap.
It was only minutes,
of course, before we came back to earth.
What else is there for a suburban foursome
and a man whose nervousness neither
tattoos nor kindness can hide?
Whatever
it was, it was enough: to say Be good now,
to say I’ll see you at your weddings,
and then,
hand wrapped in beads, mysteries of rosary
or worry—pearls for the skeleton inked
inside his wrist to test between its teeth—
it was more than enough:
Eric ruffling his nephews’ hair.
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines. In addition, she is the co-editor of book reviews for Plume; her own reviews have been published there and in The Los Angeles Review of Books. You can find Jane on Twitter and Instagram at @_janezwart.
Photo credit: Anna Shvets