women

The Girl and The Woman

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

The Girl

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

children and telling fortunes, long days

working in the corn fields, chopping weeds.

Her own family praises:

tractors, riding lawn mowers, herbicides, pesticides,

electricity, TVs, dishwashers, muscle cars, MacDonalds,

diet Coke, cell phones, computers, DVDs, iPADs.

Now the only excitement lays in Grand Theft Auto,

guns, and sex.  She watches and waits and dreams.

Canyon photo 1 anabel

The Woman

She stands alone on the rim,

watching the moon rise,

wondering.

Life flies by on wings

outstretched.

She remembers rich years

filled with long joys, living,

loving,

and temporary sadness, divorces,

moving here and there,

Narrangansett Bay, Utah mountains,

Veracruz,

babies held to breast,  blond

and chubby, cafe con leche.

She remembers girlhood longings

for far horizons, traveling

around the world, lovers,

husbands, shades of brown

beauty.

She’s learned to make

her own excitement,

singing Goddess songs,

dancing on the rim of wonder.

SAM_0901

Photograph by Anabel McMillen and Painting by Lahib Jaddo

Bedtime Reading or Not–the Hazara

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

A lifelong habit that helps me settle down to sleep remains reading.  However, occasionally I delve into a book that turns out not to be so wonderful to read just before going to bed.  The topic turns to the disturbing and then, suddenly, my mind churns.  By that time, it is too late to go back.  Or, like the book I am reading now, parts of it consist of stories inspiring, amusing, enlightening, parables for life.  Then there are the other parts:  the abuse of an entire people by the other ethnicities surrounding them, genocide, turmoil, invasion.  I remain a lifelong lover of libraries.  Recently, while browsing through new books, I found this one:  The Honey Thief  by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman.  Mazari grew up in a Hazara village in the northern part of Afghanistan, the area known as Hazarajat, became a master rug maker and fled from the Taliban to Australia in 2000 where he met his now close friend and coauthor.  For several days now, it has been my bedtime reading.

The Hazara people speak a dialect of Farci, the language of Iran.  Data varies, but they number approximately seven million in Afghanistan and remain one of the largest ethnic groups there.  Nevertheless, in spite of this, other groups discriminate against them for various reasons, including the fact that most Hazara are Shia Muslims surrounded by Sunnis.  Until 1893, they were the majority when half were massacred and many fled to live in Iran, Pakistan, and India.  Some believe the Hazara are the descendants of Genghis Khan’s warriors.  Many resemble the people who live in Mongolia today and in many ways parts of their culture resemble that of Mongolia, e.g. their tents look like yurts; no one knows for sure.  They have lived in what is now known as Afghanistan for hundreds of years.  They are people of the mountains who have learned to cultivate beauty and farm in high, inaccessible places.  They are famous for poetry and story telling.  Unlike other women in Afghanistan, they shunned burkas, fought along side men as soldiers, and believed in education for women.  These attributes fueled discrimination by other groups there.

Now back to bedtime reading.  Several stories in particular contain what I consider the necessary qualities for bedtime perusal:  entertaining and instructive without gore, controversy.  They also hold an unusual quality of something you cannot quite quantify, a hint of the mystery of life, of a particular kind of not quite describable beauty.  Hoping that at least some of you will find the book and actually read it, I will first list the stories to read without dread or worry if you want to read at bedtime:  “The Wolf Is the Most Intelligent of Creatures”, “The Music School”, and the “Snow Leopard”.  Under no circumstances read “The Life of Abdul Khaliq” and “The Death of Abdul Khaliq”.  You will, indeed, learn a considerable amount of Afghan history, but unless you are quite heartless and insensitive, you probably will not be able to drift off to a pleasant dreamland for hours.

If all this stokes your curiosity, here are two websites to learn more about the Hazara:  www.joshuaproject.net and http://www.hazarapeople.com.

Barbie Doll

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue-eyed and blond, my mother, one

fearless, controlling woman.  Long after Mom’s death, Dad said, “Barbara was

afraid of absolutely no one and nothing!”  They married late:  34 & 38.  He

adored her unconditionally.  She filled my life with horses, music, love,

cornfields, hay rides, books, and ambition.  Whatever she felt she had missed,

my sister and I were going to possess:  books, piano lessons, a college

education.  Her father, who died long before I was born, loved, fancy,

fast horses.  So did she.  During my preschool, croupy years she quieted my

hysterical night coughing with stories of run away horses pulling her in a

wagon.  With less than one hundred pounds and lots of determination, she

stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying across the Missouri River Bottom,

strong, willful, and free.

The Gift

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

On the wall for forty years,

a copy of some famous painting.

Almost everything a strange dark

shade of blue, a blue not quite

blue, the merest hint of green:

antique cupboard, curved table

base, ladder back chair, window

frame, even the tree outside.

The only exceptions:

white table cloth,

newspaper in the lady’s hands,

her pale pink floral dress with tiny

darker pink flowers,

large copper antique teapot

in the cupboard, the black and copper

pots on top.  Her teacup, saucer, plate

of toast, white and blue, an old Danish pattern.

I’ve kept this gift,

hung on too many walls to count.

My college roommate, the giver, said,

“This reminds me of you.”

I look at it; all these years

have wondered why.

We’re still friends.

I’ve never asked.

Variety is the Spice of Life

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

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.

Waiting–my first, I think, prose poem

/ Juliana Lightle / 6 Comments

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

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

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.

The Encounter Poems-Three

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Portland

It never snows here.

Now it is snowing.

The hotel bar is crowded.

No one’s on the streets.

He says,

“Come with me to my ship.”

He’s a freighter captain.

On board, he begs,

“Spend the night!”

On a freighter?

He takes me out to breakfast.

We wander in the snow.

Back home, my friend asks,

“Did you get laid?”

I laugh.

The Encounter Poems

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Throughout my life, I seem to experience what I call encounters:  meeting people I never saw before and having some type of connection with them.  Various things occur under these circumstances.  Sometimes I keep in contact for at least a while with these people and sometimes not.  This week I am going to post several of these poems.  Here is the first one.

In Line at a Fast Food Restaurant

Caramel eyes

glowing in a brown face

Panama hat

Intricately carved silver cross

Crisp, snowy linen shirt

No collar

Slacks loose.

He’s lost weight.

I think,

“Gorgeous brown man.”

He says,

“In case no one has told you lately,

you’re gorgeous!”

He walks off to meet

the pregnant woman in the corner.

Grandmother

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

We sit on the wooden swing suspended by silver chains

hanging from the bungalow front porch ceiling.

She, elderly beyond her years, grey hair piled atop her head,

thin and wrinkled.

She stays with us sometimes when Aunt Julia goes off

on one of her adventures.

Cattle graze across the road in front of the house.

It is summer.

A bull mounts a cow.

Suddenly, out of the silence, Grandmother speaks,

“Men and bulls are just alike;

they are only interested in one thing.

A bunch of good for nothings!”

Her voice is vitriolic.

And I, a child, maybe twelve, innocent and ignorant,

sit there shocked,

amazed,

embarrassed,

astonished

to hear my grandmother talk that way.

Now, nearly fifty years later,

I wonder about her life,

what in it caused this secret bitterness

she spilled just once on that idyllic summer day.

I look at her wedding photo.

She has a steady, unsmiling, pretty face,

marrying a handsome man twenty two years her senior.

Were they happy, sad, or probably a bit of both?

I remember what my mother, her youngest daughter, told me

snippets here and there.

A hard life, endless guests

never a break from gardening, cooking, canning, cleaning.

I look at other photos of my grandmother

taken before I was born,

older, nearly as wide as she is tall, never smiling.

I remember her in an old lady’s flowery, lavender dress,

thin from years of undulate fever.

I remember her feeding me bread, butter, and sugar sandwiches,

Easter egg hunts at her house,

and later, at another house, walking with her to the corner store.

I never remember her smiling.