The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Friday Poem on 11/03/22

We chose ‘Wind-up people’ by Jacqueline Schaalje as this week’s Friday Poem because we love its masterfully pared-back narrative and its delightfully surreal edge. Each vignette covers so much ground, and Schaalje explores her central metaphor — the clock as heart, as life force, as time ticking away at the span of each life — in fresh and interesting ways. The imagery is arresting and evocative from start to finish, and especially startling at the end — oh those birds!

Wind-up people

Coffee and cakes comforted us that morning. 
The seam of her knickers rolled out 
like spilt milk so I did some mending.   
Stay for lunch, my mother said, but I left, 
satisfied her clock was ticking
properly for the day.   

My father’s laparoscopic keyholes were irking 
his ribs. Right after lunch, we watched  
the eighth episode of Hit and Run.  
With Omer in the trunk and Assaf blowing  
his brains out behind the wheel, 
Dad’s clock wouldn’t have wound with 
all the violence in the world.  
Just the cup of espresso made it.  

I found my friend L down to 36 kilos  
hanging and pulling in PICC ropes, 
the hospital nurses determined to plunge 
liquids into her veins. Her clock was 
slowing and I got afraid.   

Then her boyfriend popped in and brushed 
her threads aside with his counterweight  
to kiss her. I watched as his careful winding
brought in her fluttering kite. 

Back home, family sat around the table, 
all expectant, clock ticking,
as if it were my birthday 
which maybe it was — if everyone 
didn’t drop so many crumbs
it could have felt this meal were my present.   

I tried to do some work 
that had to be turned in. Some digital  
scribbles, barely enough to wind down my boss’  
clients. She always says, 
Feel free to take them around the clock.

Drop everything now, come to bed, said my partner 
who was winding down and back up  
all by himself between the plush sheets. 
Before it’s too late, he said, thrashing his legs 
like in a treadmill.  
I’ll take over now, I said,  
and soon his clock began to chime.  

What’s the time, I cried.  
Let me see your face, he groaned. 
Shiny birds escaped our mouths.

Jacqueline Schaalje has published short fiction and poetry in the Massachusetts Review, Talking Writing, Free State Review, Frontier Magazine, Grist and Six Sentences, among others. Her stories and poems were finalists for the Epiphany Prize and in the Live Canon and New Guard Competitions. She has received scholarships at the Southampton Writers Conference and International Women’s Writing Guild. She is a member of the Israel Association for Writers in English, and is the current co-editor of their literary magazine arc. She earned her MA in English from the University of Amsterdam.

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