Hogweed
His unbuckling of belt
Her buckling of knees
Buckles around my horse’s girth
His clever bloat
The slow slip of saddle
that sometimes topples me
How easy I fall
to land in a field among
lace of Queen Anne
to look up at furry horse-belly clouds
My mouth is a buckle
rusted into place
I saw my mother’s knees buckle
I was riding in the field
of Queen
hoofing over her white face
with her bindi speck
proving she wasn’t hogweed
her toxic imposter
when I heard my mother’s knees
Such a crack they made
the crack of new leather
my saddle its first time out
He gave a snort, my horse, so much as to say
I do not recognize this danger
Then he bucked
and into
the Queen’s face with its
lace umbel of fear he galloped
I knew myself destined to fall
but mane-buckled fingers held tight
I heard my father’s belt buckle one last time
as hooves flew me over the body of the Queen
one queen after another
His belt buckle one last time
airborne as a gallop before the fall.
~
The Lesson
First, he suffers
the strings, his body
torn by steel windings. Soon he slips
inside his fiddle. Wise,
his teacher does not warn him:
that he’ll have to hang on to the sound post
as to a rafter, swing his spirit,
risk the fall.
That he’ll be provoked by the stick,
like a wild animal;
dashed against the blocks, trapped
between two walls of fire.
To be heard, he’ll have to be willing
to burn. To breathe
through the f‑holes
until he is ready to surrender
to the flames.
Beloved, his teacher never hints
that this—to perish—is the only way,
never breathes
a word. The boy first, then the man, has to learn
these things for himself,
that he is tinder,
ash,
his teacher.
~
Masterclass
We were all in our places:
you, in your front row seat; he, with me upstairs;
all of us, ready for the piano masterclass.
We all knew where we belonged in that Saturday house,
it never varied week to week:
the children, your students, filing in,
preferring to play kickball in the street,
any childhood game but this,
of sharps, flats, accidentals.
Adagio cantabile, second movement,
Grande Sonate Pathétique.
Some poor soul would limp your keyboard,
your bent body nearly tipping its chair.
Beethoven didn’t mean it like this, you’d say.
Play it like it’s a memory, the most precious of your life.
Bored, my little sister sat on the stairs
while, a landing away, he breathed thunder near my ear
as Beethoven began his weekly turn in the grave.
But one Saturday my sister saved me. A rush to the ER,
everyone in our living room, all the children,
your piano students, waiting
for the masterclass to resume
once the foreign object was removed from her nostril
and she could breathe again.
Children only, no parents allowed at your masterclass.
A parent’s effect on a child’s music could be damaging, you said.
You sometimes talked of this over Friday night dinners
when the smell of my burning hair mingled
with the char of chops on our plates. You spoke of the children,
your students, whether they had futures, any hope
of making music.
My frizzy hair came from him. You ironed it straight every Friday
in preparation for the masterclass while he caught the 7:05 into the city.
Your comb cut through my hair: the perfect division.
You commuted me from curly to straight, until
the weight of it hung longer, heavier on my shoulders.
My bang-straight hair spilled on to my pillow,
black on white, more beautiful than your keyboard,
he said.
Beethoven could not have meant it like this.
The night she saved me, I looked across the table at my sister,
her nose bruise-dark beneath its bandage. The shadow of my hair
filled my plate and I ate it, ravenous.
After dinner you went to the piano yourself,
played the movement like none of your students,
your children, ever could,
this piece beyond our grasp.
You played it like, precious or not,
it was the only memory you had.
I would inherit your piano, but I would never practice.
I would never get any better. The notes,
the sharps, the flats,
were no accidentals to me.
I would bang until I felt you
turning in your grave.
I wouldn’t stop banging even when I heard you beg.
I wouldn’t stop until I was sure,
until I could honestly say,
This is my music.
This is exactly how I mean it.
~
A Pink Dress
It is about a pink dress.
About the drape of one leg over another on a bar stool, two hands clasping
an icy Campari.
It is about the ear of a man and what he hears.
The mouth of that woman and what she says.
Her throat: that silk roadway along which her words, drenched with bitters, race north.
The ear of another man who flew over Scotland became enlarged, so that this
was all there was of him.
This, the only part of him to bury after his Bristol Beaufighter was bombed,
the organ into which he crawled after he’d heard your words spoken to a lover.
Into that pink ear he crawled, curving, incurving like the down-going spiral of his Beau
as it vanished into water.
Above Scotland he saw the trawlers off the coast.
The loose net I threw into the sea caught a fin of his grief.
You trawled in these waters, Mother,
a skilled thrower of nets.
Not much you do not want comes up and therefore goes to waste.
I will not go out with you on the coast of Scotland and stand in some
1945 wind to commemorate the end, when you, in Brooklyn, saw so little
of the war.
You, at your toy piano, your Polish mother, my grandmother, Esther,
seven days a week in a sweat shop,
sewer of seams, dresses ladies like you’d become would wear uptown, downtown,
on Flatbush Avenue, on Coney Island.
The hem of your pink dress, though cut and raised through the years,
is still a tidal wave rolling across the world.
~
Three-legged Table
Still that boy
you sit at the table
between your
one-legged father and
Lehar-loving mother
refugees
dancers once
lidded by grey London with its
stodgy fare
What dance can they do
now
with three real legs and one
fake
You sit at their table
eating their pasts
scarfing your fish and chips from
yesterday’s headlines
while hands across mouths they eat
only fear and rage
survivor’s guilt
their teeth
the grinding footsteps of
enemies
You ever careful
not to tip the table
for fear
you’ll lose
a single morsel
The splendor on the greasy news
did you ever wonder
what it was
A war offering
a casualty
It couldn’t be
a dance so it must have been
the thing they fear most
emptiness
piled so high
you couldn’t imagine ever finishing it
~
Julie Esther Fisher’s stories and poetry appear or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review New World Writing, Prime Number Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, Bridge Eight, William and Mary Review, Other Voices, On the Seawall, and Sky Island Journal. Winner of several awards, including Grand Prize Recipient of the 2022 Stories That Need to be Told Anthology, and Sunspot Lit’s Rigel Award, she has twice been nominated for the Pushcart. Her novella in stories, Love is a Crooked Stick, is about to go out on submission. Currently, she is immersing herself in writing poetry. A grateful recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, she grew up in London and today lives amidst several hundred acres of wild conserved land in Massachusetts, where she indulges her passion for nature and gardening. Visit her at julieestherfisher.com