Three poems by Rebecca Foust (Poetry ’10)

It’s the same house, same rugs, same wallpaper, and bedroom repeating;

same dresser; same rocker. Same window and frame, repeating.

 

Same birds at the pane, same pots and pans, and—on the alarm clock,

the wall clock, the phone clock—the same time, repeating

 

each hour’s increment in a lived life. But, This is no life, each day like

before and to come, repeating.

 

The furniture set in a known pattern. The rugs there, like always, inking

the blueprint of home, repeating

 

jewel tones on the floor, but what was once north–south now seems to lie

east–west—who moved the rugs?—in sum, repeating

 

the familiar, but sideways. Your inner axis has shifted, the landmarks

somehow changed but the same, you repeating

 

Why do they keep moving the rugs?  The desk, the chair, your keys?

Home its own balm, repeating

 

the familiar, but neither keys nor your purse can be found—I know

I just had them—repeating

 

the questions yields the same, that is, no real answers. Your sense of taste

gone, like eating chum, repeating

 

the same million small motions: fork to plate then mouth, then back down,

always the same, repeating

 

the flavor of cardboard. You used to love to cook, that joyous jazz variation-

on-a-theme now a repeating

 

like pages of musical staffs, xeroxed blank with no notes. Lately, you refuse

to eat anything at all. In a poem, repeating

 

lines compose a refrain and, echoed again and again, the sum of refrains

is a song. But there is also empty repeating:

 

zero plus zero plus zero still zero, a void. No accretion, no growth, no life,

no thrum. Then again, birds—some, repeating

 

one clear note, are said to singing without tune—and, the same set of sounds

from a beaten drum, repeating

 

means nothing and everything at the same time. The gene runs in families

and can be followed like breadcrumbs, repeating

 

the precise map for getting lost, down through generations. She took the same

route to work on the town tram, a repeating

 

my sister relied on. We rely on a plum to taste purple when our teeth break

its skin. Some numbers go on ad infinitum, repeating…