Drowned Hogs

Thumbing through another of the several Garrison Keillor anthologies of poems on Thursday, nothing much held my attention until I turned the page to discover a poem by New Yorker, Eleanor Lerman. In only a few lines the reader is smack up against moral dilemma, natural disaster, the collapse of cities and finally to that emotion which murmurs closest to the heart, the mystery of love.

Eleanor Lerman is a poet, novelist and short story writer who has always lived in New York. Her first book of poetry, Armed Love (1973), was published when she was twenty-one and nominated for a National Book Award. The New York Times called it X-rated with an implication that young women were not supposed to write books about sex, drugs and rock ’n roll. She tried again two years later with a collection more muted and melancholy titled, Come the Sweet By and By. Once again the experience was less than satisfying and it was twenty-five years before she wrote another book of poems. In 2001 she published The Mystery of Meteors, following that in 2005 with Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds, which won for Lerman the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. She was granted a 2007 Poetry Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2011 received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She published her first novel, Janet Planet last September.

The poem below is from the 2001 collection, The Mystery of Meteors.

WHAT THE DARK-EYED ANGEL KNOWS

A man is begging on his knees in the subway. Six-thirty
in the morning and already we are being presented with
moral choices as we rocket along the old rails, through the
old tunnels between Queens and Manhattan. Soon angels
will come crashing through the ceiling, wailing in the voices
of the castrati: Won't you give this pauper bread or money?
And a monster hurricane is coming: we all heard about it
on the radio at dawn. By nightfall, drowned hogs will be
floating like poisoned soap bubbles on the tributaries
of every Southern river. Children will be orphaned and
the infrastructure of whole cities will be overturned. No one
on the East Coast will be able to make a phone call and we
will be boiling our water for days. And of course there are
the serial killers. And the Crips and the Bloods. And the
arguments about bilingual education. And the fact that all
the clothing made by slave labor overseas is not only the
product of an evil system but maybe worse, never even fits

so why is it that all I can think of (and will think of through
the torrential rains to come and the howling night) is
you, sighing so deeply in the darkness, you and the smell
of you and the windswept curve of your cheek? If this
train ever stops, I will ask that dark-eyed angel, the one
who hasn't spoken yet. He looks like he might know

If Only

Second guessing. Doubt. Regret… Even the weakest of us knows that post hoc grumbling about the reasons why promises nothing in the way of justification or comfort, and in the end, is a futile exercise. But does that understanding stop any of us from trying to connect the dots? We are all chronic disassemblers of our misfortune, our mistakes and screw ups. Oh, if only… Why didn’t…? But I didn’t know… It happened because… All after the event, all post hoc, a slippery grasp at the elusive gift of hindsight.

A native of Washington State, Jennifer Maier teaches literature and creative writing at Seattle Pacific University and serves as an associate editor of Image journal. A native of Seattle, she is a graduate of the University of Washington and Tulane University. She began writing poetry as a kind of procrastination to avoid studying for her oral exams. Her first poem, a mock heroic paean to the giant flying cockroaches of New Orleans succeeded in getting published though it failed to cure her phobia for cockroaches. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poet, The Mississippi Review and been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Her first collection, Dark Alphabet, won the Crab Orchard Review Series in Poetry First Book Award and was named one of the Ten Remarkable Books of 2006 by the Academy of American Poets. A second collection entitled Now, Now is forthcoming.

“Post Hoc” appears in Maier’s book, Dark Alphabet. The poem cleverly and with a an enjoyable dose of humor points out the folly of constructing excuses after the fact.

Post Hoc

It happened because he looked a gift horse in the mouth.
It happened because he couldn’t get that monkey off his back.
It happened because she didn’t chew 22 times before swallowing.
What was she thinking, letting him walk home alone from the bus stop?
What was he thinking, standing up in the boat like that?
Once she signed those papers the die was cast.
She should have waited an hour before going in; everyone knows
salami and seawater don't mix.
He should have checked his parachute a seventh time;
you can never be too careful.
Why didn’t she declare her true feelings?
Why didn’t she play hard to get? She could be out at some
nice restaurant right now instead of in church, praying
for the strength to let him go.
It all started with that tattoo.
It all started with her decision to order the chicken salad.
Why was he so picky?
Why wasn't she more discriminating?
He should have read the writing on the wall; listened
to the still small voice, had a lick of sense. But how could he when he
was blinded by passion? Deaf to warnings? Really dumb?
Why, why, in God’s name, did he run with scissors?
If only they’d asked Jesus for help.
If only they’d asked their friends for help.
If only they’d ignored the advice of others and held fast
to their own convictions, they might all be here, now,
with us, instead of six feet under; instead of trying to adopt
that foreign baby, instead of warming that barstool
at the Road Not Taken Eatery and Lounge, wondering how it might all
have been different, if only they had done
the right thing.

Our First Language

Marge Piercy lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her novelist husband. She is an unusually prolific writer, with seventeen published novels and eighteen published collections of poetry. Her poetry is often highly personal, often angry with an emotional quality reflecting her commitment to social and environmental issues. Born in Detroit, Michigan into a working-class family hard-hit by the Depression, she was the first member of her family to attend college, winning a scholarship to attend the University of Michigan. She later received an MA from Northwestern University.

Piercy’s latest collection of poetry was published in March of 2011. The Hunger Moon, New and Selected Poems 1980-2010 charts the milestone events and fierce passions of the poet’s middle years, her Judaism, her connection with nature and her politics. There is the death of her mother and there is the celebration of her new marriage not only for its romantic beginning, but for the quieter details. Each of Piercy’s poems is fueled by the current of her convictions, and now and then include colorful suggestions such as encouraging her readers to attend the opera rather than movies because “the heroine is fifty and weighs as much as a ’65 Chevy with fins.”

THE TAO OF TOUCH

What magic does touch create
that we crave it so. That babies
do not thrive without it. That
the nurse who cuts tough nails
and sands calluses on the elderly
tells me sometimes men weep
as she rubs lotion on their feet.

Yet the touch of a stranger
the bumping or predatory thrust
in the subway is like a slap.
We long for the familiar, the open
palm of love, its tender fingers.
It is our hands that tamed cats
into pets, not our food.

The widow looks in the mirror
thinking, no one will ever touch
me again, never. Not hold me.
Not caress the softness of my
breasts, my inner thighs, the swell
of my belly. Do I still live
if no one knows my body?

We touch each other so many
ways, in curiosity, in anger,
to command attention, to soothe,
to quiet, to rouse, to cure.
Touch is our first language
and often, our last as the breath
ebbs and a hand closes our eyes.

My Country is This Dirt

Monday, another of those days allowing time in the afternoon to browse aimlessly in a couple of poetry collections, eye out for a shaping of words that grabs attention, a voice speaking in a personal language of the heart, shared thoughts worth pondering.

Ellie Schoenfeld is a native of Duluth, Minnesota, and the author of three poetry collections: Screaming Red Gladiolus! (1999), Difficult Valentines (2004) and The Dark Honey: New and Used Poems (2009). Her work has twice been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Schoenfeld co-founded Poetry Harbor in Duluth and is a past recipient of an ARAC/McKnight Artist Fellowship. Screaming Red Gladiolus! was nominated for a Northeastern Minnesota Book Award. The poems below are both from the 2009 collection, The Dark Honey. The first is a wonderfully uncommon take on the hard-to-define concept of patriotism, something surely more than a Pledge of Allegiance and American flag in the front yard.

PATRIOTISM

My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots. They are
idealistic, always working together
for the common good.
I kneel on the earth
and pledge my allegiance
to all the dirt of the world,
to all of that soil which grows
flowers and food
for the just and unjust alike.
The soil does not care
what we think about or who we love.
It knows our true substance,
of what we are really made.
I stand my ground on this ground,
this ground which will
ultimately
recruit us all
to its side.

And next a plain unadorned Steinbeck view of passing time in a laundromat among ordinary people.

I RIDE GREYHOUND

because it’s like being

in a John Steinbeck novel.

Next best thing is the laundromat.

That’s where all people

who would be on the bus if they had the money

hang out. This is my crowd.

Tonight there are cleaning people appalled

at the stupidity of anyone

who would put powder detergent

in the clearly marked LIQUID ONLY slot.

The couple by the vending machine

are fondling each other.

You’d think the orange walls

and florescent lights

would dampen that energy

but it doesn’t seem to.

It’s a singles scene here on Saturday nights.

I confide to the fellow next to me

that I suspect I’m being taken

in by the triple loader,

maybe it doesn’t hold any more

than the regular machines

but I’m paying an extra fifty cents.

I tell him this meaningfully

holding handfuls of underwear.

He claims the triple loader

gives a better wash.

I don’t ask why,

just cruise over to the pop machine,

aware that my selection

may provide a subtle clue.

I choose Wild Berry,

head back to my clothes.

Sugar Was Her Comfort

Author of eighteen books of poetry as well as seventeen novels, Marge Piercy celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday this year. Since 1971 she has lived on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her novelist husband. Together they run Leapfrog Press. Her 1999 collection of poems, The Art of Blessing the Day includes a poem about her mother called “What She Craved.” The poet credits her mother—an emotional, enormously curious and imaginative woman who read voraciously—with giving her whatever it is that makes her want to write poetry. Piercy’s poetry is often highly personal, often angry with an emotional quality. Her free verse sometimes reflects a commitment to social and environmental issues. Rather than a comment on issues shaded with anger, the poem below is perhaps more a remembrance.

WHAT SHE CRAVED

My mother sugared grapefruit;
my father salted it.
My mother sugared cantaloupe;
my father salted it.

My mother put sugar and lemon
on leaf lettuce from her garden;
two heaping teaspoonfuls into
her milky coffee, with cake.

Her teeth rotted out and were
yanked from her bleeding jaws
by a cheap sadist downtown.
Still she craved sweetness.

In a life with too much that
was bitter, tear soaked salty,
sour as unspoken grief,
sugar was her comfort

a little sweetness in the mouth
lingering like an infrequent kiss;
sugar was the friend kept her clock
ticking through running down days.

A Beautiful Sound

Hearing that Joyce Sutphen was recently named Minnesota Poet Laureate by the state Governor is to my ears much like the effect of her poetry—a beautiful sound indeed. Governor Mark Dayton made the announcement on August 23 that Sutphen will succeed current laureate Robert Bly, who was named the state’s first official poet laureate in 2007. For anyone who has read the work of Sutphen, it shouldn’t be hard to understand what the selection committee saw in the poet and her body of work. Sutphen’s earliest memories of poetry harken back to time spent with her father growing up on their farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota. “He always made little funny rhymes for us all through the day,” she recalled. “We’d try to keep up with him, but mostly we just stood back and let him go.” From those days she continues to draw inspiration, but has also noted that what she sees of Minnesota from her car window on the drive to school and home again is a revelation as well. An award-winning poet who teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St Peter, she says about her particular spot of Minnesota, “I live on a 100-acre marsh. I’ve written about the birds, the deer, the wind in the reeds…” All of this is evident in the five collections of poetry she has published. Her work has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Minnesota Monthly and North Dakota Review. She has also been a guest on A Prairie Home Companion and is a favorite of Garrison Keillor and The Writer’s Almanac.

Twice before the poems of Joyce Sutphen have found a place in these pages, the first time back in December of 2009, the second time in January of 2010. The two poems below are both from her most recent book of collected work, First Words (2010).

THE BEFORE I WAS BORN BLUES

I wasn’t born the year she sang that song,

but I miss it anyway. I miss the

clarinet that starts it out; I miss the

way the lady says he done her wrong.

I would’ve liked a red-feathered hat,

a tailored suit and high-heeled shoes, a pearl

necklace—a single strand—and leather gloves.

Nothing I wear will ever look like that.

There’s something about the saxophone

and the piano slightly off the beat

that makes me imagine someone handsome

who’s just about to fall in love with me,

and god, I wish I knew what happens when

he turns and…too bad—I wasn’t born then.

WATCHING MY FATHER SHAVE

I see my father’s face in the mirror,

stripping off the white mask that wraps

along his cheekbone, over his mouth,

and, chin jutted up, down his neck.

The silver razor tap-taps the sink;

the ivory-handled brush swishes back

and forth in the cup, and every time

he turns the handle, the faucet squeaks.

I watch the steaming water fill the sink,

and when he splashes it on his face,

the mask dissolves into his waiting hands;

the towel turns on the wooden roller.

How I regret being a girl and never

being able to find myself this way,

to prove how steady I am,

how close to the edge I can come.

Conversation was Hushed

After her children had grown, her husband died and her eyesight gone, Virginia Hamilton Adair finally published her first book of poems when she was eighty-three. Even after the complete loss of her sight in 1992, she continued writing on an old Olympia typewriter. From 1994 she lived in a single room at Pilgrim Place, a retirement community in Claremont, California. Until her death in 2004 several helpers assisted her in revising her poems. “Porches II” is from her third collection of poems, Living on Fire, published in 2000.

PORCHES II

All over the U.S. the porches were dying.
The porch swing and the rocking chair moved to the village dump.
The floorboards trembled, and the steps creaked.
For a couple of decades a new light burned in the parlor,
the family sitting there silent in front of the box,
voices and music squawking mysteriously from far places
into the dim-lit room. Conversation was hushed.

In the next two decades, a window in a box
flashed unbelievable pictures into the room.
Strangers guffawed and howled with laughter.
Shots rang out, people died in front of our eyes.
We learned not to care, drinking Coca-Cola from bottles,
spilling popcorn into the sofa.

A highway came past the house with its deserted porch
and no one noticed. The children wandered off to rob houses
a few blocks away, not out of need, but simple boredom.
No more family games or read-alouds.

Grandparents sometimes pulled their chairs outside
hoping neighbors would stop in.
They might even drag out an extra chair or two;
still no one came, not even to borrow something.
But it was hard to talk with the TV at their backs,
the traffic screeching by in front, the rest of the neighborhood
on relief, or in rest homes and reformatories.

The old porch is removed, and the grandparents with it.
So long, friends, neighbors, passersby.

Fancy Shower Curtains

Idle Sunday, hours of no account, eyes aimed at blue waves and summer, mind seeing another side of the world. Late in the afternoon, the bright red of another Garrison Keillor anthology caught my eye and after a dull poem or three, I stumbled upon a diamond, or at least another view of department store sales. Here is a poem by Faith Shearin from her 2002 collection The Owl Collection.

SHOPPING

My husband and I stood together in the new mall

which was clean and white and full of possibility.
We were poor so we liked to walk through the stores

since this was like walking through our dreams.

In one we admired coffee makers, blue pottery

bowls, toaster ovens as big as televisions. In another,

we eased into a leather couch and imagined

cocktails in a room overlooking the sea. When we

sniffed scented candles we saw our future faces,

softly lit, over a dinner of pasta and wine. When

we touched thick bathrobes we saw midnight

swims and bathtubs so vast they might be

mistaken for lakes. My husband’s glasses hurt

his face and his shoes were full of holes.

There was space in our living room where

a couch should have been. We longed for

fancy shower curtains, flannel sheets,

shiny silverware, expensive winter coats.

Sometimes, at night, we sat up and made lists.

We pressed our heads together and wrote
Our wants all over torn notebook pages.

Nearly everyone we loved was alive and we

were in love but we like wanting. Nothing

was ever as nice when we brought it home.

The objects in stores looked best in stores.

The stores were possible futures and, young

and poor, we went shopping. It was nice

then: we didn’t know we already had everything.

A good poem, wouldn’t you say?

Faith Shearin’s first book of poems was The Owl Question, published in 2002. A second collection, The Empty House, came out in 2008. Her more recent work has appeared in North American Review and Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework. Ms Shearin is a recipient of a 2009 NEA fellowship and lives in North Carolina.