Sample Poems by Kevin Walzer
After Arguing Over the Best Way to Wash Dishes
He slept, or tried
to sleep. There was no way
he was going to sleep. His wife was fast asleep;
there slept his insomnia's source. Not her. The steep
anger he felt at her sleep, her peace. She stayed
anger with silence and calming thought, alone.
He wanted to fight, to talk and reach to her.
He wanted to find forgiveness, and would prefer
to find it now. But he saw her gentle tone:
her quiet breath fluttered the sheet that touched
her nose. He let his anger begin to melt
and lay back down, to try and calm himself.
He had to give her sleep. He owed her that much.
The anger still ached, but less, a fading welt
no heavier now than dust blown off a shelf.
Before His Healing
for Dan
1.
The dew on grass. The moistened earth.
The bodies nestled in zippered bags
are breathing. Above the soft dearth
of sound, an engine roars and drags
its pickup body across the farm
to where the sleeping children rest
in drunken calm. Today, what harm
can come to them? Now graduates,
their lives are free
of rigid school.
One spins the truck across this space
to mark the day. He roars around
the field, tracks deep, the morning cool.
He does not see the covered face
his wheels will drive into the ground.
2.
The blinking message light. The words
are muffled in the tape recording:
"--a call from Mom and Dad. They heard
about him hurt from partying
at someone's farm, a party for grads--
there's not much information here.
I'll keep you posted, good or bad.
They're driving out there now." What fear
befalls them now:
the briefest sketch
of what befalls a brother, a son.
Him hurt-this means a million things.
Their minds begin to whir and wretch
from possibilities. Thoughts run
and fly and swoop on fearful wings.
3.
The chopper flew his body away
to rest in the hospital room, steel
now bolted into his scalp. The ways
a life can nearly go--the wheel
that ran across his head had snapped
the bones around his spine but not
the spine. So now his head is wrapped
with a cold steel circle, its slots
pinned by the bolts.
A black halo.
Metaphor, no. Clinical, yes.
The halo locks the head and neck
to give the bones a chance to grow
and mend. He'll walk, they say. "God bless,"
they say, his living body wrecked.
4.
He rests at home. The hospital bed
has followed him here and elevates
his monstrous gear: halo, head
shaved and stitched, reddened. Now late,
narcotically he breathes and sleeps,
the pain blunted by prescription.
His father sits. His mother weeps.
His brothers blanch at his description.
But still his body's
healing there.
His neural fibers did not break,
shattered like a bridge in war.
His breath flows through his lungs; the air
carries his life. He'll soon awake.
His body knows what air is for.
Portraits of a Muse
He calls his muse
by name--my name--
and paints her image, naked and clothed,
in oils and watercolors. He swears
I am his muse. She looks like me,
or looks as I did at twenty-two,
mainly because he's always begged
that I pose. Her face is mine--her eyes
brown like finished wood; her mouth
large in smile, smaller when pursed
pensively; her pink-nippled breasts
dappled with early-morning light
when she poses for him nude at dawn.
His muse is beautiful, like me.
But she is not an artist's wife,
the one I see in bathroom mirrors,
her eyes' sparkle darkened, replaced
with knowing sadness he can't paint.
At first, I might have been his muse,
when we met ten years ago. I modeled
for a human figure class he took.
He seemed enthralled by me--my form?
my face?--and stared as he sketched my shape.
I knew him outside of class, and so
when he asked me out one night to talk,
I went. An art student as well,
I brought my camera, flash and gear.
He talked of plans, endlessly grand,
to move his work from galleries
in lofts to museums--MOMA,
the Whitney--and rich collector's homes.
He wanted me to pose for him
outside of class: "I've never seen
a model like you." His earnestness
amused me. "I've never seen a painter
like you." I hadn't. I said I'd sleep
on being the subject of his paintings.
We didn't talk of photographs.
But I brought my camera gear along
the first night I posed for him
at his loft. I stripped off my clothes
as he took his brush, easel and paint
and began to work. He sketched out
a quick impression of my form,
not classically restrained, as in school.
Then I asked him to strip for me:
using all the available light,
I caught his flabby nudity
on film. He wasn't hard and toned
like me, but I didn't care at all.
"I'm not used to being the model,"
he said. "It's different, that's for sure.
We're both the models and artists,
aren't we? Subject and object,
naked." The roll finished, he came
over and touched my flushing breasts.
We made no picture of our love.
After living together for a year,
we married. I'd finished my degree
in photography, and found a job
at a small studio. It paid the bills.
My husband didn't finish school.
"The thing I need to do is get
busy," he said. He started painting
every day for hours on end.
"I think that's how I'll reach success--
not doing busywork in class."
He wouldn't work another job.
"We can live on what you make."
We did, but had no change to spare.
I worked from eight to five daily,
and sometimes weekends (he needed extra
paint and brushes), shooting portraits
or weddings. Whenever I got home,
he'd pester me to pose for him
in clothes, or nude--his moods varied--
with the same enraptured look he had
that first day in class. "These paintings are the ones
I know will make me--make us--rich."
As tired as I was, I sat
or stood, and listened to his voice:
"So good . . . you're beautiful . . . my love . . ."
He still murmurs those words today.
His paintings hang in galleries.
That's good enough for him. He earns
a modest income painting me.
He calls them Portraits of a Muse.
And I'm the studio manager now;
I earn more money than before,
enough to finally buy a house.
I don't shoot a lot these days,
of course. Not that I ever did
outside of work-not like the man
whose work my work supported well.
But nonetheless, I'm happy enough.
We have two kids and cars. His work
doesn't bleed our budget dry.
He's happy and well-known-and I'm
immortal, or so he says: his muse,
the beauty of his hundred paintings.
But I'm dull, mortal, despite his words.
The muse is not an artist's wife.
The muse is someone else: mistress.
Both meanings of the word apply:
a woman he loves without a vow,
a woman who enslaves his life.
In either case, the artist's wife
is far behind. The art comes first
even when it cannot feed him.
For that, the artist needs a wife.
And so, I had to make a choice;
I chose to age away from art.
My husband never made that choice.
Instead, he let--or made--me choose.
And that's fine. I'm happy for his work.
I didn't want to sacrifice.
But the young woman he paints, the one
he says is me, the one he calls
his muse, is someone else-perhaps
a memory of me, as I was
before nursing settled my breasts,
before choosing saddened my eyes.
Resurrection Working
Notre Dame Basilica, Montreal
Though scaffolds
shadow gods and saints
of stone worn smooth by sun and rain,
the vaulted blue
inside the dome
may still create a humbling home
where kneelers fill
the pews with prayer
and clasped hands. Stirring the air,
tourists mill. Their
cameras flash
against the altar, silence crashed.
The patron saints
observe and lurk
in corner candle-shadows' murk
where offered coins
allow the light
to rise from the candles, offering sight
of sign--Your
gift preserves our church--
a tottering sign about to lurch
though a spirit remains,
calm and stilled,
as faith demands and humans build.