Cecilia Woloch

Cecilia Woloch Poems

My mother's Polish nickname was the word for dried-up; sticks —Sucha, her mother called her. Little witch; Miss Skin-and-Bones. Fifth of eleven thin and startled children, all those mouths to feed. Okay: it was the Great Depression; everyone was poor. They baked potatoes over fires in the street, my mother said; dipped stale bread in buttermilk, ate what was put in front of them. And she was dark-eyed, dreamy, danced in vacant lots, played movie star. Tied her black hair up in rags; high-kicked through cinders, broken glass. Picked cigarette butts from the gutters for the pennies Dzia-dzia gave. Though CioaCia Helen down the hill, their crazy aunt, was better off. She gave them sweets, cheap sweets but sweet. She gave them Easter chicks one year. My mother took the tiny peeps and raised them tenderly, as pets. I've seen the photographs: their white wings all aflutter in her arms. As if such chickens could have flown, but they were meat, those birds she loved. Tough meat, and these were hungry years. And CioaCia raised the axe. My mother sobbed and couldn't swallow, nor could anyone, I've heard. The story goes she saved a few stray feathers, hid them, sang to them. Knelt above them weeping in the attic, just like church. Fed and watered them for months, her sisters laughed; the ghosts of birds. The way, years later, always singing, she would try to fatten us. Her own strange brood of seven children, raised less tenderly, perhaps. As if, this time, she wanted to be sure we'd get away. She'd set the steaming plates in front of us, still humming, cross her arms. Don't be afraid to eat, she'd say, because we were. We were afraid.
...

How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
...

Didn't I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I'd never go back?
And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?
...

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow.
...

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
...

I was leaving a country of rain for a country of apples. I hadn't much time. I told my beloved to wear his bathrobe, his cowboy boots, a black patch like a pirate might wear over his sharpest eye.
...

So few birds I know by name—
bluejay, cardinal, sparrow, crow,
pigeon and pigeon and pigeon again.
This morning I woke to the thump
...

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off
...

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence,
just watching him.
My father's body glistened with sweat,
his arms flew like dark wings over his head.
He was turning the backyard into terraces,
breaking the hill into two flat plains.
I took for granted the power of him,
though it frightened me, too.
I watched as he swung the pick into the air
and brought it down hard
and changed the shape of the world,
and changed the shape of the world again.
...

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off
paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths,
ohs, that glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them
twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children,
thinking, Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?
...

"Oh Europe is so many borders
on every border, murderers"
— Attila Josef, Hungarian Poet

All night crossing the Tatra,
Krakow to Budapest, the train
only three cars long — where is my friend?
Ken, who calls me Regina Cecylia,
Queen of the Gypsies, Carpathia.
We've travelled together from Berlin
but now the dining car between our cars
is locked — I can't get through.
In these couchettes, only one other woman,
the small boy who clings to her, hiding his face,
and the porter who's taken my ticket,
refuses in Polish to give it back.

Lie down then, let this pass:
the window a square of black glass
in which bare trees, fields appear;
forests where I could be left,
this car uncoupled —who would know?
(500,000 gypsies burned in the crematoria)
At each border (which country now?)
a clapboard shack with its plume of smoke
and the guards in their high boots,
their stink of cigar, who throw back
the door of my compartment, flick
on the lights, demand documents.
What if I had no passport, no papers
to prove I'm American?
What if I'd been born
in the tiny village my grandmother fled?
What if I had no country —
would I be no one, then, to them?
Would they drag me into the woods;
would the quiet woman hold her child
a little closer, cover his ears?

Sleeping and waking and sleeping again;
disappearing into the dream, waking into the dream
of Budapest: it's snowing so softly
the golden domes that crown the city seem to float.
At dawn, the grim porter reappears
with black coffee, sugar, two hard rolls,
my ticket, crumpled, on the tray.

I jump off the train with my suitcase
into the station's soot and din,
into the arms of ragged men —
gypsies everywhere, suddenly, flocks of them,
chanting like sorcerers, surrounding me,
calling out, Taxi! Taxi! Room!

I've read that, in caverns under these stations
— Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest —
gypsy orphans live on glue, pimped
for candy, for cigarettes.
But no children greet me here —
only these dark men I turn from, refuse,
and my tall friend, rushing toward me
down the crowded platform now:
silently, given back, at last,
my name in his throat like a jewel.
...

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow.

For years her hands were quick with thread and needle.
She used to sew all night when we were little;
now she sleeps with the Bible on her pillow

and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow:
her children grown, their father frail and brittle;
she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow.

Once she even slept fast, rushed tomorrow,
mornings full of sunlight, sons and daughters.
Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow

and wakes alone and feels the house is hollow,
though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters;
she listens to him breathe: each breath is shallow.

I flutter down the darkened hallway, shadow
between their dreams, my mother and my father,
asleep in rooms I pass, my breathing shallow.
I leave the Bible open on her pillow.
...

How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
longing for anything else â€" or: no, they must
have longed; there must have been flickerings,
stray desires, nights she turned from him,
sleepless, and wept, nights he rose silently,
smoked in the dark, nights that nest of breath
and tangled limbs must have seemed
not enough. But it was. Or they just
held on. A gift, perhaps, I've tossed out,
having been always too willing to fly
to the next love, the next and the next, certain
nothing was really mine, certain nothing
would ever last. So faith hits me late, if at all;
faith that this latest love won't end, or ends
in the shapeless sleep of death. But faith is hard.
When he turns his back to me now, I think:
disappear. I think: not what I want. I think
of my mother lying awake in those arms
that could crush her. That could have. Did not.
...

Across the table, Bridget sneaks a smile;
she's caught me staring past her at the man
who brings us curried dishes, hot and mild.

His eyes are blue, intensely blue, hot sky;
his hair, dark gold; his skin like cinnamon.
He speaks in quick-soft accents; Bridget smiles.

We've come here in our summer skirts, heels high,
to feast on fish and spices, garlic naan,
bare-legged in the night air, hot and mild.

And then to linger late by candlelight
in plain view of the waiter where he stands
and watches from the doorway, sneaks a smile.

I'd dress in cool silks if I were his wife.
We try to glimpse his hands â€" no wedding band?
The weather in his eyes is hot and mild.

He sends a dish of mango-flavored ice
with two spoons, which is sweet; I throw a glance
across the shady patio and smile.

But this can't go on forever, or all night
â€" or could it? Some eternal restaurant
of longing not quite sated, hot and mild.

And longing is delicious, Bridget sighs;
the waiter bows; I offer him my hand.
His eyes are Hindu blue and when he smiles
I taste the way he'd kiss me, hot and mild.
...

I am the girl who burned her doll,
who gave her father the doll to burn '
the bride doll I had been given
at six, as a Christmas gift,
by the same great uncle who once introduced me
at my blind second cousin's wedding
to a man who winced, A future Miss
America, I'm sure ' while I stood there, sweating
in a prickly flowered dress,
ugly, wanting to cry.

I loved the uncle but I wanted that doll to burn
because I loved my father best
and the doll was a lie.
I hated her white gown stitched with pearls,
her blinking, mocking blue glass eyes
that closed and opened, opened and closed
when I stood her up,
when I laid her down.
Her stiff, hinged body was not like mine,
which was wild and brown,
and there was no groom '

stupid doll,
who smiled and smiled,
even when I flung her to the ground,
even when I struck her, naked, against
the pink walls of my room.
I was not sorry, then,
I would never be sorry '

not even when I was a bride, myself,
and swung down the aisle on my father's arm
toward a marriage that wouldn't last
in a heavy dress that was cut to fit,
a satin dress I didn't want,
but that my mother insisted upon '
Who gives this woman? ' wondering, Who takes
the witchy child?

And that day, my father was cleaning the basement;
he'd built a fire in the black can
in the back of our backyard,
and I was seven, I wanted to help,
so I offered him the doll.
I remember he looked at me, once, hard,
asked, Are you sure?
I nodded my head.

Father, this was our deepest confession of love.
I didn't watch the plastic body melt
to soft flesh in the flames '
I watched you move from the house to the fire.
I would have given you anything.
...

I was leaving a country of rain for a country of apples. I hadn't much time. I told my beloved to wear his bathrobe, his cowboy boots, a black patch like a pirate might wear over his sharpest eye. My own bags were full of salt, which made them shifty, hard to lift. Houses had fallen, face first, into the mud at the edge of the sea. Hurry, I thought, and my hands were like birds. They could hold nothing. A feathery breeze. Then a white tree blossomed over the bed, all white blossoms, a painted tree. 'Oh,' I said, or my love said to me. We want to be human, always, again, so we knelt like children at prayer while our lost mothers hushed us. A halo of bees. I was dreaming as hard as I could dream. It was fast—how the apples fattened and fell. The country that rose up to meet me was steep as a mirror; the gold hook gleamed.
...

for Ben

This is the green we grew up in: humid blue of the blur of our adolescence;
weedy dark. These are the roads we drove into the country with whomever had
sweet, cheap wine. This is the sky of watery silk under which we wrecked our
hearts, cried out; the song of gnat and firefly and wasp and dove and frog.
Here is the place I chose exile from, sharp-hearted, sure of some other
world. And still, how it takes me back. How you grip the wheel and laugh,
don't say Remember. Don't say anything.
...

Crow, I cried, I need to talk to you.
The whole sky lurched.
Black wings. Most bitter trees
I've ever seen. Wild daffodils.
Here is a world
that is just as the world was world
before we named it world.
Here is a sky that screams back at me
as I rush toward it, darkening.
...

19.

I shut that black wing from my heart. That bad bad bird. I slam the light. Wrong love, it flaps, wrong love. I slit the curtains of my eyes. If one more death makes room for one more death, I've died enough. I've died in rooms that bird screeched through, the blood-tipped feathers in my hands. The years of longing in its craw. The little claws like dangling hooks that ruined my nakedness for good. Wrong love, it flaps, wrong love. I wave my arms to make it go. As if the sky could take it back. As if my heart, that box of shadows, could be locked against itself.
...

You're not a teenage girl but you feel the heat rising off these boys. Their eyes when you enter the classroom: lowered flame; the body curves. And when you lean across a desk to whisper good, you smell their necks. That animal distancing itself— but not too far; still innocent. The sharp cologne they wear says men to you, says: almost men. You think they have doused themselves for your sake; you straighten, swoon at their intent. At any moment they could strike the match of touch, they are that close. Boys, you tell yourself, they're only boys. And toss your head. You're thinking of wild horses, how the world will murder them.
...

Cecilia Woloch Biography

Cecilia Woloch is an American poet and 2011 National Endowment for the Arts recipient. She has published five books, and her poetry has appeared in numerous literary publications. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Woloch attended Transylvania University in Kentucky where she earned degrees in English and Theater Arts. In 1999, Woloch received her Creative Writing MFA from Antioch University. For twenty years, Woloch led writing workshops in schools, prisons, and homeless shelters. Woloch began teaching at the University of Southern California in 2006, where she both leads writing workshops and teaches her students to lead workshops for local youth. She is also the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and the Paris Poetry Workshop.)

The Best Poem Of Cecilia Woloch

My Mother's Birds

My mother's Polish nickname was the word for dried-up; sticks —Sucha, her mother called her. Little witch; Miss Skin-and-Bones. Fifth of eleven thin and startled children, all those mouths to feed. Okay: it was the Great Depression; everyone was poor. They baked potatoes over fires in the street, my mother said; dipped stale bread in buttermilk, ate what was put in front of them. And she was dark-eyed, dreamy, danced in vacant lots, played movie star. Tied her black hair up in rags; high-kicked through cinders, broken glass. Picked cigarette butts from the gutters for the pennies Dzia-dzia gave. Though CioaCia Helen down the hill, their crazy aunt, was better off. She gave them sweets, cheap sweets but sweet. She gave them Easter chicks one year. My mother took the tiny peeps and raised them tenderly, as pets. I've seen the photographs: their white wings all aflutter in her arms. As if such chickens could have flown, but they were meat, those birds she loved. Tough meat, and these were hungry years. And CioaCia raised the axe. My mother sobbed and couldn't swallow, nor could anyone, I've heard. The story goes she saved a few stray feathers, hid them, sang to them. Knelt above them weeping in the attic, just like church. Fed and watered them for months, her sisters laughed; the ghosts of birds. The way, years later, always singing, she would try to fatten us. Her own strange brood of seven children, raised less tenderly, perhaps. As if, this time, she wanted to be sure we'd get away. She'd set the steaming plates in front of us, still humming, cross her arms. Don't be afraid to eat, she'd say, because we were. We were afraid.

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