Our Andromeda by Brenda Shaughnessy Read Free Book Online

anger on her.

    â€¢

    I suppose I could blame God. That’s what cowards
    do, the lazy. Like people who pretend to be
    so abysmally unskilled at cooking

    that someone else feeds them throughout life.
    Those people are always the pickiest eaters,
    have you noticed?

    But let’s say I won’t eat potato or dairy and I can’t
    tolerate onion, eggs or wheat,
    what exactly would I be blaming God for?

    A mistake, misjudgment, an oversight (a word
    that has always amused me, its simultaneously
    opposite meanings) or utter cruelty?

    Weakness? Naptime? Drunk driving?
    Vengefulness? Power-madness? Experimenting
    with karma, playing with matches,

    autopilot? Stupidity, quotas, just taking
    orders? Mixing up the card files Comedy
    and Tragedy? An inept assistant who

    has since been fired? Poor people-skills?
    Forgetfulness? Had a headache?
    A cover-up? Setting things in motion so that

    this poem would be written? Overworked,
    underpaid? The system being broken?
    Technical difficulties? Couldn’t find remote?

    Track-work, electrical storm, hurricane,
    prayer-lines jammed by the devout,
    new policies, change of direction within

    the administration? On vacation, paternity
    leave, sick leave, personal day, long-term
    disability, short-term disability, layoffs?

    Who am I to underestimate God in this way?
    To imply he’s some bumbling Joe,
    working stiff trying to do an honest day’s work?

    I mean really. Who knows his workings?
    If I don’t know what to blame him for,
    how can I blame him at all?

    Perhaps there was never a flaw in the first place,
    no mistakes. Perhaps God is perfect,
    utterly blameless. He is what he is. Evil.

    â€¢

    The gods of Andromeda, however benevolent,
    cannot answer unless called.

    They don’t operate like Milky Way God,
    who doesn’t answer at all,

    who is always busy offline, jetskiing
    on our waterbodies, our handsqueezed

    oceans of salt water, competing in dressage
    though he always spooks the horses.

    In those days when I would call and call
    into the stupid air, if I ate something

    sweet I would begin to cry, overwhelmed
    by how small comfort had become.

    â€¢

    So you see, Cal, we’re not in particularly
    good hands here. Not mine, helpless
    and late, not even yours,

    tiny, graceful stations the train lines
    keep skipping though we’ve all
    been waiting in the rain.

    We will find our kind in Andromeda,
    we will become our true selves.
    I will be the mother who

    never hurt you, and you will have your
    childhood back in full blossom,
    whole hog. We might not know

    who we are at first, there, without
    our terrible pain. But no flower
    knows the ocean.

    The sea can never find the forest,
    though it can see the trees.
    The succulent has no bud for salt

    but one mile away the deer lick
    and lick as if the sea
    were in its newborn body,

    replenishing the kelp of the hoof.
    Though a sea would as soon
    drown a deer as regenerate it,

    there’s a patch of mercy, sweetly
    skewing between the two.
    The new wind is already in us, older sister

    to us all, blowing windfall and garbage
    alike to those who do not deserve
    either gifts or refuse.

    â€¢

    And then of course, there were the friends.
    It’s amazing how the ones without children
    leapt to their feet in anguish

    and keened, utterly genuine and broken,
    made their way to our apartment with stews
    and wine and tears, fruit and olive oil

    and kindness so beautiful it wasn’t of this world.
    While our own families, our parents,
    seemed so stunned (as if by a stun gun)

    by their own fear that they receded
    into an ether, the veiled planet Venus
    for all I understood, some bright

    occasional visitation and months
    of silence. And, oh, the friends with precious
    children. The ones who withheld,

    thin-lipped. The most articulate,
    sensitive souls suddenly bumbled,
    tongue-tied, unable to say anything at all

    but the weakest thing, the things that
    actually made everything