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Train Refrain–Don’t As(k)

November 12, 2012

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Train Refrain–Don’t As(k)

So, I moan upon the train,
refrain of work week:
Why is it why is it why
sit I? Until each cheek
is less than sleek–
Sure, I’m sure I won’t regain

lines that never reached the plane
the vain label chic–
but must I sit and fit my–
slit my– The word I seek
is not quite “seat,”
nor rhymes “in the,” nor “a pain.”

******************************
I’m actually blessed with a beautiful train ride some days of the week but despite the view from the window it’s long and seats are–shall we say ‘worn out’–
and to while away the stiffness could not resist the challenge from Kerry O’Connor of Real Toads to try a very complicated rhyming syllabic form invented by Louis MacNeice.

(Reading note -as with virtually all my poems – pauses only come with punctuation and not at ends of lines.  Thanks.  It’ll make more sense that way!)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 20 Comments

11th Day, Month (photo)

November 11, 2012

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This somehow felt to me like a November 11th kind of photo.

I am back to Nanowrimo now, more or less. May post pics, but trying to focus on November novel word count. Since I find myself writing in a notebook mainly at this point, this will be hard to compute! (Needless to say, type). But you can only do what you can do, I guess.

Categories: Country weekend, Uncategorized
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Comments: 7 Comments

“Joining Forces” – Truce (Delivered)

November 10, 2012

Joining Forces

There is always the watcher, the one who espies
inside, slyly
analytic, silent
except when snark.
Though for hours, she’d tried
to decamp,
to flee the body that we share (ensnared
by pain), to pull out
of any continguity
with lower torso. Whining
well before the Irish nurse crooned push,
push the baby, that all
was going wrong–impossible for her, the mistress
of ‘should-be,’ to believe so much pain
not terribly incorrect–

Then, when all did
go wrong, the knell
of my wired belly slowing
to the low thuds of the inconceivably
inexorable–oxygen
wrung from room and umbilical cord and only
in those seconds after life and flesh hardened beyond
what could be borne, unleashing, briefly, the
flutter of caught bird’s heart–
push push push push
now–

Straddling contractions-1-2-3-
they–LIFT– maneuvered us urgently
into the OR–push
push push push–
while she, peering through face-clasped hands,
crouched in the ceiling corner
of my brain’s buzzing
flourescents–

Overhead, masks aimed metal shells
of high-tubed light–I grabbed her by hunched–
you’ve got to–
just this once–
push push push push–
and she–
and she–
and she–
gave me
our all.

*********************************

Here’s a reading of the poem, which is the true story of the birth of my first child.

As a “process note,” the wired belly refers to the fetal monitor which conveys the sounds of the baby’s heartbeat (all those thuds and flutters.)  Contractions make the pregnant stomach unbelievably hard.  Tangled cord can cut off  O2.

I wrote the poem for my prompt of “truce” for dVerse Poets Pub, a community of wonderful poets, which I am hosting today.  Check it out!  I am also linking to Emily Wieranga’s Imperfect Prose (about childbirth).  

And also, my books!  Poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). 1 Mississippi -counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, orNose Dive. Nose Dive is available on Kindle for just 99 cents! Nose Dive really is very funny and light hearted, and 1 Mississippi is a lot of fun for little teeny kids.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 50 Comments

Thanks! And Cherry Pie!

November 7, 2012

Washington and Cherry Pie

A quick thanks to all who bore with me through this election cycle, and most of all to this country.

I have at times been reticent to post political views on this blog.  There is, of course, the fear of offending people.

But a larger fear has been, well, of getting into some kind of trouble.  Professional, political–you name it–trouble.

Some times that hesitancy may be sensible. But when it’s truly fear – a fear that partisanship is so strong that people on the other side will simply not forgive me or like me or read me, or hire me–then I kind of shiver inside.

Because if people are fearful of writing about their beliefs, it will be very difficult to maintain democracy.  (It will also be very hard to write anything very interesting.)

I’m not saying everyone should go around shouting all the time!  And some forms of speaking out are violent, inflammatory, dishonest and really not very useful, even if legal exercises of first amendment rights.

I suspect that I’ve bordered more on the boring than the inflammatory.  Still, I just want to say – thanks.  To you who agree, and especially to you who disagree.  For reading, commenting, and simply being kind.

And to you whose candidate lost, I really do know how very stinging and sour and awful that feeling is.  All I can ask is that you believe that those on this side are as sincere and well-meaning as you believe yourselves to be.

And to those on my side, come on!  Be gracious.

I’m not sure what George Washington and Cherry Pie have to do with all of this, other than the fact that both, like the right to vote and assemble, write and draw, are things (errr… people and things) for which I am supremely thankful.

 

PS – Adding this later – It’s not great to gloat, but I also think acrimony will be worsened if people try to deny the victory.  To say for example that it is a narrow popular vote victory is not mathematically or historically true (if one looks at past popular votes)–it’s a victory of millions of votes, far wider than any George W. Bush popular vote victory.  (Of course, Bush lost popular vote in 2000.)

Categories: news, Uncategorized
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Trying To Keep It Light On Election Day! (Sonnet) (Not Nano-ing At this Exact Moment)

November 5, 2012

Post-Eden

Before the sky, a lovely pale, a boy,
tall on glistening grass, tosses a ball,
and I wonder why it is that joy
is not simply inhaled.  Is it the Fall
that keeps us from feeling how it lines
the air we breathe?  Is it that first loss
that keeps us toiling within the confines
of our skins, unheeding unhidden cost?
A soft haze, like a blessing, nestles on
the sea, mutes the horizon, brings the far near.
So much within reach.  The brain wrestles on
its hardscrabble way, yet slowly fear
unwinds, diminished by sky, sea, view.
An inner hand makes the catch, more too.

*****************************************

Ah.  Why is it that joy is not simply inhaled?

In my case, it is partly because I am endlessly fretting.  This evening, the eve of the election, however, I  am feeling so much better–so very much more joyful –  because I’ve made a committment to get up super early and get myself to a swing state where I will work as a poll monitor, helping to people to avoid being disenfranchised.   So hopefully I’ll be able to get where I am supposed to be, and hopefully you will to!

The above is an older sonnet which, if I have access to internet, I also hope to link to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.  (And I’m sorry the pic’s not the sea!)

And yes, I’m trying to take a break from blogging for Nanowrimo – and I will!  But for here and now, a wonderful and open-hearted day to all.  Take care, and may we all get some peace, wisdom, and sense of unity and pride from all this.  Thanks much.

Categories: poetry, Stress, Uncategorized
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Comments: 36 Comments

Not Sure Where I’m Going (Nanowrimo)

November 4, 2012

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Working, sort of, on Nanowrimo in between kvetching about the election and missing blogging and now back in NYC without Internet access (except through iPhone) and can’t quite believe in my new “novel” yet.

So, a bit, frustrated.

Categories: Country weekend, Nanowrimo, Uncategorized
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Comments: 6 Comments

Some (Minor) Pix of NYC after Sandy

October 31, 2012

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Here are a few very minor pictures of damage and traffic.  I haven’t honestly been down to worst affected areas yet (which include where my apartment is located).   Getting around the City was quite difficult today as there has been tremendous traffic.  A lot of that has been caused by the dangling crane on the roof of a very high building on 57th Street.  Basically this means that everything going up to 57th is somewhat gridlocked and everything going down to 57th is blocked – but if you are going downtown below 57th (as in the right hand side of the picture above) you are okay.  More or less.  (Of course, I understand that there are no traffic lights below 39th.)

New Yorkers are great walkers but it’s a bit tiring.  Tomorrow some subway service will be restored. I have to applaud Mayor Bloomberg and city workers (and others) who have been out picking up tree limbs, etc. and moving ahead with the clean-up.

Categories: New York City, news, Uncategorized
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Comments: 7 Comments

Hooked

October 30, 2012

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Hooked

A woman uptown
comes home to two children
stabbed.  All the next day I hear, silently,
her screams.

Then think, as I see caught fish pulled
onto the esplanade–of how we ache
for silver linings–slitted gills grasping desperately
at thin air, metallic iridescence belly-flopping
on stone–something to be made right, fixed,
bearable–and how, to a fish,
all upper surfaces must
seem silvered – ripples plated by sun
or mist, until whipped
into the sky, it finds
that the world is not as it
has known, that there are vast portions
where neither body nor
instinct can protect, can even
function.

So we too
forge ahead, with or against
the current, but still in the comfort of luminous
viscosity until some terrible ‘suddenly’
when we are pulled
onto a stone slab of rending gasp and bootless
throttle, where the grey of sky is at best
mercurial.

If lucky, we are thrown
back – and though our breathing may labor,
accordion halation un-keyed, we float at last lopsidedly, slither
at a slant.

But sometimes, some one of us
is trapped in that sharded air until, seemingly, the end
of days.

We gasp, spin, in the eddy
of their reverberating
pain, then, gratefully, guiltily,
swim on, faster,
faster.

*******************************************
Hi–many of you know that I’m a denizen of New York City, specifically Battery Park City, and have been evacuated a couple of days.  This poem is not really about that, but something I’ve been mulling over since last week, a terrible terrible tragedy in which a nanny seems to have killed two children and then attempted suicide.  (I’m sorry; it’s a very sad story; my thoughts and prayers go to the families involved.)   I am linking it to dVerse Poets Open Link Night, hosted by the wonderful Tashtoo.I appreciate the concern of all about the New York storm.  We still haven’t gotten home but have been very well taken care of and feel immensely lucky.  The city is also in a good mood, friendly, relieved. 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 34 Comments

Sandy

October 29, 2012

Actually, getting pretty scary outside right now – only sounds – intense wind, every once in a while a shout or siren.

Sandy is not a good name for a storm.  It is the name of something friendly, soft, beachy, tanned.  Little Orphan Annie’s Dog?

So glad to have left Battery Park City, a wind tunnel on even a becalmed day.

 

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Comments: 9 Comments

Sandy – Uptown New York (Update)

October 29, 2012

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I hesitate in the middle of a big storm to mention clouds, much less silver linings.

But, as some limited compensation, these terrible situations can bring out the “friendly” in people.

Often in New York City, casual acquaintances (meaning the people you live near for years) nod (at most).  But yesterday, in Battery Park City (an evacuation zone), everyone in my laundry room, on the esplanade, or waiting interminably for the elevators, actually talked.  The big topic  – whether or not they were leaving.

If they were leaving, they talked of a friend somewhere;  if they were not leaving, they talked about how difficult it had been last year (during Irene) staying with a friend somewhere.

Dogs seemed to be a particular problem at friend’s apartments during hurricanes.

One guy (who was not leaving) explained that the brick he carried into the elevator was to be put in his water-filled bathtub.   (I never quite understood what the brick was supposed to do, but I did learn exactly which building site to go to to get my own.)

I personally had very mixed feelings about leaving.  Our building–as many stayers pointed out–is concrete.  Additionally, I’d bought a ton of food.  (Bottled water, I was to learn later, is extremely heavy.)

That said, if you wanted to leave by subway, you had to get out before 7.

So now, I am up  in Harlem (a far higher area of the City).   And people have been super kind – helping us unwedge the suitcase (with all those bottles) from the subway stairs, retrieving my necklace (from the subway platform) when my own unwedging efforts caused it to fall off.

And, although, I know there are difficult things going on – flooding down in BPC and a horrible crane dangling on 56th street–it’s been calm enough here that we could, at one point this morning, walk over to a nearby community garden, taking wet garbage for its composting operation.

Soil, I guess, goes on.

(Regardless of Sandy.)

PS – I was a bit irritated waking up this morning that we’d left BPC – the weather had been so calm at that point- but then I read about the flooding and, in the end, I really do urge people to listen to the authorities.  Terrible to make the lives of first responders worse in an already difficult situation.  That said, I know I’m super lucky to have a place to go, warm, dry, and with people I love (who compost.)  Good luck to all.

Categories: New York City, Uncategorized
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Comments: 5 Comments

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