Mrs. Howison from the Highlands;
her heaven chime with Devon,
mine with midden.
Mrs. McCanna, no stranger to a fish supper,
skin clammy with salt'n'vinegar,
declared me out-of-order.
Mr. Beckham replaced his stroboscope
with a boy, propped on a box,
set to shout "flash" every five seonds.
Mrs. Cash balanced breasts and maths
on my shoulder until I keeled over
on first contact with her mouthwash.
These were my teachers
and I have spent my life unlearning
every lesson they taught me.
Today, in a grocery store, a stone's throw
from Turin's multi-ethnic centre,
a child barged into me at the fish-counter.
Scusa, I said, with enough sarcasm
to poison an ocean.
He didn't even look at me.
Foreigner of shit! he replied
in BBC vowels, and I wondered
who had taught him that one.
:: Rob A. Mackenzie, in qaartsiluni
5.24.2010
5.17.2010
Old Professions
POET: I told them to look for the right words in the bluest place. Some turned to the sky. Some observed an odd bruise on an old one. My star students closed their eyes. I knew even if they did not find words, they found sparkling black.
CARPENTER: There were no new nails. We burned dwn houses and sifted ashes to reclaim old nails. But the houses had been fixed with wooden pegs. So I told the boys to make nails of forks and spoons and wedding rings.
CLOCKSMITH: One was two and two was three. What's the difference? One hour was no better or worse than another. Only the shadow of a dying tree remained loyal to time. The girls were most stubborn. How do you make twenty-five out of twenty-four? They pouted.
COBBLER: If you run out of cowhide, there's always pigskin. Or the hides from dogs or goats or sheep. If it came down to it, you could peel your skin off your own thighs for shoes, but I wouldn't recommend it.
SINGER: It was easy to teach them to sing. It was less easy to teach them to sing with joy. How could I teach them something I didn't know? My melodies were suspected. We sang songs of frogs, of cranes, of bats.
COBBLER: The fact was, we didn't have anywhere to walk to anyway.
CLOCKSMITH: And since we didn't know what day it was, why track the hours?
CARPENTER: Our team built seventeen houses but there was nobody to live in even one of them.
POET: We gnawed on the words we did not forget. The words became smaller but never lost their flavour.
:: Tammy Ho Lai-ming & Reid Mitchell, in qaartsiluni
CARPENTER: There were no new nails. We burned dwn houses and sifted ashes to reclaim old nails. But the houses had been fixed with wooden pegs. So I told the boys to make nails of forks and spoons and wedding rings.
CLOCKSMITH: One was two and two was three. What's the difference? One hour was no better or worse than another. Only the shadow of a dying tree remained loyal to time. The girls were most stubborn. How do you make twenty-five out of twenty-four? They pouted.
COBBLER: If you run out of cowhide, there's always pigskin. Or the hides from dogs or goats or sheep. If it came down to it, you could peel your skin off your own thighs for shoes, but I wouldn't recommend it.
SINGER: It was easy to teach them to sing. It was less easy to teach them to sing with joy. How could I teach them something I didn't know? My melodies were suspected. We sang songs of frogs, of cranes, of bats.
COBBLER: The fact was, we didn't have anywhere to walk to anyway.
CLOCKSMITH: And since we didn't know what day it was, why track the hours?
CARPENTER: Our team built seventeen houses but there was nobody to live in even one of them.
POET: We gnawed on the words we did not forget. The words became smaller but never lost their flavour.
:: Tammy Ho Lai-ming & Reid Mitchell, in qaartsiluni
5.10.2010
It Was My First Nursing Job
and I was stupid in it. I thought a doctor would not be unkind.
One wouldn't wait for a laboring woman to dilate to ten cm.
He'd brace one hand up his patient's vagina,
clamp the other on her pregnant belly, and force the fetus
through an eight-centimeter cervix.
She tore, of course. Bled.
Stellate lacerations extend from the cervix
like an asterisk. The staff nurses stormed and hissed
but the head nurse shrugged, He doesn't like to wait around.
No other doctor witnessed what he did. The man was an elder
in his church. He chattered and smiled broadly as he worked.
He wore the biggest gloves we could stock.
It was my first real job and I was scared in it.
One night a patient of his was admitted
bleeding. The charge nurse said, He won't rip her.
You take this one.
So I took her.
She quickly delivered a dead baby boy.
Not long dead--you could tell by the skin, intact.
But long enough.
When I wrapped him in a blanket, the doctor flipped open the cover
to let the mother view the body, according to custom.
The baby lay beside her.
He lay stretched out and still.
What a pity, the doctor said.
He seized the baby's penis between his own forefinger and thumb.
It was the first time I had ever seen a male not circumcised
and I was taken aback by the beauty of it.
Look, said the doctor. A little boy. Just what we wanted.
His hand, huge on the child,held the penis as if he'd found
a lovecharm hidden in his grandmother's linen.
And then he dropped it.
The mother didn't make a sound.
When the doctor left, she said to me in a flat voice
I called and told him I was bleeding bad.
He told me not to worry.
I don't remember what I said. Just that
when I escorted her husband from the lobby
the doctor had already gone home. The new father followed me
with a joyful strut. I thought Sweet Jesus Christ
--Did the doctor speak to you?
--No ma'am, the father said.
I said quick-as-I-could-so-I-wouldn't-have-to-think--
The baby didn't make it.
The man doubled over. I told him all wrong.
I would do it all over again.
Say--
Please, sir. Sit down. I'm so very sorry to tell you--
No. It's been sixteen years.
I would say, I am your witness.
No. I have never told the whole truth.
Forgive me.
It was my first job
and I was lost in it.
:: Belle Waring, Dark Blonde (Sarabande, 1997)
One wouldn't wait for a laboring woman to dilate to ten cm.
He'd brace one hand up his patient's vagina,
clamp the other on her pregnant belly, and force the fetus
through an eight-centimeter cervix.
She tore, of course. Bled.
Stellate lacerations extend from the cervix
like an asterisk. The staff nurses stormed and hissed
but the head nurse shrugged, He doesn't like to wait around.
No other doctor witnessed what he did. The man was an elder
in his church. He chattered and smiled broadly as he worked.
He wore the biggest gloves we could stock.
It was my first real job and I was scared in it.
One night a patient of his was admitted
bleeding. The charge nurse said, He won't rip her.
You take this one.
So I took her.
She quickly delivered a dead baby boy.
Not long dead--you could tell by the skin, intact.
But long enough.
When I wrapped him in a blanket, the doctor flipped open the cover
to let the mother view the body, according to custom.
The baby lay beside her.
He lay stretched out and still.
What a pity, the doctor said.
He seized the baby's penis between his own forefinger and thumb.
It was the first time I had ever seen a male not circumcised
and I was taken aback by the beauty of it.
Look, said the doctor. A little boy. Just what we wanted.
His hand, huge on the child,held the penis as if he'd found
a lovecharm hidden in his grandmother's linen.
And then he dropped it.
The mother didn't make a sound.
When the doctor left, she said to me in a flat voice
I called and told him I was bleeding bad.
He told me not to worry.
I don't remember what I said. Just that
when I escorted her husband from the lobby
the doctor had already gone home. The new father followed me
with a joyful strut. I thought Sweet Jesus Christ
--Did the doctor speak to you?
--No ma'am, the father said.
I said quick-as-I-could-so-I-wouldn't-have-to-think--
The baby didn't make it.
The man doubled over. I told him all wrong.
I would do it all over again.
Say--
Please, sir. Sit down. I'm so very sorry to tell you--
No. It's been sixteen years.
I would say, I am your witness.
No. I have never told the whole truth.
Forgive me.
It was my first job
and I was lost in it.
:: Belle Waring, Dark Blonde (Sarabande, 1997)
4.26.2010
Green and Red, Verde y Rojo
for Jacobo Mena
At night, when Beacon Hill
is a private army
of antique gas lamps
glowing in single file,
Jacobo vacuum-cleans
the law office of Adams and Blinn,
established 1856, with the founder's
wire-rimmed Protestant face
still supervising the labor,
a restored photograph in the window.
Jacobo's face
is indio-guatemalteco,
bored as the work,
round as worry,
heavy as waiting.
Guatemala is green and red,
green volcanoes, red birds,
green like rivers in rain,
red like coffee beans at harvest,
the river-green and quetzal bird-red
of his paintings,
perfiles del silencio.
Testimony of death-squad threats
by telephone, shrilled in the dark,
the flash of fear's adrenaline,
and family stolen with the military's greed
for bodies, all recorded by stenographers,
then dismissed:
Guatemala leaves no proof,
and immigration judges are suspicious
only of the witnesses, who stagger and crawl
through America. Asylum denied,
appeal pending.
As he waits, Jacobo paints
in green and red, verde y rojo,
and at night he cleans the office
of Adams and Blinn,
where Guatemala cannot be felt
by the arrogrant handshake of lawyers,
where there is no green or red,
only his shadow blending
with the other shadows in the room,
and all the hours of the night
to picture the executioners.
:: Martin Espada, Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction
At night, when Beacon Hill
is a private army
of antique gas lamps
glowing in single file,
Jacobo vacuum-cleans
the law office of Adams and Blinn,
established 1856, with the founder's
wire-rimmed Protestant face
still supervising the labor,
a restored photograph in the window.
Jacobo's face
is indio-guatemalteco,
bored as the work,
round as worry,
heavy as waiting.
Guatemala is green and red,
green volcanoes, red birds,
green like rivers in rain,
red like coffee beans at harvest,
the river-green and quetzal bird-red
of his paintings,
perfiles del silencio.
Testimony of death-squad threats
by telephone, shrilled in the dark,
the flash of fear's adrenaline,
and family stolen with the military's greed
for bodies, all recorded by stenographers,
then dismissed:
Guatemala leaves no proof,
and immigration judges are suspicious
only of the witnesses, who stagger and crawl
through America. Asylum denied,
appeal pending.
As he waits, Jacobo paints
in green and red, verde y rojo,
and at night he cleans the office
of Adams and Blinn,
where Guatemala cannot be felt
by the arrogrant handshake of lawyers,
where there is no green or red,
only his shadow blending
with the other shadows in the room,
and all the hours of the night
to picture the executioners.
:: Martin Espada, Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction
4.19.2010
Swing Low
My sister, wearing a white turban,
sang Swing Low
as we picked up sticks
in early August
in a field my father wanted to plow
for the planting of soy
that would attract quail,
which he would shoot.
My sister and I imagined
trying to eat dead birds
at our father’s table, watching
for the crunch of shot
between our teeth.
We could never stomach
murdered food, food
that had been trapped
on a hot day, like us.
So my sister sang slave songs
even though we knew
it was wrong.
We are not black in my family.
My father is the whitest
among us.
:: Faulkner Fox, in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review #7 (1995)
sang Swing Low
as we picked up sticks
in early August
in a field my father wanted to plow
for the planting of soy
that would attract quail,
which he would shoot.
My sister and I imagined
trying to eat dead birds
at our father’s table, watching
for the crunch of shot
between our teeth.
We could never stomach
murdered food, food
that had been trapped
on a hot day, like us.
So my sister sang slave songs
even though we knew
it was wrong.
We are not black in my family.
My father is the whitest
among us.
:: Faulkner Fox, in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review #7 (1995)
4.12.2010
Cry Room, St. Mark's Church
In the back behind smudged glass we sat
with three other mothers and their kids.
No one was in fact crying. Or reciting
prayers. We could have been looking in
the window of the A & P or K-Mart. I was old
enough not to consider crying an option.
My little sister crawled beneath the kneeler
and fell asleep. I crouched awkward in the pew.
To be caught in the cry room—I wouldn’t hear
the end of it. Everyone stared down the usher
when he came in to shake his collection basket
under our noses. 1963. I’d made my first
communion and begun saving my best lies
for the confessional booth. A room for sins.
A room to cry in. I watched my mother’s head
loll back, snap forward. Why were we there?
Was someone going to bring us yet another
baby to take home? One woman entered late
and sat in the last of the four pews, wedging
herself into the corner to sob uncontrollably.
Other mothers stared out the window
at the muffled mass as if waiting for the good parts.
Mine sighed and yanked us up and out
of there. We walked home in a fluster of spring wind.
I was hungry for a doughnut or two. Glazed,
sticky in the flimsy cardboard box with the see-through
plastic window. Did we stay long enough for it to count?
I asked. My mother carried my sister in one arm
and puffed on a cigarette with the fervor
of the newly-converted. We passed the Powder
Puff hair salon and the boarded up Dairy Queen
and the ill-fated slot-car track and the ditch
they found Larry Jarman in. I didn’t cry then
and I’m not crying now. God—you had to love
the dude. God, not Larry. It might’ve been Larry’s
mother crying in the back. Or Mary Magdalene’s
distant niece. Or the victim of another immaculate
conception. All I know is that I bugged my mother
into a frenzy till she bought the doughnuts
at Oaza bakery near the drive-thru car wash
and threw the box at me and told me to shut up.
My older brothers had lied about going to early
mass. I don’t know where they went, but they wouldn’t
take me with them. My mother believed in miracles
and my sleeping father believed in the almighty dollar
and the nearly almighty cents. I at e two doughnuts
before we got home. The sweet glaze stuck to my lips
and face. I confess to a smile and a taunting boogaloo
on the sidewalk as my brothers raced out the door
to snatch the box. My mother dropped my sister
onto the stoop, then fell to the dead brown grass
and smiled her own wistful boogaloo. You had to love him
or hate him or pretend or believe he didn’t exist. The cry
room stunk with soiled diapers and sweat. The hymnals
had pages ripped out, drooled and doodled on. The truth
was elusive. Why would he want criers in a separate room?
What about a room for laughers? No one laughed
in church. Even when the priest—any priest—tried out
a joke. Are there any good jokes that don’t have a cruelty
to them? Cigarettes weren’t as good as I imagined.
We haunted ourselves in the reflection of the cry room glass.
My tiny grandmother in her tiny room watched “Mass
for Shut-ins” on her tiny TV. She might have been crying,
depending on the pain. She was my second death after Larry.
Nobody explained about Larry till I was old enough
to understand. The church stretched yellow police tape
around our lives like those in fancy stores where you couldn’t
touch a thing. Usually, some kid started bawling, but not that day.
Oh, the sweetness of the glaze,
and how the greed made my mother smile.
:: Jim Daniels, in Green Mountains Review (18:2, 2005)
with three other mothers and their kids.
No one was in fact crying. Or reciting
prayers. We could have been looking in
the window of the A & P or K-Mart. I was old
enough not to consider crying an option.
My little sister crawled beneath the kneeler
and fell asleep. I crouched awkward in the pew.
To be caught in the cry room—I wouldn’t hear
the end of it. Everyone stared down the usher
when he came in to shake his collection basket
under our noses. 1963. I’d made my first
communion and begun saving my best lies
for the confessional booth. A room for sins.
A room to cry in. I watched my mother’s head
loll back, snap forward. Why were we there?
Was someone going to bring us yet another
baby to take home? One woman entered late
and sat in the last of the four pews, wedging
herself into the corner to sob uncontrollably.
Other mothers stared out the window
at the muffled mass as if waiting for the good parts.
Mine sighed and yanked us up and out
of there. We walked home in a fluster of spring wind.
I was hungry for a doughnut or two. Glazed,
sticky in the flimsy cardboard box with the see-through
plastic window. Did we stay long enough for it to count?
I asked. My mother carried my sister in one arm
and puffed on a cigarette with the fervor
of the newly-converted. We passed the Powder
Puff hair salon and the boarded up Dairy Queen
and the ill-fated slot-car track and the ditch
they found Larry Jarman in. I didn’t cry then
and I’m not crying now. God—you had to love
the dude. God, not Larry. It might’ve been Larry’s
mother crying in the back. Or Mary Magdalene’s
distant niece. Or the victim of another immaculate
conception. All I know is that I bugged my mother
into a frenzy till she bought the doughnuts
at Oaza bakery near the drive-thru car wash
and threw the box at me and told me to shut up.
My older brothers had lied about going to early
mass. I don’t know where they went, but they wouldn’t
take me with them. My mother believed in miracles
and my sleeping father believed in the almighty dollar
and the nearly almighty cents. I at e two doughnuts
before we got home. The sweet glaze stuck to my lips
and face. I confess to a smile and a taunting boogaloo
on the sidewalk as my brothers raced out the door
to snatch the box. My mother dropped my sister
onto the stoop, then fell to the dead brown grass
and smiled her own wistful boogaloo. You had to love him
or hate him or pretend or believe he didn’t exist. The cry
room stunk with soiled diapers and sweat. The hymnals
had pages ripped out, drooled and doodled on. The truth
was elusive. Why would he want criers in a separate room?
What about a room for laughers? No one laughed
in church. Even when the priest—any priest—tried out
a joke. Are there any good jokes that don’t have a cruelty
to them? Cigarettes weren’t as good as I imagined.
We haunted ourselves in the reflection of the cry room glass.
My tiny grandmother in her tiny room watched “Mass
for Shut-ins” on her tiny TV. She might have been crying,
depending on the pain. She was my second death after Larry.
Nobody explained about Larry till I was old enough
to understand. The church stretched yellow police tape
around our lives like those in fancy stores where you couldn’t
touch a thing. Usually, some kid started bawling, but not that day.
Oh, the sweetness of the glaze,
and how the greed made my mother smile.
:: Jim Daniels, in Green Mountains Review (18:2, 2005)
4.05.2010
Emma Waits Out a Spring Snow
We sure had some snow.
So many wrecks, all over
the road, down ditches
and spun out in fields
like cars which had gotten
loose without their drivers.
Didn’t go out ourselves,
only for the mail or to feed
the horses, and Will does that.
All I do is crochet and cook.
Will goes out to feed the cats,
two nice black females. One
meets him right at the door.
Before the snow Will had onions
and lettuce up, and some peas.
Also have tomato plants but
we kept them indoors. Now
the Easter flowers are coming
through. I wonder why I quit
going to church. Been all
of forty years now. Everything
might be froze—it’s all snowed
over. My mother would say that
early planting was like trying
to get ahead of God.
:: Naton Leslie, Emma Saves Her Life (2007)
So many wrecks, all over
the road, down ditches
and spun out in fields
like cars which had gotten
loose without their drivers.
Didn’t go out ourselves,
only for the mail or to feed
the horses, and Will does that.
All I do is crochet and cook.
Will goes out to feed the cats,
two nice black females. One
meets him right at the door.
Before the snow Will had onions
and lettuce up, and some peas.
Also have tomato plants but
we kept them indoors. Now
the Easter flowers are coming
through. I wonder why I quit
going to church. Been all
of forty years now. Everything
might be froze—it’s all snowed
over. My mother would say that
early planting was like trying
to get ahead of God.
:: Naton Leslie, Emma Saves Her Life (2007)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)