{"id":97764,"date":"2016-05-04T19:02:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T23:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=97764"},"modified":"2016-05-05T11:24:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T15:24:29","slug":"april-to-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/04\/april-to-may\/","title":{"rendered":"April to May"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Camille_Pissarro_-_Gelee_blanche,_ancienne_route_d'Ennery,_Pontoise_-_1873\"<\/a>

Camille Pissarro, Gel\u00e9e blanche<\/i>, 1873.<\/p><\/div>\n

Joyce E. Peseroff\u2019s poem \u201cApril to May\u201d appeared in our Spring 1979 issue<\/a>. Her latest collection is <\/em>Know Thyself<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

1.
It is cold enough for rain
to coagulate & fall in heavy drops.
Tonight a skin of ice will grow
over the bones of the smallest bush,<\/p>\n

making it droop like the wrist
of someone carrying a heavy suitcase. This moving on,
from season to season, is exhausting
& violent, the break from the Berlin Wall<\/p>\n

of winter especially. Like a frostbitten
hand coming to life, I color
first with warmth,
then with pain. Thawing, letting<\/p>\n

the great powers go
their own way, in rivers & in flesh,
frightens me, as this day
warns me of an icy night.<\/p>\n

2.
Each year I am astonished
at the havoc we have wrought
on other lives: fathers
made tiny by cancer, a mother<\/p>\n

swollen around a bad heart
\u201cbrought on by aggravation.\u201d
To suffer is to do something new
yet always the same\u2014<\/p>\n

a change of life
from the sexual dread. Some women
wish they were men, some men
wish they were dead; still,<\/p>\n

there is coin in suffering.
Suffering makes us
rich as Croesus in his golden tears,
& we are rarely hated for it.<\/p>\n

This coin I store in a purse
made of mother\u2019s milk
& flesh, which God says I must not mix.
I use it to seek pleasure.<\/p>\n

3.
Walking around with this thing in me
all day, this loving cup
full of jelly, waiting for you
to come home\u2014seven o\u2019clock,<\/p>\n

eight o\u2019clock, eighty-thirty.
What could be more important
than love? I can\u2019t imagine; you can.
Not a good day, not about to get better.<\/p>\n

4.
The bird comes complete
with heart, liver, & neck-bone
wrapped chastely in white paper.
Still half-frozen,<\/p>\n

the legs are hard to separate.
Inside, wax paper sticks to ribs.
I reach like a vet delivering pigs
Or a boy finger-fucking a virgin.<\/p>\n

5.
Air the same sweet
temperature inside the house
as outside the house.
Stepping up from the cellar<\/p>\n

with an armful of sheets
I listen for the dirge of flies
Under the chittering birds, both
Painfully loud. There is a stridency<\/p>\n

that\u2019s stubborn in a life
grown by inches: the fat
little fingers of buds bursting,
ugly ducklings, the slow war<\/p>\n

of day against night.
As I pin the swelling sheets
with clothespins damp & too
narrow at the mouth, I wonder how<\/p>\n

flies know to come out
to feed the birds, & feast themselves
on the new stillborn, this stubborn
great chain of being \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joyce E. Peseroff\u2019s poem \u201cApril to May\u201d appeared in our Spring 1979 issue. Her latest collection is Know Thyself.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":976,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[22213,7393,22215,22214,7221,165,16309,179,6525,22216],"class_list":["post-97764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-april-to-may","tag-birds","tag-issue-75","tag-joyce-e-peseroff","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-seasons","tag-sex","tag-spring","tag-spring-1979"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoem: \u201cApril to May,\u201d by Joyce E. 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