Introduction to A Buffet Table Fit for Queens by Laura Lee Washburn

“Before I am blood, heartbeat, or bone, I begin as language,” writes Susan L. Leary in the first sentence of A Buffet Table Fit for Queens in a poem called “The Language of Women.” I want to know more, and I take pleasure in the alliterative heartbeat of the b, and the medial stops in begin and language. I’m invited to understand anew, and I begin to test my experience and thought against the poem’s truths. In the second decade of the 21^st century, Leary writes “for all women— & for my mother” on this book’s dedication page, and I know for some people this dedication and the title of this first poem is going to read very differently than the same words would have been read in the late 20^th century. “The Language of Women” reinforces and expands on a stance: in this poem and in this book, we are talking about language, this history of people who may have the ability to conceive, and we are talking about how words in men’s mouths have transformed women from full human beings to something less: “not even Mary can avoid the advances of God. & so every woman is a girl. Young girl. Servant girl.”

In ten lyrical poems in myriad forms, Leary challenges traditional gender roles, ironies, religious oppression, terrorism, false gods, and lifts up every one of us as she redefines miracle, asks us to “look closer,” to find the hidden messages. Poems, I tell my students, are something to think with. Leary offers new ways of seeing as well as powerful recognitions and reinterpretations in these poems and in these substantial and memorable lines:

   “I want to say I don’t care what my mother thinks of me now nor ever, but how could this be true when our mothers are the only real gods?”

   “The task / of this life scoffs at survival.”

   “But wait, is this yours or someone else’s philosophy?”

   “how many devastations / before spring will it take to sustain us all?”

   “when we speak, / we speak the language of God—"

Read these lines in their contexts, read A Buffet Table Fit for Queens, and you’ll own new ways of seeing our world. To quote Audre Lorde, “This is poetry as illumination.”

The Language of Women

Before I am blood, heartbeat, or bone, I begin as language. As rude message snaked through a
mezzanine of sky. A man speaks for no reason other than his own & the words lodge themselves
inside the stray womb of a woman. This is no miracle. My mother, your mother can be any sheep
from the flock. A wolf howls & Mary is the chosen one. A wolf howls & in the back of a woman’s
mind, not even Mary can avoid the advances of God. & so every woman is a girl. Young girl.
Servant girl. A girl who knows what lives inside a man’s mouth can be more barbarous than sex.
Because it is the girl who must now explain herself. Pregnant. Accident. Because what else could
I do? Young girl, she could be my sister ovaling the sweep of me in her arms. Young girl, she tells
the story of a different wolf. Girl wolf. Mother wolf. A wolf that out of love or destruction once
fed upon an entire forest, the froth of tulips dusting her snout & moss lining her belly. That there
be nothing more to scavenge. No women & no sheep. All around her, fresh blood. Men, in their
desperation, fallen to the knees having cut their own tongues from their throats. This is the miracle.
A girl who refuses to neither hear nor spare the false speech of false gods, snakes her own language
through sky. Saying, Child, you are beautiful. Child, you are mine.

1

Girl House with Epigenetic Effect,
or, A Tumult of Flowers

Through a lit window in the soil, an unseen
garden. Ear to the ground & a whimper
   of blood.   The unholy histories of a thousand
       dresses   suddenly   clamoring against skull
& bone, clamoring with the heft of roses against
the eaves.  Girl, you bloom just the same, perpetually engaged
   in a long argument, blade
           held scrupulously
              to the neck. Nothing lets up because the blade
is you, is your mother, is the scent of marigolds
   balled into a fist.  Is—  every rain-swelled seed sunned
into shadow before another man makes the whole world
creak.   Upstairs, yours too a humble
   mouth, a tiny ache  burst  into a tumult
                     of flowers.

2

When a Man Cries, We Make Light of Our Own Laughter

Because it takes a woman more time than a man
to feel sentimental. For a man, every story, a war story.
Every story, an occasion for flowers. There are histories
of rivers & there are histories of men who cross them.
Men who feast upon the dramatic snow-swell of winter,
of even the ice. In the movies, it is always the woman
who watches the man watch his life flash before his eyes.
A man emerges profound & a woman beams at the discovery,
as if it were profound to love one’s family, as if a father
did not know in the other room, he could hear his children
singing. In the kitchen, a woman tends to flowers
& spoons soup, her hands perpetually smelling of metal.
She is beautiful because she is stoic, flooding history
with lessons that do not mistake country for kin.
When a man cries, this woman will draw his hand into hers
& caress his cheek, a gesture for which she is considered
strong. There is irony here, a hidden message. Look closer.

3

Existential Poem on a Monday

People die all the time on a Monday because the science behind it is so elegant. One more thing
crossed off the to-do list: brush your teeth, make coffee, catch a glimpse of your own ghost in the
kitchen. On time for once & well-dressed too! But wait, is this yours or someone else’s philosophy?
Because after work & walking to your car, a small child once tugged at the hem of your dress.
Told you Monday is the only day nearest & furthest the Sabbath. What a peculiar thing to say, you
thought. What a peculiar thing to find a child, happy & abandoned, in a parking lot. Deep down,
you wish to be that child. That good omen parachuted like canned soup from the sky. Good luck
with that, someone says. You weren’t very popular in high school, so it’s more than likely your
death, too, will be a matter of gossip. Friends will send your mother the wrong kind of flowers &
spell your name with an extra “e.” But she was so lovely, they’ll say—so kind. & your mother will
believe them because every death, as every sorrow, is as vague as the color blue. Egyptian blue.
Royal blue. Blue as the blue of Franz Marc’s horses. But you already knew that. As you knew your
own heart will never muster enough strength to keep you company. Which is why driving home,
you move slow past the scene of every accident just to see who’s dead.

4

Knitted Wings

Quiet in its jawing, winter settles upon the earth. The gunshot becomes the brushstroke & the birds,
lightly grazed, are broken. Dead leaves peek through snow like cut crusts of bread. Like tiny
sutures, like bird beaks. Winter, a violence that softens into its prey as a hand brought tenderly to
the forehead by a mother. Winter, the sudden blow. Winter, aspirin on the counter, the birds
bandaged & restored to the sky.

Or not.

Everything that happens in winter happens by candlelight. We see the burgeoning shadows, the
inelegant structures, the bones & not the meat. The way we know the sorrow of an animal without
any sign of a whimper, limp, or blood. The way even the best mothers can fuck a child up. Prepare
for her bird only knitted wings. As in another season when the snow stops & the rain stops & the
sky remembers its drought, in an open field, water sometimes helps fire along.

5

Feast

In Slovene, the month of February translates to the month
of cutting down trees. Also, the month of women tying a goat
to every stump. Because goats are tree-eaters & very useful
should a dying thing momentarily be tempted by life.

Half the world’s trees are said to be felled for reasons tied
to human survival. Naturally, we fail to see the ways in which
the goats are far braver than us, unflinching in their position
to gnaw & glut on another thing clinging to endure—what God

has done to women for centuries. From every stump, God’s
forgotten breath advancing through the outermost layers of stem
& root, through the tiniest shoots of green. More reason to believe
February the most intuitive & counterproductive month.

Because it takes seven to eight trees, or rather, an epic
of goats & women to produce enough oxygen for one person
to breathe an entire year. So tell me: how many devastations
before spring will it take to sustain us all?

6

Poem for Every Girl, or, A Brief History of Sunflowers

   As punishment for loving Apollo too much, Clytie, a nymph,
   was buried alive and transformed into a sunflower.

If in America we name only what we see,
is not every girl born  a ghost?

Not every girl buried alive for want of  anything,
asked to inhale  & exhale  her own failure

to blossom.  Clytie, sun-starved  seedling
of every handmaid, who, above ground, baskets

wildflowers & engages in the dreamiest arts.  My country
loves me,  my country loves me not.  My country

loves me. A chorus of girls beckoning the nymph  upright
through the earth.  Look there—  midday  & the sunflower

the only flower  to refuse  the shadows.  To refuse
to be named  or plucked,  swiveling its face upon each new

hour into the brassy  eye sockets  of the sun. Because
in America,  every girl  learns to look at the brightest sky

without breaking—  & to ration  a nation’s
petals  without mistaking self-sufficiency for hope.

7

Now That My Mother Has Apologized

In the bathroom mirror, the soft configuration of her face. Toweling off my hair or brushing my
teeth, it knows to startle, offering itself nightly in the surest flashes through mine. Eye through
eye, light through light, is this mercy or a muddle of stars? A flicker of my girl-life’s apocalypse.
I want to say I don’t care what my mother thinks of me now nor ever, but how could this be true
when our mothers are the only real gods? Even now at the sink, she resists my every attempt to
steady her, yet there she is looking back at me, warped to impossible perfection like one of Dali’s
ticking clocks. What is it I have been waiting for from this part ghost of a woman who insists on
tangling the threads? Until, in turning from the mirror, I see my mother, seeing me as I have so
badly wanted to be seen.

8

Dear Heroine, Dear Self

Set forth knowing your flame
is cradled inside your foot.
Forfeit your bravado for weeping,
your penchant for flowers.
Wipe any blood from the blade
of your hands & draw prayer
from the heat of your breath.
Bless the early womb. Bless
your mother, the body that once
provided for you a buffet table
fit for queens. Imagine this table
everywhere now & bring to it
your immunity to hunger. Yes,
the world will winter as will
your body’s blood. Prepare yourself.
Stain your face in dandelion
& carry springtime in the crook
of your neck. Trace elements
of your unborn children alighting
on the slick of your tongue.
They say the soul is in the image
& the soul is in the language.
There it is running from your mouth
& into eternity again & again
& again. Don’t you see? The task
of this life scoffs at survival.
The task of this life is no task at all.

9

The 89^th Constellation

It is rumored that when we speak,
   we speak the language of God—

a strange divinity of twig & berry
   loosed from the citadels of our tongues …

our bodies— now birds,
   constellated in the firmament.

Oh, how we animate inside the translucence
   of every eye.

We must be lovely indeed.

10

A Buffet Table Fit for Queens
— Winner of the Washburn Prize, 2022 —

Copyright © 2023 Susan L. Leary
Cover art: Tarry Not in the Garden by Jen Stein Hauptmann
Foreword by Laura Lee Washburn
Cover design by Diana Baltag
Book design and layout by Diana Baltag
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or republished without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Harbor Review
Joplin, MO 64870
harborreviewmagazine@gmail.com
www.harbor-review.com

Susan L. Leary

Susan L. Leary is the author of Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021) and the chapbook This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), which was a finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and a semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize with Slate Roof Press. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Tar River Poetry, Superstition Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Cherry Tree, The MacGuffin, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Pithead Chapel. She has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology, and she was a finalist for the 16th Mudfish Poetry Prize, judged by Marie Howe. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she also teaches Writing Studies.