LA FAMIGLIA CHE PIAN PIANO
Andrew Carroll
“P.S. — Do you suppose, when you & I
are dead, dear[est.],
they will publish the Love
Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay
& her Mother?
She was waiting for you: all
the woman
you could be. Lazarus promised she would
never marry
her self-image to the
blue siren mocked in male conceit—or
a man. But there she stood
like a lightning
imprisoned, with that old colossus called
happiness; and he lumbered
sweet with glad
-tidings, grateful as only men with block-
heads could contrive:
dogged, bothersome, and
patient. Not composed of reunited
victims of the
Fall, but a strange first time
collage of the too-familiar—that is
love.
Its outpour had begun ending all
her first letters with “That is love,
Millay”
as if reminding presence of the past.
She kept each note
locked secret in landscapes
pink and resistible; and in secret
Lazarus read them, returning with sighs
each amoeba of the river—furrowed
vows that, following suit, Millay would flush
one day.
Re-living was her recompense
for gifting broken youthful promises
to the promise of a yet-unbroken
youth,
for motherhood—
which of course you know
nothing about.
Andrew Carroll is a member of Long Beach Renaissance, and a co-founder of the art-media collective, FORTHE. He has been published as a literary and cultural critic, journalist, and poet. His debut collection, rest-less, a volume of unrequited love poems, was self-published in January, 2018.