{"id":103676,"date":"2016-10-13T17:48:56","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T21:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=103676"},"modified":"2016-10-13T19:03:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T23:03:51","slug":"the-bed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/13\/the-bed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bed"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_103678\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/ma-70937-web.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-103678\" class=\"wp-image-103678\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/ma-70937-web.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Magrethe Mather (1927). \" width=\"600\" height=\"475\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-103678\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Magrethe Mather, 1927.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Catherine Bowman\u2019s poem \u201cThe Bed\u201d first appeared in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/back-issues\/109\" target=\"_blank\">Winter 1988 issue<\/a>. Her latest collection is\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Can-Finish-Please-Catherine-Bowman\/dp\/1935536664\" target=\"_blank\">Can I Finish, Please?<\/a><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I was five that summer, in our new house, with the light<br \/>aproning over the desert just before dark. That year I touched the blue<br \/>pink skin of my cousin\u2019s baby rabbits in the smoky evening smell<br \/>of El Paso lawns. And there\u2019s Hulia watching me, her head positioned,<br \/>great and toothless, through the broken window; the first big boney fish<br \/>star of the wrinkled sky. And there\u2019s my mother and father\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n<p>It was one of those standard, posture-correct, kingsize beds<br \/>preferred by newly married couples in the 60s along with avocado light<br \/>fixtures. Tiki Torches and furniture store paintings of Picassoesque fish<br \/>that glared over the matching carpet where I\u2019d dance the lovesick blues<br \/>with my Uncle Mitch. He\u2019d play Hank Williams in the den and then position<br \/>me on his boots, my face pressed against his jeans that smelled<\/p>\n<p>like Coors and grease. Afterwards I\u2019d rub my face clean in the smell<br \/>of their vast sheets and pillows. Even now it\u2019s still the biggest bed<br \/>I\u2019ve ever seen. Like some kind of cloudy mountain it was positioned<br \/>up against the wall, I think to hold the house up and maybe even light<br \/>the block, bigger than all Christmas trees. Here\u2019s Johnny! and the blue<br \/>sky. I\u2019d peek over its ocean top of silver-threaded fish.<\/p>\n<p>climb up and then fall into the deep end where I knew they\u2019d never fish<br \/>me out. There I\u2019d tumble down and drown, alone in smells<br \/>of hair spray, linens, tobacco and love on Sunday afternoons in the bluish<br \/>swollen glow of their room. It was the first of eight beds<br \/>they would own together, always pointing north for the light,<br \/>Mother\u2019s side on the right, always near the bathroom in the same position.<\/p>\n<p>One day playing in their bathroom I found some pictures of positions.<br \/>I asked my father and he laughed.\u00a0<em>Nothing, just fish.<\/em><br \/>Then he lifted the book of people-fish out of my hands into the light<br \/>brown dresser drawer that held the silver dollars, metal box and smelly<br \/>stuff. Later, lying in the farthest spot under the massive wingspan of the bed<br \/>I imagined myself a fish-woman with seaweed hair and fins that glittered blue.<\/p>\n<p>If I had never seen those glossy magazines, how-to-books, or blue<br \/>movies I think I\u2019d still slide into the positions<br \/>discovered in the caverns of our river bed.<br \/>First one stroke and then another, until we\u2019re swimming hyphenated, two fish<br \/>moving together in the dark, following a scent, a smell<br \/>that unfolds into our blood when we flip out the light.<\/p>\n<p>And in the rippling blue afternoon when the sunlight<br \/>posits over us like a smell or a herd of masked fish<br \/>we rest and play in bed and learn to face night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Catherine Bowman\u2019s poem \u201cThe Bed\u201d first appeared in our Winter 1988 issue. Her latest collection is\u00a0Can I Finish, Please?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1075,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[19174,25115,21534,25040,8892,8226,11876,19907,25116,384,25117,13158,163,7481,4693,8432,7255],"class_list":["post-103676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-bed","tag-bedding","tag-bedrooms","tag-catherine-bowman","tag-childhood","tag-family","tag-fathers","tag-from-the-archive","tag-hank-williams","tag-home","tag-house","tag-memories","tag-memory","tag-mothers","tag-nostalgia-2","tag-parents","tag-remembering"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u201cThe Bed\u201d by Catherine Bowman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A poem from the archive.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/13\/the-bed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Bed by Catherine Bowman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 13, 2016 \u2013 Catherine Bowman\u2019s poem \u201cThe Bed\u201d first appeared in our Winter 1988 issue. 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