Mary Ann Samyn's Inside the Yellow Dress (New Issues, 2001)

Here are just a few favourite passages from this impressive book. 


It is always like this.
I cannot calculate 
the hurt ahead of time.
I cannot spare myself.

                                            So I go headlong--

I go wanting.

And these flowers:

                                  how bright they are.

Dried,
             they keep their color all winter.

second half of

"Moving Away from an Event"

My mother is anger and want, a small girl.

I am a small girl too.

One of us darts in and out of the bushes.

                          The other cannot imagine her suffering.

end of "Poem with a Riddle in It"

Such a small idea and gone:

her hands in the air at dusk,

                       the sun--just a click now in the trees--

end of "Poem with Light on Its Shoulder"

I say gauzy the way you might say love, 

meaning my hunger--

          desire a net, after all,

                                             and rigged--

from "Fabric/Lyric"

Read my selections from Samyn's Beauty Breaks In (New Issues, 2009 and Purr (New Issues, 2005).

Mary Ann Samyn's Purr (New Issues, 2005)

But even with the day OFF
(shades down, light switched)
the mirror has to do someting with all its energy.

It chooses you. Red Rover Red Rover.

 from "A Third Source of Unnecessary Tension"

A little error: fine

A little accomplishment: better.

I stood aside and watched my mood.

The poem rippled past.

opening of "The Variant for This Is Silence"

All day the day snows down around

each of us separately.

No, the day's debris--

end of "Cabin Fever in the Gray World"

Our new weather makes me regret a thing or two,

that's for sure.

When I leave, I always say thank you

whether I mean it or not.

end of "Crank It Up"

Sorrow, for instance, which had held her in a sling,

a gauzy numbness where she kicked her legs in sleep.

end of "What Happened Next"

As though they had argued, earlier,

or she had remembered she was separate:

These are my hands. I end here.

The space they loved made a cruel sound.

Of course her large sadness had opened,

all the furred animals shifting

in the little boat of sleep.

first half of "Snarl"

You know: first the light and then the hurt

and then the new shoots and how the deer love it.

last stanza of "A Thought, For Example, Is a Form"

The thing is you can't see the cigarette fragments

on the postcard reproduction I bought.

Pollock never stood over this little rectangle.

On the back in boldface: his name and the bar code:

4  0010  39478  4.

The scanner is red-mouthed, tight-lipped.

I owe 35 cents.

By all accounts, this is a good deal,

especially when the universe may, in fact, be a loose bag,

a skin folding back on itself.

You just don't know.

I choose a white loop in Pollock's Number 3, 1949: Tiger.

I go as far as I can.

last third of "Terminal"

In the UK, you can buy Purr through Foyle's Marketplace.

Mary Ann Samyn's Beauty Breaks In (New Issues, 2009)

Ave Maria polishes the background, while I tidy up out front.

Want to enjoy some majesty? Come on by, rain or snow, any evening.

last lines of "An Ambiguity"

In the hollow, the hollow was everything.

We oohed and aahed appropriately.

We learned sandstone versus limestone versus

what might have been.

*

What we liked best was anticipation,

which was fortunate since that was what we got.

*

I like my emptiness with a bit of elbow room.

You like yours with a convenient hatch.

from "Content / Content"

Another dazzling finale

and then I get to choose the braver way.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

are the questions.

*

Remembering is such a thrill

the rain does it all day long.

from "Her Sun Was Blue, Her Tree Was Green,

Her Line Was Very Straight"

For heaven's sake, don't worry. It's just Wal-Mart: paintbrushes and paint, some talent and a little hey why not.

from "I Want You to Scream It"

Thank goodness for tomorrow, which held today, squirming a little

but secretly loving it.

the last stanza of "In the Countryside of The"

Will I always be lonely in towns with small-time civic pride?

At least I've done a good job not filling the nothingness

with more of the same.

I consider the berries on the ivy: each one a little entrance

or exit.

My strength I learned a long time ago.

end of "It's Been a Lovely October Thus Far"

My mother wants to know, am I in town?

Infinite Crisis #5.

I'm temper, underneath.

I'm pacing all the way through.

from "Riskier Still"

Little by little is one way to row a boat. Mine is blue and white

and very very sleepy.

Yours I cannot say. But I'm betting on the unimaginable,

and the painfully obvious.

last stanzas of "Smack-dab"

How will you know me dressed as I am

in rhetoric and light?

last stanza of "Suppose We Make That Assumption"

In real life, I hold up one hand to show my city.

On the map, Michigan leaned a little drunk. Tipsy mitten.

from "THIS IS NOT AN ENTRANCE"

Feeling is active, I now realize.

Meaning lags behind, like thunder.

*

Intuition tells me I'm fine.

I've not exceeded the day's maximum

dose of anything.

A song I like repeats in my mind.

from "Tuesday Progress Report"

Two calm thoughts in a row. Personal best.

*

I'm a sensible nonsensical girl, not the other way around.

Mostly, I defer to you.

In a fit of wisdom, you chose me.

What more can I say?

beginning and ending of "When You Reach an Obstacle"

Beauty Breaks In is available with free worldwide shipping at The Book Depository.