A Lot Like Louise Gluck (correction: a little like LG)

I take hold the dog's leash
but feel the tug at my own neck.
I look up, and I am three: knee-high
in Grandmother's Monroe parlor
mother of pearl mantle above
the fireplace, cold since Grandfather's
passing. I catch my reflection
inside a cup of Earl what's his name.
I think I don't like the shade
of lipstick stamped against its edge.

I yank the leash and, all at once,
the memory is smudged...
evidence on the collar of a shirt.
Round and round, I feel myself
chase my own tales.

and now some real Louise Gluck

Prism

I. Who can say what the world is? The world
is in flux, therefore
unreadable, the winds shifting,
the great plates invisibly shifting and changing--

2. Dirt. Fragments
of blistered rock. On which
the exposed heart constructs
a house, a memory: the gardens
manageable, small in scale, the beds
damp at the sea's edge--

3.
As one takes in
an enemy, through these windows
one takes in
the world:

here is the kitchen, here the darkened study.

Meaning: I am master here.

4.
When you fall in love, my sister said,
its' like being struck by lightning.

She was speaking hopefully,
to draw the attention of the lightning.

I reminded her that she was repeating exactly
our mother's formula, which she and I

had discussed in childhood, because we both felt
that what we were looking at in the adults

were the effects not of lightning
but of the electric chair.