Holly Painter

Holly Painter is a poet, writer, and editor from southeast Michigan. Her first book of poetry, Excerpts from a Natural History, was published by Titus Books in Auckland, New Zealand in 2015. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have also been published in literary journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Holly teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont.

 

Cryptic Crossword I

 

Clues

Tempest hides aurora in

stolen ship’s book.

Splendid sound,

 

damn rain stirs up refined

rage on pitching fruit

ship in bloom.

 

Jarred tangle of hooks

below top-deck. Keep

south in boat turning into the wind,

buffeted by lurches at the start – hold!

Ship exits locks in possession of trunks, and leaves.

 

Answers

Rain kidnapped perfect

mandarin orange blossom,

shook down gust-blown trees

 

~

Cryptic Crossword III

 

Clues

Stray midnight carol:

braying of cat on a log.

It croaks like a queen in confusion.

 

Air thick with raggedy cat’s

gloom like a cello hymn, tattered

sound made when one is condemned.

 

Raised again,

forlorn yell – no, eruption –

hovered. Then quiet, defeat.

 

 

Answers

Sing, atonal frog!

broadcast melancholy noise

over lonely swamp

 

~

 

Cryptic Crossword XV

 

Clues

Fight for change is interrupted by conservative

joiner. Joker and hothead,

 

nationalist’s an unpredictable prat, worrying Mexican uncles;

attracting attention; recklessly cuing copy-

 

cats, pigs, and hawks, untamed and ill-willed if

they’re made to provide ‘safe space’ or refugee docking.

 

Answers

Altercation with

patriots occupying

wildlife refuge

 

~

 

Cryptic Crossword XVI

 

Clues

Dark daydream limited,

unfinished, grace remains. It comes in winter,

 

vision that all may see: many

birds moving together, listening to Chinese whispers,

free but somehow united

 

so that two wings,

growing dimmer in a jumble of kin, ranged

over sound and heath.

 

Answers

Moonless December

ghost murmuration untied

to darkening moor

 

~

 

Cryptic Crossword XVIII

 

Clues

Its choir gets boisterous with famous

verse on northern shire,

 

jewel of the eccentric paler

races: flowers,

cloaked in dew of fall, transform

town wrapped up in domesticity,

 

hypnotic love, constant doubt.

Tread easily to market

left to the dockyard.

 

Answers

Historic Canton

Pearl River’s walled off city

Opium trade port

 

 

 

 

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Holly Painter is a poet, writer, and editor from southeast Michigan. Her first book of poetry, Excerpts from a Natural History, was published by Titus Books in Auckland, New Zealand in 2015. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have also been published in literary journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Holly teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont.

 

Gather in the outcasts, all who’ve gone astray

 

In God’s preferred version

of this year’s Christmas card

I’m seven months pregnant

seven months on from our wedding

 

You’re a man now, by the way

with an untweezed moustache

and a paisley green cravat

that matches my maternity dress

 

at least in the sense that I’m red

and you’re green and God may be

color-blind as a dog but He knows

the Christmas color grayscale tones

 

from watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

We’ll watch it too this year, in God’s

preferred version of our Thanksgiving,

and not cringe at George Bailey’s

 

abusive tantrums but cheer at the final

family scene and God will smile

when we don’t pull out the tripod

for our yearly Christmas card picture

of two dykes and a dog.

~

When you tire of your homeland

 

Gather up one corner

and start walking away

 

Stroll through a neighboring autumn

Drag your native land over leaves

red and yellow like flattened peaches

 

Stretch your home spaghetti-thin

But careful! Not so fast!

 

When it becomes impractical

to tow your old life any farther

make your way to the national gallery

 

There find the painting with a thousand snaking rivers

and thread your country up to the oily horizon

~

Comfortable Grunge

 

All of us are soft and easily bruised

the flatulent boys of a kindlier youth

the sleeping patterns of fur and dripping noses

the careless rise and fall of mud-matted flanks

 

we’d bathe our lungs in comfortable grunge

wilting flower-weeds in pots that miss the sun

yellowed upholstery with its own nicotine cravings

 

on the radio, hear a recording of the tossing sea

imagine it in the stately grey of old BBC broadcasts

wonder about waves you can’t see

 

outside, the air is much too fine to breathe

donkeys chase nervous chickens through the yard

~

Defend the Holy General

His sons: the one a strapping lad,
a captain, the other his quavering ship,
whistling with wormholes.
Both throw the knuckles for something
to do but see in every comrade’s smile
only molars caked with gold

His vision: his keyring of monocles

His blood: warmer than he thinks
and harder to reach than his wife’s
her child’s bed leaking
into theirs every month
To him it only happened once

His kingdom: a ground so salty
the vegetables come up pickled
while the trees twist
gnarled like pretzels

Defend him still
the holy general
the general store
the storied past
the pastor’s wine
or swine that you are
surrender

~

Retrospective

 

Do you know the moment

when it occurs to you that

so-and-so from your childhood

 

must have been rich or ill or

pregnant or getting a divorce or

racist or not all that bright

 

and you realize that you are both

the reader and the unreliable narrator

of your own life story

 

and nothing you observe

can be trusted completely

even now when it is clear

 

that your math teacher was gay

and your pastor not aloof but shy

and your babysitter a drunk

 

and your mother always terrified

that something would happen to you,

her favorite of all her children?

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Holly Painter is a poet, writer, and editor from southeast Michigan. Her first book of poetry, Excerpts from a Natural History, was published by Titus Books in Auckland, New Zealand in 2015. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have also been published in literary journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Holly teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont.

 

The Strait

 

There is no street where I live

The leaves of the houseplants rattle

A town of scorched earth and fire escapes,

the city beside the strait

 

Only the inner layers pasted over remain

Today is not a shade of anything

a city grown weary of rebirth

of the scent of raspberries and wood

 

The place that made your cars

will open itself to you tonight

on land that cannot be new

as the hush or the day or

 

the air blowing between rotting boards

that gird the soggier organs

the scaffolding of a rust empire

with wild dogs for sentries

~

Eight

 

Mammatus clouds hover over telephone lines,

fingertips poised to pluck the strings of a guitar.

 

Neil hangs upside-down from the tire swing

jabbing at roly-polies until his stick snaps.

 

He dismounts with a neat somersault and

brushes the woodchips from his ecto green windbreaker.

 

Next year, his parents will split. He’ll move with his mom

to the neighborhood where all the wild boys live.

 

I climb the slide, boots slip-squeaking,

and thump up to a landing caked with wet-pulped leaves.

 

He’ll take pills in high school and get suspended for fighting

while I rack up scholarships and slice myself with broken lightbulbs.

 

I scout the woods where we’re not allowed to go.

It’s almost dark and there are no birds.

 

A flashing needle strings white light across the sky

and then fades as a crash rends the day,

 

a smoker clearing his throat

before spitting out a thunderstorm,

and we run.

~

Beside the Church

 

Rain between the digging

and the burying meant

summer afternoons of

muddy swimming holes

 

We leapt from earthmovers

shrieking as we plunged underground,

ballooned our breath in our cheeks,

and spit out dirty bubbles

 

We sliced a worm with a spade

and the dead fell out

but we were small gods:

we’d made another worm

 

We sprawled in new grass

thin tufts in the dirt

looked straight up the rain

to the black

 

and imagined

dirt coming down

~

Feed Me

 

Feed me only what is necessary

What is tender might be necessary

 

Feed me the train like a chain of clay beads

encircling the lady’s green wrist

 

its boxcars brown as a burlap sack

caked with the mud of potatoes

 

Feed me the red you suck off a candy cane

leaving a stabbing white icicle

 

Then feed me the icicle

the seasonal stalactite

 

that drips itself to life and death

Melt it for me with your breath

 

Feed me your grab bag face:

your punched in nose and your

 

beautiful eyes that can only be

the churning surf you kept

 

Feed my teenage demand

that you be everything:

 

breakfast, lunch, and dinner

morning, noon, and night

 

Feed me only what is necessary

and all you are is necessary

 

I’d feed you too, I would,

but I can never be just another

 

warm-blooded host

that’s not paying attention

~

Apologetics of a College Freshman

 

To the termites of the last empire:

Sorry, but we chew our own cities now

inflate them in the mornings

sour apple bubblegum

and swallow them at night

not the other way around

 

To the tobacconists of the old century:

Sorry, but we roll our own now

stash Mom and Dad in the Christmas cupboard

and take them out to wrap around boxes

crease their edges and trim the excess

while Mom’s still flatly nattering away

 

To the factory farmers of yesteryear:

Sorry, but we grow our own now

sprinkle the seeds of children in classroom

plumbing – they sprout from the walls

absorb their math and science and then

we pluck them and send them to college in vases

 

To the bankers of ages past:

Sorry, but we save our own now

drop kisses in jam jars with buttons

and cursing coins and wishes and

every extra Sunday we save till the

end of our days and then spend

 

To the gods of a time gone by:

Sorry, but we are our own now

fathers, mothers, devils, angels

prophets, priests, chosen people

and if we seem a touch surreal

well, let’s be honest, so were you

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