Scorpion Hill

Sometimes, at sunset, I return to our house in a small boat.
               It glides easily across the channel, the song of tree frogs
                                following with the evening wind.
 
Other times getting across is like trying to ride a wet bull
               without a saddle, thighs clinging to its back,
                                hands struggling for grab holds in the cockpit,
 
spray hitting hard – biting hard – a slap across the face.
               Why go back there to share the company of vermin and ghosts?
                                Where there are echoes of conversations: you walking towards me
 
to put the kettle on or to pour a glass of red
               complaining about bites from the no-see-ums; where rats chew
                                on window screens or squeeze through cracks
 
in the cupboard, teeth marks left on apples and soap.
               Loud rattling doors that never locked, can’t shut,
                                scorpions disappear into hiding places.
 
Outside a cluster of moths, all shapes and disguises,
               wings fluttering, cling to a single light bulb
                                left on during the night.
 

Lynne Hjelmgaard

published in PN Review, July-August 2019, Issue 248.

 
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With Cool Dude on Lower East Side

With cool dude on lower East Side
First date in the Park, hold cigarette
Don’t know how to, Joe demonstrates
In Italian, want to be cooler, me
At his house off Delancey & Broom
I’m shy in knee socks, unaware
Sofa bed folds out, takes the room
Me later, body tender in Square
One night sick with fever, but I call
His mother, Sorry Joe ain’t here
Take bus downtown to no avail
Not words or note, just bruising air
I can’t give in, go back, move forward
A child put off, who won’t be spurned
 

Lynne Hjelmgaard

in collection Manhattan Sonnets, Redbeck Press, 2003,
ISBN 1-904338-07-0;
previously published in Jacket Magazine 21 (online);
and in anthology My Mother Threw Knives, Second Light Publications, 2006,
ISBN 0-9546934-1-8

 
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Nomad Song

Now, far from the sea,
the sea-lure remains.
Come home, I say.
 
My hands can carry less and less.
I want you near,
but you move further away.
 
Your belongings come along:
a small teak stamp box,
smooth and soft in my hands.
 
A tiny glass hexagon
colorful parrots inside.
They swing with you in eternity
on little plastic vines.
 
Chatwin’s ‘Anatomy of Restlessness’,
the last book you read.
‘We are travellers from birth’.
 
You, too, shed things and places
like layers of skin.
 
Now, far from the sea
the sea-lure remains.
 
Come home I say,
but you move further away.
 

Lynne Hjelmgaard

poem of the week, Oxford Brooks University, June 12, 2017;
in collection A Boat called Annalise, 2016, Seren Books, ISBN 978-1-7817231-0-4;
first published in The Warwick Review, Vol VIII No 3, September 2014

 
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Navigation

     I.M. of Stig
 
1-
 
I captured
your silhouette floating
in an aura of blues one
hand in your pocket one
hand for the ship you
steered with your foot
on the wheel wearing
a straw hat like a cowboy.
 
You liked to handle heavy rope
could splice a line
could walk a heeling deck.
The sun baked our backs
after island’s rain washed
salt from our bodies.
 
Martha the auto-pilot hummed.
 
2-
 
You left in a hurry
sextant on the table
pointers spread on the chart.
The cabin door open –
now still swinging back and forth
forth and back.
 
Put on your old blue jacket.
I’ll even let you stuff your pipe
if you promise to plot a course
to the exact position
of where you are.
 

Lynne Hjelmgaard

in collection A Boat called Annalise, 2016, Seren Books, ISBN 978-1-7817231-0-4;
published in The Warwick Review, Vol VIII No 3, September 2014

 
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