An Angel for May
1.
Television happens in my room
A book about the good earth
On a dumb and ugly shelf. I keep coming here and not paying
Before bed, the days passed already a waste
Dense and complicated, staying too long
In the food hall, in the bowling alley
Applauding a young person’s success
The same person I thought I would see
At the science museum
A mother is a father and an aunt
And my father like an aunt to you
This show, the reason I watch it
Though I am told it would disrupt my sleep
They who enjoy dinners on purpose
They make me want to build a fountain for my room
I think Scorsese in my dreams
Functions as this repetitive thought
That prevents me from being in movies
You couldn’t believe how much money
We had spent, the repercussions of this trip
Ricocheted throughout my dreams
Without any way to pay you back
Except for with soup, soft bread and butter
Like a traveler’s meal
2.
In those sturdy shoes, looking at a vivid lake
It seemed we were below the level
Of the volatile water, the sense was the waves
Were already above us. I think I was cooking
In a house, expecting the tide to move into it
Thinking it was bubbling up, not down
With one side of my family, several cousins I left behind
Suggested a form of charisma I knew
Due to my parents I could never match
In the basement of the masonic lodge
I challenged myself to talk continuously
And here it was this lucid talk
That rids my mind of worry and shouldn’t embarrass me
I saw it in her performance, the charisma of my cousin
When she stood on one foot and swayed to the side
Surface Mine
Waiting to go upstairs, I return to the street
On which they are building a hospital
To take the place of scattered houses and trees
Across the distance of the neighborhood.
Having lived and grown up in the region, I wait in a store
That doesn’t sell what I need, but I buy nothing from the other stores.
The nightmare is my brother being printed, entering the printer, coming out printed
On a photo that shows his hands facing toward us
As if he were banging on a window, if the paper were a window.
We operate the same machines, wiping mud from the street,
Fighting each other, though we are in control.
In the mud, the minerals are barely visible,
But when I look, I find some large pieces.
My eyes slow down to match the stroller
In front of me, the scene I saw yesterday
Of the person who posed to be drawn at an angle.
The stroller passes the portion of the street
I can see from above, the houses, and the trees
Remaining for three weeks before they are replaced.
It came on, the nightmare, when I learned of a woman you once knew.
When the woman died the daughter had a bad headache.
At other times it was money
Heard above the waves, jewels being produced,
Shining in a receptacle, the planet seen on three or more posters.
The jewel, a receptacle, in which I can see my face, at an angle, reflected.
Whereas I have stood on this table
But repeatedly crashed, the surface of the table
Of crystal glass, in my earliest memory
I approach a group sitting at a table I want to sit underneath.
Now, as I touch my face, I see five cows on the hill,
Each moving toward a different location, walking in a line in the curve of my view.
Here, in the industrial north, the hills are being quarried
And the dimension stones, cut in the ground, resemble stadium seats,
Which, left behind, will in several years make up the sides of a lake.
The granite is being carved into the figure, as tall as a man who lives in a house
Where many of us live, and nearby people reach their arms out the windows of the train
Pulling up at the station, as they arrive, the man touching the lake.
Hannah Piette is a poet who lives and teaches in Iowa City. She received her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and she is currently the CLAS Visiting Writer in Poetry at the University of Iowa. Her poems have appeared in Chicago Review, Guesthouse, and Paperbark Magazine.
X: @hannahpiette4
