I was recently asked to perform at a spoken word event in Toronto, on February 9th, 2012. I offered the following, which includes some juvenalia and some from this year.
Miss Stein, Mentor
No, knowing Gertrude was not nothing;
To be chided by those warm hands, man’s hands,
And embraced by that kindly way of talking she had
Helped, when the going was rough. Always her
Strong, confident American way of agreeing
(“Well, sure!”) when she wanted to
Startled, then pleased the Sorbonne,
Oxford and Johns Hopkins men.
(1975)
Matinee (to Terrence Davies)
The room is dark, but not silent.
A roiling mass, impatient and vocal, waits for the light. Cheers greet the haloed head of a mouse, soon enough replaced by a horse-and-the-boy-who-loves-her, loses her, then rides her to glory while townfolk cheer and he is spared reform school.
That finite square at the end of a hall becomes a universe as faces, story, and music draw us deeper into manufactured oblivion. Sugared drinks and salted corn feed the stamina to take it in while sitting still, this land where dangers rise and fall, where wishes come true and the bad are punished.
Haley, Annette, Doris and the others:
Where they shine, no harm can be.
The bully at school, the unhappy home,
the sliding door of the confessional
all forgotten in a bliss of waking dream.
This Saturday reprieve is fifty cents, check the couch where Dad sleeps, get half of it there and the rest from your sister’s porcelain pig, if you jiggle a dinner knife in the slot.
This world is colour: nearer, tastier, holier than anything on TV or life itself. Your life will never look as good, but you can buy this world for twice two bits, and there will always be another Saturday.
(2012)
Matches
Making beds with Grandma in her house of wartime vintage. Her chin pinning a pillow, hands on the case below, Grandma’s eyes find a spot on the wall just left of my head.
O my she says, not kidding. I look and see the black streak from a struck match. The pillow drops; she’s solemn: Did you? Ditto solemn, alert to the false charge: No, Grandma.
She sits. Your uncle Mickey played with matches. We burned his fingers to teach him a lesson. Encore denial: how could she think it of me?
A steady look, OK;
and she must mean it ‘cause the matter’s dropped,
but her tone says Not Convinced.
(2011)
Home Remedy
Suppertime, summer, ‘63. We gather as tea is brewed, to be ready at meal’s end, the smooth repeat of a nightly ritual: dinner for seven at five-thirty, maincourse, dessert, and no waiting.
Spaghetti tonight, and sister Steph, with hiccups, laughs between spasms. We tease, console, and theories fly. But silent Mom, with pan in hand to sauce our plates, grows still, eyes on a spot above my sister’s head. And now with pointing ladle come the dreadful, quiet, life-or-death words Oh Stephanie. Don’t. Move. Instantly Steph screams, jumps, jars the table, desperate to escape the horror hanging above, maybe upon her even now.
(2011)
July Obit, 1975
When they brought word to me that Susan Hayward had died
I thought, I’ll cry tomorrow, and ordered another drink.
I thought of Anne, a Lesbian
I thought of Anne, a Lesbian
who idolized her, loved the star, and taught me, too, to care.
What for? I thank a fool.
Young and willing, a girl on probation with a song in her heart,
that foolish heart led her to climb the highest mountain
where love has gone and reap the wild wind among the living.
Then, a woman obsessed. Untamed.
The valley, the “dolls”, the back street.
Smash-up. The story of a woman not quite
the heart throb for my Anne. Or me.
All that drama at the hands of jail wardens and male wardens,
conquerers, lusty men and hairy apes
Made Susan, maybe, worth responding to.
Masochism’s triumph over machismo?
I want to live.
(1975-2012)
