MiPOesias Magazine

KATE GREENSTEET

Kate Greenstreet's chapbook, Learning the Language, was published by Etherdome Press in 2005, and her first full-length book, case sensitive, will be out from Ahsahta Press in September 2006. Her blog is at kickingwind.com.

from "Great Women of Science"

[7]

Sound of scraping. Then the slapping sound of
application. (Still trying to look nice.)

Still want to tell: how many coats I put on.
How long it took me to get numb.

One thing that ghosts have in common:
they always want to tell you how they died.

They're Latin, they're technical, nailed
to the door. Thus:

endless confession.
Everything changed.

Hours in a
contrite position.

Nor could I believe I pleased Him with my labor
(hand set, open to arrest).

To prove our existence, it was essential to isolate.
I spoke of you several times today.

My son, my brother, my husband, my father—
that we were alive at the same time.

[8]

I was in love with the idea of a friend.
The opposite of magic.

The basic
conditional is
the standard if.

Faith
(the step we took)
is her middle name. Love the leaf.

I have faith.
Help my lack of faith.

[11]

By the third day of driving it's easier—much—to eat alone in truck stops and stop at motels (to consider the third) by myself. Hardly cry at all. I write a little while I wait for my food. Starting over—the idea—is a lot like the idea of mental health. ("When you woke up, was it there?")

After the fire, or the accident, she returns to the town where they last all lived as a family. An unknown relative dies, leaving her a huge old house with a troubled history.

Disappearing objects, a surprising document. There was a chance that tragedy might be averted. Children were missing. Adults misunderstood the signs.

Thinking about mysteries—the books called mysteries—as I drive past town after town, "the middle of nowhere." Every morning I wake up alone, again, in something like the same strange room, take a shower, repack, and get back into the car.

It was surprisingly easy to leave. Even to keep secret the storage space and my trips to it. I take as proof of how invisible I was, the way he didn't notice things were gone.