Poetry By Rebecca Lehmann

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​Labyrinthine Villanelle
​
I wanted your death to work in rhyme,
as I wanted to hold your terror close,
as I wanted to figure out the world, labyrinthine.

I wanted to follow the unspooled ball of twine
and end in your mortal teeth, in tidy rows.
I wanted your death to work in rhyme. 

Instead, of course, your curly hair, serpentine,
Medusa’s stare that turned my face to frozen
stone. And there, your worldly exit, labyrinthine. 

Put your finger on the maze. Search its through-line.
Dipped in turpentine, your finger runs its curves and rows.
Swerving thus, I wanted your death to work in rhyme. 

I let you catch me. Let you turn and find
the bull at my center, breath hot and ring in its nose.
You never found the exit, dead-ended and labyrinthine. 

I wanted to decenter you. I wanted you to un-pose. 
I wanted to take a scalpel to your death, I suppose.
I wanted your death to work in rhyme,
as I wanted to mete and measure the world, labyrinthine.

​



​Pastel

When I was an ignorant child 
I stared in the face of glory
or was it the face of my mother
holding open a book of art prints
to say Look, look, though we 
were poor, too poor for art.
When you are too poor for art, 
you cannot afford anything 
even the truth. The truth is I loved
my mother and her pastels,
which she kept in a leather case,
and her special paper I wasn’t
allowed to touch. It was a different
time then we could afford to live
in our own town. Not like now
when everybody lives in an apartment
complex on the edge of town
so vacationers can buy
all the shitty little bungalows.
In the streets, no children
are riding bicycles, or walking
to the schools, which have been 
torn down, and the park is full
of moneyed retirees, who’ve turned
the beach into a bird refuge,
so no children are swimming there
or making sandcastles. The way wealth
chews through everything pretty,
pries open your hand, like a mother
pries open the hand of her child,
and says You give that back to me right now.



​
Rebecca Lehmann is the author of two collections of poetry: Ringer (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019) and Between the Crackups (Salt, 2011). Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith and other venues.