Friday, December 19, 2003
Pageant
Christmas pageants, like the event they re-enact, tend to proceed according to script, hewing as closely to the text as the Birth did to the prophecies that foretold it. The census, the overcrowded inn, the manger, the swaddling cloths. The shepherds, the star, the Magi. The gold, the frankincense, the myrrh. Phrase follows phrase with the comforting, iconic predictability of a much beloved bedtime story.
In my own Northern version of these things there is always snow, a vision more derived more from manger scenes on New England commons than from the reality of Bethlehem’s climate. Rather than dialogue, there is always a narrator: third person, omniscient. A decree went forth. No room at the inn. The shepherds watched their flocks by night. Hark ! The herald angels sing. Gospel, shot through with the bright tinsel of carols, and padded with the pure white cotton of fake snow.
I have a small, black-and-white photo of the Christmas pageant S. and I put on over forty years ago. I was 10, she 13. It was Christmas night, Aunt Sofie’s annual party. The grownups smoked, drank cocktails, and talked long into the night with Sinatra Christmas songs on the hi-fi. S. and I put on entertainments. They indulged us by watching.
In the photo, S. and I sit side by side on a kitchen chair to which we’ve taped a donkey’s face and ears. The donkey is goofily toothy; its nostrils flare; its eyelashes are absurdly long. I am wearing a bedsheet and a sheer, silky scarf as a veil, and am holding, in an oddly casual manner, a swaddled baby doll: we are virgin and child. I am cocking my head and mincing coyly for the camera. A real ham. S. is in drag. With a brown hairnet taped to her chin, and a construction paper handlebar mustache, she looks more like a civil war general than Saint Joseph, but the chenille bathrobe and the crooked wooden cane are pure Sunday School.
Behind us, taped to the wall, is a large Santa cutout.
But it’s really not such a nice story, is it. The overcrowded inn is the least of it. Take the wise men. The children’s version never mentions how they were summoned by Herod as celestial-event consultants, nor that Herod’s project was a search and destroy mission against the infant who threatened his sovereignty. The Magi were to be his unwitting patsies. They would lead him to the little bastard usurper ! Warned at the last moment, the wise men did not to return to Herod’s palace.
The children’s version usually ends well before Herod, thwarted, flying into a rage, orders the slaughter of all infants under two. This, too, had been pre-ordained in scripture. So the new parents pack up the infant and flee on their kitchen chair donkey into Egypt. Except I doubt that was part of our screenplay. Ours was the Disney version. With a cardboard Santa chorus line.
It was only as an adult, and after my own son had been born, that Herod took his rightful place in my inner Christamas pageant: symbol of the terrible, death-dealing political context into which the miraculous child was born. Into which so many miraculous children (for all nativity is miracle) are still born. The Slaughter of the Innocents is an essential part of the Christmas Story, the canvas on which it is painted, the blood in which it is written: the blood that portends the blood that will be shed at the other end of the long, dramatic arc. And the Coventry Carol, which sings of it, is the most beautiful and terrible of lullabies, the perect Christmas song:
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lullay, lullay
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lullay, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day,
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lullay, lullay.
Herod the king in his ragin,
Charged he hath this day,
His men of night, in his own sight,
All children young to stay.
Then woe is me, poor child, for thee,
And ever mourn and say,
For thy parting not say, nor sing,
By, by, lullay, lullay.
In my own Northern version of these things there is always snow, a vision more derived more from manger scenes on New England commons than from the reality of Bethlehem’s climate. Rather than dialogue, there is always a narrator: third person, omniscient. A decree went forth. No room at the inn. The shepherds watched their flocks by night. Hark ! The herald angels sing. Gospel, shot through with the bright tinsel of carols, and padded with the pure white cotton of fake snow.
I have a small, black-and-white photo of the Christmas pageant S. and I put on over forty years ago. I was 10, she 13. It was Christmas night, Aunt Sofie’s annual party. The grownups smoked, drank cocktails, and talked long into the night with Sinatra Christmas songs on the hi-fi. S. and I put on entertainments. They indulged us by watching.
In the photo, S. and I sit side by side on a kitchen chair to which we’ve taped a donkey’s face and ears. The donkey is goofily toothy; its nostrils flare; its eyelashes are absurdly long. I am wearing a bedsheet and a sheer, silky scarf as a veil, and am holding, in an oddly casual manner, a swaddled baby doll: we are virgin and child. I am cocking my head and mincing coyly for the camera. A real ham. S. is in drag. With a brown hairnet taped to her chin, and a construction paper handlebar mustache, she looks more like a civil war general than Saint Joseph, but the chenille bathrobe and the crooked wooden cane are pure Sunday School.
Behind us, taped to the wall, is a large Santa cutout.
But it’s really not such a nice story, is it. The overcrowded inn is the least of it. Take the wise men. The children’s version never mentions how they were summoned by Herod as celestial-event consultants, nor that Herod’s project was a search and destroy mission against the infant who threatened his sovereignty. The Magi were to be his unwitting patsies. They would lead him to the little bastard usurper ! Warned at the last moment, the wise men did not to return to Herod’s palace.
The children’s version usually ends well before Herod, thwarted, flying into a rage, orders the slaughter of all infants under two. This, too, had been pre-ordained in scripture. So the new parents pack up the infant and flee on their kitchen chair donkey into Egypt. Except I doubt that was part of our screenplay. Ours was the Disney version. With a cardboard Santa chorus line.
It was only as an adult, and after my own son had been born, that Herod took his rightful place in my inner Christamas pageant: symbol of the terrible, death-dealing political context into which the miraculous child was born. Into which so many miraculous children (for all nativity is miracle) are still born. The Slaughter of the Innocents is an essential part of the Christmas Story, the canvas on which it is painted, the blood in which it is written: the blood that portends the blood that will be shed at the other end of the long, dramatic arc. And the Coventry Carol, which sings of it, is the most beautiful and terrible of lullabies, the perect Christmas song:
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lullay, lullay
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lullay, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day,
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lullay, lullay.
Herod the king in his ragin,
Charged he hath this day,
His men of night, in his own sight,
All children young to stay.
Then woe is me, poor child, for thee,
And ever mourn and say,
For thy parting not say, nor sing,
By, by, lullay, lullay.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
And An Unsavory Tradition It Is
Continuing the tradition of using Anita Rust as repository for my various and byzantine unpublishable and/or unreadable epics, I have posted my Disaster Poem, a blankish verse screenplay about a Poet Laureate's sinister plot -- complete with evil machine -- to transform every poem ever written into an advertisement for "Blackbird Coffee."
In retrospect, I think I must had some kind of minor Robert Pinsky-related psychosis back in 1999-2000 when I wrote this and -- giving new and definitive meaning to unreadble and/or unpublishable -- this.
In retrospect, I think I must had some kind of minor Robert Pinsky-related psychosis back in 1999-2000 when I wrote this and -- giving new and definitive meaning to unreadble and/or unpublishable -- this.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Devo of the Dolls
It's a gray, cold morning. There was wet snow overnight, the translucent, gray slushy kind that turns to water underfoot. Then to ice. The plow came at 2:30 am. I listened to the repeated concussions of the blade on the driveway, the ensuing long scrape. Men at work. DK was asleep; a cat was pressed against my feet.
When I was a child, I used to pretend my bed was a boat. I was adrift in the night safe in its hold, with a whole host of dolls and stuffed animals. Can I remember them ? There was Ella, the red stuffed elephant. I got him (yes him) when I was one. I still have him: a pathetic rag of a thing. Eyeless, patched, its red velvet worn napless, its back seam splitting. There was Teddy, a large yellow stuffed bear. (I did not waste a lot of imaginative energy on naming my dolls.) I slept with Teddy until adolescence. One day he mysteriously disappeared. Vanished. Poof. I've always suspected my parents of the crime, as they had begun to joke about my eventual sharing of a bed with bear and husband. There was a vinyl boy doll, Mickey. There was Nancy, also vinyl; she was a Campbell's Soup Doll -- 1950's avatar of product tie-in marketing to children. There was Ginette, a yellow haired girl doll. They formed a complex social group whose details I can't remember. Ella was the boss, and was somehow responsible, at midnight every New Year's Eve, for making sure the year changed correctly. I wish I remembered how that worked.
I still can't sleep properly without hugging a small pillow.
One doll I had who was not a member of that night boat crew was Poor Pitiful Pearl. She was a girl doll with bangs (like me) and a tattered, patched blue dress and black stockings. And a kerchief. I always assumed that I was given the doll as a secret, ironic adult joke. Poor Pitiful Paula. Nostalgia items, both of us. Dance with the dolly with the hole in her stockings.
In John Cheever's Falconer the prison doctor had holes in his socks.
As do I, from time to time.
My Bubbi took the skill at using a darning egg to the grave with her. I mend socks like I would a laceration. She taught me a fabulous way to patch the knees of blue jeans. In recent years I have grown lazy. Used iron-ons. Which fall-off. Devolution, dears.
Pincushion, darning egg, beeswax.
Email, Ipod, Cell Phone.
Now it's bright and cold and windy. Twice I've had to go out and retrieve trash cans skidding acress the drive.
I got a letter, today, from Moscow, from a 23 year old man with the same unusual last name as mine, looking for information on his ancestry. I was pleased and excited; he'd found me on the internet -- I've a digital trail of poems, and one has my home address on it.
I called my father, who was intrigued, but suspicious.
I have a rare and beautiful last name. Last night, during the credits of Kieslowski's Decalogue I decided that I should have some kind of Deeply Euro first name to go with it. I was drooling over the Polish names: Miroslava, Ewa, Graznya, Halina. Or, even better: Wojchiech, Witold, Zbiegnew. There's a bit of the transvestite in me. Bubbi would find that scandalous. She found my brother's shoulder lenghth late 60's hair scandalous. She said, once, famously: you look like a gorilla.
Poor pitiful Paula and the Gorilla. Teddy -- return from your grave at the Andover Dump and avenge us !
When I was a child, I used to pretend my bed was a boat. I was adrift in the night safe in its hold, with a whole host of dolls and stuffed animals. Can I remember them ? There was Ella, the red stuffed elephant. I got him (yes him) when I was one. I still have him: a pathetic rag of a thing. Eyeless, patched, its red velvet worn napless, its back seam splitting. There was Teddy, a large yellow stuffed bear. (I did not waste a lot of imaginative energy on naming my dolls.) I slept with Teddy until adolescence. One day he mysteriously disappeared. Vanished. Poof. I've always suspected my parents of the crime, as they had begun to joke about my eventual sharing of a bed with bear and husband. There was a vinyl boy doll, Mickey. There was Nancy, also vinyl; she was a Campbell's Soup Doll -- 1950's avatar of product tie-in marketing to children. There was Ginette, a yellow haired girl doll. They formed a complex social group whose details I can't remember. Ella was the boss, and was somehow responsible, at midnight every New Year's Eve, for making sure the year changed correctly. I wish I remembered how that worked.
I still can't sleep properly without hugging a small pillow.
One doll I had who was not a member of that night boat crew was Poor Pitiful Pearl. She was a girl doll with bangs (like me) and a tattered, patched blue dress and black stockings. And a kerchief. I always assumed that I was given the doll as a secret, ironic adult joke. Poor Pitiful Paula. Nostalgia items, both of us. Dance with the dolly with the hole in her stockings.
In John Cheever's Falconer the prison doctor had holes in his socks.
As do I, from time to time.
My Bubbi took the skill at using a darning egg to the grave with her. I mend socks like I would a laceration. She taught me a fabulous way to patch the knees of blue jeans. In recent years I have grown lazy. Used iron-ons. Which fall-off. Devolution, dears.
Pincushion, darning egg, beeswax.
Email, Ipod, Cell Phone.
Now it's bright and cold and windy. Twice I've had to go out and retrieve trash cans skidding acress the drive.
I got a letter, today, from Moscow, from a 23 year old man with the same unusual last name as mine, looking for information on his ancestry. I was pleased and excited; he'd found me on the internet -- I've a digital trail of poems, and one has my home address on it.
I called my father, who was intrigued, but suspicious.
I have a rare and beautiful last name. Last night, during the credits of Kieslowski's Decalogue I decided that I should have some kind of Deeply Euro first name to go with it. I was drooling over the Polish names: Miroslava, Ewa, Graznya, Halina. Or, even better: Wojchiech, Witold, Zbiegnew. There's a bit of the transvestite in me. Bubbi would find that scandalous. She found my brother's shoulder lenghth late 60's hair scandalous. She said, once, famously: you look like a gorilla.
Poor pitiful Paula and the Gorilla. Teddy -- return from your grave at the Andover Dump and avenge us !
In Which I Realize That I Have Become A Not So Ornamental Hermit
I looked in the mirror this morning and thought: Saddam.
I've spent the past two and a half months in a spider hole, and it shows. The glazed, disoriented look. The long, witchy gray hair. Dirty fingernails. If my legs are any indication, there could be a little beard happening under the DeSalvo collar. What next ? Corkscrew toenails. Vermin. Scrofula. Formication.
I've spent two and a half months communing with dead vegetation.
My colleague, pressing me to come to the clinic Xmas party tomorrow, emailed me: i'm worried that your monastic living may be too sobering. even for you. She has my number. Hint: it's an integer between zero and two.
The whole trajectory of my life has led to this spot. Of the universe. That's a weighty acculmulation of events. Even my brain feels old.
I realize that this is yet another permutation of the fiendish collar I've had to wear: from cheerfully named Aspen, to Albert "The Boston Strangler" DeSalvo, to Gregor "behold my carapace" Samsa, to Poe with his various burials and immurations , and now, finally, to Saddam's Spider Hole.
I actually pored over the pictures of his little kitchen and bedroom and the schematic of the hideaway with great interest, scanning his shelves, inspecting his furniture. Nice digs, I thought.
My second skin. My turtle shell. My rat hole. And here's a new note: my hide-out. Am I incarcerated or on the lam or both ? Odd that it could be both. Prisoner or fugitive. Prisoner of flight.
Funny how it happens. Becoming a cartoon of myself.
This morning, staggering about the kitchen before coffee, I found myself talking to DK. What are these words I thought, even as I jabbered, pouring from my mouth ? Things I've said hundreds of times. Phrases boiling up, Pavlovian, from Broca's area. Phrases imprinted there, branded there by, in this case, the dailyness of a marriage. Nothing special. Some little, half-conscious, call and response. Some comforting, automatic sheltering super-structure. It was a moment of, well, spleen.
I need more coffee. And to take a walk before it rains.
In five days, my three months sentence will be up, and some sort of parole will begin. Parole is French for "word." As in "word of honor." From Latin Parabola. Parable. The sentence -- the judgment, the rule, the law, the complete thought, the imposition -- simplifies to a word. "I promise." Parable -- "a fictitious narrative for telling a spiritual truth." A spiritual truth ? The phrase hurts my ears.
I need to reel it all back in. To real it all back in.
Really.
I've spent the past two and a half months in a spider hole, and it shows. The glazed, disoriented look. The long, witchy gray hair. Dirty fingernails. If my legs are any indication, there could be a little beard happening under the DeSalvo collar. What next ? Corkscrew toenails. Vermin. Scrofula. Formication.
I've spent two and a half months communing with dead vegetation.
My colleague, pressing me to come to the clinic Xmas party tomorrow, emailed me: i'm worried that your monastic living may be too sobering. even for you. She has my number. Hint: it's an integer between zero and two.
The whole trajectory of my life has led to this spot. Of the universe. That's a weighty acculmulation of events. Even my brain feels old.
I realize that this is yet another permutation of the fiendish collar I've had to wear: from cheerfully named Aspen, to Albert "The Boston Strangler" DeSalvo, to Gregor "behold my carapace" Samsa, to Poe with his various burials and immurations , and now, finally, to Saddam's Spider Hole.
I actually pored over the pictures of his little kitchen and bedroom and the schematic of the hideaway with great interest, scanning his shelves, inspecting his furniture. Nice digs, I thought.
My second skin. My turtle shell. My rat hole. And here's a new note: my hide-out. Am I incarcerated or on the lam or both ? Odd that it could be both. Prisoner or fugitive. Prisoner of flight.
Funny how it happens. Becoming a cartoon of myself.
This morning, staggering about the kitchen before coffee, I found myself talking to DK. What are these words I thought, even as I jabbered, pouring from my mouth ? Things I've said hundreds of times. Phrases boiling up, Pavlovian, from Broca's area. Phrases imprinted there, branded there by, in this case, the dailyness of a marriage. Nothing special. Some little, half-conscious, call and response. Some comforting, automatic sheltering super-structure. It was a moment of, well, spleen.
I need more coffee. And to take a walk before it rains.
In five days, my three months sentence will be up, and some sort of parole will begin. Parole is French for "word." As in "word of honor." From Latin Parabola. Parable. The sentence -- the judgment, the rule, the law, the complete thought, the imposition -- simplifies to a word. "I promise." Parable -- "a fictitious narrative for telling a spiritual truth." A spiritual truth ? The phrase hurts my ears.
I need to reel it all back in. To real it all back in.
Really.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
I'm More Of A Prude Than The Next Guy, But This Is Ridiculous
The latest whacky exploits of the Lone Star State's criminal justice system is enough to leave the primmest of jaws more dropped than a pair of proverbial drawers.
Didn't the Supreme Court -- hardly, save perhaps for Justice Thomas, a bastion of kinky eros -- just dope slap TEXAS for its anti-sodomy laws after the intrusive arrest of two gay men for having sex in their bedroom ?
So now they're going after -- entrapping on a "tip" no less-- housewives selling vibrators ?
Of course Wal Mart can continue to sell vibrators because Wal Mart vibrators are for aching manly, pumped-up, God-fearing, missionary positioning, heterosexual muscles.
The historically prissy Commonwealth of Massachusetts has dabbled in these life-ruining, bedroom invading antics. Viz. the 1960's case of Professor Newton Arvin. It's a grim story, and the book tells it well.
The Texas law states that:
"...an obscene device is a simulated sexual organ or an item designed to stimulate the genitals..."
Don't you love it ? "Obscene device."
The phrase made me think of the Enola Gay, about to be re-displayed at the Smithsonian, without the pesky "context" of the 140,000 dead and the deep ethical issues surrounding its mission. James Carroll discusses this in the Globe today, noting
"In 1995, a previous exhibit drew fire from veterans groups and the Air Force Association because curators had provided "context" which suggested that President Truman's decision to use the weapon was not uncontroversial, even at the time. (Eisenhower's opposition was noted.) That exhibit was abruptly canceled.
The exhibit that opened yesterday provides no context for the display of the Enola Gay. Not even the casualties it caused (more than 140,000 deaths) are noted. The bomber is being displayed, the current museum director said, "in all of its glory as a magnificent technological achievement." A group of historians protested "such a celebratory exhibit" with a statement that drew hundreds of supporting signatures from scholars, and on Saturday more than a dozen of them, together with numerous Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings, came together. The issue is the construction and reconstruction of history, a question not only of the past, but of the present and the future. If America remembers its first use of nuclear weapons as morally uncomplicated -- or worse, as an event to be celebrated -- its present commitment to a huge nuclear arsenal, and its future readiness, under Bush policies, to build "usable" nukes will seem acceptable."
I remember the 1995 controversy. DK and I visited DC that summer. It was a grim trip. We visited Arlington Cemetary, the Holocaust Museum, the Enola Gay exhibit, the Vietnam Wall. We were struck by the contrast between all that death, and the broad boulevards flanked by tall white marble facades.
I was writing poems about Hiroshima around that time, and, after our trip wrote these two:
Smithsonian Exhibit Enola Gay Protest, 7.2.95
There were frightened kids.
That was the worst thing about it.
Children were just crying.
...a bystander
There was the crying,
but there also was
a drift of ash on a white sleeve,
and blood, spattering a sock,
not because the pretty airplane
got all dirty,
or because bad grownups
were screaming : repent ! regret !
but because a child
can drift black upon the air,
or boil red away
almost before its cry fades,
then be papered over
by text, flag, finesse,
and that's
the worst thing about it,
the rest comes out
with cold water,
a kiss, and Baby on Board
whistled in the dark.
7.3.95
Enola Gay, 2
i. Nuit Blanche with Gideons
No clocks. Must be past three.
I lie in a Holiday Inn white night
somewhere between Ecclesiastes
and the Song of Songs
in Washington DC.
Less than half asleep, I hug a pillow
to quiet my premenstrual middle,
and try to imagine a long life lived
without each month's
punctuation of blood --
how different it would be,
how restless one might get,
like a small boat unmoored
and without horizon,
how moved one might be
to leap up,
to do something, say something,
anything at all,
just to break the silence
Vanity of vanities,
says the Preacher.
I am a Rose of Sharon
a lily of the valleys .
ii. Period
The Smithsonian guard
who rifled through my purse
with his fastidious stick,
(smaller than night- ,
but larger than swizzle -)
was looking for lambsblood, ashes, sedition.
I'd had the foresight
to leave it all behind
in the hotel room
in the nightstand,
by the Gideon.
Tour guides, wallet, Kotex, Metro map --
he waved me through,
a good enough citizen,
past the curatorial disclaimer
toward the big, silver tailpiece
and blinding fuselage,
toward the black & white montage
of headlines screaming victory,
and the large screen filled
with an endless loop
of Paul Tibbetts' face
reciting the National Epic:
how sweetly the seven branches
of the Hiroshima River
arborized in the bombsight !
And what a triumph of the science
of restoration was on display there !
Little Boy, in olive drab facsimile
clung to Enola's plump belly
as the text assured us that we,
the public, were in no peril
from lingering radiation,
ambiguity, ghosts.
As I marched through the exhibit
hands above my head as prescribed
for safekeeping,
I felt a deep red fist clench
and unclench inside me,
squeezing out a satisfying pain,
a secret red sedition,
a Rose of Hiroshima,
warm to the thigh while I waited
as it whispered its way
toward the lily-of-the-valley
valley-of-the-shadow
death-white marble
Smithsonian floor.
8.29.95
It's all one big death-affirming, life-and-love denying package.
Didn't the Supreme Court -- hardly, save perhaps for Justice Thomas, a bastion of kinky eros -- just dope slap TEXAS for its anti-sodomy laws after the intrusive arrest of two gay men for having sex in their bedroom ?
So now they're going after -- entrapping on a "tip" no less-- housewives selling vibrators ?
Of course Wal Mart can continue to sell vibrators because Wal Mart vibrators are for aching manly, pumped-up, God-fearing, missionary positioning, heterosexual muscles.
The historically prissy Commonwealth of Massachusetts has dabbled in these life-ruining, bedroom invading antics. Viz. the 1960's case of Professor Newton Arvin. It's a grim story, and the book tells it well.
The Texas law states that:
"...an obscene device is a simulated sexual organ or an item designed to stimulate the genitals..."
Don't you love it ? "Obscene device."
The phrase made me think of the Enola Gay, about to be re-displayed at the Smithsonian, without the pesky "context" of the 140,000 dead and the deep ethical issues surrounding its mission. James Carroll discusses this in the Globe today, noting
"In 1995, a previous exhibit drew fire from veterans groups and the Air Force Association because curators had provided "context" which suggested that President Truman's decision to use the weapon was not uncontroversial, even at the time. (Eisenhower's opposition was noted.) That exhibit was abruptly canceled.
The exhibit that opened yesterday provides no context for the display of the Enola Gay. Not even the casualties it caused (more than 140,000 deaths) are noted. The bomber is being displayed, the current museum director said, "in all of its glory as a magnificent technological achievement." A group of historians protested "such a celebratory exhibit" with a statement that drew hundreds of supporting signatures from scholars, and on Saturday more than a dozen of them, together with numerous Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings, came together. The issue is the construction and reconstruction of history, a question not only of the past, but of the present and the future. If America remembers its first use of nuclear weapons as morally uncomplicated -- or worse, as an event to be celebrated -- its present commitment to a huge nuclear arsenal, and its future readiness, under Bush policies, to build "usable" nukes will seem acceptable."
I remember the 1995 controversy. DK and I visited DC that summer. It was a grim trip. We visited Arlington Cemetary, the Holocaust Museum, the Enola Gay exhibit, the Vietnam Wall. We were struck by the contrast between all that death, and the broad boulevards flanked by tall white marble facades.
I was writing poems about Hiroshima around that time, and, after our trip wrote these two:
Smithsonian Exhibit Enola Gay Protest, 7.2.95
There were frightened kids.
That was the worst thing about it.
Children were just crying.
...a bystander
There was the crying,
but there also was
a drift of ash on a white sleeve,
and blood, spattering a sock,
not because the pretty airplane
got all dirty,
or because bad grownups
were screaming : repent ! regret !
but because a child
can drift black upon the air,
or boil red away
almost before its cry fades,
then be papered over
by text, flag, finesse,
and that's
the worst thing about it,
the rest comes out
with cold water,
a kiss, and Baby on Board
whistled in the dark.
7.3.95
Enola Gay, 2
i. Nuit Blanche with Gideons
No clocks. Must be past three.
I lie in a Holiday Inn white night
somewhere between Ecclesiastes
and the Song of Songs
in Washington DC.
Less than half asleep, I hug a pillow
to quiet my premenstrual middle,
and try to imagine a long life lived
without each month's
punctuation of blood --
how different it would be,
how restless one might get,
like a small boat unmoored
and without horizon,
how moved one might be
to leap up,
to do something, say something,
anything at all,
just to break the silence
Vanity of vanities,
says the Preacher.
I am a Rose of Sharon
a lily of the valleys .
ii. Period
The Smithsonian guard
who rifled through my purse
with his fastidious stick,
(smaller than night- ,
but larger than swizzle -)
was looking for lambsblood, ashes, sedition.
I'd had the foresight
to leave it all behind
in the hotel room
in the nightstand,
by the Gideon.
Tour guides, wallet, Kotex, Metro map --
he waved me through,
a good enough citizen,
past the curatorial disclaimer
toward the big, silver tailpiece
and blinding fuselage,
toward the black & white montage
of headlines screaming victory,
and the large screen filled
with an endless loop
of Paul Tibbetts' face
reciting the National Epic:
how sweetly the seven branches
of the Hiroshima River
arborized in the bombsight !
And what a triumph of the science
of restoration was on display there !
Little Boy, in olive drab facsimile
clung to Enola's plump belly
as the text assured us that we,
the public, were in no peril
from lingering radiation,
ambiguity, ghosts.
As I marched through the exhibit
hands above my head as prescribed
for safekeeping,
I felt a deep red fist clench
and unclench inside me,
squeezing out a satisfying pain,
a secret red sedition,
a Rose of Hiroshima,
warm to the thigh while I waited
as it whispered its way
toward the lily-of-the-valley
valley-of-the-shadow
death-white marble
Smithsonian floor.
8.29.95
It's all one big death-affirming, life-and-love denying package.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Jingle Bell Rock
I am not a party girl.
But when DK told me our friendly neighbor J. had invited us to his yearly Xmas open house, I knew we just had to go. If only to see J's digs, about which we have been consumed with curiosity. J. is a collector (as in antiques and yard sales, not John Fowles) who keeps a fantastically neat yard, smokes large cigars and looks a little like Detective Munch from the defunct crime show Homicide. Who I always thought was cute. In a twisted existential sort of way. Rowwrrrr.
Anyway, that's how I came to find myself sitting at a basement rec room wet bar drinking too much diet pepsi. Hardly a dive on 52th street, but it would have to do.
Some guy behind the bar -- not J. -- noticed my Albert DeSalvo Collar and asked about it. I told him a little about the accident -- cell phone dude, fractured C2, outta work for months, yes we did eventually get a lawyer -- and he was, tipsily, off and running with unsolicited advice.
You gotta keep that collar on as long as you can !
(Fuck, no, this baby comes OFF at the first possible MOMENT !!)
Especially in the courtroom. I'm not kidding. Be sure you wear that thing in the courtroom.
(Courtroom ? What courtroom ? NO Courtroom !! I do not DO courtrooms.)
You gotta get yourself to a chiropracter immediately !
(No fucking way. I have a broken neck !! Where the VERTEBRAL ARTERIES go through !! Arteries that, under NON-FRACTURE circumstances, can be injured by CHIROPRACTIC MANIPULATION !!!)
You gotta make sure you rack up those medical bills !!
(Oh, yeah, now that's always fun -- schlepping through ghastly weather to medical appointments and uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking tests !)
Think of your pain and suffering, the depression, the lost wages, think of maybe even losing your job, think of the prospect of future painful disability !!!
(Keep it up, fella, and I'll be bawling into my diet pepsi. Right here between the electric snoring Santa and the juke box. )
You're looking at SIX FIGURES here !!!!
(And at this point, he reaches into his pocket, extracts a business card, and shoves it my way. He's, get this, a financial adviser. He wants my business. A piece of the broken neck action.)
What was I saying about low, dishonest decade ?
I kept flashing on Dr Nick from the Simpsons. And Lionel Hutz, Esq.
Boy, did that conversation ever weird me out.
Even Albert was amazed.
But when DK told me our friendly neighbor J. had invited us to his yearly Xmas open house, I knew we just had to go. If only to see J's digs, about which we have been consumed with curiosity. J. is a collector (as in antiques and yard sales, not John Fowles) who keeps a fantastically neat yard, smokes large cigars and looks a little like Detective Munch from the defunct crime show Homicide. Who I always thought was cute. In a twisted existential sort of way. Rowwrrrr.
Anyway, that's how I came to find myself sitting at a basement rec room wet bar drinking too much diet pepsi. Hardly a dive on 52th street, but it would have to do.
Some guy behind the bar -- not J. -- noticed my Albert DeSalvo Collar and asked about it. I told him a little about the accident -- cell phone dude, fractured C2, outta work for months, yes we did eventually get a lawyer -- and he was, tipsily, off and running with unsolicited advice.
You gotta keep that collar on as long as you can !
(Fuck, no, this baby comes OFF at the first possible MOMENT !!)
Especially in the courtroom. I'm not kidding. Be sure you wear that thing in the courtroom.
(Courtroom ? What courtroom ? NO Courtroom !! I do not DO courtrooms.)
You gotta get yourself to a chiropracter immediately !
(No fucking way. I have a broken neck !! Where the VERTEBRAL ARTERIES go through !! Arteries that, under NON-FRACTURE circumstances, can be injured by CHIROPRACTIC MANIPULATION !!!)
You gotta make sure you rack up those medical bills !!
(Oh, yeah, now that's always fun -- schlepping through ghastly weather to medical appointments and uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking tests !)
Think of your pain and suffering, the depression, the lost wages, think of maybe even losing your job, think of the prospect of future painful disability !!!
(Keep it up, fella, and I'll be bawling into my diet pepsi. Right here between the electric snoring Santa and the juke box. )
You're looking at SIX FIGURES here !!!!
(And at this point, he reaches into his pocket, extracts a business card, and shoves it my way. He's, get this, a financial adviser. He wants my business. A piece of the broken neck action.)
What was I saying about low, dishonest decade ?
I kept flashing on Dr Nick from the Simpsons. And Lionel Hutz, Esq.
Boy, did that conversation ever weird me out.
Even Albert was amazed.
