Pandora Aurora Rose
(Katherine Jeanine Hastings)
July 22nd 1975 – January 25th 2005

It’s hard to believe it’s been a full year
since the day you died.
I’m back in the town where it happened,
and everything has changed but you’re
not here, not anywhere except
under the ivy, under the fall
of pink and white rose petals,
somewhere floating in the fragments
of a thousand shards of bright memory
we keep knifed deep
in the multitude of our hearts.

A year ago today I fell on the floor
and moaned over and over,
please no please no please no
I tied a piece of lace for remembrance
around my wrist,
It’s still there- tied tight only
thinner, turned from black to
mossy green, sucked on by
kittens and bathed in the Aegean-
my mourning for you.

We could be baking cupcakes,
eating squash soup out of
butternut shells, singing songs
on the railroad tracks and
laying on our backs looking
up at all the faces in the trees.
I want you back here,
but I guess you ate those
pomegranate seeds in your pocket-
kept those shiny beetles
trapped in amber,
the needle-toothed nymphs and nixies
that led you down..

I still haven’t learned how to say
goodbye to you, so I can only
talk with you and hope you hear me.
I miss you terribly- we all do..
Princess Pumpkin, Whiskey Pixie,
Coney Island Baby..

I don’t know the man who wrote this,
but it seems he must have known you
to write about your mermaidenliness,
your skeleton keys, your teacup bruises..

Pandora’s Dress (In Four Pieces)
by Peter Schwartz

1.

there are no soft doors in this
knocking isn’t a joke

when pandora considers herself
she considers herself
like a postcard from outer space

she is no etcetera and will not
be treated as such
she’s thanksgiving in a verb
queen of undying crickets
bittersweet omnivorous

she slides over her would-be
custodians coldly as she must
having freshly sacrificed
her deep jagged medallions
laughing each threshold away
falling off her bearings

2.

she’s  been raised on eggshells and calabash
slow against the backdraft of her own particulars
manic over mountains hosanna cornucopia
before the hour crumbles like bad crackers

she could be minerva’s cousin sweating out
some inoculable tuesday on a borderline campground
she might count siblings in the pith and ripplings
of shylock and temporary evidence

she might

3.

alone she cannibalizes the differences
she strangles out a skeleton key out of old duration
she vandalizes her own soul
with ketchup

ever the correspondent she bruises naturally
as sick as a teacup
who but her could drink milk
and spit out wine or worse hemlock
with no dress to match the occasion
nothing to humor the yellow jackets
once upon a time the furies

4.

poor pandora she couldn’t see deserving
an excuse when the owls freaked out her cadets
and left monkeys on her chalkboard

she cannot see re-
boxing her collection of dead blessings
and going to the bazaar without
shame

too much torso
for too little
she’s her own mermaid
more than anyone she knows

she knows the silk of widowhood
can only be
folded