2004 Lois Cranston Memorial Prize First Place Award

Eurydice Speaks from the Basement

                                          for my mother

Our eldest asks me why

I wash clothes down here

in the middle of night.

How can I tell her

this is how the dead wait,

always listening.

The washing machine spins,

clothes flung into space,

everything pressed out of them

like the cigarettes pressed between my lips,

and my ear pressing air

for any sound of you.

Down here

I’m afraid of the rumble

from the old freezer

where in summer

our children come

to fetch Popsicles.

I’m afraid of the furnace

with its fire dancing like stars

on these windowless walls.

And the piles of luggage

like ghosts. I swear

I can hear them murmuring.

I fold the laundry,

ascend the steps

to the back door,

its single window overlooking

the unused garden,

moss and black water,

and beyond.

the street where I watch

for your car,

how the headlights will bend

in the trees like dozens

of swinging lanterns.

I imagine you coming for me

like that—

light swinging from your hand,

liquor on your breath,

excuses old as a song

rising in your throat.

Deborah Narin-Wells

Deborah Narin-Wells teaches writing workshops to middle school children and is a former English instructor at Lane Community College (Eugene, OR). She has a Master’s in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Poetry East, The Comstock Review, Poet Lore, Many Mountains Moving, California Quarterly, Hubbub, Fireweed, Blue Unicorn, CALYX Journal, Southern Poetry Review, among others, and in the 2005 Women Artists Datebook (Syracuse Cultural Workers). A chapbook, Leaving Home, is forthcoming from Traprock Books.