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Three Daughters

March 19, 2015

Molecules 1

Three Daughters

“I am a curséd man,” he said, with full marks for
the -ed, “because,” he said, cross-legged, dhoti
both wrinkled and taut, “I am the father of
three daughters.”

His hands followed the line of the shrug,
then sank like the smile beneath the black float
of  mustache, as,
from my opposite banquette, I tried to maintain an attitude
of intellectual exploration–
”don’t you love your daughters?”

“I love them too much,”meaning in my understanding
of Indian English–‘sure’–
but “meaning,’ he went on, “I must work all the days of my life
to make their dowries–”

The dowry was the price he would pay for
having his undoubtedly hard-working girls taken off his hands,
which pinched the air, long-fingered,
as if plucking words from the landscape–
and I too smiled sadly, this still a more encouraging discussion
than the one I normally had with men in Indian trains,
which always started with whether I was married
and ended somehow in my asking the most important quality in a wife,
a question which they answered without a beat–
(sometimes through teeth stained red with betel nut,
other times the teeth not stained, but always showing)–
“submission.”

I can’t help thinking today of that curséd man, sitting in the
amber light that fixed that train car even as it traversed
a subcontinent, as I read
of the poor cursed woman in Delhi who strangled her three
young daughters, “submitting” as the headline said, “to despair.”

Reading next of the proposed government budget in my own country–
where dowries once were also part
of the barter of women–and where girls are still often enough
discarded, though we are advanced enough to discard boys
about as much, the idea behind all the cuts for women and children
being some notion that if women are just kept flat on their backs,
families will stay intact–

Look, I’m not saying that these things–Indian dowries and the GOP– are
actually connected, except that they both make me sick,
sick of the trade in women, sick
at the base of a womb that held two daughters, sick at the heart
of a third.

 

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A very drafty poem that is simply a rant going about my head.   I appreciate that it may not truly be a poem.  The drawing above is by a friend of mine, Diana Barco, taken from my book of poems, Going on Somewhere.  The photograph below is mine, taken a couple of years ago in Ahmedabad, in India–all rights reserved by Diana and me!  

IMG_6650

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Dimly Perceived

March 17, 2015

Dimly Perceived

You would think a person going blind
would turn inward; at least set sights
on reknowned beauty,
but I find myself staring fixedly
at the bright blink of dishes I splash
at a scratched white sink,
without thinking overmuch
of either the timeless or
my soul,

and often on my train–
the Hudson line–which passes through
one of the world’s great riverscapes, I escape
into a teeny screen, its gleaned print winking
at my squint–

which is the gist of this–
that I am not so much looking for an answer,
as an answer back,
a response to my blurred toss
in this postmordial, mortal, pond,
an acknowledgement that you (meaning me)
are still here/really here/here now
and that I (meaning you) hear you (that’s me
again)–

the problem perhaps being
that the Hudson and its hills don’t always speak
in decipherable tones,
while the screen knows well
how to spell my name;
the dirty dishes too are personally insistent–
”you missed that crud on my back, Blindie!”
one important vowel sound off
what I was called in my heyday–

though, of course, there’s a part of me,
the part that would turn like a tree to sun
rather than a dog to hand’s pat,
that knows I should look
at mountains more,
that they might teach me
about staying power and what it’s like
to have rocks for eyes,
sky-lids–

That I should look out to the river too
as it washes
its both sides.

 

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For Real Toads, Tuesday Open Link.  (Above a pic from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, and below, some divide in the Hudson River, taken from the train–you can see train light at the top and track at the bottom.  All rights reserved.) 

 

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Unnatural

March 14, 2015

IMG_1535

Unnatural

We scoured the waterfront, the next morning, for eggs,
the fried kind with a crenellated coast,
only that city had been recently re-veined,
the harbor hemmed by chains, as in
where everything’s the same,
and, too weak to walk any farther, we wandered at last
into a pinkish franchise
not because it had a name we recognized
but because there was no where else
for the unwheeled,
and when I was handed something brown
around a  “beware it’s hot” hockey puck,
my hungry face cried “what the —–   (let’s call it–“yuck”)
and the guy, whose striped shirt sensed
my discomfiture, replied, “we only have scrambled,”
and I managed, “but it’s square,”
and he smiled, “isn’t that neat?”

So, I did not bother to say, “and it bounces,”
or
“you call this,” pressing the puff,
“a bagel?”

Only vowed to better love New York City, my then
home, dingy to its very piers, but at least a place that knew
bagels and sported on every corner
eggs fried into whatever shape
their whites might flow.

But the truth is that this is just the middle
of this story, which is perhaps why the square egg
seemed horrible to me in a way I am not
conveying–
the part I didn’t tell you
was how the night before
a very old young friend, welcoming us to the hotel’s
banquet room, edged along the skirted tablecloths
on the outsides of sliver slippers, the chemo having burned
the bottoms of
her feet, which may be why
the idea of anything at wrong right angles and
heated some strange hot–
the idea of anything so very not
what it was supposed to be–
just didn’t sit well with me.

Maybe I should tell you the end
of the story too, though I suspect you’ve already
guessed it, and yes,
is all I can stand to say anyway,
even as everything else inside me
still cries, no.

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Here’s a drafty poem for my prompt on With Real Toads to write about dining out in some form.  The pic is one from the prompt–I appreciate that it does not show a bagel! 

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Between the Hard Covers (Or In This Case Many Worn Paper-Backs) – To Sir Terry Pratchett

March 12, 2015

1654

Between the Hard Covers (Or In This Case Many Worn Paper Backs)
(To Sir Terry Pratchett)

There was a time
in which kisses were not mine.
except for that sweet kind given
by children,
where my lips pressing back closed close as a shush
in order to hush
the fervor,
to not pass on, as if contagious,
pain.

And on those Fridays nights,
which I knew in advance would be lone,
and which in the final slant of the week
were nearly unbearable,
I’d stop at a book shop just a block
from my office–each time as if
by chance–just a block too
from the train, and pick
you up.

Your pages would hold me
even before I left the store, taking both
my hands.

You would fully enfold me
by the time we reached the sidewalk
and would keep me under your covers
though the subway, paying no mind
to the couples with their bangs already bed-tousled, 
the dingy abandon
of the plastic lozenge seats.

You would carry me
across the cobbled night
of the West Village
as smoothly as a turtle
might carry a world,
a turtle also balancing
four elephants–for I read
as I walked, and I did not look out
for potholes, tree pits,
New Jerseyites swerving in search
of a parking place–

And my heart
heartened,
and my lips opened,
for lips have to open
to laugh–I read you even
in the bath–
I read and read
and when I finished,
I started in
again.

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

It is with true heartbreak that I write of the death of Sir Terry Pratchett, British fantasy writer and satirist.  I cannot overstate the gifts that Sir Terry has given me for the last twenty years or so, since he became my favorite writer.

I am linking this poem to the Real Toads prompt “out of standard” by Izzy Gruye, which has to do with failed kisses.   (At first, it seemed an odd prompt to put with Pratchett–then I realized that it made exact sense in my case.)

I cannot thank him enough.

PS – my understanding is that the above is a stock photo of Pratchett available for free use–no copyright infringement intended. 

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What Is It With Torpedoing Efforts For Peace? (Poem)

March 12, 2015
IMG_1915

They like to make it seem as if there’s just one way.

What Is It With Torpedoing Efforts For Peace?

What is it with these tit-for-tatters,
who would tear the world to tatters?
Let-others-die-hard pipsqueak ratters
who strut about like big-league batters,
but want to strike pre-emptively,
talk “take-out” empty-headedly,
not caring if their bangs rat-tat
give rise to endless big hits back–
But I don’t have the tit for that
(for it’s not my head that carries fat)
and refuse to see more children sent
to hellish war by those hell-bent–

Only let me be little clearer–
there’s no good godly god holds dearer
one side’s missile over one side’s land,
this sand over that other sand–
so, don’t confuse a plan divine
with your bloody idiotic kind– 

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

Here’s a kind of irritated poem, probably linked belatedly and as a second poem to Real Toads Open Forum.  Thanks.

When you get older, you view everyone else as children. 

 

 

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Another Time a GOP Politico Interfered with Treaty Negotiations

March 11, 2015

Another Time a GOP Politico Directly Contacted a Foreign Government
Re Treaty Negotiations

In 1968, campaigning for president through rubber jowls
Richard Nixon declared he had a secret plan
to win the war,
a secret plan that was sure, he said,
to succeed.

If it was such a great plan,
I thought (in the shadow of my long
hair, school locker, and the lottery for
my older brother), why
didn’t he tell someone, stop
the killing right
away.

What I didn’t get
was that Nixon’s operative word was “win”
(not end),
and that it wasn’t the war
he had a secret plan for, but
the election.

Though he did tell someone
a plan–South Vietnamese
government officials–through a dusky-bosomed
agent (little flower dragon lady), and in his own meeting with them too,
urging absence
from the Paris peace talks, writing
“we are going to win” (meaning again,
the election), promising
more and better
props–

But the war, after Nixon’s election,
slogged on for seven years,
cost twenty thousand more
U.S. lives–
I don’t even know
how many more
Vietnamese,
or the tally
in spirit, limb,
napalm,
skin,
cultivable
land.

Only that I acknowledge freely that it is my ignorance
that does not know these numbers–they are
no secret–

 

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

A poem of sorts–I’m sorry–in my disgust at all kinds of things right now it is hard to write very poetically–for With Real Toads Tuesday Open Platform.

Further information on Nixon and the “Chennault Affair,” which supposedly led to Nixon’s obsession with the Pentagon Papers (detailing classified information about the U.S. war in Vietnam, with arranging a break-in force to get documents from the Brookings Institution related to LBJ’s bombing halt in 1968 that Nixon thought included information concerning his pre-election interference with the peace process, and which led to the creation of “Plumbers” unit, and eventually the Watergate break-in, can be found in a variety of places.  Here are two:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/146770

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-08-15/news/bal-a-darker-cloud-falls-over-nixon-commentary-20140814_1_nixon-tapes-the-nixon-watergate

The reference to lottery is to the draft lottery. 

Also, this made me think of pitching my book Nice, which takes place in 1968, is a really cool book–especially for anyone interested in this era–, and can be gotten in paper copy cheaply, or on kindle for 99 cents. 

PP Native Cover_4696546_Front Cover

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South of the Mason-Dixon

March 8, 2015

South of the Mason-Dixon  (A Little While Back)

Even as a bare-legged
little girl with just wisps
of flaxen hair,
I knew that there was a difference
in the house where Miss Daisy, who smelled so sweet,
went nights;
even if we had not driven her home,
her owning
no automobile–that it was not–would not have been–
brick and mortar-lawned,
but clapboard, slab-boarded, a clean-
swept porch standing over a dirt-swept yard, centered
by a door that looked flat black
with just the screen closed–so hot
down there then–
no light on inside that I could see,
not from the front seat, Miss Daisy getting out
from the back–
maybe because of the bugs–

Even as a very little child,
of the flaxen-haired
variety, strands wispy as wilted
petals, I knew enough
to be surprised, almost disbelieving,
when we ran into Miss Daisy
at some store some night,
me running up to her–how
was she there–how
would she get
home–her siding
my cheek, palm the color
of ham, hand dark
as a date, smelling still
as sweet–

It must have been I think
the old Five and Ten, not
one of the new suburban stores,
blinking with white shine, yards of glass,
florescence, refrigeration.

Still, me, not ten, not
even five,
knew enough
to be surprised,
almost disbelieving,
worried–

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

A poem of sorts for Grace’s prompt on With Real Toads about the wonderful Nigerian poet, Wole Soyinka.  Mine is inspired by his poem Telephone Conversation.  (As a note, I am pretty sure that I was in the back seat and Miss Daisy in front in actual fact, knowing my parents.)

P.S. – I must confess to never seeing the movie Driving Miss Daisy–I realize people will think it’s a reference to that–not meant to be!  Oh well!

 

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Garlic

March 7, 2015

Toril Colaboration Garlic 2

Garlic

I.
Sitting at the computer,
I feel that I should write about
despair–the darkness of blood,
the darkness of women’s blood especially, un-spun clots
of loss and over-lording,
the web around a newborn’s head, the
hemorrhage of the will-be dead, all manner
of bloated belly–

That I should write about
what I know to be important, the windows black
that look out from
my room, the histrionic
screen, but I can hardly stand
to look at that dark glass, so write instead
about garlic, something
to hand–

I admire garlic–it was ever
a close-knit bunch–I say this not
to be flippant– but because of the way
the cloves cleave
one to its others, the sole backing
the whole, as if understanding
their collective (that is, non-collective) fate–to be cleaved
apart, each turned into
a reification of tears;
to also (oddly) when chopped–I’m at a wooden board right now–
serve as a postcard
of unpillowed baby teeth, as if proffered for safekeeping
by a host of stubby fingers, gapped-toothed grins–

but how to reconcile blood and
baby teeth, burn and savor,
of soil and despoiled, so many little
bulbs of light–

II.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I was haunted by a deep
weakness which was identified at last as a couple of trips past
to India, from which I brought home in my inner carry-on (snuck
past customs), amoeba–both in blobs and tubes,
that splayed me on a neighbor-given
sofa, both of us
frayed, until I was prescribed, finally,
garlic, mini-scimitars swallowed
to do battle with the worms, so many that I smelled
like a salami from down the street–

Oh garlic, how do I use you so
ungently–haphazard in my peel and mince,
you who, only asking for
a wince, gave me
your all–

III.
A singular
plural.
Kind of smelly but
alive.
Doing battle
with worms–

I know there is despair and
I know that what I know
of it is nothing, me
with a whole
child, body.

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

A second and belated poem of sorts–very very sorry about the length–for Margaret Bednar’s prompt on With Real Toads--about the art work of Toril Fisher.  Above a picture of garlic that is a collaboration of Toril and Tully (whose full name I don’t know.)  

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Questioning The Idea of Heaven

March 6, 2015

Toril-California-Poppy-Glow-20x24

Questioning the Idea of Heaven

Can it be true
that I’ll not see you
again?

That all will never be
as it always should
have been?

Will we not laugh
at trivial cruelties, which you
will allow me to call
every single one?

Match memory for memory
like one might measure height
in penciled lines by the side
of a door, the pine jamb varnished yellow
as a child-drawn sun?

We did have the door,
the pine,
the sun–

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

A poem of sorts for Margaret Bednar’s prompt Artistic Interpretations on With Real Toads to make a poem using an image by Toril Fisher, this one called California Poppy Glow. Margaret has many lovely pictures of Toril’s work on the Real Toads website–the color in these flowers oddly made me think of sun.  (I may post another one re garlic–but haven’t quite done that one yet.) 

 

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Cross-country

March 4, 2015

Cross-Country

I follow laborious lanes, alleys of yesterday’s
skis, finding intermittently
prints–paws cupping blue,
sharp-petaled as
pressed-flowers–a coyote who preferred my flattened slants
to the deep snow, even sticking to
the loops of my backtracks–

I imagine that same blue
siding his moonlit lope, and despite the warmth
of fellow toil,
shiver.

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A belated blue 55 for Real Toads.

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