Steven Cramer

Steven Cramer is the author of four poetry collections: The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (1987), The World Book (1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997), and Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), winner of the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club, and named an Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.  Recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he has taught literature and writing at Bennington College, Boston University, M.I.T., Tufts University, and in low-residency MFA program at Queens University, Charlotte.  He directs the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge.   

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GOODBYE TO THE ORCHARD

Beautiful from the get-go, we were

Incarnations of the new, and pure sex.

I’ll miss that, along with the unicorns.

The organic bower of our garden grew

Into anybody’s memory of a bed

Or a mattress, in a shack near a lake.

“Mistakes, like love, are to be made,”

You said.  I hadn’t thought of that.

That first autumn was easy, the liquor

Of decay headiest at noon.  And the orchard,

Let’s face it, had begun to resemble a casino,

All its tables rigged in our favor.  The yoke

Of being cared for is what cast us out,

Not that immense, bearded librarian,

Our curator, and not our having learned

How to get on one another’s nerves.

Goodbye to the orchard:  green

One day, the next day blood.  We know

To stiffen at a voice; how to tell the truth

From an untruth; what’s sweet, what stinks.

Behind each sleeping dog, another to let lie.

Who knew an innocence taking ages to perfect

Could fall so short when time came to live?

You knew, and then you let me know.

From Goodbye to the Orchard (Louisville: Sarabande Books, 2004)

EVERYONE WHO LEFT US

Everyone who left us we find everywhere.

It’s easier, now, to look them in the eyes—

At gravesites, in bed, when the phone rings.

Of course, we wonder if they think of us.

It’s easier, now, to look them in the eyes,

Imagine touching a hand, listening to them talk.

Of course, we wonder if they think of us

When nights, like tonight, turn salty, warm.

Imagine touching a hand, listening to them talk—

Hard to believe they’re capable of such coldness.

When nights, like tonight, turn salty, warm,

We think of calling them, leaving messages.

Hard to believe they’re capable of such coldness—

No color, no pulse, not even a nerve reaction.

We think of calling them, leaving messages

Vivid with news we’re sure they’d want to know.

No color, no pulse, not even a nerve reaction:

We close our eyes in order not to see them.

Vivid with news, we’re sure they’d want to know

We don’t blame them, really.  They weren’t cruel.

We close our eyes in order not to see them

Reading, making love, or falling asleep.

We don’t blame them.  Really, they weren’t cruel,

Though it hurts every time we think of them:

Reading, making love, or falling asleep,

Enjoying the usual pleasures and boredoms.

Though it hurts every time we think of them,

Like a taste we can’t swallow their names stay.

Enjoying the usual pleasures and boredoms,

Then, they leave us the look of their faces

Like a taste we can’t swallow.  Their names stay,

Diminishing our own, getting in the way

At grave sites, in bed, when the phone rings.

Everyone who left us we find everywhere,

Then they leave us, the look of their faces

Diminishing, our own getting in the way.

From Goodbye to the Orchard (Louisville: Sarabande Books, 2004)

CHTHONIC

Time for odd noons, eight sprinklers mist

ten minutes each; a ninth soaks the hedge

row of yews: each May, a new price hike

just to siphon up my underworld river.

No coin for the ferryman, it's a pauper's

gate to hell . . .  In the den, three tweens, 

one mine, pass from hand to hand their lip-

gloss foraged from the mall.  Graces now,

but in a wink, gray ones trading a single eye . . .

They’re pre-hormonal, prideful, venereal

nouns, fountainheads of argot pumped

to flow disdain.  About their future boys

in the vestibule, shuffling their hooves,

all trident-quick moves once in the car—

think too much, thought’s a venomed pelt.

It’s exquisite, yes, to touch a spider web

to gold, but bread and water’s better.

Whoever thought it wise storing hope

at the bottom of a jug, thought best.

Let it steep, sweet as the devil’s-food

and Capri Sun these girls bid me bring.

Inside them, thirst and hunger pulse

like p.s.i.’s channeling through pipes.

Autumn and Winter: frozen Mars Bars

and Log Cabin syrup dripped on snow.

Spring: stained eggs on a fake green bed.

Summer: the earth and earth’s daughter,

by August the girl’s step heavy, tugged at.

She’s moistening her lips for Hades’ kiss.

First published in Perihelion #15

Writer’s Tip:  Don’t confuse revision with completion. 

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