Digging Up Catherine
“two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us”
Wuthering Heights
Loving you
after all these years
is like digging up a grave.
I thought
I wanted
to sleep here deep
in the past, and though I try
to clamber out, I keep sliding back down
to your bed.
Your face has faded, yes,
to a blank, but your heart
is as hard
as it ever was, a little wooden coffin,
of sorts, bolted tight
with ice.
Liebestod
A Glittering Cobweb
Your lace veil
(like a girl’s ghost) will trail you
to the altar stone.
Then your lips will part
for a virginal sigh
along with a flimsy, small, white promise fluttering off
to the moon.
My country maid, the swain
you love
will carry off the child
in you, his bone
—like a compound fracture—stuck
in your pallid thigh.
Your purity will bleed a rose
in the rapturous rite
the furled woman blooms.
In the Next Pale-Blue Salon
He lay so still
I couldn’t hear his heart
while waiting
for his bride.
Was I her groom
in that palm-leaf room?
A Wurlitzer wrung out eyes
from its pipes. The palest
of callas
would do
for a wreath. She strolled
down the aisle
to a cummerbund
of bones.
And sobbing
in the candlelight, she said, “But we are wed!”
He whispered, “Darling, we are dead.”
One mourner, more or less,
couldn’t so much guess
on his wedding night.
A Ceremony Stiff as Tulle
We sighed
like a funeral parlor—the maid
of honor
and the floral bridesmaids, the best man
and the groomsmen bleak
in black.
Your father gave you away
as if he’d sold you
for land, and the groom took your hand
the way
that Death should take us, all dolled up.
The minister parroted words, the organ throbbed,
and we watched you slowly sink
into the dark grave
of your marriage.
Ken Anderson’s poetry books are The Intense Lover and Permanent Gardens. His novel Sea Change: An Example of the Pleasure Principle was a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award and an Independent Publisher Editor’s Choice. His novel Someone Bought the House on the Island (based on the structure of Stoker’s Dracula) was a finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A stage adaptation won the Saints and Sinners Playwriting Contest and premiered May 2, 2008, at the Marigny Theater in New Orleans. A screenplay version was Winner of Best First-Time Screenwriter (Feature Script) at Script Awards Los Angeles.