Three Poems by Rose Solari

Another Shore

It is essential to imagine

one thing as another — as when

the small hard winter apple becomes

a globe for the dollhouse schoolroom

where the rubber children learn

their geography; as when a pan of mud

is really quicksand, and in it G.I. Joe

is sinking, sinking, until a buddy

pulls him out in time; as when the old

round wooden drying rack, with all

its bare arms up, is your helicopter,

rising over the shores of Okinawa,

where you will find your brother,

not yet broken, and carry him home.

After All

So it’s just you and me, sad ghost

dissolving so quick by my side.

And we’re all down to senses – beer snap,

smoke taste – and the handful of photos

boxed on a high shelf that I’ll never climb.

Farewell, then, to the love and the hate

of it, to the shattered vase and the purple,

predictable vine. Now the stories you could

not tell will never be spoken, the demons

you never named all blanks on the line.

Brother, it took me twenty-three months

and four countries just to be here –

where I stand, with one foot by

your grave, and one in the clear.

Spell for Vanishing

That clatter of plates is her

warming up to the old story. The house

in Hawaii that wasn’t. Pineapples

growing on cartoon trees she’ll never

see. Brad is the name of the ghost,

and you already know his sea-color eyes,

the size of the ring, but still

you keep listening, wiping the same pot

over and over.

Then, just like that,

she’s wished you all away — four kids

not born, your father dispensing

the sacraments  in a parish by the bay.

You’re his, not hers, you’ve always

known it. Which means,

right now you don’t exist.

Rose Solari is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, The Last Girl, Orpheus in the Park, and Difficult Weather, the one-act play, Looking for Guenevere, and the novel, A Secret Woman. She has lectured and taught writing workshops at many institutions, including the University of Oxford's Centre for Creative Writing at Kellogg College.