Sobbing is the exact right way to breathe.
-
Are you 8? Style-wise, you a queen already.
The low heel ankle boot in black and buckles, hell yess.
The spangled jeans, acid washed just so.
The long-sleeve black sparkled owl shirt.
Keep it up.
Most of all, Keep That
Confident hand on tilted hip
& opposite tilt of chin
& glittery got-this-figured-out-already-ya-fools look in your eye.
-
Reckless in the pouring rain
She crouched on bare feet, fingers in mucky sand, heard felt thunder rumble and lightning crack.
But rain was sweet as it roared down from the sky and drenched her thirst.
Her hair wet ropes, her bare skin soaked, she dug beneath shells,rocks and sand, her nails ragged and broken.
She cared not, for her fingers snugged into wet earthy sand and
liquid electric light surges.
Something dull slips away, replaced by something iridescent, flickering of silver dawns on the ocean.
Silent and still yet
Electrified and Electrifying
She knows it as something other than pain because it sparkles and shimmers.
Shaken soaked and seared, she stumbles through tangled mangroves to solid earth, rests there.
Dreamed of panthers and alligators in the swamp and osprey and vultures in the sky, she rises to dusk and mosquitoes and bats and owls.
Smearing herself with muddy sand, she prowls with the other creatures through the twilight and greets the rising full Moon as sister and brother both.
High evening breeze through a grove of cypress trees, she hugs one, leans on it, buena, abuela, i am happy to see you. Such dreams i’ve had, may i tell you?
Si, mi querida, mija, tell me all your such dreams.
And in the telling, she wanders in her story and in the grove, but the tree never loses track of tale, or teller.
The Earth spins and revolves. The Moon weaves. The Sun shines. Flowers bloom.Trees grow.
She bleeds and bears and raises and keeps and tends and cares.
She wanders again, and in wandering wonders under oaks dripping silver gray green spikes of moss to find a ragged branch of cypress leaning upon the largest oak.
Her spotted veined and wrinkled hands know this peeling bark. Abuela’s gift just under seeming ruin.
Chisels large and small and sandpaper rough and smooth in her hands slowly painstakingly reveal the river the cypress drank before cracking the branch loose and leaving it for her —
Red, brown and black rivulets and islets burble and flow all along its length, smoothed with soft oil to a moonlit gleam.
Clearly this end a hoof, this end a claw — and just where it should be, a knotty knob that’s also a knee.
The storm and the river and the earth and its creatures in the tree in her hand, she stands and walks and tells such dreams and tales and treasures to make villains blush and maidens to take up arms.
-
From the spider’s perspective
The unfinished house was perfect empire.
Thickest beams held silken-strong threads under mostly built roof.
Surveyed her domain- an absence of interior walls
A peripatetic labyrinth of two by fours and
Music from elsewhere and
Rain-caught bowls
Seated on the floor among tools and empty pizza boxes
Our conversation inconsequentialQuotidian yet leaning towards deeper meaning, as tended –
She dropped in
At the end of her silk
Eye level to us
Betwixt and between us
To silence and remind us
Of mysteries forever, world without end…..
Then ascended to her silvery throne among the rafters.
_____________________________________________
An evening with Dad on Fatherland Avenue
-
The honey bees are drunk
Upon sea-grape blossoms
In the April sun sunk heavy
Barely aloft, so full of nectar
Of tiny butter-yellow blooms
This charm of bees
Dips and sways as predawn party-goers
Tumbling into the all-night dinerAn enormous, dense shrub, given full range to its code –
Yet here, in our secret garden, manipulated from sapling,
Forced lovingly by some former inhabitant into a single trunk
Allowed its full branching only when just out of hands’ reach,
This sea-grape spreads saucer-shaped leather leaves
And drips long curving rods of fairy flowers
That tempt and nourish this rabble –
Boisterous at sunrise feasting
Steady, business-like drinking songs in noonday sun
And by late afternoon their
Navigation blurred and wavering, wings slow as cold honeyThis hum of bees swims heavy
Back to their hive with swollen bellies of nectar
Like my heart swollen
To know this tree, that should not be a tree, but is a tree
Thrives and feeds hives
To know this game of bees
Bounces drunkenly
From my surprised cheekbone
To their queen. -
First, you must offer solace to the weeping redhead, long and thin, her pale spindle legs tangled in robin’s egg blue silk on a black and white checked floor, her head held hard by apathetic scullery cabinets, the single tap drip, drip, drip dripping behind and above her, ignored in the high and mighty solitude of her suffering.
Know that try as you might to show her the needles and pins tucked neatly into the black paper in your hand, and try as you might to describe their whys and wherefores, their heads and lengths and ends clear signals to purpose –
“See, the sewing needle has a hollow head to allow thread to pass and a sharp point to pierce the fabric – to mend your beautiful but torn dress, my darling. And these, the hatpins, regard them, long and thin to hold the hat in place, the pearly heads large so that they decorate but do not disappear into your shining tresses, only dully pointed so as not to damage your lovely skin….”
– as a means of distracting her, she refuses you, her chin aloft in grief, her lips and eyelids raw pink, shut tight against your vanity for an eternity.
Her eyes under invisible brows, behind invisible lashes will not answer yours, though she is aware of your presence and your efforts. Touch her bare shoulders and she twists powerfully away from you, writhing and wailing her loss to the indifferent ceiling, her frailty a scalding lie.
For she knows your efforts are but detective fiction, that what you really wish from her is to know the origin of mermaids and dragons and squandered magic. That your bootless confrontation of comfort is a banquet of naiveté upon which she feasts by remaining precisely where she is.
There is ordinary sunlight in this room. Why is it the kitchen, and not torch-lit dungeon or moonlit soaring tower? Why are there plates and cups and spoons here instead of banded chests of gold, ebony-handled daggers, ancient maps and ruby tiaras?
Her eyes open.
Fall upon you, sparkling.
She asks to see the scissors.
-
Tell me, said the old woman, tell me about this hand.
I thought that was your job, said I.
Said the old woman, I have no job, I have a means to an end. You tell me about this hand.
OK. Well, it’s my right hand.
So it is, girlie. What’s that to me but my left? I’m no mirror. Tell me about this hand.
This hand is my dominant hand. I shoot with it. I eat with it. I write with it. I –
AH! So you dance with it?
Ummmm said I… Where’s this all going? I can’t dance with my hand. I came to get my fortune told.
HAHAHAHAHAHH. Fortune isn’t in your hand. It’s HERE.
Ow! That was my forehead.
No. It was your third eye and I poked you in it. Wake up. Now tell me about this hand.
Hey, let go!
Why? I thought you wanted your future read?
My future, yes, ok, go ahead.
Alright then. You have five fingers on this hand. I see two more in your future.
Two more fingers? I don’t understand.
Of course you don’t. Hands.
Two more hands…..Oh I get it. So I’ll get help then?
You may, but maybe not. It all depends.
On what?
On you.
HA. That’s no fortune. That’s not even the future.
Oh yes indeed it is. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s best not to choose.
Not choosing is itself a choice.
And that is your future. Good bye. May the force be with you.
-
With thanks to Emily Dickinson and Pablo Neruda.
-
Larry was a big guy, perhaps some Seminole Nation in him, flowing along with the blood of the oppressive Scots clan that overran his swamp generations back. Large tall cheekbones, lantern jaw, long brown arms. Serious green eyes that didn’t meet yours but looked squarely at your chin or your shoulder. He kept his arms at his sides, turned his body just slightly angled away from you. Not defensive, but not open, either.
He was mostly silent, not quick to smile or laugh. A highly competent foreman of his landscaping crew, when he did speak it was always to the point. When he did smile it was because he had plenty of dirt under his fingernails, and when he laughed, it was because he had plenty of Red Dog Ale in his belly.
Larry woke by dawn, and was at his truck and loaded for delivery by the time the sun was halfway between the horizon and the tops of the live oaks. He drank a gigantic 32 oz. insulated plastic mug of coffee and ate a fast food breakfast sandwich and deep-fried hash browns on his way to the jobsite every morning of the world. If he spoke to you, it was only to tell you to check the clipboard for the jobsite address and driving directions, or to make sure that the first aid kit was uppermost in the glove compartment.
His woman, Deanna was technically a common-law wife, since they had lived together for so many years. She was a large lady, bluff and loud, and generally sweet-natured when in good spirits. She had chestnut hair bleached the color of sunflowers in contrast to her almost black eyebrows. She worked on the crew sometimes, but mostly stuck around the design shack to answer the phone and water the trees and shrubs. Unlike Larry, Deanna never stopped talking. Incessant, and always at one and half times the volume she needed to be heard, she would hold forth on every topic, regardless of whether she knew a single fact on the subject or not.
Larry both adored and barely tolerated Deanna. “Shut UP woman!” was a regular refrain in the gloaming after a hard day’s digging and planting as we stood donating blood to the mosquitoes and drank icy, dripping brown bottles of beer in a circle. Deanna would just laugh and say “YOU shut up ….” , and continue as if he’d never spoken at all. He’d squeeze her and kiss her cheek angrily, smack her behind and swig his beer. She’d lean hard into him, one arm tight around his back, the other dangling a beer bottle, but otherwise she ignored him as she would a doorframe leaned into.
Larry was our leader and we loved him. We loved him for his silence, his rare smiles and his rarer laughter. We loved him for getting us to the jobsite on time and making sure we had orange coolers of ice water on the hottest of days. We loved him because he worked harder than any of us, cussed us out quietly if we hit a main waterline with our shovel, or a hornet’s nest, or knocked a bird’s nest full of eggs out of a tree, or something equally careless. We loved him for hating pickles. We loved him for being married to a crazy woman completely his opposite whom he worshiped and couldn’t stand, all in the same breath.
Once upon a time, Oleander shrubs were all the rage in commercial landscape plantings. Large, fast-growing, blooming bright white or colored flowers almost year-round, they were an ideal planting for wide open spaces that needed filling. They are also highly, deeply and perniciously poisonous, root, branch, twig and leaf. Flowers too.
Oleanders can still be spotted in the Florida landscape along interstates, at hotels, theme parks, and other large commercial properties, but rarely in the home garden, for good reason. Aside from being poisonous themselves, they host their very own, dark orange and black whiskered caterpillar, named for them. These admirably ambitious insects can defoliate an entire shrub in a matter of hours and turn into striking polka-dotted moths as adults. These caterpillars are themselves toxic, so don’t bite them. Also, you do not want to be bitten by an Oleander caterpillar.
Larry, our big, silent, strong foreman, following his routine one fine, windy late March morning, was up by dawn, had his truck loaded full of white and pink Oleander 3-gallon shrubs, ready for planting at the day’s jobsite. He stood at the back of the truck, drinking his coffee, awaiting the signal from his crew that they had their respective acts together and were ready to roll. It was the crucial moment of checking off the inventory list before setting off for the jobsite.
As the last of the crew slammed their truck doors, Larry lifted the truck hatch halfway, placing his big gulp coffee on the truck’s bumper. As he slammed the hatch up to meet its latch, he reached in with his left hand and shoved an errant Oleander shrub in. At that moment, a slinky orange and black-wired caterpillar dropped on Larry’s arm. He didn’t see it. He slammed the hatch shut, lifted his coffee in his right hand, and slugged it back as he headed to the open driver’s door.
As he finished gulping the coffee, he felt the sting as the caterpillar injected its toxin. He flung his left arm outward with a small grunt, brushing his right hand, coffee-mug bound, across the inside of his left elbow, sweeping the caterpillar onto the ground. Coffee spilled out, and Larry stood there looking at his left arm in hurt surprise- the most animated we’d ever seen his face.
As we piled out of our trucks and gathered around to witness and determine what the fuck to do, the bite on Larry’s arm started to swell in angry reddish purple. He started wheezing, his breath coming in and out in scary shallow wisps. His eyes were swelled shut, his lips turned a frightening shade of pinkish purple. He dropped his mug and it tipped over on the ground. He held on tight to the side of the truck.
Deanna came shrieking out of the design shack, hauling her big legs in pink cutoff sweats across the drive to Larry, yelling “the epi pen, the epi pen, the epi pin, it’s in the first aid kit, the first aid kit…” Which was in the glove compartment of the truck. Someone dashed for it, yanked it out, dumped the contents on the front seat of the truck, then stabbed Larry with it.
We all stood around in a panicky circle waiting to see what would happen. Moments passed with no visible result, Larry panting shallowly like a woman in labor, his poor flat Seminole Scots face swollen fat and shut in anaphalactic shock. Someone had the presence of mind to call 911.
By the time the ambulance was pulling in to the drive, he was starting to look like a person again, but still swollen and wheezy. He could open his eyes a bit, and the fear was clear in them. So was the anger. He’d tossed poisonous snakes out into lakes, sprayed hundreds of thousands of furious hornets from their nests, dodged falling trees, pissed-off clients, and live electrical wires out to get him. And yet, this less-than-an-inch-long caterpillar had undone him and an entire day’s work in one little sting. He attempted to refuse the ride, but the paramedics brooked no argument. They were both as large as Larry, and just as expert at their jobs as he was at his, so off he went.
The landscape company owner stood in as foreman while Larry was sent to the hospital for further treatment and observations. We planted a stand of graceful, shiny-leaved Ligustrum trees, and large ribbons of brightly colored annuals that day, along with dozens of Oleanders. No one else suffered a sting. It was a hot windy March day, and while Tim made sure we had water, and there was a cooler of Red Dog Ale at the end of the day, he didn’t stand in silence with us in the gloaming circle feeding the mosquitoes.
Deanna came out from the trailer that evening to tell us Larry would be fine, he’d been sent home from the hospital with antihistamines and his own epi pen and was sleeping off the day’s horror in the trailer. Our leader had been felled by an insect so insidious, that we stood in utter silence – even Deanna- drinking our beers, grateful and subdued.
He returned to work the next day, grim and tight-lipped as ever, and we loved him all the more for never mentioning the incident afterwards. And if anyone brought it up, he maintained stony silence while Deanna advised all and sundry on the virtues of antihistamines and the dangers of anaphalactic shock. But if you were lucky and got to ride shotgun in the truck with him, he might ask you to check that the epi pen was uppermost in the first aid kit.
-
Or the card player?
Or both?
Or a pirate forsworn?
Or an angel sworn?
Are you none but a knave by birth and cultivation?
Are you a minion?
Are you a monster or a whore?
Or none and a fair human to all?
Are you all and then some?
I ask you truly, but ask no true answer.
Be not afraid to spout the truth
But at a slant pray you
Lest the straightest arrow penetrate deepest
And find yourself undone by your own lack of majesty.
Are you neither, but a life of your own,
Destined to do as you please,
Regardless of consequence?
The best stories are told roundabout.
I know not what I write
But I write for you
That read my words
And think a while upon them
May it stay your hand to hold in mercy
Against an oppressor finally avenged
Unnamed from history but final in its imprecation
That lies treacherous in its deceptions and treacheries for making the past a living breathing monstrosity that overtakes
A living heart.
Not was. Is.
How then to redress?
I know not but what I write
I hope to forestall.
I hope to mitigate.
I hope to regain.
I hope to redeem.
Let not vengeance
But hope to reconcile
And be haunted no more.
Tygerlilii 