Three poems

Literary Review, Spring, 2004 by Dy Plambeck

Three Poems

(1)
My father collects the most remarkable things, Stig says,
he collects, for example, animal skeletons, owl vomit or
stag shit, it is macabre, well maybe
but not as perverse as your having
a gilded rat hanging on the wall of the living room
in your home, Dy.

I had completely forgotten that, but it is true, and
now I remember how one summer we had the house full of workers
to tear down the green garage because it was so flop-rotten
and that they smelled so dry from dust and mortar in the afternoon
when they sat in the kitchen
each with a shiny silver lunch box
and propped thick open rye bread sandwiches into their mouths
with fingers that were grey and just as
dried out
as the rat my brother found stuck in between the remains of two walls.
The rat was completely intact, the skin was like dried leather
on its skeleton
and it still had both eyes, a tail and teeth.
I don't know where my brother got the idea to spraypaint the rat
with the gold spray
my mother decorated spruce with for Christmas, but anyway:
the rat lay to dry on a newspaper in the utility room
while my brother hammered a nail in the wall over the dining table
in the living room
and when the rat was dry, he hung it on the nail
with a little piece of string.
It was as though it watched us
while we ate dinner
and I had to switch places with my mother
because it stared like that especially at me,
but then one day, I completely forgot to notice it.

Is it still hanging there? Stig asks
but I can't really remember if it is
it probably isn't, I don't know
what happened to it, and I don't care,
the most remarkable thing about it all is
that no one ever mentioned it was hanging there
until now
but people must probably have had their thoughts about it.

(2)
Rosalinde's mother asks me if I knew it was she
who invented leek tart.
Of course I didn't know, how could I know that
and between you and me: I find it hard to believe
I think my own mother once made exactly the same claim.
It's no doubt one of those things mothers just say, and neither is
there anything wrong with it
I myself tell so many small lies all day long,
lie a little about what I have to do and where I've been
without there really
being any reason for it
other than that it's just easier that way
it's just easier. Gosh. It's a bad habit.
I wasn't like that when I was a child, was I like that? Was I?
And anyway
I always imitated the grown-ups' walk or facial expressions
when the Bure lake gang gathered to warm up
on the field in front of the H-bridge.
I would always hang on my mother's jogging pants along the way,
always hold her hand or wait behind her leg
she always dragged me along through the woods,
and therefore it has puzzled me why I was considered something of a
gang kid
I only committed the most ordinary and simple crimes:
I let the horses out of the corral, I drank bitter snaps,
I stole from my grandfather's purse, I tore wings from butterflies,
but really I never wanted anything but a little bit
more attention.

(3)
I already heard about Saddam Hussein
back when I was a child, and now
I'm hearing about him again.
It's the same story being told over and over again,
my grandmother says, and I can't help but think
about the golden hamster I had in fourth grade
Laban
who passed every single day running around
the wheel in its white cage;
and maybe there is something to the talk
I have anyway twice
however improbable it sounds
swum into a human turd in the sea
I really have done that
and both times the turd was so hard
that I took hold of it thinking
it was a stick--It
is pretty stupid I know
to keep making the same mistake
but somehow or other I always find out too late
and assure myself that it's probably quite normal
that I never learn and I really don't know why,
but it is as if there are some things that just never change.
for example the frayed edges on your jeans
are always the first thing I see
when you walk toward me with your slow steps
so slow that they bore me even more
than that war that keeps rolling across the screen.