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 Broken Ear and all its Monsters

The Broken Ear and all its Monsters

Waving a spoon back and forth over a candle,
like the master of an ancient and primitive ritual,
my father heated oil to pour into my brother's ears.
I imagine, but don't remember, a quiet incantation,
his voice soft and low, mumbling strange phrases
and the room darkening dreamlike from its ordinary
brightness. Earaches plagued my brother, who
was maybe eight then, and the warm oil, my father
said, would help. At nine, I did not believe him
and pictured ghastly torture. I watched
my father tip my brother's head, the bent
ear first, and ceremoniously pour a long thin stream
of oil into the offending ear. My brother winced,
my father held him steady, made him wait.
I stared at the bent edge of my brother's ear.
My father, when provoked, would grab
my that ear and twist it hard, hauling my brother
up and close to berate him. My brother
perfected the skill of needling my father—and
everyone else. Later, all three of us provoked him
with a thrashing teenage angst that began early
and lasted well beyond our teens, but my brother
started first. He grew out of it first as well, or managed
to hide it better. Then, he became my father's favorite,
and I the outcast. At nine, I thought my father's
repeated twisting of my brother's ear had broken it.
But perhaps he was born that way, broken,
with the seventh-generation curse from our pirate
ancestors or with some genetic psychic contortion
no nurture could overcome. Broken ears or not, we each
drew on ourselves the fury of first our parents
and then our partners with the flailing, incendiary
monsters we kept caged within.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
090728-1128-3a(3), 090724-1006-2a(2), 1st, Thursday, July 23, 2009, 12:43 PM

Willow Waiting (tonight's workshop poem)

Here's my "Model Poem" from tonight workshop.

Willow Waiting

Slumped under the weight of snow-dense clouds, lacy,
fingered and blurring wetly into the roofs and fading ridges,
a clump of scrubby bushes clings to the outer penitentiary wall,
stunned, scrawny and rusty but glazed with white.
Even the few brown leaves twist and fill with snow.

One slender stem uproots and shuffles
among the others, blunders, furtive,
a dark shape growing paler, struggling
against the deep and bending branches. The shrubs huddle,
shrink into drifts that rise to swallow them.

Snow buries the periwinkle, the picris, the dock,
Reaches up the willow stems, biting, hungry, cold.
Tomorrow, the bushes might disappear entirely,
but for the rootless one, moving, pausing, stamping,
separate. The shrubs hunker into the snow and sleep.

The girl twists her scarf tighter around her neck,
feels the snow melt icy into her too-short boots,
listens in the fluffy silence for her father.
He raises his window an inch and sings
to her though the bars.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090309-2241-1f, 090309, 1st
from a workshop piece in Dawn McDuffie's class.

I need to do a new image for it.

Of course, I completely made it my own.

It seems that everything I write wants to turn into a NOVEL!

This poem is called a "model poem" because the first draft was modeled after another poem. However, I changed it substantially.

A Perfect Love

A Perfect Love

In the graveyard at night, the woman collects fabric rose petals scattered in the snow, red ones, gold ones and black ones. They whisper across the dark drifts like the remains of autumn leaves. She chases them through ever-deepening snow, fills her pockets with them. She takes some of each, but since her pockets won't hold them all, she favors the red and gold ones over the black. She carries them in her pockets for years, taking them out only to launder the pockets. When she does, they escape, and roam around the house, multiplying. Her husband kidnaps them, trying to rid the marriage of the curse of the fabric rose petals. Only he notices that the gold petals are turning red, the red petals are turning black and the black ones are getting blacker and blacker. Velvety with soot. The woman rescues them. She now sees only gold petals, shining, delicate and light as a ray of sunshine. "Love me; love my rose petals," she intones to her insensitive husband. Since he despises the black rose petals, he immediately files for divorce. The woman fills her bed with translucent golden rose petals. They caress her skin. That night, while dreaming of a perfect love, she drowns in petals clinging to her face. When the man returns for his belongings, he finds her dead in drifts of black rose petals, a look of quiet satisfaction still lingering on her face.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090224-1249-1d; 090224-1237-1st

This is a brand new poem I just wrote today and then I made the sketch as an illo for it, it's in Peggy F's sketchbook. I may, if I have time, make a "broadside" of the poem and a painting of it. This is a prose poem and does not have line-breaks.

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.

Slow Reader

Slow Reader

I gnaw the flesh of a poem, tearing it
from the bone. My teeth rip
into the juicy meat. I chew slowly, savoring
each bite, rolling the sweet umami on my tongue,
sucking the juice from every morsel. One bite,
a pause to consider the flavor, and then another.
Slowly, I devour, tidbit by tidbit, the whole poem,
then suck the long curved bone until it is as white
as if it had lain on the desert for years.
Though may take months to consume
the entire carcass of the book, my mouth waters
at the prospect of such prolonged delight.

The next book may be a pear tree.
I could pluck a single pear, hold
its smooth curved, ripe body and examine
the pattern of its speckled skin. The shape
pleases me. I caress it and admire its taper.
When I bite into it, it squirts; juice runs
down my chin. And the stone cells—such strange
and inviting texture. Leisurely, with careful attention,
I sample mouthfuls of pear poem, eating it
down to the stem and seeds. The rest of the tree
remains, full of pears. They blush in summer light
and whisper my name.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090121-1107-1b

This is a brand new poem. Click the "broadside image" to view it larger. For Creative Every Day art and words.

Pirouettes

Pirouettes
How Geraldine Becomes a Seamstress
(Almost resembling a Ghazal)


Geraldine stares, smiles and stares, as the leaves fall
like rain, like snow, like cats and dogs, the leaves fall.

Reds and oranges, yellows and browns, purples and golds,
mustards and plums, soaring, dropping and drifting, leaves fall.

They flutter and wobble, they dance and tumble, catch
the light and hold it brightly, briefly, the falling leaves.

Under the trees, thousands of leaves. Geraldine lifts handfuls,
armfuls, tosses them high and tilts her face up to the falling leaves.

They shine like church windows, fly like maple seeds, sing
like hummingbird wings, rattle like bones, the falling leaves.

She piles up leaves and falls backwards into them,
spreads her arms and laughs. Above her, the leaves fall.

On her belly she tunnels, buries herself, swims and rolls
and comes up like an otter to a sky full of leaves, falling.

She sniffs them: they smell like dirt, like the forest, like autumn,
like the grass and the flower gardens, buried now by fallen leaves.

She strokes them: they feel like paper, like leather, like velvet,
like cloth, like sandpaper, like skin, like love, like fallen leaves.

Fragments of fabric, bright-colored bows, birthday confetti,
plucked petals of flowers, bits for collage—the fallen leaves.

She studies the veins, the patches of color, the subtle changes,
sorts them and matches them, no two alike, the fallen leaves.

She traces leaves on cloth, cuts their shapes, paints. With her mother
helping, stitches them to make a quilt. Sleeps under fallen leaves.

In the morning, leaves again. Geraldine dances. She twirls and pirouettes,
sings, laughs and murmurs merry noises in the fallen and falling leaves.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
081105-2121-2d; 081105-0011-1st
I wrote this this morning at 11 minutes after 12. I've revised it 4 times since then. It's a modified (simplified) Ghazal ("Guzzle") form. Prolly still not done.

Lying Awake with the Rubber Backbone

Your son doesn't know that you lie awake all night,

listening for his arrival. No phone call, no note, no word

from him, no idea of his whereabouts. He's just decided

to have a sleepover and not let us know, your husband says,

trying to reassure you. He's grounded from sleepovers

so he knows we'll deny him. Of course, that was what you

imagine, too. What you want to believe. You want him safe,

having fun. Thoughtlessly happy and safe.

Safe. And then you imagine priests and predators

and all the terrible things that happen to young teens,

those things that fill the lurid headlines you try to refuse

to read or hear. What if he's in trouble, desperately

hoping for rescue, while you both lie in bed, doing nothing

but staring at the dark ceiling, watching patterns of light shift

with each passing cars? Fewer and fewer cars pass,

less and less often the dim rainbow squares slide

across the flat black sky as the red numerals on the clock

slowly turn, minute by minute. Should you notify the police

of his failure to return? I don't expect him home until late

tomorrow, your husband says. He's probably right,

but you want to kick him, for not sounding worried

enough. Your son, wherever he is, can't see you lying here,

turning your backs to each other, worried, angry, fearful.

He can't imagine being old, can't imagine a heart

other than his own, beating into the darkness,

and if he could, he wouldn't care. Nor can he picture you

at fourteen. He doesn't believe that you can and cannot

remember what is was like to be his age. He imagines

your lives, if he thinks of them at all, so different from his

as to be irrelevant. Useless. All that matters to him

is his own immediate pleasure, and not the consequences

of his actions or the pain he causes others. Tomorrow,

when he's hungry, he'll return, pretending nothing happened,

because if nothing happened, there with be no punishment.

He will want not what you eat, what you carefully, lovingly prepared,

but soda, double chocolate Milano cookies, microwave mac and cheese.

He will complain bitterly if the freezer isn't stocked

to his preferences. Your husband, feeling exhausted, spineless

and limp on his 63rd birthday, will hide in his painting and do

and say exactly what his son wanted, nothing, giving the boy

permission for more of the same. You, his wife will imagine divorce,

a quiet cabin in the country. Freedom from the having to care

for anyone unable to return an ounce of love. When the lights

on the ceiling increase again and then fade into dawnlight and the boy

has not returned, you know it will get worse before it gets better.

Or it will never get better. If the boy survives

to return, it's all downhill forever, as it always was.

Mary Taitt, 081020-1141-1b

Gathering Eggs

Gathering Eggs (How Geraldine Remembers Ricky) [Quiet]


Geraldine wears sandals so she can count on all her fingers
and all her toes. Twenty hens mean twenty eggs. It's hard to count
that high and remember from one egg to the next. She starts over
again each time. One, she says, two, three, touching the fingers
of the free hand to the fingers of the hand holding the basket. One hand
is right and one is left. She knows that the left one is left behind
when she catches a ball, but when one hand holds the egg basket, she can't
remember which can catch. An egg is like a ball, but stretched a little,
or squashed, and breakable. Geraldine remembers dropping eggs: the broken
shells, the pool of thick water, the round yellow eye staring inside.
Too many times, her mother yelled, got red.

No, throwing and catching eggs is not a good idea.
She gathers the ones in the nest boxes first, the ones she can see.
Eleven of them, ten fingers and one toe. She finds five more
behind the door. A whole foot's worth. One between the hay bales.
One under Peg-leg's favorite bush. One in the cat's dish—that
would be Penny's. And Bobo, Bobo dances in her nest box,
clucking and singing. Geraldine laughs out loud. Bobo looks up,
as if to say, "nothing funny here." Geraldine bends, and clucking softly
to the chicken, slides her hand under its hot belly to retrieve the egg.
Ah, here it is, the last egg. Hot under the hot belly, round and smooth
And hot. Hotter even than inside her own armpits.

Geraldine slides the egg out, cradles it between her breasts. She sits
on a hay bale, basket beside her, and touches the hot egg. The shape
feels good. Smooth, round, and hot. Sun dances though the coop
window, golden, visible in slanting columns against the shadowed
walls of the hen house. She caresses the egg. Smells the hay, the sun,
and the chicken dropping. Bobo stops for a snack of corn
and a drink and joins the other chickens in the yard.
Geraldine strokes her egg gently, rubs it on her cheek,
and watches the chickens peck at the grass and dirt.
The egg will soon join the others in the basket, but now,
it feels a little like happiness, a little like love.

Mary Stebbins Taitt


-----The line above, and everything below it, is not part of this poem----
081007-1347-1b, for Dawn's assignment, Quiet, due Monday October 13, 2008

I am taking a poetry class from MFA at Vermont classmate Dawn McDuffie at the Scarab Club in Detroit across from the DIA. Detroit Institute of Arts. AND I just got a partial scholarship to the Springfed Artists retreat in Harbor Spring Michigan next weekend. YAY! I am VERY excited!! WAHOO! Fun fun!

I am hoping to also enjoy fall color driving back and forth.

The poem above is a brand new poem that I wrote JUST now, wrote the first draft and one revision, which is posted above. The assignment was "Quiet." Geraldine, the protagonist of my manuscript, is a brain-damaged young woman (in this poem), and I felt that her solo gathering of eggs and appreciating them was a quiet moment in her life. Ricky is her boyfriend and lover, who she hasn't seen since it was detected she was pregnant.

I have a bunch more new poems, but have not had time to post them. AK! And will not prolly, til after I return and get settled in (Just got back from the Dodge poetry festival in NJ!)

I see that the lines are too long and that the line breaks are messed up as a result of that.

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.

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