Molly Tenenbaum
Becoming a Ventriloquist
1.
No one knew you had not yet been born.
They couldn’t read your breath of shadow puppets,
walked unchanged inside your gliding smoke.
Where would you live? You were an only child.
They found you a hole beneath the temple.
2.
The cashbox in the family store,
its wide-eyed numbers, pop-out lip,
at your turn to work, screamed
“Don’t let him touch me! Keep him away!”
Meanwhile, birds rattled like paper
nearby then away out the window.
3.
At the bar mitzvah, you crouched
under cakes, your hundred
cousins fanning out to find you.
4.
Your teacher like gargling water.
Your lunch stolen later if you said the answer.
The girl you loved then, black hair and brows,
Did she ever speak to you?
What if your mother had left you?
Is it true your mother left you?
Of course she didn’t leave you.
You lay on the couch after school, not speaking to anyone.
5.
Your first words had been shells—
slippers, whelks, winkles.
Your earliest sentences, rags and small shoes.
Later, they wore glasses. You left
home and country, a stranger.
6.
From the street, clopping on cobble, incessant
newsboy under your sill.
In the classifieds, your pencilled circle:
Rich widow longs to speak with her husband.
You’d trained as a tailor.
You invented the artificial heart.
7.
In the house of your childhood,
a box you were never to open.
They hid the key under your tongue.
8.
You were folding the bunting after the speeches.
Ever after metal flavor.
You didn’t know where the gong was,
but as the tone shimmered, you beat it again.
You swirled at the hole of the world,
waiting your turn to pour through.
Bio
Molly Tenenbaum is the author of The Cupboard Artist (forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press, 2011), Now (Bear Star Press, 2007) and By a Thread (Van West & Co, 2000). Her work appears in many journals, including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry 1991, Black Warrior Review, Crab Creek Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cutbank, The Diagram, Fine Madness, In Posse, Nimrod, The Mississippi Review, New England Review, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Shenandoah, The Southeast Review, Swivel, and Willow Springs, and in webzines including Anti-, Fringe, and Snakeskin. Honors include a Hedgebrook residency and a 2009 Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship. She’s also a musician, playing Appalachian string band music; her CDs are Instead of a Pony and Goose & Gander. She teaches music at home and English at North Seattle Community College. http://www.mollytenenbaum.com