Mary E. O’Dell

Getting Away

When she opens the door behind the door
she encounters a wall
which she attacks with vigor, desperation, and the heel of her left shoe.
Finally great chunks of plaster fall away
and there’s no reason she can’t go.
Just walk away and leave it all —
the bare, dangling bulb
drawers full of tarnished knives and spoons
musty photos of people she’s forgotten if indeed she ever knew them.
She peers into the night, then begins to pack her apron:
       two pairs of woolen hose with garters
       peaches and a paring knife
       four bone buttons for barter with the natives.
Then, armed with a branch of thorny rose and girded with panic
she steps into darkness warm as soup.
Commotion in the trees brings her breath up quick
and low in her belly a birdwing turns,
grazing the cusp of her heart
and settling in motion a double-edged unease.
Her pulses roll like undulous reptiles signaling. She’s traveling, says one.
The other echoes, Traveling
and clamps the bird in its unhinged jaw.
As vision fades, she gazes backwards.
The sour yellow light plays at the corner of her upturned lips:
The peaches are green, they will do for a while.

—Mary E. O’Dell, originally published in The Louisville Review.
Reprinted by permission of the author

As co-founder and lifetime president of the Green River Writers, Ernie O’Dell has been mentoring poets for a quarter of a century. Her full-length collections include Poems for the Man Who Weighs Light and Living in the Body.