April 2006
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April 28, 2006 by Melanie Alberts.

SAPPHO

Wait

a moment:
all of me survived.

Like many women
I have not been heard fully

I have been misread,
as others spoke through me.

See me in the olive branches
on Lesbos any morning:

they arch shakily outward,
hang fat fruit like eyes

over papyrus, a girl
wanting to read.

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April 25, 2006 by Melanie Alberts.

something’s lost…
footsteps upstairs
grow louder

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April 24, 2006 by Melanie Alberts.

I SAY HELLO

to my old school yard
now a sullen place, neglected,
the black top blank

as a shut-in’s face.
I stand at the wired gate
two feet from where I fell

at recess thirty-four years
ago, hands first, knees last, buckling
like an umbrella closed

too fast. No one saw because I ran alone.
Alone like the new kid I always was,
plump, too tanned for Connecticut

in May, teased for saying “cuts”
instead of “frontsies” or “backsies.”
What a stupid thing to say. I ran

from boys snapping their arms shut.
I ran from the endless hellos
before classrooms of unsmiling faces,

I ran from the bullies and I ran
to bully myself because my family
didn’t have a home. Because other girls

in second grade got dance lessons, why not me?
I ran in circles around an unforgiving heart.
I ran too hard, I ran too fast.

I was taught to run, to say hello,
fall hands first, lick my cuts and go on.
Keep moving. Hello. I have to run.

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April 22, 2006 by Melanie Alberts.

earth day swim…
toes stretch wide
in the cool water

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April 22, 2006 by Melanie Alberts.

Saturday, three a.m…
I wait for your plane to land.
Birds make loud plans
for a celebration,
a coyote sends regrets

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April 20, 2006 by Melanie Alberts.

This poem originally appeared online in an early edition of the Blue Penny Quarterly, now the Blue Moon Review. I started writing it in college and only considered it ready for publication 10 years later.

THE DRESS

1.

We met in August
in the unforgiving heat
for a walk to the reservoir,
the black water.
You undressed there
without speaking, dived
in without me to come
up like a fish’s
instinctual arc.

Watching you I thought
it too easy to be lovers,
to say yes.

2.

Women deceive themselves,
you tell me. They’ve hurt
you, you feel it coming
like a rumble.
What is it, what makes
me bring your head
to my blouse, kiss down
the curls of your hair…

3.

I place your body
in the dream water,
it lifts, twists
as I stand on shore.
Meteors break
up above us,
come down close.
With my eyes closed
a voice pulls out your name.

4.

You’re very good
at apologies and excuses

but there are more important
things to say.
For instance,
today I bought a dress

5.

because I imagined
another man behind me
in the mirror, unzipping
it, helping it down
to my ankles
where it would feel
like water, shallow
and warm. How long
would it keep me there,
hold me before I dive.

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