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Eleanor Boudreau

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Earnest Postcard

Dear Earnest,
The front of a motorcycle reminds me of my reproductive system—
handle bars the fallopian tubes, mirrors ovaries, headlight uterus,
and front wheel vagina.

Working in the barn, I fit my sweaty fingers in a glove,
and remember you at your cruelest,
“Get thee to a nunnery. To a nunnery—go.”

I fit my other hand in the other glove and wriggle
thumb to pinky.
In the air in front of me, a little wave—

Say bon voyage.

I am searching for the objective,
I mean the objective correlative,
for the loss of a child that was not

a child—and it doesn’t exist.

But E, I still can’t help but feel
I have something to say about the sonnet form.

My heart is in two pieces.

__________

Bird’s-Eye View

EXT. THE STREET

Earnest thinks shrimp don’t have legs,
                 and I am holding folders with kittens on them. “I’m a poet,”
I say, “I like poetry.”

INT. A MOVING VEHICLE

His lunch in a paper bag,
                 his lunch on the floor beside his feet,
                 the apple on top of the peanut butter sandwich,
                 the sandwich being crushed—see how funny it is? That sandwich is
                 absolutely crushed.
This is an experiment: a pair of cross-tracked lovers.
The shingles on the houses glisten in rain or shine.
On the street, people furl and unfurl their umbrellas.
It is raining, and as it rains, the raindrops turn around the wheels of trucks
                 and rise as mist.
I’m dabbling in desolation, I’m dabbling in debilitation.
A pair of cross-tracked lovers—and honestly—
                 who comes up with this?
He is going to stick his hand down my shirt when I see the plastic trash bag
                 in the road in front of us, flapping in the wind and rain, a bruised eyelid,
                 and have to swerve.
I have been driving for a long time, and I haven’t hit anyone yet, but, baby—
                 that’s dangerous.
I’m having trouble feeling anything, and he says, “You don’t seem to feel
                 pain, Eleanor.
You’re numb and cold like some sort of lower, lower form of life.”

The shadows from the dumpsters fan out and slide down the hillside,
                 and the little pebbles that make up the hillside stay
                 in their places—remain motionless—miles and miles
                 of hearts of stone.
The tarantulas on the roadway and all the little animals in the forest
                 freeze in the headlights—
                 turn to stone.
I drive over the shadows on the highway.
I’m terrible—don’t forget that—I’m evil and was born it,
                 but, Earnest, you do not think
                 shrimp have legs.
This is an experiment
                 to see if I can be kind—to see if I can lie—
                 and I like words too much. I know all women do,
                 but I’m not going to lie. I am a lower, lower form of life.

EXT. RESORT PARKING LOT

The shingles on the cabins glisten in rain or shine.
This is the parking lot. This is our stop. And I get out
                 to have a cigarette. One car pulls from its parking spot
                 in the fading light; the car in front eclipses one headlight.
It seems like an accident that we are here together. Perhaps it is
                 an accident that we are here at all. Already, men are trying to help.
I know I won’t be able to carry anything—
                 not my suitcase, not my remembered pain, not even this thought.
I will be given a key. I will walk to a threshold that I will cross,
                 then I’ll be naked. They call this vacation.
They call it recreation. I will not remember what
                 the weather was, but before I give it up,
I point my umbrella outward and to the side and collapse
                 a single tooth. The silver ribs shut the black skin quickly. Like an eye.

__________

The Last Earnest Postcard

Dear E,
Last winter, the snow in sheets of laundered white,
this spring, the grass blades kissed and cuddled in their bed
with the slightest breeze

and I led horses named for weather—Misty, Hurricane, and Twister—
to their paddocks, fences stitched on the hillside, in Rhode Island,
which, you know, is not an island.

The horses nuzzled at my shoulders
with their drumming, peach-skin noses. Once they were free,
their naked crests ran through the meadow
then dropped to eat.

I don’t understand history, I never did. But history is
just motion in a summer field.

It’s been a long time, Earnest. Please forgive
the public nature of this postcard.

I only think of you.

__________

Elegy

There is nothing worth describing. There is
a perfect rectangle formed by four dogwoods, their bark
pinkening with the rays of a setting sun, an open wound. Their flowers
scraggly, white, hair above an open wound. The legs of something mutilated
stomach-up.

__________

Eleanor Boudreau is a poet who has worked as a dry-cleaner and as a radio reporter. Her first book, Earnest, Earnest? (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Barrow Street, Waxwing, Willow Springs, FIELD, Copper Nickel, and other journals. She is @EleanorBoudreau on Twitter and @ebpoet on Instagram. Her website is www.eleanorboudreau.com.

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