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Karen Swenson: Poems

WHAT DOES A WOMAN WANT |
MARKET WOMEN: LAKE TOBA | WE

The following poems come from Karen Swenson's third book of poetry, The Landlady in Bankok, which was chosen by Maxim Kumin as winner of The National Poetry Prize and published by Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, Wash State 98368.

"Probing the local genius as expressed in history and customs, Swenson absorbs the anguish of colonization and dictatorship to reveal ordinary people and events with sardonic humor, pathos and hope," said Kumin in chosing Swenson's book for the prize.

Swenson's travels have taken her to Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia and other realms. She is a New Yorker, presently living in Manhattan and gives frequent poetry readings throughout the Metropolitan area. A member of PEN American Center, The Poetry Society of America, and other professional organizations, she has published widely in literary magazines and anthologies for over twenty years and written travel articles for various publications.

WHAT DOES A WOMAN WANT

We read the same books as children--Kipling,
Haggard, Stevenson--and dreamt adventure,
but they went off, the boys, to munch on sago
grubs with cannibals, be rocked to sleep

in a hold where rats and roaches rustled
under the slap of a moon-starched sail
and on the volcano's steaming lip, pose
for the camera, their calves fringed with leeches.

Coming to adventure late I'm not sure
I'd savor grubs. I didn't join my Burmese
bus companions when they dined with their
right hands. On a tramp off Sumatra's coast,

I held a scream, a bobbing bathtub toy
in my throat, as two-inch roaches filed
above my head. My bones ached to the marrow
scrambling up to fourteen thousand feet.

I envy the acceptance that accrues to cocks.
They are the universal, catholic sex.
Witch doctors don't ask wives why they've allowed
their husbands out to roam the world alone.

Green with begrudging as a young rice field,
I'm a prurient curiosity,
in my unorthodox sex, to the local men
in foreign towns who hope, or else assume.

They're shoals to navigate with care as I
tack Malacca's strait, round java's head
sails spread and bellying to cross the shadow
line, gathering my way before the salty wind.

MARKET WOMEN: LAKE TOBA

They've come on board their grocery baskets full
to gossip and shake off the clinging sand
from bare feet and vegetables. They pull
weeds from pale tails of beansprouts as we land.
These women then will disappear
into their lives. But now I can watch them,
the ordinariness of their day, sheer
exotica. That word's apothegm
is their sarong-wrapped squat embellished by
a wilderness of batik birds and blooms
while we, another clan in our blue Levis,
our dungaree and sneaker tribal costumes,
feed their curiosity's appetite,
our differences our mutual delight.

WE

In a museum of the city
once called Saigon, are snapshots. One's
been blown up so we can all see
it clearly. An American,

a young foot Soldier, stands on battle
pocked land, his helmet at a jaunty
tilt, posed for buddies as the Model
Grunt. In his left hand he is dangling,

like Perseus, a head by its hair.
Though not Medusa's, it's his charm
for turning fear to stone. Its stare
will quiet, awhile, his throbbing chest.

The tattered flesh that once dressed collar
bones hangs rags from this Vietnamese
neck, captured with the soldier's scar
of grin by a friend's camera.

Is it enough to see it clearly?
We all know what to think. The whitewashed
walls of a second room show nearly
as many black and white shots of

Cambodian atrocities
against Vietnamese. No room's hung
with what was done to enemies
of Vietnam just as there's no

American museum built
to show off snapshots of My Lai.
One pronoun keeps at bay our guilt
they they they they they they they they.

Copyright © 1995 by Karen Swenson. All rights reserved.

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