This is one of my favorite poems. It’s by Belle Waring, from her book Refuge. I’m filming my first adult movie tomorrow. This has been running through my head all day like a Buddhist chant.
Reprieve on the Stoop
Belle Waring
If your first memory was the arms of your father
about to chuck you out the window of that catpiss
apartment in Downingtown, you couldn’t dream.
You don’t remember dreams, like when I got
robbed, the scumface
broke in my room while I was alone
asleep and naked and when he left
I woke up
untouched. Now if the sun
abides in these brassy leaves
quivering over my ankles which talk
to you and you ask me to sit
so I do–you and I
we’re both alive and how bad is that–on the stoop
like a girl with her front door key on two feet of green
string around her neck, watching the boys shoot
hoops, how they crouch and leap extending to the rim
and sweat on the sweet lunette of neck over their T-shirts
only now we’re not slinking
home for supper in time to boil a pork dog
and watch dad throw his liquid obituary in mom’s
face. We sit down on the stoop and watch the earth
swing her hips to the next dance hit and the dark
slide his arms around her waist. Listen
–I’m not romantic, baby, but I do
know grace when I see it.
