We share so much.
We do.
But it's the differences that cause me to remember you
in that too white austere restaurant light.
More expensive places offer
yellow stained fingered light pressed tight to lips,
forty years of French smoked walls and conversation,
caramel flambeed lamb and Italian golden orbed scones
that colour the memory
in an aged fresco
of however much your card can hold.
But not here,
not the Wouffle Hausen.
Here the lights hum,
be not proud,
and we weren't.
Couldn't be.
Who would dare?
She came all bubblegum pop and roll of hip.
Coulda been from 1956,
except for the hoodlum of baseball capped Jacks
gonading around
waiting for her shift
to shift.
I ordered
what I once knew
and you lost your Wouffle Hausen virginity
to a chopped steak melt plate.
It wasn't her that mattered,
the Jacks,
or the menu;
not even the light,
but what it did to you.
You -
held within it's truth,
nowhere to hide;
the lines of your face
parchment
of every man ever born blessed
to roam
and love
and build
and die.
Your man-hair as honest
as any two day old hat head would impart
stuck up
as your face slid down
in that moment when you gave thanks
for what the bubblegum girl
was about to present.
You gave thanks
in fluorescent white light
beneath a quarter bloomed moon
and my heart did break around the thick edge
of that oval white plate.
We share so much,
we do,
but it's the differences that cause me to remember you.
(Thanks Kim for prompting me to remember, not that I would ever forget.)
Rewritten
It's 1975. The Tehkumah Community Hall is full to bursting. Bulky winter coats have bubbled up in lumps like mushrooms at the bottom of an old stump after the rain. Naw, they're dumplings in a pot on grandma's stove. I peek at them, the rising backs of them, from between the curtains. The curtains are heavy, heavy as blankets, heavier than the ones on my bed. They're as heavy as blankets that have stories sewn right into them, blankets that don't mind holding dirt. The air is heavy too, hot, thick to breathe and the dumplings shift around. The lucky ones find seats, move their shoulders back pretending they don't notice the thick air. I see them, the shoulders, and I feel safe. I see them and feel as if those shoulders could float me anywhere, as though my feet will never have to touch the celery or onions that boil away in the pot beneath me.
And then I laugh.
I am wearing a dress of flowers, tissue paper thin. I could be blown away in the draft of the winter door if those dumplings didn't swallow up the draft first. But even though my dress is paper thin, but twirlable (I've tried!) my feet don't lie. It is winter. I see their shoulders and they see only my feet beneath the heavy curtain, big blocky winter toes. I sweat inside my boots. My stockinged feet are abath in the shock of pretending pretty, while the rest of the world freezes just beyond The Hall doors.
There are people in the audience I know and not one person who doesn't know me. I know there are soiled tissues in pockets, some even stowed in bras. I know there are parents that ssssst from between tight lips at their kids, younger than even me, while they squirm at their parent's dripping feet. Someone clears their throat and it spreads like an infection throughout The Hall, faster than the yawns that will come as soon as the lights are turned down. And I know that deep inside my Godfather's navy coated pockets he carries fudge for me. I know my Godmother earlier pressed it to pan and told him not to taste, but both she and I know that he will have crumbled off a corner of the piece wrapped for me and he will have savored it more for his theft. My brother is on my mother's desert-like chest. He's willingly shipwrecked there, and my father sits there stiff in a plywood/metal chair. It is unbelievable. He sits there with a wave of brownish just slightly light of red hair cocked from his crown. It seems unbelievable to me that he's there in something as ordinary as pants and shirt and skin, even a coat, like all the rest, but there he is.
The curtains will open. I will sing and I will never forget the sound of those pulleys working the heavy curtains parting to the crowd.
This is where the rewriting takes place. Not in any one event. Not in the weight of curtains, the shift of dumplinged shoulders or even the sweat of feet. It will all happen exactly as it did. Even my father's death, the snotty tissues, the baby shipwrecked to chest and the fudge deep in pocket gathering fuzz that will later find warmth and melt in my cheek. What will be rewritten will be this: You will be somewhere in the world and I will know. You will be somewhere already popped of throat and gonad itching. You will be reading books and stroking page. You will be watching stars on your cousin's ceiling and hawks against a clear blue sky. You will be driving by yourself to county fairs and sitting far in the back to not only listen to bands play, but to see all that unfolds between them and you. You will be laying out tools and fixing cars, wiping your hands to jean and wearing stains. You will be throwing shirts into a sac and taking off, not paying much mind to the fuel gage.
The curtains will open and I will know that you are out there - somewhere - and that one day we will meet.
And then I will sing.
And then I laugh.
I am wearing a dress of flowers, tissue paper thin. I could be blown away in the draft of the winter door if those dumplings didn't swallow up the draft first. But even though my dress is paper thin, but twirlable (I've tried!) my feet don't lie. It is winter. I see their shoulders and they see only my feet beneath the heavy curtain, big blocky winter toes. I sweat inside my boots. My stockinged feet are abath in the shock of pretending pretty, while the rest of the world freezes just beyond The Hall doors.
There are people in the audience I know and not one person who doesn't know me. I know there are soiled tissues in pockets, some even stowed in bras. I know there are parents that ssssst from between tight lips at their kids, younger than even me, while they squirm at their parent's dripping feet. Someone clears their throat and it spreads like an infection throughout The Hall, faster than the yawns that will come as soon as the lights are turned down. And I know that deep inside my Godfather's navy coated pockets he carries fudge for me. I know my Godmother earlier pressed it to pan and told him not to taste, but both she and I know that he will have crumbled off a corner of the piece wrapped for me and he will have savored it more for his theft. My brother is on my mother's desert-like chest. He's willingly shipwrecked there, and my father sits there stiff in a plywood/metal chair. It is unbelievable. He sits there with a wave of brownish just slightly light of red hair cocked from his crown. It seems unbelievable to me that he's there in something as ordinary as pants and shirt and skin, even a coat, like all the rest, but there he is.
The curtains will open. I will sing and I will never forget the sound of those pulleys working the heavy curtains parting to the crowd.
This is where the rewriting takes place. Not in any one event. Not in the weight of curtains, the shift of dumplinged shoulders or even the sweat of feet. It will all happen exactly as it did. Even my father's death, the snotty tissues, the baby shipwrecked to chest and the fudge deep in pocket gathering fuzz that will later find warmth and melt in my cheek. What will be rewritten will be this: You will be somewhere in the world and I will know. You will be somewhere already popped of throat and gonad itching. You will be reading books and stroking page. You will be watching stars on your cousin's ceiling and hawks against a clear blue sky. You will be driving by yourself to county fairs and sitting far in the back to not only listen to bands play, but to see all that unfolds between them and you. You will be laying out tools and fixing cars, wiping your hands to jean and wearing stains. You will be throwing shirts into a sac and taking off, not paying much mind to the fuel gage.
The curtains will open and I will know that you are out there - somewhere - and that one day we will meet.
And then I will sing.
Henry and Ruth
Dear Henry:
I’m not looking for forever any more, love. I’m looking only for today.
Something has happened as we’ve gotten older. Plans have disintegrated, egos capitulated, bones have fallen inward with our shrink. Our bodies have become smaller as our spirits have begun to move outside of us, live around us, hover soft breezes tossing up our christened white hair. We’re tired structures, Henry, cornerstones askew, bats taken to our belfries, our thoughts have fallen through joists of linear and are becoming scattered rusty fallen nails.
But in our disjointedness there is freedom, Henry.
Bones float
- yesterday -
- today -
- tomorrow -
independent entities.
Promises of foundation and structure, things we once demanded, are as two dimensional and irrelevant as the coroner’s bill
too late too late
already gone, they whisper
Henry, I want to wake up beside you and when I animate my body, lungs like tarps taking in that first deep surprise of morning breath, I want to know that what I take in is – in part – what you’ve just expelled. Let’s our lungs elastic together, Henry. Once I wanted you to play Jimmy Stewart and hoped you’d lasso me the moon, spit paste it there just above and to the right of our house, in the sky. And now I only want tea for breakfast, one slice of moon cake between us, and for that to be enough to sustain our day. Today you’ll squeeze my elbow. Today I’ll pet your foot with mine. Don’t bother that you can barely feel it.
Once I signed my letters forever, but Henry, I’m not looking for forever. I’m looking only for today.
love you, dear,
today,
right now,
Ruth
Ruth,
Sixth grade Emily Frank passed you that note that wasn’t a note at all.
Remember that?
It was a pencilled drawing that I’d tongued out over paper the whole of Mr. Pratt’s Spelling Bee with nary a word written down. There you were revealed in all your leaded glory, two circle breasts like pancakes and two cherry topped nipples, just like I imagined, and your handle hips that never quite fit into your skirt. You turned fifteen shades of beautiful rose that radiated from you like heat.
I remember you like that.
Four years later we ate apples taken ripe from Johnston’s farm and jumped fences running. We had apple trees of our own but they were always sweeter like that. We laughed, we did, until we peed beneath the weeping willow. Remember how my muscles played the cheap undershirt of white? In those days I could get away with it. It was thin enough for you to scent my skin and thick enough to net my answer. Your cheek found my chest and we found ourselves employing that willow for other things.
My arms could carry twelve good logs as my feet worked the stairs, my knee pushed the door, and I thundered it all to the floor. You’d raise a brow to the storm near the stove, my storm. Yes, you would.
And that one time, that trip to the city where we played at Scarlot O’Hara meets old cousin Jed. Hotel bathrooms are small but you and I fit in between the toilet and sink. Your skirt a crescent to your full moon sigh and me a shooting star, a comet, really the whole big bang theory right there in the Howard Johnson.
Remember me young like that.
Yes, I know, I am here still, love and you are too but we’re sure not what we used to be. You coo me quiet and touch my head but my parts don’t respond as a whole. When I wear an undershirt it just looks like I’ve forgotten the rest. Your hips do rise but I don’t tell you how they just look like bones and the closest I come to your nipples is when you bend to tamp my stubborn legs to this chair, pile of papers they are, of the story we once lived.
Please Ruth,
remember me young.
Love Henry
excavatin
Everyting. I.owns.is.shit!
Really.
Chaiz wobba.
Ceilins fallin in.
Washin machine lurches.
Floors is all off kilta.
Shovel,
da handas broken off.
Was lef in da snowbank all las winta.
Snow plough girthed it an unruly lot
in da snowbank,
'gainst da tree,
down da concrete,
inta da neighbours yar'.
Cheapa dan terapy!
Dat guy who worked for da town
nailed it ova and ova agin
and dragged it tree driveways down.
Ye could easy killa man
wit da unfettered snarl
of da broken handa.
Ita slide in trew da skin
lika knife
trew butta.
Makes excavatin a tricky bidness,
diggin down deep trew
layers ashit.
You gotta get nose down deep and gamy,
all centa agravity low and grunt
and ya can't be no afeard of hurtin yeself.
No, fut no!
You gotta be willin to take it in da belly.
Damn straight!
Can' get no furta down
lessen you take dat chance.
Excavatin,
Is some tricky bidness.
Really.
Chaiz wobba.
Ceilins fallin in.
Washin machine lurches.
Floors is all off kilta.
Shovel,
da handas broken off.
Was lef in da snowbank all las winta.
Snow plough girthed it an unruly lot
in da snowbank,
'gainst da tree,
down da concrete,
inta da neighbours yar'.
Cheapa dan terapy!
Dat guy who worked for da town
nailed it ova and ova agin
and dragged it tree driveways down.
Ye could easy killa man
wit da unfettered snarl
of da broken handa.
Ita slide in trew da skin
lika knife
trew butta.
Makes excavatin a tricky bidness,
diggin down deep trew
layers ashit.
You gotta get nose down deep and gamy,
all centa agravity low and grunt
and ya can't be no afeard of hurtin yeself.
No, fut no!
You gotta be willin to take it in da belly.
Damn straight!
Can' get no furta down
lessen you take dat chance.
Excavatin,
Is some tricky bidness.
Drawing out the Truth
We dot the town,
pitiful,
breast worn,
hair once clean,
nerves twice tried over,
and underwear
underwashed.
Somnambulist,
you think.
Weary,
rusted through,
used up
and discarded,
but I know better.
We've a club.
We're doing it.
We're chopping wood,
making kindling,
starting fires;
soot the charcoal
of our poems.
We write ourselves
across our days
as our children
paw to breast.
Divorced,
you say.
Chosen,
I respond.
Chosen
to live anew.
We've no secret handshake
but we do smile,
one to one
from beneath our oily dreads.
Do you know how beautiful
light truncates
beneath toil?
It fractures
in grandmother tea light splendor
as we ply to fingers,
tongues out,
to draw out our own slivers,
mini
plays of ecstasy
from swollen puckered skin.
And when we do,
release is sweet,
and it is
all ours,
each to each.
(I see us around town, usually kicking it over the speed limit, trying to inch hours together to get it all done, these women who don't know each other, but who do know more of the other than anyone else might.)
pitiful,
breast worn,
hair once clean,
nerves twice tried over,
and underwear
underwashed.
Somnambulist,
you think.
Weary,
rusted through,
used up
and discarded,
but I know better.
We've a club.
We're doing it.
We're chopping wood,
making kindling,
starting fires;
soot the charcoal
of our poems.
We write ourselves
across our days
as our children
paw to breast.
Divorced,
you say.
Chosen,
I respond.
Chosen
to live anew.
We've no secret handshake
but we do smile,
one to one
from beneath our oily dreads.
Do you know how beautiful
light truncates
beneath toil?
It fractures
in grandmother tea light splendor
as we ply to fingers,
tongues out,
to draw out our own slivers,
mini
plays of ecstasy
from swollen puckered skin.
And when we do,
release is sweet,
and it is
all ours,
each to each.
(I see us around town, usually kicking it over the speed limit, trying to inch hours together to get it all done, these women who don't know each other, but who do know more of the other than anyone else might.)
Ahhotep
There are days when decimation is funny,
when destruction the craic,
when incineration the tail end sweep of scarf,
and civilizations fall by dinner.
That's when my gait is large.
It bridges puddles,
countries,
genders,
and hunters fall from their lot by will
leaving their guns to rust
while prey is made
in unlikely sources
beneath noses
once held high.
(*Ahhotep was an ancient Egyptian warrior queen. Some days we get the shit kicked out of us and some days we feel like Ahhotep.)
when destruction the craic,
when incineration the tail end sweep of scarf,
and civilizations fall by dinner.
That's when my gait is large.
It bridges puddles,
countries,
genders,
and hunters fall from their lot by will
leaving their guns to rust
while prey is made
in unlikely sources
beneath noses
once held high.
(*Ahhotep was an ancient Egyptian warrior queen. Some days we get the shit kicked out of us and some days we feel like Ahhotep.)
A Question for you
I find myself in a curious place.
It's a rising and falling kind of place,
a place close to truth
but just a fraction of a shift off center.
It's knowing something
but not being able to work the mind up enough
to fully recognize what it is that I know.
It's wanting so desperately to live,
to really live,
or to die,
in a moment of perfection.
It is not a sad place,
nor is it a happy one.
It's a curious place,
like the precipice of orgasm.
Is it better to cum,
to reach fruition
and then let go,
or is it better to eternally yearn,
to grind the edge,
hum into the horizon?
Cat and Man
I am mama cat.
I carry in my mouth
the mewling potential of man.
It is a pitiful lot,
eyes swollen shut,
gummy, fetid
bellied eyes.
I could clean them.
And I will,
but even open
they will be tsk tsk-able.
Shrunken, helpless
embryonic puss,
you mewl man's anthem.
And as I write this, the patheticalness of man, it is only to recognize the impossibility of man achieving absolute truth and enlightenment while alive but yet we are born with urge in our veins and we seek it and when we are lucky we experience momentary euphoria, always only momentary, but sweeter still for its briefness.
It's a rising and falling kind of place,
a place close to truth
but just a fraction of a shift off center.
It's knowing something
but not being able to work the mind up enough
to fully recognize what it is that I know.
It's wanting so desperately to live,
to really live,
or to die,
in a moment of perfection.
It is not a sad place,
nor is it a happy one.
It's a curious place,
like the precipice of orgasm.
Is it better to cum,
to reach fruition
and then let go,
or is it better to eternally yearn,
to grind the edge,
hum into the horizon?
Cat and Man
I am mama cat.
I carry in my mouth
the mewling potential of man.
It is a pitiful lot,
eyes swollen shut,
gummy, fetid
bellied eyes.
I could clean them.
And I will,
but even open
they will be tsk tsk-able.
Shrunken, helpless
embryonic puss,
you mewl man's anthem.
And as I write this, the patheticalness of man, it is only to recognize the impossibility of man achieving absolute truth and enlightenment while alive but yet we are born with urge in our veins and we seek it and when we are lucky we experience momentary euphoria, always only momentary, but sweeter still for its briefness.
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