Ruth Baumann lives in Richmond, Virginia, but is hoping to move South. She writes most of her poems with her large calico cat laying across her left arm, belly up. She can't imagine a better muse, even if it makes typing a little slower.
Two Poems (October 25, 2011. Issue 32.)
Rapunzel's Children
Afterwards (silly term,
everything now always afterwards):
she knew they would wonder, their questions
tiny hermit crabs scuttling
across her flesh.
why don't we have a grandma or grandpa
where are you from what did you look like
when you were my age why
are there no pictures did you
have blonde or brown hair where
were you born what's your daddy's
name did you have a brother how old were you
when you lost your first tooth what
were you like
Her only answer, the art of origami, art of
loss and silence, art
of art.
A pirouette of words. Children,
there is so much in this world to fear,
there is so much more that simply
doesn't make sense. An open window,
a breeze, slow drawl of thunder.
Rapunzel Escapes the Tower and Wishes on a Dandelion
She'd rather a psychic vision,
advice about the right supplies
to get through the night,
an instruction manual,
"how to use a Swiss army knife".
A Swiss army knife.
Still, something reassuring
in superstition. Rapunzel pulls her dress tight
around herself and blows.
Seeds scatter,
half tumble her face,
catch on her lips.
Moon: full, bright, sclera
of the night's eye. Crickets,
loud. Grass, tickly
against herinsect-paranoid
legs, slapped red, every bug
escaping. Occasionally,
moonlight flashes
her naked feet, two white marks
against charcoal-black
earth,
absence.
If she swallows dandelion
what happens to the silent and desperate
she just prayed into the world?
A hand instinctively runs to twirl hair but
catches air, a mosquito. Then she remembers,
urgently need a whole field of dandelions:
she has cut
and jumped
Saliva wells up in her mouth. She gets
further and further away/towards/somewhere
Bone-jazz (May-ish, 2011. Issue 28.)
He wants to get sober
almost as badly
as he does not want to get sober;
this evening, the contradiction
seems especially tart. He cannot
stop licking his lips, cannot stop
hunting the taste of salt, as though
somehow that would make things
more sweet. A jittery
praying mantis of a man, tonight.
Complaints roll out of his mouth
like the hail that pounded down
one night last week and woke him up
from his "nap"
in the yard. He measures his sobriety
not in days or hours but in
shakes of his hand, hunger of
his long fingernail, and of course
that irritability that grows, turning his flesh
into one giant, trembling
hulk of an itch. The feet of a cockroach
pound a drum solo.
Is this what it comes down to,
the constant reduction
of a life? Measurements, larger and
larger, to narrow him
smaller and smaller? Numbers
become terribly important, but
mostly fractions, and their
multiplication confuses him,
so he concocts a clumsy guesswork. Good
enough. He hasn't noticed yet,
but he says the same thing twice,
then three, five times. This is
a frantic salsa to the
skeleton, saccharine as
a cherry popsicle, sour as
strawberry lemonade,
the music is much too fast
for any proper rhythm. His bones sing
of their creaking, when
is the last time he ate,
oh, lord, oh,
lord.