GRASS WIDOW A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts by Barbara Wilson-Battles December, 2014 Thesis written by Barbara Wilson-Battles B.A., Shawnee State University, 2012 M.F.A., Kent State University, 2014 Approved by ________________________________, Advisor Mary Biddinger ________________________________, Chair, Department of English Robert Trogden ________________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences James L. Blank ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................. vi POEMS Vulnerable ........................................................................................................... 1 Mr. Peabody’s Coal Train Done Hauled it Away .................................................. 2 At 5 ..................................................................................................................... 3 Dragonflies over Mineral Springs ........................................................................ 4 Dark .................................................................................................................... 5 Marquette Cement Company Pond, Elizabeth, OH .............................................. 6 Country Matters: The Fair................................................................................. 7-8 Weapons Inventory .............................................................................................. 9 Letters to the Blind ............................................................................................ 10 Naval Air Station, Pensacola, 1997 .................................................................... 11 Possum ............................................................................................................. 12 The Weight of the Human Skeleton.................................................................... 13 For Ted Hughes After the Publication of Birthday Letters .................................. 14 For Whitney Houston, Dead at 48 ...................................................................... 15 Maybe Emily Dickinson Stayed Home Because She Liked Crack ...................... 16 Ode to Liars ....................................................................................................... 17 Grass Widow ..................................................................................................... 18 Time’s Left a Wreck .......................................................................................... 19 Sonnet for the Fucked Up .................................................................................. 20 8th and Boundary ............................................................................................... 21 iii The Car, the Car ................................................................................................ 22 Wrecked Impala on the Renegade Horizon ........................................................ 23 Diva in the Desert .............................................................................................. 24 Barn Full of Panthers ......................................................................................... 25 Shelter in Place Warning .................................................................................... 26 The Days Pass and Meander Like a Drunk Daddy on the Highway ............... 27-30 Fooling Around with Ex-Sonnets ....................................................................... 31 Every Poet Knows a Junkie ............................................................................... 32 Country Matters: Mistaken for Wasps ................................................................ 33 Grass Widow: Slight Return .............................................................................. 34 Dear Distant Spouse .......................................................................................... 35 Sinking Sand: All Other Ground is ..................................................................... 36 Cold Cook by the Little Scioto ........................................................................... 37 Blow Up Doll .................................................................................................... 38 Dead Girl near the Road .................................................................................... 39 You Didn’t Forget the Old Sailor Songs ............................................................. 40 The Things that Made the Sun Bearable ............................................................. 41 Lost Tackle ........................................................................................................ 42 Camp / Fire........................................................................................................ 43 I Ate Peanut Butter M&Ms ................................................................................ 44 Contrasts ........................................................................................................... 45 My Therapist Has Cautioned Me Against Catastrophizing ................................. 46 Double Abecedarian for a Dying Region ............................................................ 47 iv The Narrow Way leads Home ....................................................................... 48-49 Charm Against Alzheimer’s Patients Wandering Off .......................................... 50 Hymn ................................................................................................................ 51 Unveiled Threats ............................................................................................... 52 Last Word .......................................................................................................... 53 Impervious ........................................................................................................ 54 NOTES ......................................................................................................................... 55 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis advisor, Mary Biddinger, for her guidance, as well as her involvement in the revision and sequencing of poems; and, most importantly, for her keen understanding of what I hoped to accomplish with this manuscript. I would also like to thank Catherine Wing for her recommendations on craft, form, and clarity, and for her ability to rein in my worst poetic impulses. Thanks also to Phil Brady for serving on my thesis committee. My NEOMFA workshop peers and friends have provided a wealth of useful feedback both in and out of class. I will miss our workshops. My amazing partner, Scott Battles’ emotional and technical support has been invaluable to the completion of this manuscript. My Antioch girls—Erika Curtiss, Malika Evans, Kristine Herman, Jennifer Labut Cannon, Samantha Ohrman, Kathy Wilder, and particularly, Jane Rago— inspire me daily. I remain grateful for their belief in my work over the last 22 years. My Shawnee State friends’ and professors’ encouragement played a significant role in my decision to enter an M.F.A. program. Finally, thanks to Sean Frank for his friendship and support throughout my two and half years in Kent, and to Leslie Risin, whose patience and reassurance alleviated my fears of making certain poems public. vi POEMS Vulnerable 1. capable of being physically or emotionally wounded 2. open to attack or damage: ASSAILABLE 3. mascara haunting her eyes 4. the roadmap of blood and bruise, the stiff access road of spine 5. the hands bent into backward-twisting wrists 6. the mouth, an eclipse of moths 7. the regulations of intimacy 8. the startled melody of pleas; that last line on the page, subject to erasure 9. the motions the morning after, arms bruised with disaster 10. the odd other end of a pornographer’s eye—the tilt of hip, flash of thigh 11. the crushed trumpet of her minor cry 12. the thing forgotten, allowed to wallow in disrepair 13. the dark wound puckering at touch 1 Mr. Peabody’s Coal Train Done Hauled it Away Hills are containers for the unspeakable, seeping capsules of jagged memory, the sawed-off nub of time. Houses seeping into bedrock forego that last blotch of sun, turn to empties littering the ditch. Trees run a little rusty here. Fall, ridges are brittle as osteopeniac bones. Out broke-banked curves, girls, shotgun and blue, commit suicide methodically as cleaning house. Eyes, abacus beads calculating damage. Strange dictionary redefining face and place. Blood root and elderberry wine, the memory of taste. An atlas of mouth, directionless, a grimace metastasized. Land of dark and green, pained breath of heifer, the mare who pondered lying down near last dots of houses freckling hollows by the Green River where Paradise lay. The place where blue herons turn to albatross wronged, reeking and grateful for the passage elsewhere. 2 At 5 After midnight mornings came and went with the crush and fly of gravel snapping the windshield of a “56” Chevy ringed by last smashed cans of Red, White and Blue, she’d find him hunched in the kitchen, half-dead over coffee, a dented empty crammed between unfiltered Camels and Butter Rum Lifesavers he grabbed from the rickety machine just before the third shift whistle. Saturday morning war stories littered rooms with the clutter of short pay, peeled beer tabs and candy, stale, unrecyclable. 3 Dragonflies Over Mineral Springs