Lots of milk in this yeast bread makes it a smooth clean bread.
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Exception
Woozy with the need for sleep
I sat down to write a poem.
A twentieth-century 1988 fatigue
lay over me and I pitied myself.
So I fixed some popcorn,
took a dinosaur napkin down
from the refrigerator to wipe
my fingers clean as I ate.
I wrote as I ate, laying ink
and thinking of what I would say to you
tomorrow. I would confess how hard it all was,
a daily grind with pre-dawn beginnings
to post-midnight ends, and I would look for
your concern, try to see how special
a case I am.
And then I noticed how all my poems
hug the side wall of the paper
like someone walking safely near
cement siding holding
on to the vertical,
hunching in the shoulders,
eating popcorn at one in the morning.
Exception
Woozy with the need for sleep
I sat down to write a poem.
A twentieth-century 1988 fatigue
lay over me, and I pitied myself.
So I fixed some popcorn,
took a dinosaur napkin down
from the refrigerator to wipe
my fingers clean as I ate.
I wrote as I ate, laying ink
and thinking of what I would say to you
tomorrow. I would confess how hard it all was,
a daily grind with pre-dawn beginnings
to post-midnight ends, and I would look for
your concern, try to see how special
a case I am . . . to you.
And then I noticed how all my poems
hug the side wall of the paper
like someone walking safely near
a concrete wall, holding
on to the vertical,
hunching in the shoulders,
eating popcorn at one in the morning.
Buoy
The recognition that white snakes were arms
of women–mother’s nurture, winding blench–
rose through your skin insidious as steam,
uncoiled from long submersion, seeping out
of smug protected memory. You sit,
a sorry daughter, feel her fold
her arms in rolls of dough around your skin.
Your heart confesses murmurs–babbling scarlet,
braiding twining thoughts into contrition.
Wrapped as this, you can’t untangle it.
The knot is tied and fear flips over, you are scared.
You can’t think where you ought to run.
An adaptation of Jean Genet from his “The Thief’s Journal”
Creating is not a somewhat frivolous game. The creator has committed herself to the fearful adventure of taking upon herself, to the very end, the perils risked by her creatures (creations). We cannot suppose a creation that does not spring from love. How can a woman place before herself something as strong as herself which she will have to scorn or hate? But the creator will then charge herself with the weight of her characters’ (creations’) sins. Jesus became woman. She expiated. Later, like God, after creating women, She delivered them from their sins: She was whipped, spat upon, mocked, nailed. That is the meaning of the expression “She suffers in her flesh.” Let us ignore the theologians. “Taking upon Herself the sins of the world” means exactly this: experiencing potentially and in their effects all sins; it means having subscribed to evil.
Every creator must thus shoulder–the expression seems feeble–must make her own, to the point of knowing it to be her substance, circulating in her arteries, the evil given by her, which her heroes (creations) choose freely. We (the many men and women in Genet) wish to regard this as one of the many uses of the generous myth of Creation and Redemption. Though the creator grants her characters (creations) free will, self determination, she hopes, deep down in her heart, that they will choose Good. Every lover does likewise, hoping to be loved for her own sake. . . .
Happy Inter-dependence
Happy Independence from America!
Today I celebrate my independence from the ugliness
of America’s past
declare my disconnection from its rigid spirit,
my independence from its caustic politics,
and claim my ancestry among those who reveled in the woods,
the mountains,
the lakes,
the stones,
the trees
of this magnificent continent.
OK.
I am an American.
Among the Chippewa, the Sioux, the Lakota . . . the Micks
from Ireland.
We are of them.
We honor what they honor,
and so,
we are Americans.
Silent Expressions: Cincinnati Ballet, c.1990
–photos by mickey [Michele] morgan
I did my best, and I know I’ve made errors here, so help me out, Cincinnati Ballet Veterans! (many thanks to Rene Micheo)
Tuesday
The birds are beautiful today. I remember no other day have they sung such an integrated symphony. Then I hear why:
“Who’s responsible for cleaning up this dead thing?” “Uh. I dunno . . . yeh, ‘t’s a dead bird, I guess.”
The winged beauties circled wide and high above their lost child . . . and sang and cried to each other all morning.
The Act of Witnessing
“Girl with Green Shawl”–Moise Kisling, 1919
The Act of Witnessing
She faces the settled form;
densely bound beneath an auburn down,
olive skin like mama’s belly
curves and cups bulb
eyes that seem so ready
to roll out wetly,
not competently contained
by fences of thick thorn lashes;
filament fingers flutter above
the hollow curve of loss.
Words form by compression—
the bend of the torso,
down and in, then out,
suspended for a moment—
mauve lips are fragile vines.
Words spill, scattering
as does she as she
gathers
chestnut crystals.
To Villa Pamphili
Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Pexels.com
To Villa Pamphili
Start running
from the door
up the steps
urine smell
of cats
to the corner.
Garbage
spills to gutters
and the sidewalks
stain with grease.
Run past the curb
to the other,
up the pavement
to the station
where the boxer
growing old,
and now retired
pumps his gas,
flatters men
he doesn’t like
yet bows a formal
“Ciao!”
to a woman
running forward
wanting back
all the body
she once had.
Rhythm though
monotonous,
she knows she
must stay with it,
jog to find
an equili-
brium and make it
past the stores
with their trinkets,
and the cars
buzz like gnats,
shrill her ears,
fill her lungs
with veils of fumes.
Buses
packed with bodies,
bunched up stems,
bouquets
of stinking weeds.
And run
past the church
that is empty
always empty
save for hefty
black-shawled
rosaried women,
stub hair back,
short.
Stockings
slide in shoes
worn from shopping,
cooking, cleaning,
stooping, taking
care to serve.
Hurry
to the villa
up ahead.
Walls
shot with holes
of cannonballs
from the time of Garibaldi.
Outside.
That’s the outside.
And the ramp
will take her inside
Enter
through the portal.
Jog
to the open, to the garden
that has been here while she was running.
Feel the pulse receding as she leaves what’s
outside, slowing breathing, walking over bones sedate
in their rest, birds, squirrels, chipmunks.
Water flows over rocks, obedient to no
force but their own. She lies down with them.
