A slew of the poems from No Longer Upstairs were published in roughly ten different poetry mags. The collection itself was also favorably reviewed in the Seattle Small Press Review by David Lloyd Whithead (spelling?)
Testing the Spirits - Excerpts
© 1989
Teresa Bachman
Psalm of Thanksgiving
Thank you for the invisible battle,
the internal war, this damnable
unseeing eye.
Thank you for the pain and suffering,
the bite of those gnashing teeth.
Thank you for the restless mind,
the questions without answers,
for the fortress where beauty
should not be, but is.
Thank you for the unmowed lawns,
the weed choked gardens, for the chipped
sculpture, the unfinished poems.
Thank you for the crying voice I hear
winding up so many stairs from deep
within my heart.
Two Moons – Excerpts
© 1990
Teresa Bachman
Thank you for the invisible battle,
the internal war, this damnable
unseeing eye.
Thank you for the pain and suffering,
the bite of those gnashing teeth.
Thank you for the restless mind,
the questions without answers,
for the fortress where beauty
should not be, but is.
Thank you for the unmowed lawns,
the weed choked gardens, for the chipped
sculpture, the unfinished poems.
Thank you for the crying voice I hear
winding up so many stairs from deep
within my heart.
Two Moons – Excerpts
© 1990
Teresa Bachman
At the Doctors
Momma, curious about my erratic flow
sat smiling, nodding, as if this were common
to holster my feet in stirrups,
lose my form beneath a sheet, genitals exposed
to some old man with a stethoscope.
I told Momma I was frightened—
those rubber-gloved fingers,
that cold metal speculum probing
where I had never before touched or looked.
Momma said my body was a man’s thing:
my husband’s, the doctor’s, the mortician’s.
After all his prodding the doctor declared me
normal. I didn’t even know what he meant.
Momma wiped dew from the corner of her eye,
gathered those other things
which distinguished her as female:
her purse, chapeau, those pearled gloves.
Bent, cowering in the corner,
I tugged on panties and swore
no one would ever again see me
both naked and helpless,
then cursed my mother for curiosity
which cost her nothing
and me everything.
Raising my Child
She was playing in the rubble, touching
all those magical dirty things which pique
a child’s imagination: cat’s-eye marbles,
polished stone, glass shards, testicles.
Atop that pile, stiff, a paralyzed stick,
lay the snake with the severed jaw.
I slicked his neck myself, remember
killing him. Now his jaw, venom intact,
quivers toward my daughter’s hand.
I yell, I yell, I yell and emit no sound.
Boning knife in hand, prepared to kill
one last time, that wicked
and masculine influence
which has dogged my life so brilliantly,
too late, I realize
I’ve sliced the throat of my own child.
I cannot save her now and let her disembowel
in the kitchen sink, hoping her father does not
discover the mess I’ve made,
all my futile attempts at mothering.
Dinner Date Forever
He reveals too much,
those stumps he tucks inside wooden man-size legs,
that he’d kill himself before losing me, his hopes
pinned blindly as in a marital pin-the-tail game.
I care nothing for him and do not even now his name,
but I am bound now by social obligation to continue
this false affection started for a dinner date.
In turn, I reveal nothing,
not that I resent kneeling to kiss his head,
nor that duty, not passion, fuels my tongue,
not even that I resent being crutches or conscience for any man.
He has determined, over the course of our meal,
that since I am aware of his affliction, he can
parade himself for all to see, certain
I accept him as he is. I feel I hold a child’s hand
or the paw of a salivating dog.
I can’t leave
for he has given me his wooden legs
as a token of our love. He kisses me
loosely about the belly, never once realizing
the stark face of my repulsion.
I have no one to blame but myself,
for I listened to wild ravings of his secret soul
and pretended emotions which cannot be built
solely upon the pretty faces so often shown
to strangers.
Learning to do Without
These are my hands, yes, my hands;
these are my hands.
Imagine them cut off, cast aside,
my hands, missing from my arms.
These are my arms, yes, my arms;
these are stumps with such a fine point,
my arms, leading to a close
with nothing to punctuate the end.
These are sheaths to scribble on,
if I had hands.
This is paper spattered with blood.
This is my husband who has gone a long time
without a caress, with only a kiss,
yes, my husband. He doesn’t mind,
not my husband; he doesn’t mind.
These are my feet tucked up my legs.
Now I can sit; I can sit and sit
and I can sit and stare out the window.
These are my sockets, my polished sockets
where I fit marbles
and pieces of popcorn for later on.
This is my brain, yes my quick
little brain. Oh, I don’t need it.
Imagine for me: severed.
This is my tongue with nothing to say.
This is my vagina, sewn shut.
This is my husband; he doesn’t mind,
not my husband. He’s not been caressed
in an awful long time.
These are my arms
with such a fine point
and once I had hands;
oh once I had hands.
But I sure don’t mind; no,
I’ll learn to get by.
The Bovarist
It is amazing, the array of knives.
That beginning poet feels she must taste
each cold blade in order to accommodate
her craft. As though a boning knife could cut
her loose from herself, blood flowering the sink.
At night, to fall asleep, she counts uses
of the cleaver, the bread and oyster knives,
those which filet and pare. With imagination
even the flaccid grapefruit knife
could wield danger to her anxious wrists.
At dinner, as the ham knife is slicing
through tough meat, she envies her father’s grip.
Her own hands—a child’s small grasp;
the knife handle—a clumsy, weighty fit.
It is amazing, the reams of poetry this bovarist
won’t write. She is busy romancing death.
“Poet” is simply a tag to explain her actions;
her own name tainted, linked inextricably with knives.
If only she had, instead, remembered spoons:
the soft, round curvature of their bellies,
the generous femininity of them; her first
utensil. If only she can accept the cheese,
butter or dessert knife, their simple pleasures
then perhaps she can write the poetry
that, with no where to go, twists beneath her skin,
the poetry she needs to read to keep her,
if not happy, then at least alive.
No Longer Upstairs – Excerpts
© 1992
Teresa Bachman
The Dreams About Your Parents House
You materialize in your parent’s backyard
as though it were yours.
Sometimes you’re in the alley,
someone chasing you, the gate locked.
You’ve scaled that fence, have driven through it
only to find the house insecure,
the doors, like paper dolls, flapping in wind.
You phone for help. Whoever answers hangs up.
Lights flicker. Your husband senses trouble.
You can’t imagine a home of your own.
This house claims you.
Your car is in the driveway so you could leave.
Something stops you:
a winter storm, an overwhelming
grief, your mother drunk
and sobbing in the kitchen,
that psychotic in the yard.
If you were certain you were alone you’d run.
But you believe children
are chained in the basement
and until you find them
you’ll never go.
The Dreams About Your Basement
(Rain City Review, Spring 93 &
Urban Spelunker, Jan 93)
Again, you are in your basement
and, as always, it is strewn
with the broken toys of your past:
formulas on wadded paper
which never quite made it
to either science or poem,
photographs hacked off below the eyes.
You find a stale Trisket on the floor
and eat it.
This was your childhood room,
the window opening at dirt level,
cool as a half-buried casket,
the red eye of a furnace blinking
directly across from your bed.
You try to find excuses for the mess,
but since it wasn’t your doing, you can’t—
this bronze key broken off in the lock,
shattered rum bottles with uninviting, upturned teeth,
latex sheaths, gangrenous with sperm,
an insufferable array of debris from your parents
no longer upstairs.
The Spy Dreams
Your hand becomes a box, a bag,
a small vial, a briefcase
whose contents are priceless, though disguised.
You roam familiar streets you can’t place,
strangers you seem to remember, a phone
you can’t dial.
Behind each edifice—an indomitable enemy.
And because your enemies are fluent
in reconnaissance you’ve developed a knack at running,
a master of disguise—blending into the chorus.
When someone pushes you center stage
you become a mannequin in sequins,
unobservably human.
You’ll be in this game forever—
espionage, counter espionage,
keeping secrets hidden.
The Dreams About Men
You are fucking men, or
are being fucked by men, or
are avoiding fucking men
for one reason or another.
One isn’t even a man at all, but a rodent
who merely looks and smells like a man.
You want to be polite and pet him.
Despite his display of incisors,
he licks your wrist, tickles your palm
with his finger.
You lock him outside.
Your best friend is marrying a man,
but won’t tell you who.
You wonder if you’ve screwed him too.
While in bed with the best man
you see outside his bedroom window
a man with German features, biceps,
his body a brick;
a look of fearlessness in his eyes
as though you could wound him
and wound him and wound him
and he’d never break.
You leave your stuttering bedfellow
and eavesdrop on this man.
He tells his friend, he says,
“I own an alligator farm
to keep women away”,
his life goal—isolation
from all women, like or unlike yourself.
And you are ashamed to admit
you once bedded him, too.
You materialize in your parent’s backyard
as though it were yours.
Sometimes you’re in the alley,
someone chasing you, the gate locked.
You’ve scaled that fence, have driven through it
only to find the house insecure,
the doors, like paper dolls, flapping in wind.
You phone for help. Whoever answers hangs up.
Lights flicker. Your husband senses trouble.
You can’t imagine a home of your own.
This house claims you.
Your car is in the driveway so you could leave.
Something stops you:
a winter storm, an overwhelming
grief, your mother drunk
and sobbing in the kitchen,
that psychotic in the yard.
If you were certain you were alone you’d run.
But you believe children
are chained in the basement
and until you find them
you’ll never go.
The Dreams About Your Basement
(Rain City Review, Spring 93 &
Urban Spelunker, Jan 93)
Again, you are in your basement
and, as always, it is strewn
with the broken toys of your past:
formulas on wadded paper
which never quite made it
to either science or poem,
photographs hacked off below the eyes.
You find a stale Trisket on the floor
and eat it.
This was your childhood room,
the window opening at dirt level,
cool as a half-buried casket,
the red eye of a furnace blinking
directly across from your bed.
You try to find excuses for the mess,
but since it wasn’t your doing, you can’t—
this bronze key broken off in the lock,
shattered rum bottles with uninviting, upturned teeth,
latex sheaths, gangrenous with sperm,
an insufferable array of debris from your parents
no longer upstairs.
The Spy Dreams
Your hand becomes a box, a bag,
a small vial, a briefcase
whose contents are priceless, though disguised.
You roam familiar streets you can’t place,
strangers you seem to remember, a phone
you can’t dial.
Behind each edifice—an indomitable enemy.
And because your enemies are fluent
in reconnaissance you’ve developed a knack at running,
a master of disguise—blending into the chorus.
When someone pushes you center stage
you become a mannequin in sequins,
unobservably human.
You’ll be in this game forever—
espionage, counter espionage,
keeping secrets hidden.
The Dreams About Men
You are fucking men, or
are being fucked by men, or
are avoiding fucking men
for one reason or another.
One isn’t even a man at all, but a rodent
who merely looks and smells like a man.
You want to be polite and pet him.
Despite his display of incisors,
he licks your wrist, tickles your palm
with his finger.
You lock him outside.
Your best friend is marrying a man,
but won’t tell you who.
You wonder if you’ve screwed him too.
While in bed with the best man
you see outside his bedroom window
a man with German features, biceps,
his body a brick;
a look of fearlessness in his eyes
as though you could wound him
and wound him and wound him
and he’d never break.
You leave your stuttering bedfellow
and eavesdrop on this man.
He tells his friend, he says,
“I own an alligator farm
to keep women away”,
his life goal—isolation
from all women, like or unlike yourself.
And you are ashamed to admit
you once bedded him, too.
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