every angel is terrifying

this place, expanse of bayou water
seeping through clumped grasses
along the shore/ in the distance
tall black cypress, sentinel of darkness
bereft of foliage, its stern geometry
a fist in the gray-blue sky
this place somehow my place

I return to memory, to young love
to passions played out in naked
legs on old quilts, sultry moonlit
nights/ to more settled joys
three little boys catching crawfish
and roasting hot dogs on a cub-scout grill
to the lanky blue heron skulking
through tall reeds locking me
with fixed eyes/ there is no fear here
only longing

I return--I leave, knowing
I did not find what I came for

perhaps it is an angel
because I am lonely for god
want to find something in the dark
terrible loneliness of this place
where the young bride came
and the young mother came
and now the old lady comes
carrying the young people
she has been, back here, to lay
them to rest or to revive them
to know them again, to ask them

I leave knowing I will return
until I cannot

dancing with the dead

my ear catches unrecalled memories
      the jazz of home riffs in my mind
my old mother insists we visit
      the living dead in the Louisiana graveyard

all of us somewhere between here and somewhere else
      a continuum/ a dance—synchronous—going off
in infinite circles from a single center/ timeless
      place/ children and parents diverge/ converge 

syncopations of such music as we make 
      the beat pulses underground
in the space between our ears

my son’s music/ fingers riffing across keyboard
      and fingerboard/ a caress for the fret/ a cavort
for the string/ the play of multiple tensions
      without which nothing

but grave places peopled by wispy corpses
      nobody sees/ they say there is no music here/
no dancing with the dead/ so they say/

but though I don't see them—wispy corpses
      cavorting unruly of a night
motion is in the air both/ both for me and forgetful of me
      suspended between here and there

perhaps it isn't really dancing/ what they do
      when they rumble down under and up
and out from grave stones/ both a back and a forth
      moving through time like water through a sieve

so these southern dead must make a music too
      feu folets and cicada calls/ bayou mosses
dancing feet/ the old two-step/ zydeco
      my old mother growing older and deaf
leaving/ the slow drift out of my time
      and into her own or theirs/ what she sees
in her blankness/ hears in her distractedness/ that I cannot

while I cling to the boy who thrives a new music/ a new time
      and takes me with him/ for now

Driving the Old Road

Driving the Old Road, alone, its dusty haze
so familiar, you ride down over and over.
You are talking to yourself, driving alone,
words strung together, flung apart to comfort,
to shape what's tumbling in your mind,
your rearview mirror, yourself,
moving away from your past while you crunch on
toward where you have always been going.

The road rides you, its dust, its rude destination,
moody dusk, forgetfulness, and familiarity.
Words shift, and you don't seem to know much—
hordes of memories, hoarded against this time.
You don't think how your days may be as numbered
as long forgotten stars in the frozen night of this day.

You think to yourself: somewhere
there's a metaphor for arriving.
The rood—your quarter acre—this is not
just another strange place you've never seen before.
And how easy to forget where you came from,
where the road began, its story.

Perhaps you hear your name called, an echo
in the forest of trees moaning with the weight
of too much knowledge, or not enough.
Your name, a small light in the constellation
of drives that brings you back and back
the way you have always come,
that name echoing in your head, your name,
not some tree song, but the old stories.

How to silence the voice--nagging little predator,
some dark inside you. You driving alone,
rumble of gravel under tires, matching the grumble
in your core, reminder of hungers, turmoil
in your head: the borrowed car,
these last few gallons of gas, the weight
of your foot on the pedals. Time spiraling out.

You may think the deed has been done—road-kill,
only to have it rise up again by the side of the road,
galloping along, loping along, breathing—
laughing—speaking words you recognize:
your name. Called and called to, its tongue,
a serpent's, and you meeting yourself
coming and going, beating you to the place,
to the house, to the end, as you drive the Old Road—
its curve and steep, its crunch and grind—
that little light lying at the end of it.

from my small window

sometimes a small window to the outside
is more manageable      sometimes the whole
horizon is too large      frightening       freighted

       my neighbor hears voices in her house
       inhospitable whispered conversations
       snickers and taunts      intermittent silences

       I do not see my neighbor going to work
       that's another window      I do not race
       from window to window to see the passing there

nor the wending of the street
past the street corner nor the lines
of cars on the highway      despite the constant whir

my small window--my trees that aren't my trees
the deer that sneaks into my neighbor's yard
to steal figs off of      not my tree

barely a shape between the leaves
barely a movement barely there
then gone      though      I don't know where

a squirrel skitters into my line of vision
onto my deck      pauses to crack open
a hickory nut      chewing      pretending

he doesn't know I'm watching
before leaving a trail of crumbs and shells
his tail      in my face

the clouds gather darkly
perhaps it is raining somewhere
perhaps someone is      weeping

       she screams at them      escapes to her deck
       with a cigarette at night      she spotlights
       her yard and mine      to catch them

       they yammer from inside her walls
       (she says her husband died but she never married)
       she bangs on the walls and screams at them

sometimes a small window is too much
so much coming and going and I am here

Cordelia Hanemann is a writer and artist in Raleigh, NC. Her work has appeared in such journals as Southwest Review, Atlanta Review, and Laurel Review; anthologies, The Well-Versed Reader, Heron Clan; and Kakalak; and in her chapbook. Select poems have won awards, and she has been featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly. A native of Southwest Louisiana, she is now working on a novel about her roots in Cajun Louisiana. korkimax@gmail.com