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| Stacey Waite [from her website] |
from
Stacey Waite’s the lake has no saint:
when
the chalk of androgyny
there
was always something about the public bathroom doors, always the
chalk of androgyny sticking in my throat as i’d walk towards the
women’s room with my mother. somehow i knew she wasn’t bothered
by the stick figure triangle skirt that indicated the path we were to
take, the ways we were to interpret our bodies, but my mother and i
do not have the same body. my mother does not read the doors at all;
she is automatic in her automatic body. she tugs me in by my small
arms and leads me to the stall. . . .
when in a cabin in maine
no
room where the fish
were
sometimes cut
no
claw foot tub
in
which to wring
out
the sorrow
from
her body
we
swim the length
of
the lake apart
last
night her hand
drafts
my body
in
halves
we
do not keep
the
records
of
what has been lost
she
says she would
again
if not for
wanting
to see underwater
and
my body is underwater
the
bed is underwater
her
hand heavy
in
the wet shell
of
another summer
in
maine no the fish
were
not cut in this room
in
this room the fish
were
not cut or taken
from
underwater
the
room itself is
underwater
the
bed is underwater
the
body the cut trees
the
wreckage of towns
all
taken under
the
lake
has
no saint
after
which
to
take its name
when after you
have exhausted the possibilities
blank the sun does
not matter the jeweled edges of your body do not matter not in the
spring which arrives late in the evening i will not paint the new
house blue i will not paint the new house blue somewhere she is
walking in fields and when i do not paint the new house blue she will
not weep for her mother for what she has lost and calls to report
lost the news of dying you do not understand but will not paint the
new house blue no wall no roof no blue in the ceilings or gutters
blue is not the color you will paint the new house though your body
blue though your hands blue as what comes before a bruise she says
what wood will not lie beneath the haunted bed
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