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Browns and Grays and a Touch of Blue
Thursday, March 10, 2011 VI.3.3. Welcome, again. This week I feature a friend from Western Australia, Sue Clennell, with two of her poems. The pictures this week are, once again, mine, taken earlier in the week on a drive in the Central Texas hills, northwest of San Antonio, specifically in the area of Welfare, Texas, a very small town whose retail/financial/and governmental center is pictured above. Ranches surround the town, some cattle, some horses (including the miniatures, about the size of a large dog, like the one in the last picture), but mostly sheep and goats. This is the season, between winter and spring) for clear blue skies, with everything else in shades of brown and gray. I'll go back in about a month and come back with pictures of pastures and hills covered in the colors of wild flowers. I have a good mix of poems this week, with Sue and my library poets and some new and some old poems of my own. Here's what I have. “Untitled” (I think) Me “let me tell you about me” Patricia Fargnoli “The Eagle, the Wild Sow, and the Cat” “The Fox and the Grapes” “The Little Fish and the Fisher” “The Wolf Accusing the Fox Before the Monkey” Me “last words” “still reeling” Charles Bukowski “big time loser” Me “the fellow in the blue denim shirt” From "Hands on Stanzas" Salvador Hernandez Rolando Lopez Jeff Maldonado Mario Ortiz Me “the musician” Sue Clennell “Chagall Would Approve” “Mosman Park Meditations” Me “for Katie’s Nana” Shiela Ortiz Taylor “Mid-Life Love” “Playing Possum” Me “cat-sitting” Anna Akhmatova “To the Memory of a Friend” and three untitled pieces Me “anticipating” Catherine Bowman “The 54 Figures of Lotetia” Me “colors” As an aside, I'm posting this week via and unusual venue and I don't think "spellcheck" is working properly. So, who knows what spelling horrors abide within the text below.  I start this week with a poem by Tao Lin from his book Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. It is a strange poem from a strange book, with hamsters representing, I think, the "Every Man." Maybe not - you can draw your own conclusion. The poet, born in 1983, is the author of a novel, a collection of short stories and a previous book of poetry. He lives in Brooklyn. The book was published by Melville in 2008. The poem I chose, at least I think it's a single poem, is longish and either untitled or a part of a titled poem which comes before it in the book that doesn't seem, in terms of content, anything to do with it. Whichever, what counts is that it is, I think, very slyly funny. untitled (I think) In its room the hamster stared at a book by and author who had died. "What if I died?" the hamster thought a little confused. The hamster had not yet met its hamster friend. The hamster was alone. It was an urban variety of an uncommon species of vegan hamster. Its room was small. It had stacks of stolen books. The hamster had organic green tea extract that was stolen.. The hamster's toothpaste was stolen and it used stolen flaxseed lemon soap on its hair, which it cut itself. The hamster had an eleven-dollar toothbrush. The toothbrush was stolen. The hamster was a recent college graduate. Some days it felt terrible, then realized while walking that it didn't feel terrible, but very good, and then felt relieved and consoled for the rest of the day until it went to sleep, though most days after a few hours everything outside its head became a single unit of experience that entered its head - which was also its body - and then included its head, creating a single mass the hamster carried home and laid on a pillow. The hamster's pillow was made of goose feathers. The hamster had found it in the refuge room. The hamster's philosophy of life included rather than was dictated by veganism. If the hamster saw cheese or meat in the garbage it would process its choices - to eat or not to eat - and in most circumstances eat the cheese or meat, so that later on it would not require as many resources to continue to exist and so could spend more money on things that would contribute to increasing the life-span of other organisms while also reducing pain and suffering in the world. The hamster conceived this philosophy by observing that it did not commit suicide. "I am perpetuating a conscious state of being by eating and breathing an thinking and no slitting my wrists," the hamster thought unexcitedly, "therefore my philosophy - derived from my actions, which are pre-philosophical, or something - is that i am a conscious being and I want to live, that all conscious beings not working towards or in the act of suicide also want to lve, and that I should therefore behave in a way that allows the most organisms the most life." The hamster sometimes thought about war, politics, globalization, and world trade but mostly about thins like death, writing, existence, loneliness, and meaninglessness that to it often preempted - despite its philosophy regarding the value of life - economy, capitalism, society, and materialism. The hamster lived in Manhattan. Later it moved to Florida; then, to be near its hamster friend, Pennsylvania. It had read over three hundred books of literary fiction, including almost all of Jean Rhys,Lydia Davis, Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Frederick Barthelme, an Richard Yates. One night the hamster read a book that said HIV probably wasn't the cause of AIDS. the hamster told three other hamsters that HIV probably wasn't the cause of AIDS and two of the hamsters got angry at it. An angry hamster looks exactly like and unangry hamster because the anger is within. The hamster was unemployed. It stole from Whole Foods and other grocery stores and Virgin Megastore. Each day the hamster walked in stores, put items in a black duffel bag, walked out of stores, and ate the items walking around. If the items were books it didn't eat them. It read them, and sold them to used bookstores, or mailed them to hamsters it knew from the Internet. The hamster eventually consumed,sold on Ebay, or gave away over $8,000 worth of stolen goods. It said to another hamster, "You have to be retarded to e caught stealing." Later the hamster was caught stealing and banned for life from Whole Foods. The hamster stole only from publicly-traded companies. The function of a publicly-traded company is to increase its worth so that stockholders will have more money than before. A a publicly-traded company must increase profits or convince the hamster population that profits will increase soon or else it will exist less, the not exist. When one publicly-traded company loses business another publicly- traded company gains business, except when an ind dependently-owned company gains the business. An independently-owned company is not existentially required to increase profits but can use profits to increase wages, improve quality, lower prices, fund charities, or institute money-losing but socially- beneficial programs as ends in themselves rather tan means for increasing profits. Outside a 24 hour grocery store a homeless hamster lied to the hamster four times, each time gaining twenty or thirty dollars. After the second lie the hamster said, "Are you lying to me?" The homeless hamster said t was not. The homeless hamster talked about Christianity. The hamster listened politely and gave the homeless hamster twenty dollars and the homeless hamster danced in on alleyway, becoming smaller as it got further away from the hamster, who liked what was happening, partly because the dance was a jig. The third lie the homeless hamster said to the hamster was that it had a kidney infection from eating out of the trash. It said it pissed blood. "What happened?" the hamster said, and stared at the homeless hamster. The homeless hamster was silent. The homeless hamster said it was cured. It said they put a needle into its kidney and took out the poison, and that if needed money to have residence for one week, so that it could get a job. The homeless hamster moved very fast the fourth time and said it had eight years training of a kind of martial arts. The hamster nodded. The homeless hamster very quickly turned away from the hamster then turned back suddenly with a face that displayed no discernible emotion and no discernible lack of emotion. The hamster was impressed a little and thought briefly about how it was very well nourished and ate mostly only organic foods but felt like it could not move nearly as fast as the homeless hamster just did. "You look strong," the hamster said. There was another homeless hamster the hamster had given a dollar to, about two minutes earlier, and the the homeless hamster with martial arts said, "Do you want me to jump him?" The hamster said not to jump the other homeless hamster, who had a beard. The bearded hamster was very large and round and stood about thirty- feet away. It wore a large black trench coat and had a facial expression like it just woke from twelve hours of sleep and didn't know where it was. The hamster had seen the homeless hamster with the beard many times before and it always had that expression. The hamster-every man stories continue throughout the book, sometimes titled and sometimes untitled, following a titled poem that doesn't seem to be related. I wish I could do the whole book.  Here's a poem I wrote in 2008. I don't think I've ever used it anywhere. let me tell you about me a poet who seeks to create art drawn from the essences and intricacies of his own particular self should first insure that his own particular self embodies sufficient levels of interesting essences and intricacies to merit a patron’s involvement in the adventure of his art meanwhile on this night i am so completely humongously stupendously ginormously bored with myself i see no prospect for another poem for a dozen possibly two dozen years in the future upcoming and it's another fine mess i've gotten me into  Now I have poems by Patricia Fargnoli. The poem are from her book Small Songs of Pain,, published by Pecan Grove Press of San Antonio in 2004. Fargnoli, an award-winning poet who teaches at the Keene Institute of Music and Related Arts, took inspiration for this book of 37 poems from the 100 gouaches base on La Fontaine's fables Marc Chagall completed between 1926 and 1927. Although she retained the fables title, her poems are based on Chagall's paintings, not the fables themselves. The poems are short, so I'm presenting several of them here. The Eagle, the Wild Sow and the Cat (L'aigle,la laie et la chatte) A tree diagonals corner to corner. How solid the trunk the white cat climbs - toward the eagle protecting her young and away from the sow foraging fro truffles at the roots. Someone has chopped off a heavy limb halfway, beyond which the cat stops in her climb between danger and danger. The Fox and the Grape Le renard et les raisins) The grapes are big as the fox's head and between the grapes and the fox spreads a whole canvas of sky. Everyone knows the story - the fox never gets the grapes. The reason is: all that unnegotiable space between them. The Little Fish and the Fisher (Le petit poisson et le pecheur) The comedy is human, said the fish being, as he was, pulled from the water upside down and backward on the line. The fisherman believed he'd caught the fish - the fish knew all the universe is blue and that hook, nothing but a barb he'd easily toss. Small as he was. The Wolf Accusing the Fox Before the Monkey (Le loup accusant le renard par-devant le singe) A monkey on the tree limb judges this argument. Fox and wolf below bark anger at each other. The sky behind them doesn't care what happens, off in its own endless blue: a wholly other.  Here's another poem I wrote in 2008. I continue to transcribe my poems from Blueline's attic to my own keeping, running across stuff that's not so bad. last words three deaths this past week, the deceased not close to me, but close to some who are, so, while i cannot mourn with them i can hold them in my thoughts thoughts which turn to deaths closer to me my mother who died this time of year, the day after Thanksgiving, and my father whose death came when he was just a few months older than i am now and my brother, though older, died younger thoughts of death lead to thoughts of other deaths and deaths to come including my own and for some reason i am led to thoughts of Sunday church services when i was a child, Missouri Synod, Lutheran, the strictest and most conservative of the sect, a little white church on the corner of Harrison & 8th, the congregation sprinkled with a few prosperous business men in silk suits, but mostly workingmen, farmers, plumbers. carpenters, mechanics, like my dad, wearing, every Sunday, the only suit they owned, their large, knobby hands hanging like rough red weights from the loose sleeves of their jackets, fifty or more years ago this was, all of them dead now, the silk-suits and the rough hewn, all dead an in the ground, like my father who wore for more than twenty years the same double-breasted blue, pinstripe suit he bought in 1943 for the day he wed my mother, and my mother and the other women, too, all the women dead, too, their Sunday-church-hats dusty in dark attics, or on the shelves of resale shops, or on the pink hair of a seventeen year old with studs in her ears and nose and tattoos on her legs so many people died, too many to count, enough to know that there are more dead in my life now than alive and another death today, death at a lesser level, but mourned just the same, my morning refuge, the place where i have written for many months, comfortable with the same friendly people, comfortable at the same table in the back looking out on the corner of Martin and Soledad, door and big windows boarded up this morning, a note on the plywood-covered door “we are closed - goodbye” last words, as good as any Now another 2008 poem, this one a sequel to last words, above. still reeling from the loss of my morning hangout i sit in this sterile corporate replacement, looking at this blank page feeling sterile myself in the poetry-creation department of human affairs sputtering over the collapse of my sheltered little poetry-creation corner p e r h a p s i make life and the process of putting words and thoughts on paper, or, in this case a computer screen, w a y too complicated p e r h a p s i should take the course of my friend and furry companion Reba who divides all the natural and unnatural world in to 2 parts that which smells (good) & that which does not (bad) my current situation, poetry-creation wise, stinks, which, according to the criteria of my friend Reba, means things must be going g r e a t ! ! ! ! i can only whimper in gratitude  I haven't done him in awhile, so here he is, Charles Bukowski, from one of his more comprehensive collections, The Pleasures of the Damned, Poems, 1951-1993. big time loser I was on the train to Del Mar and I left my seat to go to the bar car. I had a beer and came back ans sat down. "pardon me," said the lady next to me, "but you're sitting in my husband's seat." "oh yeah," I said. I picked up my Racing Form and began studying it. the first race looked tough. then a man was standing there. "hey, buddy, you're in my seat!" "I already told him," said the lady, "but he didn't pay any attention." "This is my seat!" I told the man. "it's bad enough he takes my seat," said the man looking around, "but now he's reading my Racing Form!" I looked up at him, he was puffing his chest out. "look at you," I said, "puffing your goddamned chest out!" "you're in my seat,buddy!" he told me. "look," I said, "I've been in this seat since the train left the station, ask anybody!" "no,that's not right," said a man behind me, "he hand the seat when the train left the station!" "are you sure?" "sure i'm sure!" I got up and walked to the next train car. there was my empty seat by the window and there was my Racing Forum. I went back to the other car. the man was reading his Racing Form. "hey," I started to say... "forget it," said the man. "just leave us alone," said his wife. I walked back to my car, sat down and looked out the window pretending to be interested in the land- scape. happy that the people in my car didn't know what the people in the other car knew.  Have you ever wondered about that quiet fellow in the corner, staring into the distance. I do, can't help it - always wondering what's going on there. the fellow in the blue denim shirt fellow in the blue denim shirt sits in his booth, back straight, eyes ahead, sips his coffee, no other movement but for ever so slight rise and fall of his chest, breathing, sits, sips his coffee, still as the dark side of the moon, eyes focused straight ahead - a philosopher lost in a new theory of life and meaning; a scientist erecting new theoretical blocks on the structure on the universe; a mystic engaged with the divine, afloat in deeper sea of being; a linguist diagramming a compound sentence in Kolamagandi-Yazik; an anarchist plotting to overthrow the Man and all his minions; or just another blank mind at the beginning of another blank day - I can’t tell from here  Next, I have several poets from Hands on Stanzas, 2003-2004 Anthology of Poetry produced by The Poetry Center of Chicago. More than 3,000 students throughout Chicago read, discussed, wrote, and presented poetry in classes taught by Hands on Stanzas poets-in-residence. The book includes more than 1,700 poems by students in the program, including the four I've chosen to use this week. The four student poets are from the J.C. Orozco Community Acadamy, taught by Poet-in Residence, Jennifer Karmin. The first poem is by student-poet Salvador Hernandez. Wish To Be Young Again? Sometimes you wish to be young, you can get away with more things. There's not much pressure, it's all probably fun and games until you see your brains hang. Get older, hear a gunshot, bang! You notice it's not a game. There's ups and downs about being young. Pretty much your life is easy, anything you want is given to you. Once you get older you got to pull through. You got to walk the walk. You got to talk the talk. You got to watch your back just in case someone might attack. This poem is by student-poet Rolando Lopez. Killer Mistake A mistake feels like something is in my heart that I can't really handle. A mistake feels like I can't wait until I forget my mistake. A mistake feels like the world is going to end. All that is left in my mind is the mistake which I made a long time ago. A sweaty, ugly, disgusting mistake until I BLOW UP and shout out that mistake. In the end I am free. Now, here's student-poet Jeff Maldonado. Trapped I feel trapped I feel like something needs to be saved I feel weak It reminds me of someone trapped In a burning house A nervous feeling I feel afraid I'm in a war Drowning in water All the scary feelings go away When someone saves you You feel relief You feel like you have Another chance My last selection from the anthology is student-poet Mario Ortiz. Am I a Coward to Ask for Help? Help makes me feel Like a coward and scaredy cat. I think I can't do things myself. I feel weak, stupid and dumb. I think of falling off a cliff, Drowning in water, Fighting with an enemy In a war. Like I can't breathe.  You have to wonder how much they miss the glow. Though I don't think it was so much the glow that drew the subject of this poem, but the music itself. the musician the musician doesn’t do much music anymore in one band after another since he was fifteen, he hasn’t played with anyone in almost a year it’s the business it’s the always being broke it’s good never being good enough it’s relying on the slap of chance, right place, right time, right audience, going for the big fish every night in an over-fished pond it’s playing the same music at every gig because there’s never enough time to write and rehearse something new it’s running in place seeing the scene pass you buy as you run getting nowhere but I’ve been to the gigs seen hundreds of people dancing as they play; seen mohawked made-up dark-eyed tattooed and pierced punks stand straight, singing, cigarette lighters held aloft, when the band starts a gig with the national anthem... and for just a minute, the time of a song, punk haven could be a VFW convention; seen drunks at a Westside bar, heads down, lost in the yellow bubbles in their beer, smoked-short cigarette dangling from their cracked lips, push their bar stools back and stand, shaky, dancing, three bars into first song; seen a thirteen -year-old sitting in a grassy park, eyes wide, like he'd never seen a live band before. begging his parents to let him stay, just one more song, he says, just one more song; seen an Austin mix of cowboys and gangbangers and hippy hold-outs dancing on sixth street at a midnight gig seen the groupies, at every gig, standing, pressed up against the stage, heads upturned body twitching seen the excitement of the excitement, the music induced frenzy, the, shall we call it, narcotic of love thrown in waves from audience to stage… and if it was me on the stage, reveling in the glow every night... I can only imagine how much it must cost to give it up  Next, I have two poems from my friend Sue Clennell. Sue, from Western Australia, is a co author of 'The Ink Drinkers' and has just released a poetry CD The Van Gogh Cafe You can listen to excerpts from this on radio Goomalling at Chagall would approve. Perth is a lackadaisical spit on sand, where figures ride huge steel eyes on the foreshore, where in Millionaires’ row it rains loaves and fish. If Chagall says flowers beat paintings, then Perth is everlastings, leschenaultia, desert pea, Geraldton wax. Only here are the wind‘s jaws propped open by karri. This city is wrapped in Asia’s time warp, cranes spelling poems in the sky, ships of sheep. A sun magnet, everything is just blue blue blue. Mosman Park Meditations The river loops like blue yarn being wound around hands, or a chair. You don’t know where it starts, where it ends, what side you are on. Unconcerned, a dog rounds up shadows in the water. Tutuish, a little girl places her feet carefully on grass. Peppermint trees tell tales on my youth, how I was always here instead of at sport. The river loops like my life. Now I have a daughter who also jigs sport. The sun shares our cappuccinos, it is a day for questions. “Why are boats always white?” she asks.  I wrote this next poem at the request of a very good friend who suffered a terrible loss last year. Remembering Katherine 4/3/98 - 6/22/10 a child like a star is born and brightly burns through the darkest nights, then, flickers in the universal winds and fades, it’s allotted time complete, and all the constellations that burned with it dim in a fellowship of loss until grief fades, consumed by memories forever closely kept… for what more can we ask of a child than to be a star  Here are two poems by Sheila Ortiz Taylor, from her book Slow Dancing at Miss Polly's, published in 1989 by The Nalad Press. Taylor was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1939. A poet, novelist, and literary critic, she is a professor of literature at Florida State University at Tallahassee. After receiving a bachelor's degree in English at California State University, she completed a master's degree at the University of California at Los Angeles. After teaching English for several years, she returned to UCLA and finished a PhD in English. Mid-Life Love Do you remember when you learned to paint in Mrs. Beardsley's kindergarten class? Do you remember yourself in your father's old shirt the arms cut off leaning over orange juice cans of fragrant calcimine? Do you remember when she split your world with news that faces are not pink that skies instead of floating touched the ground? Tonight, love,I tell you the skies float purple and the green calcimine tiger eats alive our Mrs. Beardsley We lie in each other's arms now belly to scarred belly pink again loving ourselves alive - artists once more Playing Possum Saturday morning - sun slits silent through blinds striping the sheet under which we curl like sleeping puppies. I play possum moving closer so that the blood snoozing through you accepts me sleepily into its circling current. You move back into my warmth using me like the chair I become. Holding you against imagined dangers I grow fierce and able half-wish for a charging cougar a crazed boar to shoot and then resurrect with the memory of your soft sounds from the evening before the flickering candle the open window the open door. You wake now to your imaginary alarm and then more quietly to this still Saturday. You place your finger to my lips in warning. If we make a noise the dogs will wake and bark and caper in the kitchen till we rise and take them out. We lie now in each other's arms quietly guarding time as if death itself were a dog in a distant room waiting to solve her loneliness at the first sound of life.  As I think I've mentioned before, all my pets are ancient, each with special handling required. Including the cat, a calico that came over the fence thirteen or fourteen years ago, still plugging away. cat-sitting I’m a restless sleeper back problems keep me moving from bed to recliner to bed and back to recliner all night Kitty Pride used to sleep with me but she’s old and the 100-year-old bed I sleep on too old-fashionedly high for her to get up and down from as is the recliner, too high, and old and feeble as she is now she sometimes loses control of her claws and let me tell you sleeping with a cat on your lap, curled on tender, private areas, who sometimes loses control of her claws is a recipe for loss of many manly virtues like screaming in the dark of night is not something normally considered manly activity so she doesn’t do it anymore, sleeps on her pillow in the corner instead snoring like a bull elephant in an amorous mood except for a night several weeks ago when despite her age and feebleness she managed to get into the recliner while I was in bed-phase and when I shifted in the middle of the night to recliner-phase I didn’t see her in the dark and sat on her and poor dear she shrieked and I jumped but not before she demonstrated once again her lose of claw-control so that at one o’clock in the morning I’m putting alcohol and band-aids on my butt scratches while she completely over the trauma sleeps on her pillow in the corner of the room ~~~ we are planning a vacation in several weeks and have been concerned about finding a cat-sitter to take care of her while we’re gone someone to wake her up now and then to giver her her medicine via finger-in-mouth insertion thinking already that considering all her special needs finding someone will be almost impossible and now having my own cat- sitting experience I am ever more skeptical we may have to stay home this year  Next I have several poems, all but one untitled, by Anna Akhmatova, from the book Selected Poems, published in this edition in both English and Russian by Zyphyr Press in 2000. The translation to English is provided by Judith Hemschemeyer. Akhmatova, who was born in 1889 and lived until 1966, achieved her first fame as a young poet in pre-Revolutionary Russian literary society. She fared less well after the revolution, banned, rehabilitated during the second world war, then banned again until late in her life when her international recognition could no longer be ignored. To the Memory of a Friend And on this Day of Victory, tender and misty, When dawn is as red as the fire's glow, Like a widow at a nameless grave, The late spring keeps fidgeting about. She is not in a hurry to rise from her knees, She breathes on a bud and smooths the lawn. And helps a butterfly from her shoulder to the ground, And fluffs up the first dandelion. November 8, 1945 The following pieces are not titled. I haven't been here for seven hundred years, But nothing has changed... In the same way the grace of God still pours From unassailable heights, The same choirs of stars and water, The same black vaults of sky, And the wind spreads the seed the same way, And mother sings the same song. My Asian house is sound, And I can be tranquil... I will return. And now, fence, bloom! New reservoir, fill! May 5, 1944 When the moon lies like a slice of Chardush melon On the windowsill and it's hard to breathe, When the door is shut and the house bewitched By and airy branch of blue wisteria, And there is cool water in the clay cup, And a snow-white towel, and the wax candle I burning, as in my childhood, attracting moths, The silence roars, not hearing my words - The from corners black as Rembrandt's Something rears and hides itself again, But I won't rouse myself, won't even take fright... Here loneliness has caught me in its net. The landlady's black cat stares like the eye of centuries, And the double in the mirror doesn't want to help me. I will sleep sweetly. Good night, night. Marsh 28, 1944 Tashkent Those lynx eyes of yours, Asia, Spied out something in me, Teased out something latent And born of silence, And oppressive, and as difficult to bear As the noonday heat of Termez. It was as if into my consciousness all of pre-memory Like molten lava poured. As if I were drinking my own sobs From a stranger's palms. 1945  Early morning cafe - lots of stories, some fun, some not so. You just have to watch closely. anticipating sunny day beaming down sun glasses at 7 am just enough rain yesterday morning to wash down accumulated city grime leave it all shinning in the morning bright after a cold night… trees screaming early green signs of anticipation springing up everywhere like the two old men at the table next to me talking about movies about that crazy Angelina Jolie and all her tattoos back when she and that guy whatshisname were carrying around vials of each other’s blood and the one old guy talks about a movie he saw last night, he doesn’t remember the title but it was pretty good and the actress, whatshername, in her twenties now, she was pretty good too, 24 years old the other guy says did they show her naked? he asked pretty much the first old guy said… trees prematurely green old men, perpetually horny - spring’s got nothing to do with it  Here’s a poem by Catherine Bowman, from her book 1-800-Hot Ribs. The book was published by Gibbs-Smith Publishers in 1993. Bowman, born in El Paso, has published four collections of poetry. The book I'm using this week was a first. Her most recent, The Plath Cabinet, was published in 2009. Her honors include fellowships from Yaddo and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She also collaborates regularly with composer and bassist John Lindberg, and they have performed and taught workshops at venues in North America and Europe. Bowman is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Indiana University, and also teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana The 54 Figures of Lotetia It's the rooster's crow that begins this tale of woe: When the devil straddles the roof of the woman's house, the woman wanders the windblown streets looking for the man. The man waits under the umbrella, tapping on a card in the game of Loteria. On the cafe umbrellas float the figures of glazed mermaids, the mermaids that used to glide up tall ladders to soak in the city water towers. Now the ladders are moss-grown, the bottle half-empty, the barrel rusty, the trees all dying, the melon unsweet. But it's still a sweet melon in the man's sleep, and he is brave, hatless and enclosed on card 12 of Loteria, in a city filled with hats, eachinscribedLa Muerte La Muerte, laughs the skeleton and its green pear head shakes. Tears fall. As they lower the flag a guitar spills a cyclonic tango, churning the sky and grinding with the moaning cello, the cello climbing higher to join the night heron's cry. It's the cry of the bird that drank from the hand that tailored the boot that swallowed the moon that flew with the parrot, the parrot that mocks the man in Cafe El Negrito. The drunks smell like ripe watermelon and the sky is as red as a heart. Drinking clear liquor, the man waits for the woman and watches the shrimpers. But the shrimp nets return empty and his hands wait like two quivers of arrows. The musicians sing and the spider weaves. The spider, the soldier, the star, the bowl. The world is card 37 in the game of Loteria. The man drinks ffrom a bottle of Apache liquor. As he drinks, a giant Apache rises up from the bottle's label. The cactus, the scorpion, the rose, the skull. The bell sounds. Water pours from a pitcher. The water washes the world, wakes the deer. Ten thousand deer thunder under the sun. The sun strips off its shirt of hair to crown the river. The canoes shine like miners' lamps on the pine green river. Past the pine they slide with the current, netting the radiant fish. The fish push toward the sea, the palm, the red flowers, the harp music of insects and frogs rising. Rising, the stringed harp lifts the man out of his dream. The woman wanders the windblown streets. The rooster is crowing up at the devil and the frogs are dead and gathered in heaps.  I went out for a drive in the hills this week, as mentioned in the beginning, brought home the pictures you've seen here. This season, shows, perhaps, best the harshness of the hill country, a hard winter that turns every thing gray or brown. Even the summer, at it's hellish hot worst, will leave some green and the purple of the hillside sage. But this is what it looks like now. I'll go back in a month or so for the spring colors that come and go quick. colors outside the blue open sky there’s not much color in the hills this time of year - just shades of gray and brown, with splotches of dull cedar green, brush and mesquite like a prickly carpet over the rocky rise and fall of the limestone and granite landscape… but a month from now the pastures will be ablaze with wild flowers, red and blue, yellow, purple, and white, like flags of surrender, winter to spring, spring's pride of victory short lived as summer lurks around the corner, summer… as spring is life for the easy living, summer comes as death for all but the strongest… it is a hard place I live in, unknown to those who come here now, settle into air conditioned hillside comfort… those who came first knew, learned the hard way, as they built their homes from the stones in the fields, built long stone fences to make pastures of those fields, sweated through the long dry summers, shivered in the sharp winds that blew over the hills from cold northern mountains and plains, their only reward, a new life and all the colors of the short, too-short spring  I'm supposed to be writing my morning poem right now, but my mind is a desert wasteland of missed connections, so I'll write this instead, which, having been done so many times, requires almost no brain at all. It goes like this - all work in this blog remains the property of its creators. My stuff is available for lend - just give proper to the source. That would be me and "Here and Now." I'm allen itz, owner and producer of this blog, presently eating sand in search of inspiration. |
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