The White Eyelash

Poems

Susan Kinsolving

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780802199522
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A poetry collection of "peculiar grace" from the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist author of Dailies & Rushes (Brian Phillips, Poetry Magazine ). Susan Kinsolving's first poetry collection, Dailies & Rushes, was hailed as a "brilliant debut" by the New York Times, and "grand and almost terrifying" by the New Yorker. In her new work, The White Eyelash, she turns the extremes of her recent experiences—especially those with her ageing, mentally ill mother—into poems of harsh factuality. This dark narrative sequence is highly contrasted by the humor presented in a section called "Light Fare & Oddballs." Once again, Kinsolving exhibits a daunting range with signature style and substance. "[ The White Eyelash ] finds the poet remembering her trouble mother, concentrating on visual detail or pursuing light-verse forms and verbal games with a demotically highbrow, casual grace.... Often organized around colors... these poems show a love for beauty and a casual line reminiscent of Eamon Grennan's." — Publishers Weekly

AT THE EXIT

In memory of C.D.B.

(1916–2001)

DRIVEWAY

Sullen, snide, sad, I was an adolescent
asked by my mother to open the garage door
while she waited behind the wheel. I walked
in front of the car and lifted the large handle.
As the door went up, I met my mother’s eyes
through the windshield. When we went inside
the house she said, You know that I just had
a chance to kill you. I was silent for a week
or so. Ever after, when I did the door for her,
lifting to its roller track or lowering its weighty
closure, I thought of her foot pressing the pedal
and her angry heart braking for love and power.

MY AUNT’S LAST ANECDOTE

Against a tumble of flower baskets patterning
the wall, labyrinth of a childhood hall, the nurses
stood stiff as the points of their caps, each graduating

and fading into one tense shutter of time, dated
in gilt, 1909. Finding her mother’s distant
stare and finger-counting nine months back,

she ran in tears to her aunt, realizing with dismay
what was relative, though not what to say. “Is Mama
mine? School ends in June; my birthday’s too soon.”

Upstairs, she was made to lie down, to sleep. Instead
she looked deep; disparities began to untwine
as if from the wallpaper’s scheme of blue vine where

edges were showing through, dark stains of cracking glue.
Hours later, whispers moved into the stir of leaves
touching on the summerhouse eaves. She never forgot

that day, how picture and hook had been taken away.
Without a word, she was led to the door, then sent out
to play. Years later, drunk and dying, she would say,

“Now tell me if it’s true. My sister was mother to me
and to you? Someone in this family knows the facts of
our maternal mystery, not that it matters anymore to me.”

DRASTIC

Around our house, my mother had plenty of plastic: clear
runners over wall-to-wall white carpeting, polyurethane
flowers stuck into the garden, polystyrene fruits hanging
from a small tree, transparent boxes in all the cupboards,
garment bags enshrouding the clothes. Even a plastic cover
for the car. One day she feared another pregnancy, transferring
her history to adolescent me. She put thick plastic
sheeting over my closet door. As her panic grew more drastic,
she had a locksmith attach huge bolts. Then she kept the key,
refusing to answer me. But I saw a crack of light. Plastic,
without plasticity, her mind I knew, was far from right.

THE UNDESERVING

The granddaughters are intelligent and pretty.
Her will affords them money in thirty years,
which she says is too soon. They need
to experience the depression, one of economy,
another of mind. They have not worked hard
enough and do not save. Travel has spoiled them.
There’s no place they haven’t been. The privilege
of their private schooling is met with public scolding.
She cannot tolerate their abundant experience
and gladness. It is an inequity she cannot forgive,
so she will not acknowledge their birthdays,
graduations, gifts, or even a joke. Life has denied
her plenty. Now the richness of her own blood piques.

STRIVING

Above all, my mother wanted me to be
popular, to be well liked. That was her hope,
her ambition for me. I was taught always to avoid
unpleasant controversy. So when I was nominated,
as a joke, to be high school prom princess, she
believed it was for real. She spent hours creating
slogans and posters for the coming election.
I dreaded the event and, worse, her regret at my
inevitable loss. My mother had been, as she liked
to admit, something of a campus queen. I laughed
once, saying, “How silly. What does that really mean?”
Now I’m sorry for those words. Youth is brief;
memories of triumph, however mythical, are sweet.

INTO THIN AIR

Flying over Chicago, she looked down from the plane
window and said, I know I’ll never see my city again.
I didn’t try to reassure her with a lie. Instead, secretly,
I began to cry, overwhelmed with jet speed and Godspeed,
clouds, cataracts, and all conclusive disappearances.

I mourned my own farewells, the ones I would never
know, my last look at a lilac, last apple bite, last café
at night. Yet what relief to be rid of the embracing adieu,
to drop, as I once did, a tennis racket, ring, and book,
without lament, never turning for even a second look.

MAKING NEW FRIENDS
IN THE NURSING HOME

Of course there is a cast of characters. Walter
with his heavy hands, a big noble man,
who sits with dignity awaiting his ultimate
appointment. The sisters, one a hyperbolic
hypochondriac, who greets everyone with
“Call 911! Oxygen is needed!” and the other
who is as unaffected as the air. “What a pair.”
The nurse smiles as she explains to the new
visitor not to be alarmed into action. Camille
is the third floor thief. Ask the time and her wrist
will reveal six watches up her sleeve, the day’s take.
Miami Vice is Miriam from Florida, leather-tan
and ready to bite, kick, or hit. Restrain her
hands and hear her plentiful profanity in a spray
of spit. “Mister Penn was at it again,” the head RN
reports. “With a book over his lap. A classic!”

THE REC ROOM

The walls are decorated with large paper cutouts:
bunnies, pumpkins, turkeys, flags, hearts, et cetera,
according to the season. The social worker explains
these act as reminders of where we are in time,
helpers with our orientation. I nod in disbelief, wanting
to know where I am at this instant. When did I become
my mother’s keeper? What is this place that seems
mysterious as Stonehenge on a dark day, surreal
as a performance by Cirque du Soleil? While Muzak
polkas play, the white-haired denizens stare at war
scenes raging on a silent TV. The imagery is circa 1943.

IN HER NEW DINING ROOM

“You get used to it”—the nurse shrugs—“though food fights
can be fierce.” My mother refuses to eat with the gargoyles,
as she calls them. Too many saliva straws have twisted
into their twisted mouths. She can’t face the obese moan...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Also by the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Dedication
• Blurring Myself
• So Near and Yet
• At the Exit
• Cantata Lyrics
• Light Fare & Oddballs
• No Longer Here