IN FLORIOGRAPHY, THE HYDRANGEA MEANS COLDNESS

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TO YOU, WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Dear Joe,

           It’s raining (all the words for weather, how they gather); and I’m fretting about what I’ve left out—the gardening fork and the spade and the rake—as I sit here with a cup of coffee, after polishing an iron skillet I’ve had almost all my life.  I’m curled like an ammonite in my favorite kitchen chair, here at the old oak table, here in my midlife body with its familiar Tin Man creaks; the same ache in my hands as when we’d write for hours at this same table, how you’d rub the moons and boats till they sailed free in my wrists. And I think of the cups you gave me—this is one of them, its transferred flowers so like my hydrangeas which you called water flowers, their litmus blues and pinks—and I wonder whether this rain will savage or salvage their hangdog heads; how it was you who told me coffee grounds change their colors, and I think again of how you’d lower your head as you counted the iambs, tapping on your acid-washed thighs. Oh, Joe, unlike me you didn’t miss a beat.

           Now that I’ve had a second cup of coffee (which is also joe, which might be a reason I’ve always liked that name), and I have screwed up so many things, including my caffeinated courage, I’ll do what I haven’t done in decades—I’ll send you a letter. I have never been able to write about you, but I can write to you, Joe, and I can’t help it now, words are dripping like water in the buckets we set out during storms in that leaky upstairs flat. And even though I’m thinking of all the reasons I shouldn’t be writing to you, all the things I have to tend to, I think maybe today I ought to recall the things you and I didn’t attend to, by the river, looking for arrowheads, before you lit out for school and how you promised you’d be back before it rained in hell. (Only you could pun on Milton; you’d  read everything).

           The world may be, as you once insisted, a magnet, and the sky, as I put it, dark as cast iron, and the rain that you showed me the trees by the river call down might flatten the corn (tassels blonde as you were) and the cornflowers (blue as you said my eyes were). And I truly have more sense than to stand out in the rain, waiting for Satan to start beating his wife; I was raised better, but I don’t care, something is pulling at me, and I want to be at the river’s edge, and I’m here in the kitchen wearing a pink and blue apron and imagining the Ohio as rain dimples the water.

           And I think like the farmers and their Almanac say, we need this rain that’s drumming the roof (your fingers, drumming your thighs), because everything here’s been drier than the rooster tails your old Chevelle sent flying, as you pulled away, waving out the window, glasses glinting in the sun, and me shading my eyes against all that brightness and wondering what heat Florida has that Kentucky doesn’t. I remember the night before, how you’d counted the freckles on my nose; how the humidity and the ferric flecks in my blood drew me to you all the more, how the turntable played Rust Never Sleeps, and how we didn’t either, as we engaged in what the Baptists among us might call carnal and what you’d call total immersion.

           And I’m thinking of all the letters that I wrote you, as you immersed yourself in poetry, and where they might be. Did you save them? Did you burn them? I know you read them, because I have your answers, and I have your theory of poetry—like the rake and the spade and the gardening fork, I have spread them out before me—the best part is what’s left out (to display, to hide), and I think of how we’d call poetry hide and see; and I don’t think we saw, dear, what was right in front of us, plain as the freckled nose on my face or the rattlesnake under the chokeberry; I think of what’s lying ahead of me and I think of what I’ve left on and under the earth. I think the best part of being with you, Joe, is coiled inside of me like the centrifugal force in that rattler, and I think that’s truly what I’ll leave out till I light out myself.

           Once a year or so I can’t sleep; I think of the dead rising up incorruptible, and I kick off the quilts and reread Hart Crane, who was your favorite, and I surprise myself all over again with how familiar the dead become.

           I want to stay here, on this earth, Joe, and I don’t believe in dying for love. That’s for the Greeks, not for the likes of me. I’m thinking of Narcissus, swallowed up by water, and of Persephone, swallowed up by earth and coming back, and that’s how grief is, dear one, it comes back. Even though I have an iron backbone, I think of rusting, sometimes; I think of water dark as coffee and the undertow of the river, and I waver.

Sometimes yours truly,

Pamela  

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Horses, Horses, Horses

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IF I'M ALIVE AND WELL, WILL YOU BE THERE HOLDING MY HAND?

for you I would strip
these kid gloves off, finger by
finger, so slowly

showing red-ribbon
scars and scratches quick-torn nails--
how from the tunnel

unhouseling my
self from gravest dirt I clawed
my way back to life

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Awaiting an Entrance--Back to Blogging

FREEWRITING IN WHICH I IMAGINE DEGAS' ACTRESS AS A BOXER

And in this corner, buttoning her gloves, as her attendant fans out the fan of her hemline, our actress prepares her entrance.  Note the peephole, a small moon in the upper left corner; note the absinthe of her dress; note, instead of the boxer's canvas, the threadbare Aubusson with its muted yellows and oranges.

Is she going to be met with applause when she enters, stage right, to become the spotlight's focus?

I love the diagonals, the pastel smears and strokes, the wasp waist of the actress, and especially the bare hand/gloved hand that almost center the drawing.  The sinister first is concealed, as the dexter still fastens.  That arm pose is very mannequin-like.  Is she, like the dropcloth setting she'll soon stand before, only a prop?

I hope she returns to her dressing room, after wild applause and seven curtain calls; I hope she pulls off a glove with her teeth and relaxes in her threadbare Japanese kimono as her face, unadorned by maquillage, glows white as a snowdrop.  I hope there are white roses and lilies wafting their scents for her; I hope there's a carriage waiting in the alley.

I hope she escapes, unscathed, from the withering pens of critics.

I hope we all do.

We'd Have Been Married 27 Years

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Robert Reid 

IN ICTU OCULI

“Sorrow is my own yard,” William Carlos Williams, “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime”

                        My irises are blue,

Last November when winter was balmy,

            Unexpected, sabers slashed up through

                        A scrim of gold gingko leaves, in early

                        milky with cataracts, still

December the last iris unfurled

            Its frills, sinuous scallops bisected

                        Central from ciliary—blue ink pearled

                        I should have seen

From your fountain pen, blue lines crisscrossing

            Your atlas, blue veins traversing your wrist.

                        An unseasonal gift that Christmas morning

                        the cyanotic nails, looked

Blossom on the white wicker tray—the vase

            That held the last iris was delicate,

                        A milky blue.  “There’ll be more,” you say, “next

                        more closely at your hands,

Spring.  We’ll have iris for years and years.”  Blades

            Of green slice through the earth, this autumn,

                        Your ashes in winter’s bedded gardens.

                        not what they held.  

Back to It: 4631

For such a very long time, I've turned my back on this blog as a focus for daily writing practice, and I've begun to miss it.  I want to resume writing here, as I need a record of the little thoughts that aren't going into my fiction, teaching, poetry...I want a place for musing.  My notebooks are filling up with sentences that are as beautiful and true as I can make them.  I need a place for marginalia, for mosaic, a field where I feel free to play.  

As in this sketch by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, I think I'll turn my back on the desk and look into the mirror, see what I can write, what I can make up.  I miss this daily/weekly/monthly responsibility of writing and saving images.  I think FaceBook may have ruined blogging for me.  We'll see if I find anything interesting, or useful, or extraordinary to say.  

I've read over some of my old posts, and they're good.  This is not good.  But still, practice makes, if not perfect, at least more supple.  

So here goes:  Today I am interested in an article about a man who kept a Bonnard and a Gauguin hanging in his kitchen for 40 years:  

Galle(r)y Kitchen??

The article doesn't mention the Fiat worker.  I'd love to hear his side of the story.  Maybe I should write it...

I know that I should write, and write more.

Notes from Underground--Time Out

"If is the middle word in life." Dennis Hopper, right before reciting Rudyard Kipling on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970. 

What if? If only? If...when.  If...then. 

I don't know. I think people my age have forgotten we are a lost generation, just as lost as those Americans on whom Miss Stein's pronouncement fell in the 1920s. An entire generation of us was lost, as AIDS killed us, so many of us. I miss so many of my friends from the 1970s and early 1980s, all the pretty boys with their pretty smiles and their pretty tongues barbed as a cat's; all the the smart boys with their sonatas and their sonnets and their paintbrushes and photographs. I miss those photographs. I miss laughter and louche looks and champagne for no reason. I miss platinum-edged china and paper plates and the proper use of salad and shrimp forks with both. I miss Faruk and I miss Sam and I miss Danny and I miss Jon ("I took the goalpost out of my name, sweetness"). I miss Jimmie mocking my Kentucky accent and teaching me how to buy a dress and curl my hair. I miss being able to wear fur and Frye boots. I miss automats and egg creams and pizza by the slice slapped on a sheet of wax paper at 1 a.m. I miss waking up at 11 a.m. and drinking mimosas till happy hour. I miss Happy Hours. I miss the trek from Russian Tea Room to CBGBs to the corner deli. I miss the hours I used to spend with my friends, the hours they didn't have left.

if only...

If only every day, I didn't curse Ronald Reagan, the prejudices that prevented treating a pandemic, and the entire staffs of small-town hospitals. If only every day I didn't know in my bones, in the dreadlocks of my own DNA, that science could have killed the AIDS virus back in the early 1980s, could have classified it and cultured it in a petri dish and crushed its replication, could have prevented its spread as well as clarifying care and cures for others. There could have/should have/would have been a vaccine by now, a cure by now...if only there weren't Republicans in office...if only there was a heart and an art to public health...if only the word "pariah" ddn't come to be redefined in so many cities and small towns...if only suffering people were treated as well as dogs and cats and cars are treated. So much wit, charm, beauty, talent, heart we lost; there are so many words we will never read, so much music we will never hear, so many paintings and photographs we will never stand before, amazed...So much might have happened, so many might have lived, and lived well, if it weren't for the ilk of Ed Koch, for drug companies who'd rather turn a profit than save lives.

If only...

I remind myself that I am alive, and I am healthy, and I have memories. I am thankful for that.

I am thankful for Ward 86, SFGH.

I am thankful my friend was treated with compassion when he was dying.

I am thankful I was there.

I am thankful that I was alone afterward.

If only...

In my own person, in my own personal grief, I wish that I could remember everything. I forget sometimes that I am a witness to one of the great tragedies of our times.

I forget that it is the duty of the witness to testify.

But people, it is so hard.

Be patient with me these days. I am writing from my very nerve endings.

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"heart/like a four-poster bed, heart like a canvas"--Boxing Day

I want a tiny house away from all other forms of life except my cat and maybe sourdough starter. I'll take dragonflies and butterflies, luna moths and maybe the occasional orb spider. I'll take my books and my antique lamps and my 400 Bakelite bracelets. I'll take my cashmere sweaters and my cowboy boots. I'll take my Levis and my lockets, my kimono and my Mikimoto pearls. I'll take Harv's sketchbooks and journals and the canvas of us he didn't finish painting. I'll take the shape of him still in my bed, the scent of him on my pillow every morning before I awaken. (How in the world can one dream of sugar cookies and clove cigarettes, then awaken to a half-empty bed? to a heart like the test of a sand dollar, each petal a sieve for grief?)


(title of blogpost from "Frieda Kahlo to Marty McConnell" by Marty McConnell" 

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DRAFT THREE: July 14, 2013

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HERE LIES ONE:  REMEMBERING YOU THROUGH CAVAFY

And if you

After 25 years, return to sand, to silver glints

Of gum wrappers and lead weights on broken

Test line, return to the spot where he removed

Your swimsuit so deftly and posed you there

And drew you to him after he drew you, your

27-year-old body, in India ink with a wash of grey

At twilight, the magic hour when the sky’s veiled

Violet, when the first stars pock it like rain on water

And below them the lake lies, gray zinc, and waves are

Wrinkles looking for someone’s brow—but not yours,

         For you’ll be ink on ivory forever—and unchanged.

What you didn’t realize is that ivory cracks and after

Find her poor

He dies at this same spot where you were first filled

Up with his child a quarter of a century ago you yield,  

You crack and craze; you unravel like fishing line or

Shot silk or kapok; you float into the air, into the water;

Waves wash over you then, when grief finally beaches

Itself like a hull in the sands of your heart.  The lake

Laps back and forth and fossils wash up on sand

And a bass leaps, flares silver and green, and falls…

And after you cry, you slip out of your swimsuit

And you look at your breasts that pleased one man

And two children, at your belly that cocooned them,  

At the scar that he kissed when you first made love

Ithaka

After your C-section and you were shy, when he said

It is coming home o it is --the only sure things now are

Breast belly crescent scar cunt—this is you, this is

Your body, and can this body so set in its ways

Please another, will another wander to find you

And feel at home? And you slip into the water

As though you were slipping back into your slip and

You float and it is satin shock it is cold and clinging

And your breasts bob and your hair’s gilt

In the late afternoon sun and you cry just a little more

And you climb on the rock where you once lay

On top of him and you lie there till you’re warm         

Won’t have fooled you 

And you leave off your sundress, your sapphire slip,

Your sandals (each dribbling sand like an hourglass),

                  Your sunglasses, your St. Christopher, you gather

Them up in a towel and naked you walk to the water

Your face wavers and his words echo and you do  

See that maybe there is still something to you,

Something of the figurehead, bare-breasted ravaged

By wind and wrinkling waves, a difference

         That perhaps he still sees, and you promise you’ll

Learn to promise to love and honor and cherish

Someone else and you scatter the last of his ashes

And scratch his name in the sand and watch

She has given you

Water filling the letters you have carved so deeply  

That it will be late morning before the very  

Last serif has been erased by the waves. 

Oh, Marilyn

              

WARDROBE’S ADVICE TO MISS MORTENSON

Ditch those boots by the backdoor but never

Forget your barnyard brain—see sex as dumb

Animal want. Abandon all gingham;

Lift that fine ass out of your Levis. Slip

On a slip so sheer you’d buff it with

Windex; let one of your bra straps slither

Past a rounded white shoulder. Remember

Tabu; daub it behind your knees and your

Earlobes, beneath the heavy globe of each

Breast.  Rouge your mouth; say nothing, hint

At everything.  Draw a fine line slant

Over each sleepy lid; file half an inch

From one satin pump.  Remember you may

Wiggle, might wobble, should limp like wounded prey.  

MISHEARING LATTICE FOR LET US

“WHAT’S A FOUR-LETTER WORD FOR OBSESSION?” 

     “Frigate like a Book.”  Emily Dickinson, #1263

Always you read in

bed, belly down, boards of the

book you’re holding like

shoulders in your hands,

posture the missionary

position, face cupped

over the splayed words  

moving horizontally,

vertically, cross-

word clues, (2 across,

7 down), symmetry not

that of Escher’s birds

or chessboard squares; yet

you believe in them--shadow,

dark serifs, glyphs of

letters; I have faith

in silence, the spaces in

between, the light that makes

it work. You say to me

Clue me in; I say to you

Stanza break, the curve

of the bee over

the imbricated rose.  Fill

in the blanks, dear. How

do I spell this out?

Imagine your hands against

my spine; go ahead

and turn the dog-eared

corner; see what’s waiting for

you on these white sheets.

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Roll Call

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My great-great-grandfather in the Union Army, writing letters home to my great-grandmother, letters still in my family; my great-great uncle hanged as a 17-year-old by night riders for being a member of the Confederate Army (do y'all see why Kentucky was never reconstructed?); my great-grandfather gassed in World War I; my grandfather and his oldest son, my father, and all of his brothers, including my uncle David who served in Viet Nam; my first father-in-law, Charles Johnson in Viet Nam for two tours of duty; my college boyfriend Ken, also there; my former brother-in-law Steve, serving in Desert Storm; a legacy of service starting with my current father-in-law, JD Parker, and continuing unbroken through his son/my brother-in-law Jesse II, his wife Susan and her son Jesse III (both of the latter on active duty); another of my nephews, Chris, graduate of the United States Naval Academy; my teacher (albeit briefly) Bruce Weigl; my student, Denny; my friend Butch; Major Dale A. Johnson, whose POW bracelet I wore.

Air Force. Army. Coast Guard. Marines. Merchant Marines. Navy.

Thank you for what you've done, for the history you've provided.

There's also the history of my first mother-in-law, Lilo, who spent her childhood in bomb shelters in Mannheim, learning to play chess in the dark; of my friend Mai, who escaped Saigon on one of the last flights out of the country; of my friend Jules (name changed) who left the service after being raped by his commanding officer. Those stories will wait for another day, but they're no less true than the ones above, and no less worthy of being remembered.