~RHODA JANZEN~
FIRST TIME
The sniff of wipers on
the glass
insists, Get out, go
on, get
out.
The beautiful shock of a
punch
assuages the reflexive
flinch
and buttons up one's old
raincoat
with fingers that tremble
loose,
or
thrill vaguely to the
abuser.
The first bruise is
like the first
kiss,
right and proper to
remember
forever, the white hot
gasp
inhaled open-mouthed to
the chest,
the taproot of shooting
temper
that, like a gladiolus
with the
thrips,
rasps dry and secretive,
and drops
sick in March.
It's as serviceable
as the raincoat in whose
pockets
sudden panic hunts for
change
in headlights that cough
yellow-orange
among Kleenex and movie
tickets,
counting and recounting
the cost,
impatient for a tardy
bus,
which when it comes is
packed with
thrips,
crumb-white and weighing
down the
stem.
One defies them to crawl
in closer,
shoving to the thorn on
Wilshire.
(One nostril clears: smell
of onion
jam.)
Rain drags us. Our
number
swells,
inching home through
Beverly Hills.
At home the freezer
hints that somewhere
in the hoarfrost the thing
is hidden.
There's no smart without
blood's
fool,
nor does pain even fissure
the skull
until one remembers all of
a sudden,
the trick that the
swelling resists—
black-eyed peas, tiny
frozen fists.
© by Rhoda Janzen
