Under the Quick

By Molly Bendall

In Molly Bendall’s fourth book of poems, the verbal underworld of doing and undoing—oath, love charm, prayer, curse—becomes a refuge of tenderness and malediction. One of her generation’s most subtly imaginative poets, Bendall overhears—and whispers to the reader—a lost language which is by turns brainy and promiscuous, clueless and inscrutable, bewitching and bereft: a voice skirting a strange silence, a “goblin market” of snares, cures, trifles, and métiers inconnus. Under the spell of these poems, worlds once imagined break into growls and fingersnaps undoing the rough magic of impersonation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parlor Press, LLC
• Release date: Aug 26, 2009
• ISBN: 9781602357174

Molly Bendall

MOLLY BENDALL is the author of three previous collections of poetry, AFTER ESTRANGEMENT, DARK SUMMER, and ARIADNE’S ISLAND. She has received the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, the Lynda Hull Poetry Award from Denver Quarterly, and two Pushcart Prizes. She teaches at the University of Southern California.

Book preview

I Causes and Cures

Reminds Me of Panic

          Push me in, let me

arrive at the late scene

               heaving the furniture, tossing

an episode with knobs and feet,

          where praise drags on the floor.

No one retrieves it, yet

                    everyone wants to be there

nearer to the wreck. Hear her tap shoes,

          and the invitation’s run off.

     Do make-up do, and temper,

                    zip up the case.

Who knew the fashion would be

seams all hanging out and thready?

          Knuckle me hither,

a jewel croaks.

          Sink your tummy ‘til it sleeps

    on the rug so woven

          in electric blue.

                                        Give us

a lingering moon, and one night

      I’ll switch the little fire on.

Every Skipping Speed I’ve Noticed

Soft near the birdcage,

      dull next to the moth light.

          If I shiver I’ll

scarcely fit the judgment.

O rare thing—zephyr, gust,

          and spacious storm.

          Hipper than that it moves.

And where is the hero

to snazz up this

          place?

Intruder in a daze, be my cool

          transparence—

nothing but a breeze,

that sharp sliver,

          silver halo.

Call them all geeks and grin,

                    and whatever

     misses might

swim between the pearly slipknots.

It’s murder sometimes.

A Wild, Raw Clearing

Weren’t you the plucky one

       that found me falling sideways

near the rocky parts?

              All my hues of deviling

put stresses on your grip.

              The last of the pumas

still roams the mountains—right there,

       her face with a