Samuel Washington Allen Prize Co-Winner, selected by Robert Pinsky
The Maureen Papers
I.
You sign up for a massage
at the retreat center
and make the mistake
of saying you’re a nurse
whereupon the therapist
starts to murmur: “These hands
that have healed so many…”
pressing and crooning,
“the burdens you bear…”
kneading her own rhetoric,
while, head down on the frame,
you make faces at the floor.
II.
Take it home, you say,
of a book I find
in the guest bedroom.
I’m getting rid of them.
Using too much space as it is.
Later: Want to go into town?
There’s a new book place
on Chapel Street. Discounts.
You never know.
I like to poke around.
But I meant it.
Take that one home.
III.
You swerve off the sidewalk
into any Goodwill store
to pull at the musty jackets,
emerge with picture frames
or a couple of place mats.
All summer, yard sales
seriously slow
your drives up the coast.
Before my first trip to London
you make sure I know
there’s a great and permanent
flea market in Camden Town.
IV.
Sundays in summer
you take your coffee
and the Times crossword
out to the deck, to the warmth
and tackle the puzzle swiftly,
while whichever disagreeable cat
is in residence then,
or just hanging around
because you feed it,
follows the slightest movements
of your pencil hand
through sun-blinkered eyes.
V.
The things people say at funerals!
(We are leaving Aunt Daisy’s.)
“It’s a nice day for it.”
And that man, Peg’s neighbor,
talking, talking.
I thought we’d never escape.
But he’s so kind, Peg told me just now.
He brought lovely fruit – you know, from his store –
when Ed was sick.
I’d bring fruit, too, I thought,
if it let me bore people to death.
VI.
Sometimes, at a dinner party,
when we’d be telling stories,
you’d mention “my brother”
and I’d nod with the others,
following the narrative,
the joke, some opinion held
by a relative stranger.
Then with a start I’d remember
you had only one brother
and that for twenty-five years
I was married to him.
VII.
I’ve done it, you’d say.
I can do it.
Why should I do it?
A kitchen history
in twelve words.
But times when you felt you still must do it
you’d close then open
the refrigerator
take wrong items
from the cabin
replace adjust
stir sigh
and at last
shrug food
onto the table
like something to which
you’d given
absolutely no thought.
VIII.
This is what you did
when I was trapped
in that slurred and constant
post-surgery monologue
steroid swollen
with plans beliefs resolutions
projects hopes declarations
you set food before me
waited as I cut it
into small pieces
to illustrate my points
then sent me to bed
where sleepless I watched
Roman Holiday
for its universal truths
that I’d always remember
as guides to my life
and when I told you
all about them next day
you listened.
IX.
I know who did all this
your father says to you
in the middle of the surprise
80th birthday party
you’ve spent months
arranging for him.
It was Bridie, wasn’t it?
She’s a great girl.
You swallow the retorts
of a lifetime,
pat his shoulder.
No, Pop. It was me.
Ah, was it now?
And I never suspected.
You’re so busy, Maureen.
But why did you choose this band?
X.
I’m a mess,
you’ve been saying lately.
I can’t remember things.
You always add
just as well
the closest you come
to acknowledging
the pain of years:
mother suicidal
alcoholic husband
daughter with AIDS
the car crash
that took your oldest son.
XI.
I’m a nurse
you said to me once
and still I didn’t know
or wouldn’t see
what was happening
when Jimmy died
how they kept moving him
down, by degrees
Emergency
Surgery
I.C.U.
I was, I don’t know,
dazed, I guess
thinking he’d wake
they could do something
just some broken bones
nothing internal
A nurse, for God’s sake
I couldn’t see
XII.
Your little house becomes a place
where you can’t be alone anymore.
The soft lichen-greens and yellows,
prints you’ve placed so carefully,
framed photo of your father’s mantle
with its philodendron, clock, and Irish flag –
you have to get out of there.
If you can open the door.
XIII.
That you called, for my sake
and at the last minute,
to say we couldn’t meet
after all, you were returning
right away to Texas
to stay with your daughter
now seems—though I wept after—
an enormous feat of strength
in the face of inertia,
a gathering of all your forces,
so scattered, so self-reproving,
against the woe of life.
XIV.
For a long time you and I
had difficulty naming
what we were to each other.
Ex-sister-in-law?
In fact, we were closer
after the divorce.
In that desperate season
I got into my car
and drove to New Haven
to make very clear
no way would I lose you.
Sister-in-law then. Not “ex”?
After years you simplified:
Friend.
XV.
2003
We decided to leave the play
at the National Theater
after the first act
–
and rather than look for a bus
we walked across Waterloo Bridge
in glittering nighttime –
silver Thames, London Eye
like a constellation.
We’d take the train
over at Embankment station.
The city was ours.
We didn’t regret for a moment
the waste of our tickets.
We staked our claim.
Susan Donnelly is the author of Eve Names the Animals, Transit, Capture the Flag, and six chapbooks. Her newest chapbook is The Finding Day (2019). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Agni, and in many other journals, anthologies, and online sites. Susan conducts poetry classes and individual consultations from her home in Arlington, Massachusetts.