On the Bench.
By Nicole Vournazos
Sawako Nakayasu inspires this set of poems. She used the idea of balconies in nature to contrast the man-made with the simple green environment. I try to capture the same metaphor, the idea of sitting on a man-made item in the middle of nature. In this set of poems, I also wanted to capture the simplicity of being on the bench outside. You can see how simple actions can have large, even magnified meanings within our lives and especially within our interaction with others. The language mirrors this idea and spacing.
Dedicated to Sam and Bruce for revision help.
Drawing
I thought about the bench;
I made up its wooden planks
In the back of my head.
I bent the arms.
I pushed its feet
Into the brown soil.
I coiled the metal back
And melded it
With yours.
I shaped the feet
Equal widths apart
And pushed them towards you.
I erased the arms.
So yours could hold
Me up instead.
I grasped the planks
And pushed them down;
We could sit together then.
I reflected on the sunlight
That would trap us between beams
And clasp our hands together.
But I sketched the bench
Over and over again, on top of itself
Until it was gone.
Night Looks Down on Me
While I write poems on the wrong bench, try to understand where to put these words in the sections of my body in the places on the bench; to fend off the heat that you are not instilling deep inside me because you wouldn’t sit and talk with me on the bench, being in the wrong side. But so I’ve learned all the world ignored is better than acknowledged now.
The Bench
The boy takes
Off her glasses
And puts them
On.
They sit.
She smiles.
He laughs.
She takes her glasses back
From the boy.
The boy writes on the palm of her hand.
She turns her music on.
The boy laughs.
He smiles.
They sit.
He looks at
The boy does not understand.
He smiles.
The girl sits.
He laughs.
The girl smiles.
She looks down at her music.
He laughs.
She sits.
He smiles.
And she laughs.
She writes back on his hand.
They smile.
He laughs.
He takes her headphones.
They sit.
Nothing is playing.
She looks down.
He looks at her.
He smiles.
He smiles.
The girl does not understand.
He smiles.
He laughs.
They sit.
She smiles.
Eating Strawberry Ice Cream on the bench.
I was eating strawberry ice cream on the bench. The person in front of me was hunched over. Pensive, in thought, it held its head up with the first of his arm. He is sitting too. On the black rock - it reflects his marble body in the sunlight. His feet are staggered, parallel to mine. And he stares at me. I want him to move his hand away from his mouth, La Pensevr, so he can tell me what he is thinking. The sky over looks both of us. We sit together. The clouds go by. We sit underneath the clouds as they go by. They are our umbrella, they capture our thoughts, they try to stop their spillover. I take another bite of strawberry ice cream, but the thinker in front of me cannot. He might like my strawberry ice cream. Perhaps, he wouldn’t be so hunched over. The clouds go by and we think; I about my strawberry ice cream, he about his state.
Assortments
[1]
The legs press down on
Unyielding soil.
[2]
The hand grasps
The curling arm.
[3]
The neck is far above
The other.
[4]
I am bent sideways.
Next to the board.
[5]
My feet stand quietly
It’s four do too.
[6]
The bench and I sit in the park.
Waiting on the bench
The
starry
imprints
of brown
leaves are tattooed on the pavement
Cold November rain wants to make the ink bleed,
seep outside of the starry lines.
But the square pavement,
Simply continues. The
prints go on.
The ink
Never bleeds.
The starry
Prints of
Leaves become
Stamped on top of
each other. But the lines are
concrete. The starry imprints of
leaves are there; They never find ways to
Move. The ink never bleeds.
Printed, concrete
The stars
Never
Seep.
Cold
What I don’t understand
is how I can hold my hand
on top of you.
&nbs
p; Lean back against you.
Here you are helping me sit up.
Letting me lean on you.
But you don’t breath
You don’t inhale with me.
You don’t exhale with me.
I sit with my two feet,
Next to your four.
The nicks on your legs
Mimic the scratches in mine.
Your are silent, as I am loud.
Just quieter than my sigh.
I am lean across you,
On top of you.
But the boards,
The boards are cold.
My hands are warm.
Your grey color
Matches the grey in my eyes.
And as I try and grip your arm further
It is cold and hard.
Yet, I continue to sit.
You are place for me,
To rest. To hold me up,
Hand-holding
Polished nails inside gloves grip
The sides of the bench
Little hands holding large hands
Hold the arms
That cannot bend to meet fingers.
Others, with dirt under their fingernails
Hope for something steady to hold.
Bitten, broken nails, scratched hands
Find smoothness.
And older hands, older hands
Have something to match their age.
Mitted-hands wrap their arms around.
While the un-mitted hold their hands away.
Sometimes, they are places on the sides.
On top.
Others, below their laps.
The hard planks there for balance.
Hands grip the bench,
And the bench stays,
It always
Holds back.
Quiet on the bench.
An ode, my friend
To silence, as we sit on the bench.
And we wait.
To the words
Imprisoned behind our lips
Pinned against those of others.
To the afternoons
Where we were carried it on
Our backs
To the days
Crucified by silence
Hung in martyrdom.
To the nights it hissed
And asked for forgiveness
Nailed cross-wise,
And bleeding, wondering why it was forsaken
My dear, an ode to the silence
Held deep in the dark caves of our throats
To the times, my darling,
When my lips were pursed, sealed by the layers of cold stone between us, and
My darling, to the silence, to the sounds of
Our voices resurrection;
My darling, to the day when the earth will shake
And our voices mount once again in their ascension.
Three.
A boy and a girl are eating lunch on the bunch.
The boy smiles. The girl laughs.
He pushes his plate over to her and she pushes it back.
He has dark hair. She has dark hair.
He moves her hair out of her face.
He moves a spoon into her mouth.
He smiles. She sits.
He smiles. She waits.
His hair is sticking up. She looks at him and tilts her head sideways.
He drinks. She sits.
He gets up. She waits.
He leaves. She waits.
Retired Ballerina
There was you and me. And something else.
That day, the bench was there.
And I could sit.
The bench was there when I needed to sit.
And perhaps, you’ll never know,
But the bench was there
When there was nowhere to go,
Somewhere to rest my back
For it was tired from being arched deeply over.
Somewhere to rest my feet,
For they were tired of dancing that day.
Somewhere to put down the bags,
That I had carried all to get here.
A place to re-tie my shoe.
To straighten my bracelet
On my wrist.
Fix my bun.
Put the pink ties away.
And it was on the bench,
That I stretched out the my pointed feet.
Against the hard grains of cement beneath my feet.
I pushed my arms against its sides.
I sat face up and looked at the sky
As I flexed
And pointed again –
As I flex
And point again.
From the Bench
I see the white church
And the firey leaves that form
Colorful halos
Around its head.
Ways I look at you
I.
Your collar was perfectly ironed and your sweater vest aligned
So that the button of your pants was showing: I could see the small white of your undershirt;
you unbuttoned each button, and spoke to me -slow, rhythmically while you moved your pen as we set on the bench together that day.
II.
Your t-shirt was ironed, but it was uneven
So I could see the small dark of your neck that reflected the bright lights of our city. And I watched your eyes widen as you pulled the t-shirt back into place
As we laughed our way through those sparkly-sparkly lights at night passing the bench.
III.
Your tie was loose so I pulled it over your head
We grinned as I took your pen out and scribbled on your hand,
In the closed room with the open window.
Our laughter echoed into the night and reverberated back into the room, where your tie was loose from the bench.
IV.
You rolled up your sleeves but there was no one to see you,
When you sat back in your chair and sighed at me, because I couldn’t do it for you
Because I was far away, when you rolled up your sleeves, watching.
V.
You unbuttoned the top of your shirt, I could see your throat; the contours of the jawline meshed with fabric. I, finally,
Unbuttoned the second one. I could see your chest.
And the sparkly-sparkly night went on as I sat on the bench and remembered.
Stand on top of the bench I see
Thinning Strands of wheat
Strain against hardening earth
Golden processions.
Sitting
I went to the bench
to think only about the ways we
could be together
on the bench.
You could hold my hand.
I could hold yours.
We could sit on the bench. Together.
I could sit next to you.
And you could sit next to me.
Our feet could touch
the ground.
We could be together on the bench.