Six Poems From Andrea Perkins

Dance With Parent

you must have a strong leg,
sticky hands, and be free on saturday

to take this class
you must be vivid, wrong, submerged

the soft, warm head of your child
obvious, the rest buried in sand

or earth, that spinning cradle
which only breaks under the heavy flapping of ghosts

you will learn how to balance on air’s cutting edge
and lift infant up until it spreads all ten limbs

outward, gazing forward, moving always up


The Weight of Hair

there is a point at which we cross over
and with the ease of landed gentry or a small animal
meet the monster of light, abraxas,
or as they say here, abracadabra

until that happens, your expectations will be knifing you,
hope and fear interchangeable,
you might even bury your heart up to the neck
and leave a glimmering in the vestibule
next to your root and claw
and all because life is passing and there is no coin
that can get you back

so what if the day moves in and down
towards its own red ending?
maybe down in that hole,
is the bottom, the beginning
or at the very least an electricity made
by all this

words that are waves not baskets
baskets that are macabre embroilments
not love, subpoenaed by marshlight,
by rings of saturn crossing seas of ice

my advice is:

write your name in snow
so nobody who is sleepwalking
in the forest will see it
later, when they awake
from hunger and cold, from dreams of fur and gold,
wearing pajamas, they will see smoke
in the distance and follow it back to camp
all the while wanting heated mansions,
hearts with wings or skulls with wings

ok so this is where it starts getting into trouble
like it’s two in the morning and we’re going into a walgreens


Plow

nail in the wall,
unfinished pearl,
onions splitting their shoots in the near ground

my reflection
in the expanse of cold window
grows a beard of night

nail in the wall, stick in the mud,
a Grecian perfection of loins and teeth and the future
which is already here, a cathedral
where I spit out my time
and awaken

in this little life
a plow is both a shape and a tool


Our Mascot The Angel

in this most difficult of games
the winner must molt his or her wings like beetles in heat
and wind round with wings and legs in a kind of
dark glomming until he or she is vani-
shed.
another, easier game, played in the ancient night with cards
and natural masks, is still played even today.
down in the valley they call it ‘love in a laundromat.’
the loser of it sings a tidy lament on augury and vice.


Free Labor
taken almost entirely from a piece of junk mail
sent to the author on Christmas

4 apprentices (2 sitting, 2 standing)
talking about the luster of certain strawberries.
the silence that follows is yellowy.

the practice of the apprentices
is to work in their own time
or for money wages,
a quarter dollar a day.

work from six to nine, then breakfast. work
from ten to one, then lunch. from three to six,
rest.

others work in little gardens around negro houses
and seem always well pleased to be fully employed.
i know a small estate worked exclusively on this system.
it is in excellent order.


Three Poems

1. Hacienda

make no mistake,
they went there

family got into car on dark street,
sprinklers hissing all around

there was no time
for binoculars

in vast cement basements
dogs ate light


2. Ur

pluck the string
and the girl moves for you,
gives you a soft courage
beneath the teetering worm

stop looking up, look down, they say
they say: work work

and no ocean known, or just one
loaned on erasure


3. Basic Night

there are no other worlds without end

may ends, then a month without water

the townspeople drink dew from leaves
twice in a year without rain
the prize goes to the one who can stand
all day with a gaping hole in his chest



Andrea Perkins' non-fiction has appeared in Egypt Today, Coast News, MetroActive and New West Magazine. Her poetry has been found in Paper Salad, The Cement Boat, Girls With Insurance and elsewhere. She writes mostly fiction, but this has only (so far) shown up on lamp posts in her friend Otis' imagination. Born in Utah, she has lived in Egypt, California, Tennessee, and currently Hawaii.