Leveler Poetry Journal
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At night, by marriage:


To be honorable


in return for the baby that in the night he said it died & the hard

ground but he dug the hole & no not to show me where


& no not to say how


I was a fool to touch the dirt, & with my bare hands, & to dress in his clothes

in secret, & meet him in the grain for the dress


Why did he want me to be married in the barn & the hole already dug


I went to the barn where we went

often

the barn was dark & it filled with grain

was when I went to my mother


I went to her through her eyes, which were tunnels & she saw me

though she slept


I pointed to the sealing wax up under my dress

& the night after that

her fear was a seed so I went to her again


I thought the grain was a trail to help me get back, but it was

still in the dark where I started


Finally my father makes the rope so I showed him the rope

& he gathered up the spade in both hands


& by this time the grain removed


I’d been seen & the teeth too all forced out of my mouth, but


the dress was perfect is how they knew




Lisa Ciccarello

levelheaded: At night, by marriage:


Lisa Ciccarello’s “At night, by marriage:” presents an eerie scene. In part this is achieved through the poet’s awkward syntax (ie. “in return for the baby that in the night he said it died”). While we can easily decode this line, it isn’t spoken by a master of the English language. It’s spoken by someone who has a buried baby on her physical and emotional landscape.


The events of this poem make partial sense. The speaker gives us specific details, but leaves out others that are needed to make the narrative clear. For example, the first line of the poem presents the speaker’s reason for marrying—“To be honorable.” But this statement is confounded by the details that follow in lines two and three. Whose baby died? How? And who is this “he” that “dug the hole”? Regardless, it is as if the speaker is fulfilling her or someone else’s need to offset death with a union.


Ciccarello’s strategy of including/omitting specifics makes us active readers, as we fill in the details surrounding the narrative. Perhaps we read “he” as the speaker’s father. Or maybe “he” is the soon-to-be husband.  In either case, her decision to “dress in his clothes / in secret” is psychologically interesting. So is the fact that “the dress” is housed in a barn, seemingly safeguarded by “him.” The phrase “meet him in the grain for the dress,” (emphasis on “for”) suggests that donning this particular outfit is the real reason the speaker decides to wed. No doubt “the dress” is a symbol for something—perhaps for having the opportunity to be beautiful even in the wake of tragedy, for fulfilling some complicated but child-like fairytale, for being pure.


Ciccarello’s use of simple language with far-reaching metaphorical prospects adds layers to the story. While we understand “the hole already dug” is for the deceased child, this image may also be a foreboding sign for the marriage. The cinematic phrase “the barn was dark & it filled with grain” turns a blackened room to gold. Yet the space is still creepy, a huge bright pile rising up in contrast to a small, dark hole in the dirt.  With phrases like “her eyes, which were tunnels” and “the sealing wax up under my dress,” Ciccarello uses sharp visual images to introduce more metaphorical complexities.


It would take a much longer essay to explore all of the metaphorical content of “At night, by marriage:.” We don’t know where the speaker might want to get back to, or why the father “makes the rope” in the present tense. We’re not sure why exactly this rope is in play at all. Is it looping into a noose or bonding two people in matrimony? Are the teeth “all forced out” of the speaker’s mouth grotesque or simply a feigned smile?  And what, finally, is it that “they” learn from the sight of this perfect dress? That everything is all right, or that for such beauty to occur there must have been tragedy?



– The Editors