Wendy Vardaman Poems

Fifty daffodils, one hundred
hyacinth—buried
last fall produce
only a handful of half-way resurrections:
...

I try to ignore the window
washer leaning against me; he strokes the sheet
that separates us, blocks my light,
my view of construction across the way,
...

Away a few days, we return to a deluge—
ankle deep in the basement—
window-leaked above, over-saturated beneath: the papers and maps
scattered all over the floor past salvage: we tear
...

He likes action,
violence, surprise, plot: not shards
of household glass assembled
with tweezers, blurred vision,
...

Some days are like that—everything
means something:
two parallel pits in fresh snow, filled with black
ice and surrounded by sediment, by rock
...

The Man in the Moon flaunts
his freedom in his mostly intact tux: the bell
moon, a weight that cannot hold him,
the tightrope, a chain that also
...

'Don't you ever,' I say, collecting
my 13-year-old from her Othello rehearsal, when
two hours late she doesn't turn
up, 'do that again.
...

She was not at home—at least
no one answered his heavy knocking—just
as well; the hot sun that afternoon
drew him to a shady patch on the green
...

In the week that winter
yields to spring, the last snow seeps
into the saggy-doored garage, between wide foundation gaps,
...