Considering, small revisions

I didn't like the flea image (see previous post), it didn't sit well with the rest of the imagery and the mood. I also felt the ending wasn't clear enough. I wanted to leave a little mystery and uncertainty, but to indicate the possible ending more clearly. I hope I've done that. Feel free to comment on the changes, but don't be too offended if I go my own stubborn way regardless. Sometimes, I like suggestions, and sometimes, they fall flat.

Considering

No screams show on the map, though you know
they hide there, perhaps below the cryptic markings,
the dragons, mermen and tridents. Red
bleeds the tattered edges of terror. Jagged, the ink
hemorrhages into the long fibers of the map’s rough paper.
The ink burns the flesh of your fingertips when you reach
to locate the memories. You stand on that cliff looking
down, twitching your shoulders for wings, but this isn’t
a dream. This is your life; each breath catapults you closer
to his opened fists, his fingers poised at your neck
ready to close. Suppose you ran? Who can explain
the geography of the heart, the way the blood and ink
of your story is ground from the same DNA as his father’s
and his father’s father’s? Observe how your own father
holds hands with his father; conjoined twins—they connect
at the out-thrust jaw. Note how together, they caress the map.
They paint your name across a heart with a blade suspended
above it. Small stars indicate honing, and the tip
draws to point sharper and smaller than the needle canine
of a ferret. From the margins of the map, they erase your face
with a wash of your tears. When wind fills with the taste
of iron and fear, and you consider your options, you take
one small step toward a hurtling topography of rock,
shattered promises and silence.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Peter, Joseph and “the General,” with love (Also for Brian Powers)
110107-0940-2a(4), 110106-1537-1c(3), 110106-1023 1sr—1st poem of 2011

The Casks

The Casks

The woman watches Jesus play with the sun. He tosses it into the air and catches it, throws it behind his back, bounces it like a rubber ball on the yellow pathway through the lawns and parks of Heaven. Through his body she sees trees, bushes and an odd black sky with unfamiliar stars. Jesus shines translucent white, bright, but not too bright. He bounces the sun, lifts his leg so that it bounces under to the other side. It passes through the light fabric of his robe unencumbered. He catches it, places it back in the sky above the earth, and turns to smile at her. He offers her his hand and she takes it. It is warm and feels like ordinary flesh, like her husband's hand. Like love. They descend a long series of stairs into the darkness. She thinks Hell, and when he opens the small oaken door and ducks inside, the scene there does not dissuade her from that
fear. Dwarfs, elves, and monsters. Wormy things sitting on benches and stools. The room glows red in spite of darkness; a huge fire burns in the fireplace. Gargantuan oaken casks rise behind the bar from floor to ceiling. Everyone talks, laughs, drinks. At the bar, Jesus orders them each a drink. His glows yellow and she watches it enter his body, which brightens and shifts to a yellower hue. She tips and rolls her glass, sniffing. It smells of chocolate, coffee, and raspberries, tastes like roses. It makes her terribly sleepy, and she awakens, of course, in bed. Her husband snores loudly. She wants to rouse him and tell him her dream, but knows he will dismiss it. 'Just another dream about death,' he would probably say. She might elbow him sharply for that unspoken comment if it weren't for that glowing hand on her shoulder. Instead, she accepts another drink and goes off to explore the future.

Mary Taitt
090309-1012-3a, 090308-2236-2a, 090307-2110-1c, 090307-1122 first

This is a new PROSE POEM from two back-to back dreams. (See dreams here).

Surrounded by Sky 090223-1440

Surrounded by Sky

A woman imagines she has cholera and worries she will be eaten by a shark. She fears she will slip under the fence and be swept over the falls at Niagara. When she eats, her belly explodes and kills her and when she flies, she dies in a plane crash. Every snowy car ride turns into an automobile accident and every Ferris wheel collapses when she reaches the top. She collects clippings of people killed by wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, escaped lions, burst appendixes, rabid rats, ice falling off church roofs, infected toenails, knowing each of these deaths is the one that will claim her.

One day, the once worried woman, who had already died a million imaginary deaths, lies dying. Dementia consumes her and she fails to recognize death's teeth at her throat. The reaper pulls the black hood off to his boney face and she only smiles. She dreams she is a child, and afraid of nothing. She climbs the tallest pine in the forest, a cabbage pine with branches like a ladder. Up and up and up and up, like Jack on the beanstalk she ascends, effortlessly, to the tippy top. It sways in the breeze. The sky surrounds her. The treetop bends, then breaks. She should fall. Instead, her body inflates with sunshine and she flies. She flies so high she can see the individual rays of starlight and each has a voice and a song. When the woman joins the song, a terrible rasping pours from her throat. No one at her deathbed recognizes the angel voices in the cacophony flowing like a fountain from her lips.

Mary Stebbins

090223-1440-2c; 090222-2135-1e; 090222-1756-1st

This, in case you can't tell, is a prose poem, which I wrote for Paul Roth, sort of. I may explain later. I think it may be the beginning, or the end, of a new chapbook. YIKES!

I'm doing this backwards, in a sense, posting the latest, newest version on my process blog when I've already posted an earlier version to The Smell of Sun, my poetry blog That was becasue I wanted to post it, unfinished though it was, to Creative Every Day.

Thin as Our Fingers
(Turning Flowers to Garbage)

A lake appears along the trail, above the cliffs
and pounding surf beneath. Bounded by cliff-side rocks,
it stretches nearly as far as we can see. Huge,
like the ocean below, but calmer. More welcoming
than the crashing waves of the sea. The trail
enters the lake and continues out of sight under the water,
as yellow as the yellow brick road in the Land of Oz.
I plunge in, eager, excited. Warm as air, the water
caresses me. Soft. Buoyant, delightful. I exhale, sink into it,
and rise again. “We can swim to the left, we can swim
to the right!” I tell you. And demonstrate. A smile
blossoms on my face and fills me with light
like the first sunny day of spring. You hesitate, then follow,
slowly. Wade, then swim. Then smile, too. We drift together,
above the yellow path under the water. You laugh,
bob, sway, almost seem to dance, until you see
the snakes. Green snakes, hundreds of them.
Some are as thin as our fingers, some as thick and long
as our arms and legs. The snakes float on the water like lily pads,
hold only their nostrils above water, heads suspended, tails dangling
like the long stems of water lilies. I swim and glide among them,
easy, relaxed, smiling. No clouds crowd the horizon; the sky
wears the clearest, deepest blue robes imaginable. Reflects
the endless blue water. But you stiffen. Hang back.
“Look,” I say, “they are harmless.” Snakes surround me,
and pay me no mind. Still frightened, you refuse
to swim forward. Suddenly, you yell and splash at the snakes.
In an instant, they all rear up, draw scaly lips back
to expose their fangs and hiss. They charge us both.




Mary Stebbins Taitt
For Keith and Janine
090113-1229-1eb

Snakes in the Water

Read more about the dream that caused this poem at my dream blog, Hidden Rooms.

Catching Rainbows in a Butterfly Net

I chased thousands in a field of spray, thought they'd slip
through the net like air, like fog, like the spray itself,
but it held them, shining fish, softer than fish roe,
slipperier than eels.   I swallowed them whole
in a whirl of cherry, strawberry, orange,
lemon, lime, blueberries and concord grapes
They wriggled and slid into the cage of my ribs
and swam there, lighting the cold cinder of heart
with color.  The sun when I caught it didn't burn
the fibers of net.  It tasted like fireballs, cinnamon
and cayenne and  roosted in the cinder of heart
like a banty taking to the trees at dusk.  Whoever told
you chickens don't fly never had banties!  Even
most of the white leghorns fluttered to the rafters
when the fox came in.  (Which wasn't the point
you were making, of course.)   Meanwhile, the sun
flapped its yellow wings, fluffed its white belly
and puffed out the cinder of heart into a great balloon
that thrummed in my chest glowing and shimmering
with rainbows, throbbing and singing: an electrical
tinnitus that seemed to be chanting: Oh Joy, Oh Love,
oh Glory.  Halleluiah.  Say what?  Hello?  Did I mention
the word dream?  None of it could be my fault.

Mary Taitt
For Kay Ryan, Rhonda Walsh, Lottie Spadie, Dawn McDuffie and Jim Doran
090106-1603-1d from a dream
brand new poem today

The Harmonies of Grief, with footnote

The Harmonies of Grief,
How Luisa and Geraldine Sing the Dirge

Luisa screams and screams. Blood gushes
from a gash on her forehead, her right arm hangs
limp at her side and a ripped section of her dress flops
blood-damp around her thighs in the wind. She sits
among pale emeralds of shattered glass, holds Jake
with her left arm, and rocks him. Squeezes him.
Jake lolls on her arm. She screams, sobs. Subsides
to silent weeping. Then screams again. Geraldine crawls
on the hot sand to kneel beside Aunt Luisa, stares at Uncle Jake
and wails. She lays a hand on Aunt Luisa and one on Uncle Jake.
His skin is warm, but his head hangs crookedly
to the side. It looks wrong. Geraldine wails and sways,
wails and sways. She pitches her keening to harmonize
with Aunt Luisa’s. But Aunt Luisa bleeds; her arm dangles.
Geraldine stands, loses her balance, falls, stands again,
and crosses the sand. She climbs the bluff toward the road.
Every few feet, she slides back, but she persists. Flags
down a car. Waits for the ambulance. The paramedics
cover Jake’s face, but Aunt Luisa uncovers it to give him
a kiss. Then kisses him again. Jake’s car rests upside down
on the beach. As the paramedics raise the stretchers
up the bluff, gulls descend to Jake’s potato chips,
scattered in an arc across the sand.

(scattered[1] in an arc across the sand.)



Mary Stebbins Taitt

--------This line and everything below this line is not part of this poem.--------
081018-2145-4a; 081016-2153-3a; 081015-2235-2a; 081014-2335-1st, an attempt at a 20-line E-prime poem for Dawn’s class, due Monday, October 21.

---

[1] There is an invisible state of being verb in this final phrase: (which are) scattered in an arc across the sand. I could edit it to read:

up the bluff, gulls descend to Jake's potato chips. The impact

scattered them in an arc across the sand.

Imagine, perhaps, that for the sake of the exercise, I did that, and let me know which you prefer.

False Accusations and the Dire Wolf

False Accusations and the Dire Wolf

Yolanda unexpectedly tumbles. Her skirts fly. She lands akimbo
on the ground, disarrayed. Hollers "she hit me;" points at me.
Shakes her finger. I'm yards away. And innocent.
Indignant at the false accusation, I dash over to defend
myself as bystanders help her up. She leads me to a window display
of trophies, pointing to one that says "Micaelson's." "You spelled it wrong,"
she says, her voice rising with anger. "I didn't make that one," I explain.
I point to the trophies I made, hand-carved from wood, unvarnished.
The one she's pointing at is black, fancy, plastic and metal, manufactured.
"And anyway, Camp Micaelson's has no "h" even if I had
made it." I ask her to hug me, to heal this rift between us.
She wavers, withholding.

Down the road toward us, a wolf charges, huge, black, bent on attack.
Without hesitation, I step between the wolf and Yolanda. As it springs,
I tackle it, knocking it down, grabbing it by the jaw, putting a knee
on its chest. It gnaws my hand; we struggle. Breathlessly, I tell Yolanda
I am a Shaman and can subdue the wolf, but I am not so sure. The wolf
fights with power and strength. I wonder if I am I courageous
and tenacious or simply puny. I feel puny, but battle on and on
until the wolf shrinks to a small fox. "Go," I say pointing down the road.
It slinks away, tail between it's legs, then pauses, looking back.

"It wants to be my spirit guide," I tell Yolanda, "Come on," I call.
The small fox runs back. My other two wolves attack it. "Down," I say,
"play nice." The fox leaps to my shoulders, curls like a shawl
around my shoulders. Wolves on either side, fox on my shoulder,
I smile at Yolanda and say nothing more.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
080321-1416-1c

see the dream work from which the poem came here.

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Also posted (by accident) By Mary Stebbins Taitt to Raw Word Batter at 3/21/2008 02:24:00 PM