in parentheses

William Heath has published three poetry books: The Walking Man, Steel Valley Elegy, and Going Places; three novels: The Children Bob Moses Led (winner of the Hackney Awrd), Devil Dancer, and Blacksnake’s Path; a work of history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (winner of three awards). www.williamheathbooks.com

W. Heath has been previously featured on In Parentheses.

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Sarah’s House of Spirits

Sarah Winchester marries the son
of the man who invents the Winchester
repeater, the Gun that Won the West,
a medium tells her that unless she builds
more rooms to her house to host and
appease the spirits of thousands killed
by the notorious rifle, she will die—
so for thirty-eight years she adds room
after room, door after door, endless corridors,
stained glass spider-web windows, twisted
stairways, parquet floors of mahogany,
teak, ash, oak, and other choice woods,
silver-plated chandeliers, secret
passages to elude pursuing ghosts.

Each night she visits the Séance Room
to learn what needs to be done next.
This calls for continual renovation
as the house expands to five-hundred
rooms, shrinks to one-hundred-and-sixty.
The resulting maze has an upside down
column that doesn’t touch the ceiling,
chimneys that never reach the roof.
Windows in the Grand Ballroom feature
obscure quotes from Shakespeare,
“Wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts,”
“These same thoughts people this little world.”
Allusions to esoteric messages inciting
her obsessions? No one knows.

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906
severely damages the house, Sarah
is rescued from her wrecked bedroom,
she sees the quake as a signal to change
her ways, thirty front rooms are sealed.
An eight-story tower falls, other turrets,
towers, cupolas, and balconies remain.
The number thirteen figures prominently
in her extravagant designs. Thirteen
the number of window panes, ceiling panels,
stairway steps. Among flowers, fountains,
statues, and exotic trees highlighting
her resplendent gardens, thirteen palm trees
lining the driveway die of old age.

Blind Woman in the Rain
A Barcelona Story

A blind woman sells lottery tickets
on the corner near the store.
Wrapped in a blanket she sits
on a little canvas chair under a balcony,
but when it rains hard she gets wet.

During a downpour Roser’s Uncle Joan
grows upset with her, swears
Me Cago’m Deu (I shit on God!).
He leaves his customers and says
to her, “When the neighbors tell you
it’s cloudy, or the radio predicts rain,
for your own sake don’t come out!”

She insists, “You always sell
one or two.” Then one day around
closing time and raining heavily,
Joan rushes to the corner, tells her
to go home before she catches
her death of cold, but she replies,

“If I wait around, I’ll sell these two
I have left.” Roser’s uncle pleads,
“For God’s sake, sell me those two
and leave.” So she hands him
the tickets and that evening Joan
wins a small prize in the lottery.

Mirrors

Mirrors are windows
into a room you will
never enter, the Other
stares back with almost
your face but for
the grimace and hair
parted on the wrong side,
and the cold touch
of glass to a kiss
never refused,
never returned.

Pilar and her mother,
who has Alzheimer’s,
enter an elevator
walled with mirrors
and her mother begins
talking to the woman
beside her. Later,
back in the elevator,
her mother says, “Look,
there are those two
women again.”

Weather Report

A brief brilliant summer
a long snowbound winter,
in between a few days
of Indian stealth.

As the voice breaks
against the measure
and the sailboat tacks
against the wind,

so a man stands
against the slow
downward
pull of things

and takes his walk
in any weather
and says his say
at any price.

The New Wave
(La Nouvelle Vague)

A drunken man in a white suit
walks with a cane on the beach,
dead seagull in the sand, Jean
Seberg’s face, a razor blade
taken out and replaced, cliffs,
seagulls circle in the sky,
shirts buttoned and unbuttoned,
Jean Seberg’s face, snug in
a fuzzy white bathrobe she
hugs herself, sun on the sand,
a man with a cane, Jean
Seberg’s face, hair
concentration-camp short,
dead seagull in the sand.
An unshaven man spits
on a glass door, drops some
cash on the floor, a long
dialogue about angst, ennui,
two shots are fired, Jean
Seberg’s face, a lone tear
in the corner of an eye, a gun
is pointed, a drunken man
waves his cane, wonders
how much jockeys weigh,
a policeman, chewing a stick
of gum, hits Jean’s fiancé
on the head with his pistol,
Jean walks arm-in-arm
with her beau on the beach,
the lawman takes aim at
the man in the white coat,
a boy, shirt unbuttoned
to the waist, stabs the officer,
still chewing gum, in the back,
Jean Seberg in a white dress
walks the beach alone, her guy
is gone, the wind is blowing,
two men follow her, the boy
runs into the raging surf, Jean
Seberg’s face in a slow fade.

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