All In

It’s a way of seeing, a way of being in the world. It’s a leap
into the void, stealing a night from another life,
it’s the hook, the snap of acid, soft clacks of the train,
memory raining its silver stories down. I am the daughter
of the Bohunk side of the family, where the men praise
the Teamsters, curse all pipefitters, pound their fists
on the table, pound their fists until the Berlin Wall comes down
and tanks roll out of Prague. I am the wife who forgot to come home.
I am the mother holding the son who shoots into
van Gogh’s cobalt revolt, the mother who scours the sea
in search of a lost blanket. I am the grandmother who is promised
a pirate ring. I am the daughter with the dropper of morphine,
the cancer patient with the bee tattoo and the blank fortune cookie.
I am the witness in the courthouse who sees the indentation
below the killer’s new crewcut, the woman in the hospice room
with owls, raccoons and fireflies. I am the bride in camouflage;
I ride into the wind, licked by the desert sun’s red tongue,
ride past Eppie’s Blue Spruce Bar, with its bright blue rebar,
ride toward the sea and the sea sighs like history or desire, ride, ride
to my pirate who will kiss the blue bruise that blossoms
beneath his hand—no, I am Alice falling, spinning, down
and down the dark hole of the new world. I am the red road
to Barstow and the widow and the widow’s tears. I am a sea bream.
I am Penelope, wed to beauty. I am a Fury.
I am Circe. I am Marie Curie.
I am a rain of birds. I am Persephone, aflame
with alchemical passion. I am an untamed river of light.
I am burning with the knowing. I am a poet.

Instructions to the Bride in Camouflage

“Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.” —Sylvia Plath

You come by horse. You ride into the wind across Rio Arriba, past
Eppie’s Blue Spruce Bar, with its bright blue rebar, and into
the village of Abiquiu. You see little mud houses and bleached
skeletons of automobiles. No white chickens beside a red
wheelbarrow. Not here. You are headed to Georgia’s sacred place
for a writing workshop with women. You want to know if you
should go all in. Your literary ancestors can tell you. But haven’t they
already? Didn’t Emily advise you to tell all the truth but tell it
slant? And didn’t Elizabeth proclaim that the art of losing
isn’t hard to master? Edna reminded you that love is not all
and Alice chided, be nobody’s darling. Normally you avoid
gatherings with people you don’t know. But you are hoping
these women’s poems will unfold like birds of paradise
and sing to you, tell you who you are. You dismount.
As twilight spreads like a deepening lavender bruise, you call
Ghost Ranch. Someone will come to show you the way.

An earlier version of “Instructions to the Bride in Camouflage” appeared in Conspire.

Deborah Tobola has received awards and recognition from the Academy of American Poets, Pushcart Prize, the National Writers Union, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She earned a B.A. in English in 1988 from the University of Montana and an MFA in Creative Writing in 1990 from the University of Arizona. Her memoir, Hummingbird in Underworld: Teaching in a Men’s Prison (She Writes Press, 2019) garnered positive reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as winning awards in creative nonfiction, social justice, and social issues.