Nothing Elegant.
A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.
—Gertrude Stein
about the word
​
the pen is the
pen is an organ
flaccid or sound
muscular music
flowing milk or ink
Horace said pen
is tongue of
mind who needs
articles point is
pen is maker
of kind teacher
teaching us
right
—Karren L. Alenier
A Red Hat.
A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it. If red is in everything it is not necessary. Is that not an argument for any use of it and even so is there any place that is better, is there any place that has so much stretched out.
—Gertrude Stein
​
a red hat
​
there we lay
stretched out
beneath red cumulus
surrendering to the leviathan
cloaked in grey shroud
yet filled with light
​
—Harold M. Greenwald
A Feather.
A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.
—Gertrude Stein
the feathered girl
​
She alights one estival day
like a butterfly kiss
with soft western winds hewing
her sail windward
She soared here
with a rush of soundlessness
and salty light
her plumed journey and its story
of sheltering and defense
intact
—Martha Sanchez-Lowery
Malachite.
The sudden spoon is the same in no size. The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.
—Gertrude Stein
​
honeycomb
​
The spoon sits on the windowsill waiting. You hear a tiny wail from the next room. The minutes descend in the blank house. The blankets hold your body back until a cough breaks the silence. You open a door and it is a decision to act but the acting is too late like an actor missing her lines. When you hold the baby the night is an instrument of forgetting. The spoon is too small in its roundness. A shine escapes the baby’s mouth. The baby tries to burrow back in. There is no later to capture a comfort. The moment wavers. Your body is a spoon that remembers the carrying.
​
—Carrie Bennett
how we hold on
my mother kept a steamer trunk
with classic clothes immune to fad
my husband owned a cedar chest
packed with bits reins and riding whip
I am neither fashionista
nor ardent horse enthusiast
in my chest an aging heart brims
with blood both beautiful and swift
when it drops you gonna feel it
we traded
Internet for mosquito
net cocooned
for sleep
under a halo
of white mesh
the sea beating
the coral cliffs
of Negril a lullaby
of dominoes geckos
the kingpins in the road
hawking anythingyouwant
the minstrel Fire improvising
Toots Hibbert’s “Pressure Drop”
a daughter hopeful that her father
in a Sav-la-Mar hospital would kick
lung cancer with an herbal medicine
something six chemo treatments
in Georgia couldn’t do
ink
years I served the Oracle
of Delphi preparing
her ink guarding
her gate that only one
at a time basked
in the light of those
answers ah but the ink
fell to me I painted
her words prophetic
enigmatic always terse
and what did she command
but make me swear to burn
those scrolls
I dreamed of casting
that wisdom into the temple
well awoke heart pounding
slipped snippets of the scrolls
into capsules then flung them
with birds into the fiery sunset
Weslaco Texas a dark comedy
my sister lives in a noisy neighborhood
bang duck
border police
gun running
death quick
bang duck
drug deal
business cards
explodes played
bang duck
in a noisy neighborhood my sister lives
FROM THE WELL,
I call.
It is my breath traveling
from within: diaphragm,
throat, lips.
What is dark
looking for light: Mama.
Our beginning,
a well,
pit of the gut, female
holding: womb. Like ghosts
of sisters and brothers before
me, I hear you practicing
my name, summoning.
I believe
your voice
love.
EXIT INTERVIEW
I loved her?
After
all those years
I don’t know
what
love is—I used to think
it was in my music there
I could say anything feel
anything be reborn out
of the hands of a jealous
man wanting my mother
without competition I
learned this New
England game
to say
the opposite of what
I desired what I needed
to live now I have nothing
inside she lent me her
womb in that place I could
compose true words I could
leave my body behind.
FLOWER: PAUL’S LOVE SONG
Because the hotel manager floated
scores of our favorite flower on the surface
of the swimming pool, Jane and I decided
to visit the Taxco market and buy enough
gardenias to cover our bed.
At siesta careful
not to arouse staff sleepyheads, we carried two
baskets of blossoms in several trips
into the hotel and up the stairs. When the bed
became a sea of creamy white, we undressed,
lay down and drowned our senses.
How much is too much?
In the blue fluid of the pool Jane Bowles poked
her head, short curly hair winking red,
through the fragrant corollas — a swoon
of flower boats.
FLOWER: PAUL’S LOVE SONG cont'd
Could a husband and wife, sheath
and knife, be joined in everlasting memory
on a perfumed spread of gardenias? She
with her women; me, Paul Bowles,
with my men.
Could I recreate those hours we lay
together?
In New York I furnished everything in white:
sofa, chaise longue, Ottoman, coffee table,
lamps, a polar bear rug. Then I sprayed
the drapes, and every pillow, every throw
with ambergris mixed with crushed
petals of gardenia.
Come back
from Taxco, I wrote to her.
What price paradise?
LOOKING FOR DIVINE TRANSPORTATION
"I heard the noise of their wings,
like the noise of great waters..."
Ezekiel I:24
I have wandered
into the Garden lured
by the fragrance and color
​
of delicate blossoms. Among
jabbering children speaking
innocent words I cannot repeat
​
and tragic characters in felt
hats, I search for those angels
who are wheels. With no visa
​
to be here, no encyclopedia
to guide me, I conjure
an image of you, let you
​
be my bible of common
sense: how to find my way
in; how to find the way out.
LEO ON SEESAW
for the pleasure of Gertrude Stein
Little Buddha little brooder
Kleiner Bruder tiny brother
bitty bother sitting baldly
in the butter in the batter
shaking philosophic digits
in the kitchen
for the Kuchen
has been eaten
by the kitten
wearing mittens in the winter
hiding splinters in his fingers
finding spiders
in the cracks
of the plaster
So we laughed
twenty HA HA HA HA HA
in metered breathing
something close
to the day
he was born
PRISONER
I was born in the house of Bab Yaga—
legless, nails on my fingers bitten
jagged, eyes like tar pits
containing a mother's hunger.
​
Her house stands on scaly legs
screening, fencing off my saviors.
Its mobility reminds me,
a snaggle-tooth child,
of my deficiencies.
​
Then, as always, my mother
in long black skirts sweeps
into the dingy room, her musky
perfume and coarse dark hair
smother my wrinkled face
in a consuming kiss.
A PROPER CALL TO THE EXPATRIATE
Paul Bowles told me he ripped
the telephone off the wall.
Otherwise he was quite polite
despite the American Government
revoking his citizenship for being
a communist, however briefly.
​
On the street, when I meet him,
he says, "Come by any night.
My friend Mrabet, raconteur,
artist, will make chicken
with pickled lemon. Show me
your stories and poems, we'll
talk. My poetry is awful.
​
Gertrude was right."
At the door, he invites
me in, "Yes, yes. Take
your djellaba off. Tangier
is stifling though the wind
blows and doors slam and
people always shout. Make
yourself comfortable. X marks
the spot: sit down." He points
to the symbol in his shaggy
rug. Then he puts his
jacket on. Decorum, not heat,
overtaking him.