Middle House Review
Donna Vorreyer "Two Poems"
Ebb Tide
The first blood-rush of breath, and it’s
morning again. The insistent and terrible
light throws patterns on the bed. Love,
it’s time to wake, leave this comfort and
re-enter the world. One more touch and I’m
up, stepping over dog toys, walking
with the hitch and stutter of age, with
the familiar tingle of nerves that spiders
its way down my arm, into my hand. It’s
a feeling as consistent as the sunrise. A
pill makes it better. A hot shower. Terrible
news blares from the radio, all I love
both at hand and at risk. I know that
you are stirring now upstairs. That I’m
safe and I am oh so lucky, walking
out the door each morning wrapped in
the armor of our certainty. The sky? It
darkens, fickle and remote. It takes
itself so seriously. And here we are, an
anomaly, unchanging as the wide ocean,
which is to say moving all the time but not
apart. Never apart. I will never need to
fear our waves. I know just how they break.
Funhouse
Naked in the mirror, I try
to arrange myself in ways
that do not invite
shame. I do this often,
both vain and in vain.
The masters painted ladies
with this shape– plump
stomachs and thighs,
soft arms and breasts–
faces relaxed, ready to
wade into a river or greet
an angel. But delight
in abundance has faded,
and the glass brings only
the pain of reflecting or
distortion of breaking.
Some days, I sustain
myself with little, desperate
to be less. But you make
a bed of my name, desire
always my thick intimacy,
never ask me to scale
back my hunger,
bless it instead
with your own.
Bio:
Donna Vorreyer is the author of Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016) and A House of Many Windows (Sundress, 2013) as well as eight chapbooks, most recently The Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2018). Her poems and reviews have appeared in Poet Lore, Waxwing, Rhino, Harpur Palate and others, and her third full-length collection will be released by Sundress in 2020.