By Joanne Dominique Dwyer

Featured Art: My Memory Knows More Than Your Photograph by Brooke Ripley

No longer on my knees holed up with a halitosis priest

in the twilit-dark behind a screen of latticed woodwork.

No longer swathed in a fog of incense.

Not thirsting for absolution, but slanting toward a mindset of confession.

Desire to disclose that mornings I promise myself to write

I do housework, albeit arbitrarily & haphazardly.

A woman gone astray, circuitry askew.

I half sweep one room, half mop another.

Sprinkle toilet bowl cleaner as though I’m anointing the sick,

but never get around to abrading the porcelain.

Drink two cups of tea; return emails.

Put musk oil in my hair, lemon hydrating lotion on my feet;

a woman just shy of wallpapering her tongue.

I top flaxseed toast with grass-fed butter.

Apply flea and tick repellent to the lonely dogs.

Drape laundry up in the coppery sun; tweeze my fading eyebrows.

Put a pot of garbanzo beans on to boil; water the withering fruit trees,

check the traps for rotting rodents.

Shake out the Kashmiri prayer rug from under my desk.

Chant mantras in a language not my own.

Only now am I tranquilized down enough to write.

And then Leonard Cohen’s lyrics leap into my head:

A million candles burning for the help that never came.

Which sidetracks me into believing it is best not to need.

No anodynes or aphrodisiacs; no aide insulating my attic;

no jump when my battery dies; no holy words

or holy water; no cream to temper my caffeine.

Instead of marrying words to trees, I go down the stairs

of my basement, retrieve a polyester superhero costume

to wear to God’s funeral. Dab a little perfume

between my breasts and on the small of my back.

I arrive and look around to see who is crying.

I sing burial songs, write my name in the ledger.

Return home, mascara smeared, as if I’ve been punched

or had a facelift; eat heavily frosted supermarket cake.

Then make an appointment for later the same day,

while I still have tequila in my blood, to get a tattoo

of an invisible rider on the back of a black mare.

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Joanne Dominique Dwyer has two poetry collections: Rasa, chosen by David Lehman for the Marsh Hawk Prize (2022), and Belle Laide (Sarabande Books, 2013). She is a Rona Jaffe Award-winner and a Bread Loaf Scholar. Dwyer was also included in Best American Poetry 2019. She has been a visiting poet to elders with memory loss and, through support from the Witter Bynner Foundation, a poetry facilitator to adolescents in New Mexico. She is also a ceramics artist.