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Woodpecker

Woodpecker WOODPECKER / Maria Flook Shame doused him when he looked in bemused by my wallpaper, Bird of Paradise, in a shade too rich. I was sewing without needle or thread, a bit of vaudeville I employed against the sweltering day when nonsense overtakes strict privacy. There, in the double glass of my vanity, a trick mirror which multiplies the corners of a room so that every spider hatches four, I saw woodpeckers--a row of flames faltering like candelabra. Tm brightened by intrusions, pleased when I recall a hard name, when I find a lost guest in the hallways of daydreams. These brief visits seem honoring. But when I turned to face that flickering, the branch sagged like a curtain wire Later, while touching at chores full-lipped duplicates, and my guest, that ruffled weight, was gone. or sitting with my circle, those bored, the near, the far, the disappearing, I heard his hammering. A battered alphabet of one or two sharp consonants, something prayerful and overworked like chipping a long name upon a monument. He tapped with tolerance like someone knocking on the window of abandoned property. I thought it was my door or the door between two worlds, wherever the homeless are not home. Inspector of hollow hours, spy in a private ruins, he reads lichens like small compasses, chiseled. the maps in wormwood where a few words were Those bare trees left standing, a spectacle, silvered, more awakened than anything living. The Missouri Review · 73 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Missouri Review University of Missouri

Woodpecker

Flook, Maria.
The Missouri Review , Volume 10 (3) – Oct 5, 1987
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Publisher
University of Missouri
Copyright
Copyright © The Curators of the University of Missouri.
ISSN
1548-9930
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Abstract

WOODPECKER / Maria Flook Shame doused him when he looked in bemused by my wallpaper, Bird of Paradise, in a shade too rich. I was sewing without needle or thread, a bit of vaudeville I employed against the sweltering day when nonsense overtakes strict privacy. There, in the double glass of my vanity, a trick mirror which multiplies the corners of a room so that every spider hatches four, I saw woodpeckers--a row of flames faltering like candelabra. Tm brightened by intrusions, pleased when I recall a hard name, when I find a lost guest in the hallways of daydreams. These brief visits seem honoring. But when I turned to face that flickering, the branch sagged like a curtain wire Later, while touching at chores full-lipped duplicates, and my guest, that ruffled weight, was gone. or sitting with my circle, those bored, the near, the far, the disappearing, I heard his hammering. A battered alphabet of one or two sharp consonants, something prayerful and overworked like chipping a long name upon a monument. He tapped with tolerance like someone knocking on the window of abandoned property. I thought it was my door or the door between two worlds, wherever the homeless are not home. Inspector of hollow hours, spy in a private ruins, he reads lichens like small compasses, chiseled. the maps in wormwood where a few words were Those bare trees left standing, a spectacle, silvered, more awakened than anything living. The Missouri Review · 73

Journal

The Missouri Review – University of Missouri

Published: Oct 5, 1987

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