Sample Poems by Martha Vertreace-Doody
Artifact
In the days of my hiding, I chance
upon a statuette, off-centered, seated,
in National Geographic—not the usual song and dance
about a woman in bark cloth, hunter-gatherer—but nude,
this full figurine, belly overgrown
in the lushness of fired
pottery. A mother-goddess whose fire
power ripples in flesh. By chance
she hails from Sha’ar Hagolan, now grown
to be Israel, People of the Book. Earthy, seated
in every Neolithic household, these naked
ladies—slanted eyes, heavy thighs for village dancing
which promises the ground springs green, dancers
spinning upward through each fiery
phase of a woman’s moons, when, naked,
she gives herself to the one who changes
her heart-sac, seated
in her soul-house, an elegant pose as her mystic grows
strong. More than a hundred found—the growth
of mother-goddess as protector who chooses the dancing
hands of her creator to unseat
me in the days of my hiding. My hunger. A fire-
storm stirs my changeling
self against the face of fear—naked
came I forth—naked
will I return to clay which birthed her. What grows
from her navel, her cleft, changes
every household. At the dig, wild dancing
among scientists afire
with finding her near the Sea of Galilee. Sitting
now on our bed, our time, you sitting
beside me, vulnerable in your nakedness,
I see her clay face when your firelight
kindles, gazing at my breasts. What grows
between us turns me from myself, dancing,
loving our changeless
naked fat. Venus sits in the western sky
as night grows merry mischief. Our dance
changes into fire.
Midwinter
Breakfast: red grapes. Seedless. Cold.
My hands look like my mother’s—more flesh,
less innocence. The rising sun finds me riding
with you as the Loop pours into a cloudbank
layered with promises of lake-effect snow.
High in the January sky, Venus or Mars,
a planetary light show over the Daley Center.
“Weld everything”—Picasso’s note to workmen,
scratched on the maquette—Chicago’s Woman
with broad shoulders. On the in-patient desk
the receptionist leaves last century’s
magazines about cakes and ale, travel coupons
outliving expiration dates. “I own bricks
in this place”, an old woman says when I become
her partner in this conspiracy. “A couple have
my name on them.” She waits for the westbound bus
whose schedule I memorize waiting for you—
your kidneys—a machine for making two kinds
of stones--two sides of the moon’s scarred face.
The doctor wants you salt free, draining litres
of water each day. The woman says, “You’re
a pretty lady”—then eats chocolate almonds
without offering me any. He wants me
thin--“Think anorexic,” he says, touching my knee.
She licks her fingers. I think of my dream—midnight
scratching--bare branches at the kitchen window—
my mother’s hands.
Mystery of Flight
Under the sequoia, the woman stands
shadowed by arched wings of the condor--
feathers shedding black leaves of moonlit night—
settled in branches above her,
as if the open beak, bowed head,
summon the woman’s first flight from the ground
which holds her, as arm-spread mirrors wing-spread
when the shutter captures her light,
red fear in the bird’s eyes.
I think of our crossed letters—yours,
of Long Beach, when morning fed us
like palms of a child begging sweets,
when our borrowed bikes counted thumps
of wooden planks on the boardwalk; mine,
of Hyde Park, the bell-tower, fierce rasp of a peregrine
which beckoned her chick, rising
on a ninety-degree day, wind barely stirring
humidity.
Such beauty
stuns me, such trust in wild fear—
this hawk who learns to glide
under a blue rack of clouds, this time-bider,
gatherer of clouds, storm-cycle.
I ask your brave eyes if our death
will leave torn pinions as markers,
or if we will unfurl our feathered arms
to snatch warm currents linking timberline
and rocky fastness
to what we know, shielding us
from whatever waits for us beyond our letters,
mine, slid from your hands into yellow sand;
yours, pressed between my journal,
this summer sun.