When mama ain’t happy

when mama ain’t happy

When she unhinged the door
her children narrowed their eyes
and girded themselves for war.
But her new tactic surprised
even them. She unscrewed her head,
and then her neck, propped a hockey puck
on a plastic bottle instead.
Her victory would be a slam dunk–
she drilled holes in the puck to see
her sons scurry behind chairs,
wrists angled. They flung a few Frisbees
that she batted out of the air.
On a crumpled note she wrote a final bromide:
Do not toy with this mother frankenbride.
***
Friday Five from Poefusion: plastic bottle, hockey puck, dirty handkerchief, crumpled note, unhinged door.
readwritepoem: mothers

I went on a rampage today with my oldest son. Freeboarder ducked his head low over the keyboard (he was online playing WOW, talking on AIM…), lest any of the wrath redirect toward him. Why was I angry at Philosopher? I’ll let you imagine any number of possible scenarios. It’s spring, he’s eighteen, and he has only two weeks left of high school….

Sigh. I went to the pool, swam laps furiously for an hour, and returned calm and contrite. I’m really a very weak mother. Lots of love, little in the way of toughness.

photo credit: stockxchange

365 Arlington Heights Road

365 Arlington Heights Road

Enter the yellow Cape Cod
of your childhood,
walk through the living room
with a picture window.
Climb the stairway, paneled
in cherry-stained pine,
to the attic bedroom–
you crouch, too tall to stand upright.
Twin beds, covered in lilac,
twin windows, eyes on a city
street, cars driving forty miles an hour.

You remember your sister
jumping from her bed in the night,
hair in curlers bouncing in her fright.
You remember your bed pushed
against hers to sleep–terror of Bloody Mary.
You remember the cold air in your closet,
the ghost of David, killed in Vietnam.

You were afraid of heights but now
you squirm out the window,
hoist yourself onto the roof.
There you perch.
The shingles warm your feet.
Sniff the jasmine draped
over the bower in the garden.
Past the highway you spot a field,
a Krishna-blue sky, a lemon-drop
sun casting a flimsy glow on the air.
Spread your arms, arch your
breast to the horizon. Lift up
on the balls of your feet,

***

Totally Optional Prompts: transformation

And a nod to gingatao, who sometimes ends his poems in mid sentence, a poetic device I admire.

photo credit: Cape Cod for the birds, from stockxchange.

A different kind of love potion

A different kind of love potion

She kept a flask of love
mixed with caution in her bag
for times when she felt bereft of
human kindness. If her spirits flagged
she’d take maybe a little sip, just a nip
to stop her eyes from tearing.
Drops would often slip
down her cheeks, declaring
her a weakling to anyone nearby.
Once she wept on a city street.
She asked her lover, Why
don’t you love me with the same sweet
kiss of yesterday? He turned away,
and she stood alone, holding his dried-out bouquet.

***

3WW: cautious, human, maybe

Photo credit: Sea in a flask, by Fran G. at stockxchange.

Opera Arias put me in the mood to write

Kathleen Battle singing “O Mio Babbino Caro.” (Gianni Schicchi)

Lyrics:

O mio babbino caro,
Mi piace, e bello bello,
Vo andare in Porta Rossa
A comperar l anello!
Si,si ci voglio andare
e se l amassi indarno
andrei sui Ponte Vecchio
ma per buttaarmi in Arno!
Mi struggo e mi tormento!
O Dio, vorrei morir!
Babbo, pieta, pieta!
Babbo, pieta, pieta!

Translation

Oh my dear daddy
I love him, he is so handsome
I want to go to Porta Rossa
to buy the ring!
Yes, yes, I mean it
And if my love were in vain
I would go to Ponte Vecchio
and throw myself in the Arno!
I fret and suffer torments!
Oh God, I would rather die!
Daddy, have pity, have pity!
Daddy, have pity, have pity!

Music: Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Lyrics: Giovacchino Forzano

To read more about this opera and the explanation of what the lyrics are about (she’s pleading with her father to let her marry her sweetheart), go to Sarah Brightman’s page.

Nita and yaake tagged me for this meme about music, and how it inspires us to write. Here is the original meme from forgetting myself:

Think of THE song that most inspires you to write, whether it gives you an idea for a story, script or just puts you into a better frame of mind AND/OR peek into the lyrics and find a verse that sums up the theme of whatever project it is you’re working on. If possible, post a video of the song to convey to readers the full context of the song and the mood it puts you into. Finally, send the assignment to five other writers to do as well.

As usual, I didn’t do exactly as the instructions suggested. I didn’t find the song. But I do love Italian opera, and Kathleen Battle’s voice in particular. Among the other contenders for this post were The Clash, and a Spanish singer named Bebe. Finally, I went with a sound that makes the hair on my arms stand on end and swells my heart.

I’m supposed to tag five writers. This is tough to do, because it seems like so one wants to do these memes anymore. If your name appears here and you don’t want to write about this topic, no worries! And if your name isn’t here and you’d like to write about music, please join in!

Writer Reading, Joe Felso, Poefusion, Red Ravine, Slow Muse

Homemade shrugs from Yoga Journal

The May newsstand issue of Yoga Journal includes instructions for how to make your own shrug. I like shrugs because they add an element of feminine interest to plain yoga attire. And I’m not comfortable wearing only a spaghetti-strap cami in yoga class, especially while teaching. As I’m forty-seven, not twenty-seven, my body is for use, not show.

Because it’s Yoga Journal and not Vogue, the article describes the clothing lines of three yogini fashion designers who recycle clothing. They add flounces, cut off the legs of slacks, reshape, and trim until a new outfit has emerged. Check out Kat O’Sullivan’s website. I’m sure you’ll be inspired.

I haven’t used my sewing machine since the last Halloween costume I made for my kids, so the shrug project seemed like a good place to start. Here’s a few pics from my first attempt.

I made a mistake on this first try. You can see in the photo on the right I cut off the left tie. No worries! This was a stained T-shirt I was trying to salvage. It will now go in the rag bin for clean ups of the piddles my diabetic dachshund makes from time to time.

Here’s a finished product. I hated to send this T-shirt to the rag bin– I bought it Mexico after hiking to a mountain top to see an ancient temple. I was so proud of myself that day for not giving up halfway to the top to drink beer mixed with pepper, salt, and lime (cheladas). A young woman was selling them along the trail as if it were a lemonade stand in the middle of the forest. But I was good, and saved the drinks for the way back down.

I’m going to pull out the old sewing machine to hem the raw edges of the shrugs. Since I’m the kind of person who beats a good idea with a stick, I’ll probably be wearing shrugs long after they go out of style.

Confession Tuesday at The Polkadot Witch.

Writing about myself

Well-written blog posts are mini essays. Some are lyric, some are personal, others didactic, and still others bombastic. By and large, most bloggers write in the first person, and include details of their personal life on the page. Isn’t that how the word blog came about? Writers recorded tidbits of their lives in the form of a web log.

In his essay, Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character, Phillip Lopate gives the same sort of advice teachers of fiction writing often mention - to create a pattern of behaviors for the person you are writing about. It’s not enough to say I. He also suggests using exaggeration to make a point about oneself. There’s no sense in being blasé when trying to seduce a reader.

Gloria, author of Writer Reading, does a great job re-creating herself on the page. She’s passionate about reading good books, adores art, devotes herself to her profession, and voices strong opinions about everything from MFA programs to the ways literary editors select and reject a writer’s work. And she’s a mother and wife who wears her heart on her sleeve. I know all this about her because of the way she writes. She has created a character: Gloria the literary blogger.

My blogging character is a dreamy yogini poet. I’m a pacifist vegetarian mother raising two meat-eating teenage boys who lives much of the time in a fantasy world of my own making. Just for the record, I can still distinguish between the imagination and the world I perceive with my five senses!

I wonder if writing about the self lessens or increases narcissism? On the one hand, If I’m honest about myself I’ll list my quirks and traits objectively. If I’m dispassionate about outlining my foibles, I might understand how others view me. As far as I know, that’s a sign of a healthy person.

On the other hand, all these posts might be another way for me to bolster a fiction I created a long time ago, a fragile fabrication that now lives electronically. Maybe my self-worth is so low that I need to paint a portrait of a persona each day in order to feel loved.

Which do you think mariacristina is, authentic or paper maché?

What about you? Who’s your blogging persona?

have low expectations to avoid disappointment

The Channel at Gravelines, Evening, by Georges Seurat, 1890. From MOMA, NYC.

have low expectations to avoid disappointment

At dusk the Port of Gravelines
is a pastel place. Mauve and amber
clouds seep into a blue-gray sea.
A spray of tiny waves
settles on your skin.
You lick your lips and think of grapefruit.

When the stars come out
you wander along the canal
in search of a tovarich,
a comrade or two. Why you think
tovarich you don’t know. You enter
the nearest pub.

The bartender will count
your glasses of wine with an abacus.
Each click of the wooden beads
will remind you of how good it feels to be drunk,
how you must keep the flow of wine
in the blood, how if two glasses
feels good, three or four will be better.

When two rabbits hop on stools
to your left and right, you’ll try not to show
surprise. You’ll invite them with glad grace
to a glass of sherry, a plate of fried
anchovies, a tiny dish of black olives.

You’ll walk to your hotel avec tes amis
down empty cobbled streets,
slippery from a recent shower.
A pigeon will shit on your head.
The rabbits will laugh, not bothering
to hide their glee. You will scrape
the viscous sludge from your brow
with a crumpled napkin from the pub.
Farther along you’ll find
a fountain. You’ll lean your head
under a cherub’s mouth and rinse
your hair beneath a stream of water.
You’ll climb the stairs to a garret
room, and forget to invite the rabbits
up for a nightcap.

*~*

Poefusion: a pigeon, an abacus, tovarich, two rabbits, Gravelines

An egg of despair

an egg of despair

It started in the classroom. The students were baby birds sitting in desks, mouths open for the inch worms of knowledge I dropped into their gaping beaks. In the beginning their wet feathers revealed tender skeletons. As their downy plumage sprouted they screeched for more: cockroaches of compassion, beetles of love, caterpillars of entertainment, and centipedes of speedy spoonfed answers. How can a teacher keep pace with growing grackles?

A lump formed in my gullet. At night I drank goblets of Pinot Grigio to dissolve it, but the stone didn’t wash away. Instead it plummeted down to my rib cage, and leaned on my lungs. It stole my breath.

Egg removal instructions from the faculty handbook: Slowly extract the egg. Take care not to puncture its tender surface. If the shell cracks, sadness will ooze into the chambers and crevices of the body. Blood vessels will carry tiny pebbles of panic and terror to the lymph nodes, where despair will metastasize, corroding the liver, pancreas,and kidneys, freeze the heart, and turn the brain to mush.

In the bathroom I opened my mouth in front of a mirror, and reached a hand down my throat, palpating dark, moist spaces until I touched an egg, lodged behind my breastbone. With raccoon-like fingers I prized the nodule away from my inner cavities, wrapped it in tissue paper, and brought it to My Therapist. She intuited the proper course of action. Sitting across from me on a chintz love seat in her sunny office, she smiled, took out a silver key from the pocket of her skirt, pulled aside the neckline of her blouse, and unlocked a door in her chest. A secret chamber, she told me. She held out her hand for the egg, which I placed in her palm. First she pricked a pinhole in the thin shell with a needle, and then centered the egg on a miniature tuffet inside the chamber.

And there my egg continues to gestate in a new nest. I wonder if it causes My Therapist pain? As I talk to her on bright afternoons silhouettes of people I once knew dance and gesture above our heads. The shadows form a dusty cloud that hovers in the room, blurry and black around the edges, until a breeze catches it, and the smoky shape floats through an open window, wafting into sunlight infused ether.

readwritepoem and totally optional prompts

Photo credit: egg anyone? by Debbie Shiel at stockxchange.

nighttime enigmas, NaPoWriMo 30

nighttime enigmas

I often dream about classrooms,
never empty, choked highways,
elastic cars with too much leg room,
their steering wheels spiraling away.
What haven’t I learned?
A transcript says I never passed
math, students leave before we adjourn,
parking lots have glassed
over with ice, no headlights
to brighten my path.
I am an actor who needs to re-write
my lines. The director is no empath.
There’s a message I’ve ignored,
but once deciphered, will reap rewards.

~*~

3WW: empty, highway, ignored

Photo credit: road crossing, by Ali Taylor, stockxchange.

Confession Tuesday: a questionnaire

Yaake from Mirrorcracked tagged me with these questions, so I thought it would be fun to answer them for Confession Tuesday. Visit The Polkadot Witch to hear more confessions, and visit mirrorcracked for interesting and illuminating stories and tidbits from real life. If you read this and want to answer the questions, consider yourself tagged. I know that’s cheating, but I’m too lazy to do all the work of informing people and linking. So, link back to mirrorcracked if you want to play along.

Last movie in a theater
Into Great Silence, a gorgeous documentary. I went alone, during the day. It sounds sad, but it wasn’t.

Book I’m reading
Can I list more than one? Willow Room, Green Door, by Deborah Keenan, Creative Visualization by David Fontana, and Yoga Nidra by Richard Miller. It’s taking me awhile to get through these three because of the simultaneous reading. Holding three books in my three hands and reading all of them at once requires some juggling.

Favorite board game
Apples to Apples. I bought it for my son, and I’ve never played it. I beg my family to go along with me, but the only game my boys will play is Risk.

Favorite smells
Lavender, rosemary, roasted red peppers, baby breath, puppy breath, coffee….

Favorite sounds
bells, birds, baby laughter, baby dolphin coos, anyone’s laughter, wind in the trees, the human voice singing, Kathleen Battle singing Mozart arias….

Worst feeling in the world
Being a part of a large group of people and thinking that they don’t like me.

The first thing I think upon waking
What was I dreaming?

Favorite fast food place
A burger shack down the road that serves veggie burgers on whole wheat. My son insists they snort cocaine off the grill, but I don’t believe him.

Future child’s name
OhMyGod (I’m 47, so I’m not in the baby making business anymore).

If I had a lot of money I’d
keep writing without the guilt that I don’t earn enough dough.

Do you drive fast?
I’m the slow poke you are screaming obscenities at on the highway. You think I must be smoking weed, but I am not.

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
Yes, with two–my husband and my dog Duffy.

Eat stems of broccoli?
No.Too stringy. I use them for broth when I’m in a thrifty mood.

What color would you dye your hair?
Blood-orange red

Favorite sport to watch?
People shoving through mall doors on the day after Thanksgiving.

What’s under your bed?
My doppelganger, who would like to strangle me and take over. I might let her.

Would you like to be born again as yourself?
Sure, but I’d rather live on a tropical island.

Over easy, or sunny side up?
I need to keep on the sunny side.

Favorite pie
The one that doesn’t end up on my hips.

Favorite ice cream flavor
Cookies n’ cream