Poetry: 3 Poems by Andrea Bates

Three poems by contributing poet Andrea Bates

The Gates of Enfer

By Andrea Bates

 “The gates of enfer. That’s the gates of hell, right?”
-overheard in the garden at the Rodin Museum, Paris

They say it’s other people’s children,
not wanting what you’ve got, blood
on a white shirt, lost chances you were
too scared to take. And in France?
those who do not speak the language
languish for days in an enfer
of their own making—tongue studded
with syllables it cannot pronounce,
chest heavy as Rodin’s gate, heaving
in its attempt  to ask for a spoon
to savor the sorbet sold at the garden’s
stall. Yes, to try to curl the tongue
around cuiller brings tourists
to their knees, is to abandon all hope,
ye who enter here, is to watch
sorbet melt into a pool of sweet
bitterness in its cup, is to leave it
as an offering, what the dead can
drink, thirst bronzed by the heat
of Rodin’s ironworks, love’s
unrequited vowels of ici, here,
Paolo reaching for Francesca’s hand,
only to grasp the parched air.

Roulé d’aubergine au chèvre

By Andrea Bates

Lettuce dine with fork and thyme, pears flambé
on a plate appear to satisfy the palate, but only if
we first salut the salad. When dining a la carte in Paris,
the entrée is the appetizer, so the appetite
should be as crisp as frisee that chevres the spine.
Chaqun a son gout, a phrase planted on the purple-
egged tongues of aubergines. On top, olive oil drizzled
as gentle as pluie sweetening the cheeks on a stroll
down the Champs-Elysees. A glass of merlot and voila—
the miel is complete—like honey at the table, baked eggplant
stuffed with warm, warm goat cheese on a bed of greens.

MADAME’S CAFÉ OF THE GOURMET HAND

By Andrea Bates

“All the pigeons of Paris are dead. Some have been eaten, which is natural,
but most of them have been condemned to death because they carry messages.”
 –Monday, Jan. 19, 1942, TIME magazine

She is old enough to remember the Occupation,
backyard butchering of pigeon, twist of the neck,
a stuffed pie to feed eight people, tablespoon of meat,
dressing of parsley, and carrots smuggled in
from the countryside. Her mother didn’t tell her
it was pigeon–she would have cried and ruined
the dinner, but decades after the war ended
and her mother was dead, she discovered the recipe alive,
written in her mother’s shaky hand, cached inside
an envelope at the back of a kitchen drawer. A clipping
also of Notre Dame, stained glass rosette removed,
preserved in a secret cellar where prayer would protect
from the MP40, submachine gun, trigger finger of the Nazis.

The bombs these days are laid by pigeons, eighty thousand
strong, waggling throng of grey as if pieces of the Parisian
sky have fallen. She greets them with a plastic bag of seed
and crumbs she’s wiped from dinner tables and abraded
from day old loaves, seasoned with dried parsley
and thyme. Some believe there is no rhyme or reason
to this mission, others do not forgive the blast and drop,
residue of feather, purge of seed consumed. Every bird
is a victory, every bird she tends is one less she must
remember eating. Now, her outstretched palm beckons,
Café of the Gourmet Hand feeding the flock near Notre
Dame, each pigeon perched on the iron rail, awaiting
its turn to receive what she cannot bear to throw away.

Andrea Bates’s first chapbook, Origami Heart, was published in Toadlily Press’s 2010 volume Sightline.