First Memory: Tangents, by Vicky Sprow

An old woman winding
her way down a side street never sees herself
from behind,

a child of three coddling
the hiatus of her mother’s
pagan hand, the belt of a paper

memory. Never from behind
she dreams her own past present
again, rising to meet it like bread leavening.


* * *

Mid cocktail hour: would that this hard wood rage
to smoke and fire! Would that I stand forever calling
at the back of pigtails bobbing

fearlessly ahead, to take my place one day, to drag
eyes down martini glass stems toward
Cheyenne carpets. (Those slippered feet were mine

once.) I ache to smell the thick
balm of burning, to tumble through to audit
my first memory. Would

that this fleece-coated floor shatter
to cedar talc below me and I fall
ambassador to an age of unfinished

chivalry, to that of a lesser hour. The moment
is black; my mind sifts through crumbs of
cedar like picture postcards, telling

the story of a counter melody, of what was
wished and might have been but
never was.

* * *


I see the tonic is a glitter dome, it percolates
façade and biscotti laughs on teeth
like fermented woodchips under

rubber soles. In its tent lagoon with gin
and ice I catch the residue of pink
ribbon fleeing

to the exile of a hollow hand.
I see it from behind, the way
the one meets the other, mortised

like liquor swelling
around frozen stones. They are consummate.
Then, every hollow had its fill but now spaces

are tumid in their emptiness. Now,
the lagoon is the eyes
of an old woman winding

her way down three glacial stairs
to meet me, coaxing gently
with steady irises.


-- Vicky Sprow