Art: Winter Sky On A Shallow by Léni Paquet-Morante

 

 

 

Because the Sign Was Missing

 

Because the sign was missing, we missed the turn and had to turn back, back to a narrow dirt
road veering blindly into thickset woods, and as we went, plunging deeper and deeper
through the winding tree-shadow, a light rain began to fall. We were searching for the
garden, which was somewhere on that road, or so we’d been told.

At length we reached a row of gates, but through which gate were we to enter? The Gate of
Indecision beckoned, as did the Gate of Felicity, the Gate of Humility, the Gate of Delight,
even the Gate of Mirth and Sorrow, since at times we had felt the weight of each. When rain
began to beat down harder, we ran for the closest gate, the Gate of Chastity. Perhaps we
were longing to be pure again.

Or perhaps the garden was longing for us, because once we pried open the gate and passed
in silence through the stone arch, once we began picking our way over flight after flight of
rough hewn steps, the terrain rising and falling under our feet, the trail forking every so often
and rambling off through the flowering woods, all lush and wild and strange, the rain
stopped and we felt a certain heaviness fall away, ourselves lush and wild and strange.

We had no idea where we were or where we were going but wandered in a spirit of
suspended expectation, letting the stones lead. The garden was in full bloom and smelled of
the sweetness of turned earth. Above our heads trees arched like ribs in a cathedral ceiling,
and birdcall followed us, as did the whispered conversation of water. Around every corner
we came upon a startling new scene, like set pieces in a drama, each with its own intricate
tapestry of leaf and blossom, its own body of water, a fishpond or wading pool or fountain
or waterfall, and always a place to sit, an encouragement to stop, to rest, to contemplate.

Often there was a long banquet table surrounded by chairs, as if at any moment a feast might
appear, the table crammed with goblets of wine and steaming platters, the chairs clamoring
with rivals and friends, if only we wished it. We wandered over bridges, in and out of tree
houses, through multi-storied towers, a room hidden behind a waterfall, a giant chess board,
its massive wooden kings and queens poised for battle.

As the sun climbed down rungs of low-slung clouds, the whispers of water ceased. Someone
had turned off the fountains, the waterfalls. In the ensuing silence frogs started to sing. We
kept to the path until it ended at an expanse of green, which sloped down to the lake.

Slipping off our shoes, we tiptoed barefoot over the cool grass and shucked our clothes and
lowered ourselves into the lake, which was as warm as tub water. We swam past the rope
swing, past the wooden pier and the barge, past the tiny island crowned with table and chairs,
past the floating dock, past the bluffs and the dam, past the canoes and kayaks, swam in that
murky warmth all the way out to childhood. Not the childhood of our past but our future
childhood, the childhood the gardener had given us, the childhood we still dreamed of
sometimes, curled up alone in our beds, with their creased sheets and creaking springs.

 

 

 

 

There I Was

 

There I was at the garden party, the sun atremble at trees’ edge, the women in fine flowered
frocks, the men in straw hats and seersucker, champagne flutes fitted to their lips, rose and
azalea bushes dressed buddingly in their best, and behind me the buzz of bees, a good
natured hum hovering over the garden. I set my flute on a glass-topped table and wandered
away from the women gathered to gossip and admire, the men talking golf and politics, my
skirts feathering across my skin like curtains in the warm, honey-scented breezes, blown in as
if to complement the season.

I was drowsy, distracted. Unformed notions flashed into consciousness and out again, like
the sunlight dappled among the blossoms. Not far from the party I knelt in the cool grass,
the bees behind me grown louder, more insistent, the way the murmurings of a restless
audience will swell in anticipation of a performance.

I glanced over my shoulder, and as if they had been waiting, the bees lifted, like dust shook
from a tapestry, lifted in a dense veil of noise. Then they came. Like a well-aimed arrow the
bees came, buzzing now quite loudly, one might even say angrily. They came for me.

I looked back at the party in alarm, tried to stand, to signal the women for help, but no one
noticed me, or the bees, which all at once were upon me, and I among them, surrounded so
utterly I could no longer see, as if night’s lid had closed over the garden. I braced myself to
be stung. I dared not move, nor so much as breathe, the bees’ heavy drone enwrapping me
as a shroud. I thought to pray, but to whom?

All of a sudden it was light. I was untouched. Only then did my heart start stuttering in fear,
for though the bees had passed me by, the buzzing remained, insistent and pressingly close,
as if inside my ears.

Before I could exhale, the bees returned, coalescing before me in a cloud the very shape of
my kneeling body, like an image in a warped mirror. I stared at this dark reflection with a
senseless calm, awestruck and curious, aware of the danger yet helpless in the presence of
such a powerful, terrifying beauty—numberless, electric, menacing. I hoped that if I made
no move to hurt the bees, they would not hurt me.

Suddenly they scattered, but after a moment they knelt again before me in another droning
cloud, this one even thicker, closer. The livid sound of their buzzing was so loud I could
hear nothing else, not even my own fear. As we faced one another, I and the bees, I had no
thoughts at all, not even of death, which felt closer and farther away than ever before, I lost
all notion of my body, all notion of time, staring into that bee-self, the self staring into me,
until at last the bees scattered once more, streaming darkly into the air like smoke after an
explosion.

Then they were gone, the buzzing with them. I staggered up from the grass and ran back to
the party, the guests still gossiping, still sipping at their flutes. Did you see that? I asked, but
nobody had seen a thing, not a one had looked up.

 

 

 

 

Nothing But the Dog

 

My therapist calls it “mental treadmilling,” the way my thinking races and races
without taking me anywhere. Always at night, when sleep has left me for dead. My grocery list
leads to buying leads to consumerism leads to capitalist greed leads to worker exploitation leads to
class warfare leads to famine, rape, murder, my whole body now cold, rigid, still. No logic can
bring me back, no hopeful narrative, no memories or wishes, nothing but the dog, his husky
breathing, his back warm against mine, his twitching and soft whimpers as he dreams, surely,
of digging up a bone.

 

 

 

 

The Missing

 

When we left our fathers’ houses, we emptied our pockets, little by little, of what
once was ours: dolls and hairbows, hairless legs, miniatures, high-pitched tunes, unlocked
doors, untroubled reflections, fancies, saviors, treats, trust. And our very names, we dropped
those, too, and they litter the ground in our wake, like last autumn’s leaves. Can you hear
that? It’s the sound of your boots as you trample those leaves, in search of us, the missing,
though we are nowhere on this road you travel, nor on any other you’re liable to take.

 

 

 

 

Fear

 

And they woke to find that their bodies were empty. And fear poured in, filling up
the space where they had been. Yes, it was fear behind their eyes, fear in their blood, fear in
their fists, their chests. A whole world of human-shaped vessels filled with fear, like urns full
of ashes. When they spoke, it was fear speaking. And when they fought, that, too, was fear.
Fear heated up the air they breathed, the water they drank. With so much fear, how will we get
back inside ourselves? they wondered, but they were afraid of the answer.

 

 

 

 

About the author:

Lauren K. Watel My prose poetry recently appeared in Ploughshares, guest edited by Ilya Kaminsky, and is forthcoming in The New York Review of Books, The Hudson Review, Literary Imagination, Lake Effect, Sugar House Review and Birmingham Poetry Review. A flash fiction was recently published in Pithead Chapel. My essay “Hunger” was awarded the honorable mention in the Prairie Schooner 2021 Summer Essay Contest and will be published later this year. Other essays have recently appeared in Five Points and World Literature Today. My prose poem honoring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was set to music by Pulitzer-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and the piece premiered last fall at the Dallas Symphony. My prose poetry has also appeared in The Paris Review, The Nation, Narrative, Tin House, Antioch Review and The Massachusetts Review, among others.

 

In the artist’s words:

Léni Paquet-Morante is a New Jersey based painter and sculptor. She has a BFA in Painting from Mason Gross School of Art and studied sculpture at Johnson Atelier Technical School of Sculpture.

Léni has exhibited in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York since 1984. Solo shows include Johnson & Johnson Corporate Headquarters, Princeton University, Mercer County Community College, and Passaic County Community College. She is listed in the Women Artists of America National Directory and is registered with the Canada Arts Council.

Léni was awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Artists-in-Education Residency Grant in 1986; the Lacawac Field Sanctuary AIR in 2017; and a Diderot Grant for the Chateau d’Orquevaux AIR in 2019. Her work can be found in private, institutional, and public collections internationally.