POEMS/ My Great Aunt
Edith Russell (white blouse, standing) on the way by ship to Shanghai
My Great Aunt
1. Her Diary
On an attic shelf an old felt hat
slumps beside a battered box
in which a diary,
inked letters broken,
lies closed. She wore
the hat until the feather
molted, filled the diary
then left it on that shelf
abandoned. In it – her life –
no going forward,
no turning back,
stuck in a spinster’s world
that she would never leave.
She wrote it all and
let it rot alone, unread,
hat and diary aging together
on that attic shelf,
below them
the leather trunk she took to China,
full of her empty dreams.
2. The Things She Kept
In the trunk, her photo. Her eyes do not smile,
as the steamer carries her across weeks
and miles of empty sea to Shanghai. It is 1913.
She stayed four years, filled thin journals –
dates of music lessons, tea parties, birthdays.
Inside that trunk, the things she kept:
(1) four small white-faced Chinese dolls
in satin smocks for use in spells,
round black skull caps above their pigtails;
2) a miniature stone coffin –
within, an ivory corpse, shrouded
to keep against a coming death;
3) two exquisite pairs of tiny slippers,
made for young girls to offer the goddess
who eases the pain of bound and broken feet;
(4) sheets that she’d crocheted, sealed in folds
of faded tissue, trousseau she would never use,
and written in fine cursive script, a simple note:
“Sewn in 1911 for my wedding to — ”
the name crossed out.
This poem appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013)
1. Her Diary
On an attic shelf an old felt hat
slumps beside a battered box
in which a diary,
inked letters broken,
lies closed. She wore
the hat until the feather
molted, filled the diary
then left it on that shelf
abandoned. In it – her life –
no going forward,
no turning back,
stuck in a spinster’s world
that she would never leave.
She wrote it all and
let it rot alone, unread,
hat and diary aging together
on that attic shelf,
below them
the leather trunk she took to China,
full of her empty dreams.
2. The Things She Kept
In the trunk, her photo. Her eyes do not smile,
as the steamer carries her across weeks
and miles of empty sea to Shanghai. It is 1913.
She stayed four years, filled thin journals –
dates of music lessons, tea parties, birthdays.
Inside that trunk, the things she kept:
(1) four small white-faced Chinese dolls
in satin smocks for use in spells,
round black skull caps above their pigtails;
2) a miniature stone coffin –
within, an ivory corpse, shrouded
to keep against a coming death;
3) two exquisite pairs of tiny slippers,
made for young girls to offer the goddess
who eases the pain of bound and broken feet;
(4) sheets that she’d crocheted, sealed in folds
of faded tissue, trousseau she would never use,
and written in fine cursive script, a simple note:
“Sewn in 1911 for my wedding to — ”
the name crossed out.
This poem appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013)