Changing Weather
Mark Halperin
FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
I.
When, after a few moments of standing, her arm
relaxed, nothing happened; she bit down. Juice ran
down her chin, apple-firm, pear-rich, pulpy as a plum.
She looked at grass, the far horizon. Clouds stacked,
one on another. She heard water, the trill of warblers.
Dread passed, replaced by an anticipation. Trees flickered.
The ripple across her skin, could be the pin-pricks of
time beginning between this one and the next. What
started up again? Each action points away, yet starts
from here—toward expectation? Bending to drink,
you trust the throat to swallow, the body to show the way.
Does fatigue lurk like a problem, or is that someone watching?
II.
I told her nothing. Why would we speak?
I reached around, behind, and looked
into her questioning face. That took
her by surprise. He knees grew weak.
She sank so slowly to the ground
she could have been a petal. Say
I told her that, as man held sway
over all creatures to be found
in Eden, so had I; he would
be replaced too—the last to come
rules the others. She understood,
wanted a moratorium,
an end to time and what it hid.
Did she push me away? Who
can be sure now? Maybe I whispered
in her ear. Maybe I licked it too.
And maybe all the stories show
is that their tellers mistrust snakes,
themselves and women. One mistakes
words for deeds, another, the glow
of satisfaction for deceit—
till you suspect they’re jealous of
the two of us. And it’s enough
that we lay down. Legends compete
for believers. Before there were words,
there were murmurs. Desire stirs
as dust does, as children clutch
at fingers. Before we hear, we touch.
III.
He turned toward the center of the garden, stopped. Or I’ve invented that. She’s disappeared. See her or see the tree behind her as if it moved and replaced her. She’s gone. Where she’d been awakens, as from the dream she emerged from. If she can appear after sleeping, she can disappear while awake. After a step or two, there is a woman. She offers fruit. Can I go where she went? Leaves rustle, birdsong crosses birdsong, underneath, the clicking of crickets and grasshoppers: a wall of moving sound. She smiles. Nothing is familiar.
ISBN 1-59661-058-1
33 pages/$9
Paintings by Bobbie Halperin
This collection of poems is a creel of lovely rainbows. Halperin snaps his line into deep pools and reels in flashing revelations. Whether he watches a flock of jays jabbering or observes Satan murmuring to Eve, this poet catches, with a particular perfection, the nuances between nature and myth in Changing Weather. —Richard Denner, author of Collected Poems: 1961-2000, Comrades Press and The Collected Books of Richard Denner: Volumes 1-12, dPress
This is a chapbook of seamless formalist poems laid beside riveting prose poems. Halperin is equally adept at shining a light into the domestic heartache (“Memory,” “Drunk,” and “A New Town”) as he is at meditating skillfully on the mysteries of art and music (“Even Brahms” and “Three Properties of Dutch Primitives”). But, for me, the highlights of this splendid collection draw on Halperin’s unerring and sympathetic eye for nature (“Deer-Hide” and “Jays to the Feeder”). “Leaves in the Wind,” shows Halperin at his best. The twelve lines tumble easily off the page, marking the short but important pass of the last unfallen leaves “accomplishing something steely and chilly.” Mark Halperin’s Changing Weather infuses the normally modest form of the chapbook with the breathtaking ambition of a full collection. —W. T. Pfefferle, author of Poets on Place