Tulip remnants float in my palm,
the color
of fresh blood,
of sunsets
cerise, burnt orange, gold.
A pale blue dragon
thunders
across a salmon sky.
Slowly indigo night
descends.
Only the night hawks call.
memoir
Puma IV
In the poetry class this week we read Louise Erdrich. I’ve read most of her novels but did not realize she also wrote poetry. In particular I liked “Captivity” which made me think of Quanah Parker and his mother. We are supposed to be inspired by whatever author’s poems we are reading on any given week. Sometimes that occurs; sometimes not. The following poem follows the previous three puma poems I published on this blog last September. This one is different; it comes from an actual dream last week. Its unique beginnings contradict the fact that I rarely recall dreams and care nothing about dream interpretation.
Stars shining through sleep
Dreaming dark.
A white, luminescent lion
comes nuzzling arms, legs.
Should fear engulf or
a quiet peace dominate?
Tawny lions encircle:
affectionate
smiling lion smiles.
Fear slides in slightly,
logically.
These lions bring love,
a natural peace.
Fear dissipates,
the lions and I locked
in an eternal, primal dance.
Variety is the Spice of Life
Here I go again taking classes. This one is Part III of the series on modern women poets taught by Lorraine Mejia-Green through the Story Circle Network. We read poems by a variety of women and use their works and related assignments for inspiration. This week features Julia Alvarez and even though I have already read all her novels, etc. and a book of prose poetry, the selected poems are new to me. It seems I always take a different route from a lot of the others enrolled in the class. The following show cases draft two of my first assignment:
I keep coming to this part
where I’m happy
95 per cent of the time.
It’s my story
dictated by
ME.
“Variety is the Spice of Life.”
Cliche?
Yes, but true.
Four marriages
Lovers-I lost count
Activist in “love” with
Che and other South American
Revolutionaries.
Feminist for forty years
Up to maybe four careers.
Big city apartments
Ranches
Old houses by the bay
Bricks with arched windows
A tree lined street.
Can I settle?
For what, with whom, where?
Variety is the Spice of Life.
Gaston Luis Zulaica del Sueldo
Gaston Luis Zulaica del Sueldo walks toward me after disembarking from the plane. Although I have never met him, I know exactly who he is. Tallish, thin body; long, handsome, light tan face; smiling, perfect teeth; arms open. A teenage Latin Lover, bouncing on the balls of his feet, rushing to me. Those arms wrap around and squeeze me tight. My new son has arrived from Argentina.
Every night while I fix dinner, he sits at the brown Kanabe piano my parents gave me thirty years ago and plays and plays: Beethoven, the theme from Twilight, Chopin…I look up from chopping onions and see the short, dark ringlets on the back of his neck and watch his gliding, long-fingered hands. He plays until salad making time arrives. He tells me he makes salads for his grandmother back home. Now he makes them for us: layers of emerald lettuce, red peppers, black olives, orange carrots, green onions, a kaleidosope of appetizing color.
Gaston Luis Zulaica del Sueldo. It curls around my tongue when I introduce him. Images of tango dancers, gauchos–he is a champion rider, malbec wine–at seventeen he brought me some in his luggage, snow capped mountains where he skis, and cattle grazing on the endless grass his family owns. We speak Spanlish at home, we laugh, we cook. On my birthday he insists on paying for everyone. When I tell him I did not expect that, he looks at me as if to say, “What kind of man do you think I am?”
Gaston Luis Zulaica del Sueldo.
Note: One of the assignments in the prose poetry class was to write about a name, real or imagined. This one is real. Gaston lived with me a couple of years ago and I still keep in touch with him and his family.
Destino
Week two of the prose poetry class:
“It is a blessing to live out your destino.” Julia Alvarez
Long ago, in the hot summer, I could hear the corn grow at night with the windows open in northwest Missouri. Rolling hills of corn and soybeans still clad the dark brown earth left by glaciers thousands of years ago. So much time has gone without my returning to this land: colleges in different states, marriages, jobs in cities.
My father lived ninety years on this farm his Swiss grandfather homesteaded. He yearned for distant lands, to explore, to learn. He loved the West, endless space, rugged mountains, canyonlands, wildness. When it snowed too much for school, he loaded us in the car, turned wheelies, and headed for Kansas City. His yearning to be a doctor died when very young–the only child left at home, caring for a diabetic mother, recovering from a failed youthful marriage before he met Mom.
He gave me his love of questioning, traveling, reading, trying the untried, a pride in the land and work, and a sense of wonder. This night, after shoveling out from a dangerous blizzard, I sit in front of a fire, write on a Western canyon rim, look at his parade saddle and the photo of the farm for which he felt so much pride, and cry: my destino.
The Blizzard
Looking through the window.
The steps climbing up the hill to the barn.
Outside the office window.
My patio which I will have to eventually shovel–afraid to do so today because the wind is so strong.
The barn door before I shoveled my way in.
The view out the double barn door. All this is actually under a roof. The wind is blowing the snow everywhere.
The view from the front door after digging it out twice from reoccurring drifts.
The new assignment arrived for my prose poetry class. In the last couple of hours I have read poems by Baudelaire and Rimbaud as examples of some of the first prose poems. While I read them, I listened to “The Unicorn, the Gorgan, and the Manticore” by Menotti, a piece I am supposed to be singing in 1 1/2 months. Work shut down today because of a massive blizzard. The wind literally shrieks down the canyon where I live–gusts they say to 70 mph. It piles up drifts four to six feet high. Twice today I have donned my boots, gloves, heavy coat, and gone shoveling and to feed the horses. For the first time since the barn has been there, snow is actually inside, driven by the wind, and the horses are standing in snow drifts that blew under the overhanging roof of the outside runs. Even getting to the barn door necessitated shoveling through drifts taller than I. The snow continues, predicted for another twelve hours or so, maybe as much as twenty inches. Living alone fails to daunt me, but I cannot concentrate well today. My drive is long and climbs up a steep hill. Even my four wheel drive truck may not make it. I keep thinking it may take days for me to shovel out even if, when the snow and wind cease, my neighbor brings over his tractor to help. A friend, several miles away, remains without electricity. I filled my wood burning stove with wood and started a fire just in case. It seems a perfect day to write and cook and practice music. And here I sit unable to concentrate long enough. The wind keeps rushing through my brain.
Waiting–my first, I think, prose poem
It seems I cannot stop taking courses, or at least some courses–those dealing with art, literature, poetry, music. Perhaps the reason has something to do with the fact that from about 7:30 to 5 for five days a week, I teach math. And not just any math, but mostly math to teenagers who hate it, think they cannot do it, and complain considerably. I try to “save” them, inspire them, help them to see math’s usefulness in regular, ordinary adult life. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes….
My new poetry class started today, but it is very different from anything I previously studied. I am supposed to read and learn how to write prose poems. Now if I can just figure out exactly what is a prose poem versus, let’s say, flash fiction or memoir. I’ve read all the directions and a couple of Robert Bly prose poems and have decided it has a lot to do with imagery. This post is my first attempt. Still I am quite concerned that it is not really a prose poem and if not a prose poem, what is it. Please tell me.
She stands alone by the train tracks,
watching and waiting and dreaming.
Hobos no longer exist.
She remembers reading stories of life
when her great grandmother lived:
hobos begging for food, gypsies stealing
babies and telling fortunes, long days of
working in the corn fields, chopping weeds.
Her own family praises modernity:
tractors, riding lawnmowers, herbicides, pesticides,
electricity, TVs, dishwashers, fast cars, fast food, diet sodas,
cell phones, computers, DVDs, iPADs.
Now the only excitement lays in video games,
guns, and sex. She watches and waits and dreams.
Marriage
ONE
Afraid of revealing me the Essence of Me
Mother told me Boys won’t like it
Too smart Too aggressive
Too full of Myself
Too serious Too intense
Too adventuresome
Too nasty a temper
Too in love with Possibility
Too Too Too Too Too Too
I took her advice
Married a Genius Scientist
Safe Timid Disadventurous
He liked me because I could Shoot a
Bird off a Wire
a hundred feet away.
In time We All Died
Him Me the Bird
TWO
Last night I dreamed of him
Black velvet, young, strong, sexy, arrogant.
I had to have him!
This morning
I almost told our daughter.
Then I Remembered
It took nearly 31 years for me
to Learn
She has a sister only 3 months younger.
She told me.
He has never said a word.
THREE
I remember the time he touched my face, melting me.
I married him;
My face slowly, inexorably froze.
FOUR
I was a very good investment.
He consistently insulted my daughter.
We are ALIVE and HAPPY.
He’s DEAD.
Vegetables with Coriander, Cumin, and Tumeric
Vegetables are my favorite food. Interspersed with the poems and essays I publish, I try to post unique recipes. My recipes come from years of interaction and relationships with people from all over the world, husbands, exchange students who enhance my extended family, travels to Asia and Latin America, my international friends near where I live. Recently, after a dinner party, I had left over vegetables that needed cooking so one evening home from work, I created this recipe. It is vegan by accident not intention. One could add fish, chicken, turkey leftovers (see recent post for turkey curry), shrimp…you get the idea. The options are endless. I used the vegetables I needed to use up, but take a look in your refrigerator and try what you have on hand. Experiment.
1 medium sized beet, peeled and cut into half coins
1 poblano pepper seeded and chopped
1/2 purple onion, chopped
Several pieces of Swiss chard, stems removed and chopped, leaves cut into large, bite sized pieces
Garlic cloves, peeled and chopped–amount to your own taste
Olive oil
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, ground
1/2 teaspoon cumin–or extra to taste
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
Saute the beets, chopped Swiss chard stems, garlic, and onions in olive oil until beets are cooked through. Add spices and poblano pepper. When the pepper is nearly done, add the Swiss chard leaves and cook only until wilted.
Serve over rice. I used equal amounts of black, red, and Jasmine rice.
How to cook rice:
1/3 cup black rice
1/3 cup red rice
1/3 cup brown or Jasmine rice–your preference
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1 teaspoon concentrated broth/bouillon–I use Better Than Bouillon brand which is available Vegetarian as well as Chicken, etc.
Pour enough olive oil into a saucepan to cover the bottom. Add the rice and chopped garlic. Saute at high heat until rice starts to stick, stirring constantly. Add two cups water and the bouillon. Stir rapidly until bouillon dissolves. Turn down heat to low, cover the top of the saucepan with four paper towels or a tea towel folded to make several layers. Put sauce pan lid on the top and cook for approximately one hour. Red, brown, and black rice take twice as long to cook as white rice. Do not peek while rice is cooking. Lifting the lid to check causes the rice to be mushy.
In Silence
Today it warmed up considerably after some very cold weather. I love the outdoors but not the cold so really find cold winter weather confining. While cleaning up a pile of brush, I noticed how quiet it was, no birds singing, no sounds, nothing except an occasional soughing of the junipers during a wind gust. Some friends stopped by and immediately commented on the quiet. It suddenly struck me just how different this is from the rest of the year, especially spring and summer with endless birdsong and raucous insect symphonies. At dusk when I finally went inside, I sat down and wrote this poem:
The deer meander along the canyon rim,
stop, browse bare bushes
in silence.
The bobcat climbs the canyon wall,
surveys his rugged realm
in silence.
The coyotes run above the rim,
watchful, wary,
in silence.
Now, in January, the birds stop to drink
from the blue birdbath, bobbing
in silence.
At night, the stars and moon
illuminate my sleep
in silence.
writingontherim 