Intermezzo
It was winter. A week
since my husband had eaten
or swallowed water.
At the end of La Bohème
Rudolpho gives Mimi a muff
to help keep her warm.
I thought of that as I held his hand.
It was midnight, an hour
until he let go of mine.
A month later workers in crematoria
stacked bodies ceiling high.
Hospitals ran out of rooms.
No one sang except on balconies
from New York to Rome.
I was left to grieve on my own.
Intermezzo, I called that time.
Entr’act.
It seemed miraculous when at last
the sopranos and altos came back.
Applying makeup to their naked faces,
scaling octaves again
divas offered their confections
to the bereaved who returned
cautiously to concert halls
for high notes,
hungry for the familiar librettos.
Truth said, I prefer plainsong.
The way it resembles a poem.
Or bird song. Pity-pity-pity
I repeated to myself
for so long, what cardinals chant
before dawn.
Why am I telling you this,
you in your separate room,
if not to ask you to sing
with me now?
⟐ ⟐ ⟐ ⟐
My Mother and Robert Penn Warren
Having never met him, my mother sent
a sample of my poems to the famous poet,
apprising him of my predicament:
two young sons, no money
and a deadbeat husband. All these years
since nineteen-eighty-six,
I’ve had the reply he typed on a postcard
that included his return address,
because yes, he did write back to my mother
(the dear man) to say “the poems are,
I feel, impressive. But as far as the MacArthur
Foundation is concerned …”
Had I only known my mother’s intention
I’d have stopped her
before she dropped her letter
into our mailbox, before she raised
its red flag. (Could anything
have been more embarrassing?!)
Decades later in a restaurant
she approached Toni Morrison.
Too well I can imagine those two
exchanging pleasantries
until, like a slot this time for mail,
an opening allowed my mother to insert
my name into the conversation. Why not?
she’d challenge me. Why not pick up
the phone and ask for what you want,
marry one man or leave another,
spend what you’ve got, let your hair down,
take a nap when your baby is sleeping?
And don’t worry if you’ve told a story
more than once, she’d say, reminding me
of the one about the writer
she couldn’t forgive
for making her look ridiculous
at a Q & A when he snapped:
“Everybody’s daughter is a poet.”
I won’t tell you his name,
but my mother would.
To read Allison Funk’s poem “Great Egret,” published here in 2022, click here.