Two Poems

Brenda Yates

An Unscreened Porch in the City

But dreams will wait only so long; pills
mainly corner the pain and since
nothing is worse than sleeplessness, you don't ask what
happens to your dreams.
Except for the gritty machine-greys
that do, in fact, seem to hover nearby,
a quiet night is a blessing—
family is happy; sleep
continues.
To anyone who had gone so long without, it would
be hard to remember dreams
laid
down
in the arms of the dark. Then,
the storms of pain let up and in the
midst of sleep,
of dreamless sleep—
its rivers dammed behind
nightly need—pent-up dreams burst. It's water, it's animal, color-saturated
creatures that hold you down to force-feed the emptiness.

Note: The first word of each line is from James Dickey's "A Screened Porch in the Country,"— But mainly nothing happens/ Except that a family continues/To be laid down/In the midst of its nightly creatures/ . . .

***

Last Stop

Detaching my mother's chair from the place
she'd taken to, near the garden windows,
I wonder if it's not a state of grace—
dementia. No way to tell if she knows
St. Catherine's Home for the Elderly
and Infirm. I roll her to the dining
room where those who still think have eyes that see
these long corridors with wheelchairs lining
the walls like shunted boxcars. Watching me
from tunnels of illness, they spew bitter
clouds—the same malignant smell that once she
had thought worse than death. I lean into her
sour breath and skin, hoping that today is
sunny, in a good year for her roses.

Brenda Yates grew up on SAC bases stateside and overseas. She settled first in Massachusetts and finally (so far) in California. Her poems have appeared in Mississippi Review, Eclipse, Pearl, 51%, Cider Press Review, Spillway, Blue Arc West and So Luminous The Wildflowers, An Anthology of California Poets. She was awarded the 2005 Patricia Bibby Memorial Scholarship at Idyllwild Arts.

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