The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter by Susan Hahn

Author:Susan Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fifth Star Press, NFP
Published: 2012-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

NIJINSKY’S DOG

Nijinsky danced his last dance, “World War I,”

in January of 1919. He then suffered an

irreparable breakdown.

Nijinsky’s dog, if he had one, died last August.

She was a beautiful animal

with all that was rational

beaten out of her strong

cleanly chiseled head.

We’d circle each other,

lonely, in the heat

of the late summer nights,

both of us waiting for you—

for some crumb of attention.

When I didn’t finish the dinner

you’d sometimes offer,

you’d slip it into her bowl

and she’d spring toward you,

more starved for love than food.

I’d watch her from my chair,

passing the time until you’d turn yourself

toward me—remember (O please)

I was there. Out on the ledge

she’d sit, elegant and damaged—

her scars buried in her dense gnarled

fur. Since I’ve come up here I twist

my hair so hard it snaps

and now I have a bald spot

that my barrettes can barely cover. You

almost seemed to cry

when you told me that she died.

But as I came closer I saw

your eyes completely

dry. You left her

on that hot August roof—

the tar blistering

her dog feet. She couldn’t stand

to touch the surface

so she sat and sat

on that asphalt edge,

her mind on fire with memory

of how you once took care

with her, gave her a yard

to play in, rolled with her

in cool green grass.

She’d dream of that

and want it back, before

the war that destroyed her world:

your wife’s shrieks take the goddamn

dog if you leave

me. And the dog

in her dog mind thought and thought

it was all her fault.

I wish I’d been there

when she took her leap

into the too blue, parched

air, over the anchored

oak tree and the naive lilies

reaching toward the idle sky,

to see her resolve—the pause,

then the quick

amazing move—the elevation, the gift

of rising, her thick mane ablaze

against the dazed noonday sun.

How she broke

free in that grand jeté,

sailing in holy

madness past her dog life,

her soul bounding out

of her sad dog eyes

while her ragged body hit

a barren patch of earth.

c. slaughter

AFTER THE MISERABLE lunch with Deidre, Cecilia returned even more so to thinking about the disastrous dinner with Herr M and the all-encompassing consequences of it—of the damage it had done to her, both internally and externally—her broken spirit and the wretched gossip. The debris—the scum—from it something she feels she can never clean up.

He forbade her to publish the poems. Said he would ruin her career. He said people would know it was his futon in one of the poems—its urine smell, the urine of his child. She had shown three new ones to a friend and her so-called friend had shown them to him. He was particularly paranoid because he was fighting for joint custody of his two year old daughter and in a pit-bull rage he snarled predatorily at her over the phone that the poems—these poems—if read by his wife’s lawyer or worse, the judge, would cause irreparable damage to his chances. As if a lawyer or judge would read a poem and, even if they did, care. Poems as evidence? Not in this country. Never. She sent them out anyway and they did get published. Even though she could not seem to take good care with her body, she felt she could with her art—or at least try.

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