Editor’s note: Frances Hatfield lives in Santa Cruz, where she also maintains a private practice in depth psychotherapy. Her poetry has appeared most recently in Parabola Magazine, Memoir (and), Jung Journal, Undivided, and Numinous Magazine. Her first book of poems, “Rudiments of Flight,” was published this year by Wings Press. She will participate in the Poetry Santa Cruz reading series, along with nationally known poet Steve Kowit, at Bookshop Santa Cruz at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 14.
The Invitation
In the house of shame
good news is worse than bad
Who set me wandering through my dreams
searching for relics of my wings?
Who lit the lamp and drew for me a bath
Scented with roses and myrrh?
That light will surely shatter me
when it finds me hiding in ashes
What do you mean, take off
the demon-riddled rags?
What then
could I wear?
Nude Descending a Staircase
Imagine the scene
where the body plunges
through a plate of glass
in very slow motion,
the invisible wall shatters
into a puzzle of light, the shriek
of splintering shards winds down
to reveal a choral ode
both jubilant
and tragic
and let’s say you are the glass
and love is the body,
you could see
it coming and knew
it wouldn’t stop,
what chance did you have
against that immortal
weight set ablaze
by time,
and there were two worlds
you were trying to keep apart
with this marvelous invention
of yourself,
and who were you fooling
that you are made of something solid,
you are really only liquid light
fresh out from the fires
of your birth,
descending to earth
slower than the eye can see,
and now shattered—
the place you once stood
remembers wind,
the bed
will be baptized
by rain
as you fall,
piece
by shining piece
into the abyss
that is the shortest
distance
between us
