VERANDAH PORCHE

TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET

for Andy Kopkind

Andy, cancer tears you away

from the neighborhood where your

summer chickens strut and feed

among potted orchids and the whole

hill is coming out from under

April.  Like a patient etherised

upon the cruelest month, you quip.

You need someone to go to your root

cellar for the tender show bulbs

to spread among good friends’ gardens:

canna, calla,  dahlia,  glads.

Reach into the crypt, you laugh.

Below your kitchen, down steep stairs

I feel among heat ducts’ hollow

curves.  Things hang and seep, close

and moist:  Is this what dark is like

within the body? –Remember unwrapping

The Sex Life of Flowers?  Hummingbirds giving

head to bearded irises and monarchs

sucking milkweed. Andy, when the body

backfires blossoms stand in for all the

shapes a lover makes with us.— I load

my wicker basket with your brown trousseau.

Look how each bulb or tuber fits

like a hand grenade about to blow.

SO AS NOT TO ENTER
WINTER EMPTY-HANDED

1. 

Hold a candle to a mirror. 

Spell out the lover’s name in tallow. 

Dip a spatula in water.

If brittle letter-blobs chilled on silver 

won't lift off evenly

set him aside.

2. 

Fill a black sky-speckled kettle

with a rolling boil.

Steam quart jars. 

Can light.

Seal and cool.

3. 

Take a cleaver to red cabbage. 

Thunk! Choose half.

Ink its imprint:  dense violet strata

curved around a geologic core. 

Pull yourself together.

Shred the clean side

for a tart slaw.  Serve.

4. 

Root for your future.

Bring daughters into wind. 

Bend to the field. 

Watch their white hands

numb and gladden

around red potatoes.

Say: Dig for our ancestors.

See with your fingers. 

Quick work. 

Frost’s no false alarm.

5. 

Squash song:

Simmer forever my delicata:

two-toned thick-skinned winter keeper.

Why take a lifetime to be tender?

Beside you the slick seeds burn.

ONCE WONDER
 

Once white Wonder Bread

built bodies eight ways

then 12 ways.

Did bread change

or did the body? 

Once we pledge-allegianced

to one nation indivisible

then under G-d we slept

through reveille

without waking.

Once we spelled just

48 states with their dinky capitols

then Alaska mated with Hawaii

tricking jigsaw puzzle makers

with their size and place.  

Once my late dad trekked

20 miles no 25

in street shoes

through a mythical blizzard

to get home to us! 

Men don't come like that

any more my mother swore.

Once my brother took me

to sample cherrystone clams

a dozen  raw and salted dashed

with Tabasco. I let him be

the suitor-savior to shell out for.

Once Wonder was a pliant slice

tabula rasa in a wrapper

then the sums ballooned.

No wonder

who’s red-handed  

and true-blue.

Verandah Porche’s work as a poet, performer and writing partner explores relationships between individuals in communities. Based in rural Vermont since 1968, she has published two books of poems, The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books) and has pursued an alternative literary career, creating collaborative writing projects in nontraditional settings: literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. She has developed a practice called ‘told poetry’ or ‘shared narrative’ to enable people who need a writing partner to create, preserve and share personal literature. Verandah Porche’s work has been featured on NPR's “Artbeat,” on NH Public Radio’s “Front Porch,” and in the Vermont State House. In 1998, the Vermont Arts Council awarded her its Citation of Merit, honoring her contribution to the state’s cultural life. Current residencies include the Police Poetry Project with teenagers and local police in Bennington, VT, and Music of Our Spheres with a ninety-member women’s chorus in Brattleboro, VT.