The Subject of Any Archive is Always Missing
Penelope Scambly Schott

1  Six, Going on Seven

The child hopes to be wanted
for her sweet ways

but the calloused thumb of certainty
pokes at her faults.

Other children sing in alleys
or dance like dolphins,

but this girl has no pet names
or socks with lace.

Her shamed chin
points to the carpet

or else to the grass.
Her bouquet is dandelions

minus their white fluff.
The subject of any archive

is always missing.
Even her face is missing.

Oh, how she listens to frogs.
Perhaps those people

who might love her
live under the pond.

2  Ship’s Carpenter of Silence

He clenches a three-penny nail
between hard lips

so that whatever he says
comes out pounded and flat

When he launches a new boat
he sinks deeper than rain

If he hauls out on an island
to re-knot his knots

it is always a gray island
missing from every map

When he sails back into port
the hold is packed with silence

He will dock at the wharf
and greet no one but rats

In this thin bed here on the land
he dreams of shaping wooden hulls

If she dared to touch his lips
the skin would flake like shavings

3  When You Find Yourself Standing
at the Railing of a Bridge

Let shoeless toes curl
on grating.

Loft keys and license
over that rail.

Now point your thumb
for a ride.

If a trucker brakes,
get in his cab.

Go where he is going.
A dry place.

Lie down under stars
and sagebrush.

If you crush juniper,
it loves you back.

Deep water
will not call you here,

only the stiff crackle
of lizards.

4  Fourteen Things I’ve Lost:

A two-karat diamond from my first mother-in-law
Thirty thousand dollars in escrow

My father
An unfinished baby who looked like a scrap of flesh

Any chance at a fifty-year marriage
My twenty-four inch waist

The gold thimble from my grandmother
My golden pigtails

The phone number of a seer who reads answers on water
My fear of moths and their powdery residue on the tips of my fingers

At times, my temper,
my patience,

and almost my mind
But mostly, my violent desire to die

Penelope Scambly Schott is the author of seven books including A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth, winner of the 2008 Oregon Book Award in Poetry, and most recently Six Lips. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Nimrod, and The Georgia Review.

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