Cells
after those of Louise Bourgeois
Although cells almost rhymes
with selves, I often feel I have
nothing
in common with the body
I’m in.
~
I note how they divide, subdivide
as if under a lens—this thought,
that emotion—
before art from chaos
can form.
~
August 1945. Hiroshima,
my parents’ wedding, Nagasaki,
war’s end.
In time, I would see my conception
as another link in that chain.
~
Combustible love. Till death
do us part. Such an odd circle
of bell ringers
we are, tolling one for the lost,
another for lives to come,
~
and so on to extinction.
Against that end,
I fill
pages with consolations
nights when the sirens wail.
~
When I thought my mother was dying,
I saw she was me in a hospital gown,
soft middle,
thin wrists, and I knew I’d be lost
if I lost her.
~
Secret, sliding, glass,
pocket, storm.
Revolving,
barred, louvered, French—
I like to think of doors
~
as ports of call
where travelers enter
the unknown,
for the time being
putting their cabins behind them.
~
The day the undertaker’s men
lifted him onto a stretcher
to ferry
my father away, I dreamt
he escaped through a hidden door.
~
Lift up your gates,
and you shall be lifted up—
a plainsong
that heightens the longing
within my echoing chambers.
~
In an isolation cell
one can begin to hear voices.
I wish
this was something I did not understand.
This unfastening.
~
It’s possible to break out
of a jailhouse or household,
although
most people tunnel away
inch by slow inch.
~
When I’m long gone,
with a view as wide
as Wyoming,
I might find myself
looking back
~
through a door left ajar,
half in love with the lingering
scent
of rooms as familiar
as the breath of ephemera,
~
hints of who’d lived there
in corners, on walls,
everywhere
except in the standing mirror,
which is blank.
—
Allison Funk is the author of five books of poems, including her most recent, Wonder Rooms (Free Verse Editions of Parlor Press, 2015). The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is Professor Emerita at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.