Purple IrisAuthor(s): Marianne BoruchSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1987), p. 66Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20156392 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 17:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Iowa Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.109 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 17:17:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Purple Iris

To cool off summer, we picked up fans

on my grandfather's porch. Winter, as if we could

invent it with our stories,

my brother's breathless lies: icebergs

grinding holes in our meager boats. He said

it froze us, solid.

Penguins looked on, without sympathy or amazement. We agreed: frozen so, we'd be

ice. We could see

right through each other.

I know that part's true. For now when we argue I can sit here opposite you in the kitchen

and see right through your ice

to the yard, its shimmer of maple, the lingering

lunging crabapple, past that

to the violet bed, its web of heart-shaped leaves

flickering like a pool. Then one dark iris,

probably there by accident, high as radar

on its filament stem. I look

through you and see it

a rinse of light, a perennial startle

of invention and courtesy, and I forget we are angry, forget we have done this

damage to ourselves.

66

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.109 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 17:17:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions