Rosemary Daniell lives in Savannah, Georgia.

ROOMS, OR THE COMFORT OF ENCLOSED SPACES

for the raped & murdered women of Africa, Eastern Europe

Many women have walked here before me:

nuns & houris:   always   we have dreamed

these rooms:   call them harem   sanctuary

cloister   asylum:   some have even

found them inside a silent marriage.

And walking them   bright   white   lighted

(French doors   bay windows   are dreams)

is ecstasy:   crown moldings curve   become

herstory:   England   Germany   France.

Here   books are stacked   strewn.   From

cut glass   cut flowers send out waves. . .

These are what I would have:   the perfume

the silk   a silence muffled by old rugs

broken only by a soft click   high

heels on polished wood   the tap tap

of a manual typewriter   & yes   a four-

poster bed   a mirrored armoire to hold

the dresses   narrow   shaped   black crepe

(each suitable for a funeral or

a seduction)   the hats   cupcakes with veils

the kid gloves   fitted to the small bones

of my fingers   the gowns for sleeping:   ankle-

length charmeuse:   each   a ghost drooping

from her own satin-padded hanger . . .

And in the morning   a white-painted table

for coffee   sunlight through a tall window

made wavery by old glass   a liquid poured

more than a century ago   the cat   silent

or purring   pink paws pleated like little fans

one artichoke on bone-white china

(or asparagus   spring-green & steamed) –

Chardonnay in sparkling crystal   knives

arranged on a pristine counter   (awaiting what?

A throat-cutting?  The slitting of a fig?) . . .

For this is a female place   an enclosure

the male with his heavy cock   led in leashed

& shackled   (only for moments   so

he won’t break these things   these lovely things) –

forced by the rake of a pink-tinted nail

to rise to my will   my need.   For here

he is always gagged:   there is no sound

but of my choosing:   no blare   no cacophony

no hard rock   no rapping   no box bleating

a gray-white glare   the rough voices of sports

casters   presidents  (Nascar   George Bush). . .

And behind him   the guillotine door slams shut

the wooden balcony inclines deliciously –

yes   inside these rooms   I am safe   as sealed

as inside a jet at 30,000 feet

a hotel room in a third-world country . . .

And is this only a woman’s fantasy?

And if it is   is this because she is the one

who has had the male fist raised against her

who has been forced onto stilts   into closets

& garter belts   who has been invaded &

entered   who   without anesthesia   has had

her clitoris clipped   her labia cut

like cloth   sewn & resewn   “a tight pussy”

to be ripped apart by his sex   each childbirth

who has trembled in shelters   her young within

her skirts   only to watch her virgin girls torn

in rape   her boy children   (once pink   innocent)

destroyed by the male inventions   (or worse   become

one of them)   who nightly has heard the gunshots

who daily has had the news   (always bad)

shoved before her boiling   propped-open eyes

yes   is it because only she who has never

known safety can know what these rooms mean?

ONE-EYED JACK

Your little face with its one eye

was an arrow when I first saw it –

one socket an absence   like my heart:

too much pain for you   a deformed kitten

for me   for all my losses.

And then there was the other stuff –

that extra ear beneath your right one

the seam rising from it to whiskered mouth

a ridge as though sewn by machine.

But they   my coked-out neighbors

named you One-Eyed jack.

& you were the happy one –

scratching in the dirt

squeezing through the slat in the fence

prancing before me sideways

just out of reach   a little wild cat

& not one pretty thing about you…

But do you care   digging   dancing –

without enough sense to know what you don’t have

happy with what you do?   And how can I be?

MIRACLES ARE LIKE THAT

for Glynn, whose last words were, “You worry too much.”

On my walk   I find a bird’s egg --

silken blue   broken   still smeared

with a little wet yoke   like

Cadium yellow paint.   I cup

it in a palm   carry it home –

place it beside the white lily

in bloom   rising on its green

stalk   a queen in black dirt.

Then I walk away   almost

afraid to believe in such beauty.

Yet blazing with the knowledge

that they are there:  too dazzling

To look at   too fragile & bright.

But then   miracles are like that.

     © Rosemary Daniell.