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PARALLAX
Maureen Mulhern
Copyright © 1986 by Maureen Mulhern
All rights reserved
“Candelia” received the 1984 Ruth Lake Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mulhern, Maureen, 1957–
Parallax.
(Wesleyan new poets)
I. Title. II. Series.
PS3563.U393P3 1986 811′.54 85-22750
ISBN 0-8195-2130-2 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8195-1131-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
All inquiries and permissions requests should be addressed to the Publisher, Wesleyan University Press, 110 Mt. Vernon Street, Middletown, Connecticut 06457.
Distributed by Harper & Row Publishers, Keystone Industrial Park, Scranton, Pennsylvania 18512.
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
Wesleyan New Poets
Cover design by Joyce Kachergis.
For my parents …
Contents
After Rain, What Entropy Appears 12
Under a Tundra, the Desert, the Sea 18
PARALLAX
Skating
Over Sinoway’s pond the snag of skates
Dragged rough lines across the crust.
I imagined crayfish in hibernation,
Their pewter spines curled in frozen viscous
Sacs and bubbles while hockey pucks
Sent shadows over them like tiny spheres
Whizzing out of orbit. I spun crookedly,
Snow catching on my eyelashes
As I stumbled, pulled by a mottled glow
Of fish below the ice, their opaque,
Greenish skin as fine as rice paper, mouths
Stuck in perpetual loops. I circled
And etched cuneiform runes, scrambled
Messages to wood-hued owls who took
Refuge in Sinoway’s barn. (Their tight,
oval chests beneath the feathers, cold.) Cider
Fermented in enormous vats and apples
All summer long waited listlessly like
People in bus stations. But the winter
Was an Appaloosa, bruised white and grey,
Its mane, cream turning pale against the sky.
At night, I dreamed of clear, red planets
Eclipsing thinner disks, shifting
Like ocular cells on all sides; featureless
Faces bobbed for eye space while I clung
To the basket of a hot-air balloon
And felt the world obliquely tip away, sliding
Further and further to where I am now.
Candelia
Once I’d walk from one end of the living-
Room to another, the medication took hold
And I’d turn into sand;
Particle