Theodora Goss: Poems

How to Create a Monster
by Theodora Goss

First you must learn how to sew.
He had never learned, you see —
no, not he, the mad-for-science boy,
for whom I was just another
pretty toy, his Elizabeth,
his Liz, Betty, Sissy, his pet
cousin, almost sister.
My dear Victor Frankenstein,
you need to be able to sew
with thread so fine
it is almost invisible,
as thin as the hair
of a Swiss miss, or the air
at the top of a glacier.
I learned how, of course,
from your mother.

How to make the little stitches
like bird tracks, mouse tracks.
While you were reading your books
of alchemy, I was making and mending.
While you were wandering
over the hills around Geneva,
dreaming great dreams — university,
breaking the bounds of human knowledge,
etcetera, I was sitting
by a window, embroidering
a handkerchief, or darning your sock,
watching long, slow minutes pass
on the mantle clock.

But I learned how to sew.
I can make stitches so fine,
you cannot see them. I will take
this lifeless girl, this Justine,
and make her, remake her,
into a companion. I will mend
her, you’ll see. And then we will roam
the hills together, whatever
the weather — monsters don’t care
about that. They only care
about the essential things, like how to find
birds’ nests in spring, berries
and nuts in autumn. We will live
off the land, like feral goats,
climbing the steep cliffs,
dressed in warm coats
of felted wool. If you see us lingering
by a mountain pool, look away.
Monsters don’t like to be watched.
We will talk
about Paradise Lost together.
(You would never
discuss it with me. What,
isn’t my brain good enough for you,
Victor, you thick-fingered blunderer?)

You messed up, clearly. But I, trained
as a seamstress, reading your books
surreptitiously, while you were out
being a Romantic hero — I,
the heroine of no story, at least not my own,
just a minor character in your narrative —
I can sew beautifully. You’ll see.

They will ask, who is the monster,
Elizabeth or her creation? But we will already
have disappeared into the mountains.

(The image is The Sunny Window by Frank W. Benson.)

The Poet Dreams of Blodeuwedd
for Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917)

He dreamed of her, the woman made of flowers,
someplace near Ypres, beneath the bombs.
She walked in trenches that were also tombs
and like a linnet sang through endless hours
of mud and muck and death. Where she would pass,
her footprints left a trail of meadow-sweet
and yellow broom, and small white marguerite.
He smelled them until someone shouted “Gas!”
And when night came, she flew above the field
of battle like an owl that has no song,
while silently she gathered all the dead
within her wings. He knew that before long
he too would lie upon her feathered breast
and finally, beneath the poppies, rest.

(The image is A Young Lady by Elisabeth Sonrel.)

Let Them Say
by Theodora Goss

Let them say of me that I loved beauty,
whether in the smallest things —
spider webs on which the raindrops hung
like crystal from a chandelier, the polychrome
velvet of butterfly wings, or the largest —
sunsets, mainly, during which the heaped-up clouds
bloomed like roses, but also stars at night,
all the usual lovely clichés
in all the different ways
one can love, with both fondness and rapture.
Let them say that I loved the smell
of old books in libraries, and alternatively
the smell of lavender on cotton sheets, the sight
of violets nodding on their thin stems
between heart-shaped leaves
in an excess of spring. Let them say
that I cried at every happily ever after
at the end of a fairy tale,
and the intricate play
of light through lace curtains.

Let them say that I found
each day too short for all the sounds
of birdsong, or wind in the linden trees,
or even the symphony of car horns.
Too short to read every poem.
Too short for bicycling along all the beaches
or eating all the cherries in all the orchards,
hanging the double ones from my ears
like enormous rubies,
and that I loved chocolate inordinately.
Let them say that I loved beauty —
and honestly,
that, I think, would be enough.

(The image is Woman Arranging Flowers by Theo van Rysselberghe.)

Some Books
by Theodora Goss

There are some books I return to again and again,
the way I return to a beloved house
where I was a child cutting out paper dolls
I had drawn myself, creating their elaborate outfits
for the imaginary tea parties they would attend,
or where I myself would host tea parties
attended by a stuffed lion and assorted animals,
some of whom preferred their tea out of acorn cups,
some out of chipped porcelain,
some of them wearing felt hats decorated with flowers
made of tissue paper, others wearing berets
I had crocheted from yarn discarded by my mother,
and all of whom were inordinately fond
of oatmeal raisin cookies.

In the house there were a number of enchanted places,
such as, for example, under the bed, or the closet
beneath the stairs, or inside the yellow tent
of the unpruned forsythia bushes, or up the pine tree
where three branches radiating in a regular pattern
formed a series of steps to an arboreal country.
The sofa cushions transformed into a fort,
and at night, when I lay in bed, outside my window
the wind would whisper, Come out, come out,
and sometimes, in dreams, I did.

I lift those books down from the shelf, then climb
between their covers, tucking myself in,
while the paper dolls whisper the latest gossip,
the porcelain cups clink with a promise of tea parties,
and the stuffed lion roars
in a garden filled with the yellow cascades
of unpruned forsythia bushes in early spring.

(The image is The Tea Party by Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema.)

I’m Going to Die of Something
by Theodora Goss

First they told you
to eat fish, because it was good for you.
Fish was brain food, blood vessel food,
food for the soul, like the ocean in a fillet.
Then suddenly, they told you
not to eat fish because it was filled
with metals. You might as well eat
your jewelry.

Then they told you to drink red wine
and not to drink wine at all, to eat lettuce,
and that it was tainted with listeria,
to eat strawberries, but they were grown
with pesticides, to eat dark chocolate
because it contained polyphenols,
and then not to eat dark chocolate
because it turned out to contain
metals, just like the fish.

I wish I could live forever. Don’t you
want to live forever, like the ancient
gods, always young and beautiful?
No one ever told them that ambrosia
damages the liver or kidneys,
that it contains saturated fats
or too many calories.

But the hard truth is that I,
and you too, sorry, will eventually die
of something or other — if nothing else,
of having breathed too long, oxygen
being as dangerous as it is beneficial.
And what I’ve decided is that
it might as well be from strawberries
covered with chocolate.

(The image is A Basket of Strawberries by William Hammer. I could not find a painting of a basket of chocolate . . .)

On the Recent War
by Theodora Goss

Every child that died
on either side
was a song that will never be sung,
a dance that will never be danced, a story
that will never be told or written,
a painting that will never be painted, a statue
that will never be carved in stone,
a tune that will never be played, a poem
that will never come into being.
A silence, an absence
where there could have been —
something, anything.

(The image is Child in a Straw Hat by Mary Cassatt.)

Pigeons and Peacocks
by Theodora Goss

I dreamed of a strange bird
that looked like a pigeon, white and brown,
but toward the back it had some feathers
that were blue and green, iridescent,
and its tail had the telltale eyes
of a peacock.

Was it a pigeon turning into a peacock?
A peacock who had somehow disguised itself
as a pigeon, but forgotten to hide its tail feathers?
Was it a secret agent, a peacock in MI5?
Or maybe a thief, some sort of international
criminal, a peacock wanted by Interpol? Or maybe
a peacock in a witness protection program?

Alternatively, was it a pigeon
who had decided it wasn’t going to be limited
by its identity as an ordinary pigeon
strutting around the streets of Budapest?
A pigeon with a vision board, who set intentions
and was determined to live its best life?
A pigeon with a story to tell.

Or was the dream somehow a commentary
on human existence, that we are all
pigeons and peacocks, not always in equal measure,
sometimes looking ordinary and innocent
from the front, but trailing a kind of feathered glory
behind us?

(The image is a painting by by Pieter Casteels III.)