rochelle hope mehr
it all started when my mother said
"I have a wonderful surprise for you”
I waited all day until she unwrapped the present at night
and put on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake
So disappointed was I by the saccharin sentimentality
I never realized my true affinity with the dark Russian soul
I really should have - my grandfather from Odessa drank
his tea hot from a large glass
we had a tin saccharin container which I used to open. I’d marvel
and watch him plop saccharin into his tea
He’d crack walnuts open with his bare hands
no nutcracker for him
I never could get over it
He seemed so strong
What does this have to do with Tchaikovsky
Who loved Mozart but whose music sounds nothing
like Mozart’s?
With Swan Lake which ends as bitterly as saccharin?
With beauty which starts off with such promise
and, once dissipated, rings tinny in the ear?
circular suspension
fiduciary unpleasantness - war
reduces the patience of saints
to dust
I melt into madness
fiercely
competitive
sacrificially paranoid
an infinitude of betrayals
abounding
I seek the night
wildly peaceful
openly tyrannical
lovingly obsessional
we wend our way forward in time
I quiver in anticipation
temi rose
rochelle hope mehr
you ask me to read the poem aloud
perform it
bring it to life
but I cannot
I am muzzled on the page
I bit off
a sublayer of my gut
lies exposed
toxemias froze
it is a specimen
to gawk at
not a beast to summon
to arise
let it lie low
constrained by the page
temi rose
we don’t have much
what we have can’t really be considered ours because the state
the church or the bank, institution or vagabond bully
will come and take it all away from us
they tell me I am lucky
i’m not dead - they’re probably right
but I’d like to raise the bar
step off this roller coaster
grow up and
live