Basement Shrine
Few excuses to be down there:
damp cinderblock walls
raw wood steps lead to laundry
the old piano, boxes and tools.
Not sure where I got the Madonna –
she was dashboard size, plastic.
I set her on a riser-back
in the “closet” formed by the stairs,
made it my chapel.
Such a strange child!
I was around six or seven,
so my only excuse to be there
was to fetch or do wash.
We didn’t have the chute
in the linen closet
to drop wash down – Mom fussed
till they closed that.
(Would I have jumped? Maybe.)
So I went up and down with an armload,
maybe delayed as much as I could,
maybe snuck down when she was at the neighbor’s
or hanging shirts on the line.
All so fuzzy – those days are locked behind
“verboten” doors.
Just the Madonna hiding,
with me, under the basement stairs.
All Hallows
after Yusef Kominyakaa – Corrigenda
I take it back. Those crossed
bamboo poles aren’t X-ing out
your life. The goat hasn’t placed its cloven hoof
on the future, dust swirling
in sly forged signatures.
The sunflowers don’t submit
to beheading. There are no Edens unmoated,
unmolested by tanks, or tank-minds.
These poems gather in no harvest.
Leave their maps in the churches
where they will be mis-used.
Read the Scriptures of selfishness
preached on each receipt.
I never said they were pitchforks, silver bullets.
The past re-animates itself in every treachery
but leaves no identifying mark.
Catherine McGuire is a writer-artist with a deep concern for our planet’s future, with five decades of published poetry, six poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century, a SF novel, Lifeline, and book of short stories, The Dream Hunt and Other Tales.
