Selections from:  WRITING WHO WE ARE

Scroll down for poems by Kiya Heartwood, Trish Lindsey Jaggers, George Ella Lyon, M. Kay Miller, Mary Ellen Miller, Nancy Roberts, Anne Shelby, & Peggy Steele

 

KIYA HEARTWOOD

FENCE ROW

A thin, seventy year old man and his grown daughter
Stop by one day looking for his cattle.

He says,
"I had to move in to town.
These old cows get out now.
We just can't keep up the fences like we used to."

"Do you have a man here?"

He worked here as a boy.
The best farm in the valley.
Tobacco money and corn
Angus, big and solid like wrestlers
Hot biscuits on the table
Wood pile stacked clean, in full cords
Black barn beams, hand hewn,
Two feet thick and still holding.

A walnut tree grows right through the roof of one
Of those barns now.
Vultures have settled in the hay loft.
The pond dam leaks,
And I can't judge yet
Between good forage and bad.
His eyes see the weed choked fence rows
And my tomatoes.

The tomatoes tell him I can be talked to.
The fence row says
I still have a long way to go.

TRISH LINDSEY JAGGERS

THE SEED-SOWER

She was one of those you couldn't buy
for; she didn't want cheap words
or candy kisses;
she wanted truth
and equality
and live flowers
occasionally.
She was an Amazon
in a world of small children;
she took me into her garden,
taught me words from weeds,
which flowers to cut,
and which were best left standing-
as the seed-sowers.

Today, I tried again to buy a Mother's Day card,
but a poet can't find beauty
among ten-cent words
in a two-dollar card.
I bought a blank one;
made my own bouquet
for Momma's grave, too.
Give me my flowers
while I'm living, she said
their wires twisted around my heart,
silk frayed
and raveled;
no glue can hold my leaves to the stem;
no vase can display me.

GEORGE ELLA LYON

DEAR BODY

I owe you a litany
of apologies, one for every day
since I was ten.
For thirty-nine years, fourteen
thousand two hundred and thirty-five
days-your moon-blood turned me
against you. There's no way
now to make this up,
life being short, poems shorter.
But here, at least, is a start.

I apologize for being ashamed
of your monthly pledge
to life, your steady flow.
Forgive me for despising
every nook and cranny
of your wisdom, every secret
fold of your desire.
When you were tired
I labeled it Lazy,
and when you were sick
I had no sympathy.
What a fake! I thought.
What a prison!

I am sorry for trying
to starve you, to disappear you,
sweet flesh. Praise to wide
thighs, dimpled columns
of the temple. And to round
breasts, Praise, twin delights
that fed my sons.
And Body, the names I called you!

clumsy
ugly
greedy
disgusting
evil
corrupt

when what am I
but a light you give off?

All this time,
three hundred and forty-nine thousand
two hundred and forty days,
I've been the one with the words
and you-mute, articulate-
have carried our life
in your hands.

M. KAY MILLER

LILITH

Toss your hair back, Lilith,
disconcerting and disobedient wife.
Let him see you walk away,
hips swaying and back straight.

Yours is the oldest story
and thus the strongest claim,
thrown out of Eden first
for your refusal to acquiesce.

Where came this wild courage?
To stand up to God and say
"No, thank you. I've a life
of my own to live and enjoy."

What did you think, Adam,
as you watched her green going?
Was there sorrow that she did
not love you enough? Or relief?

Soothed by God's promise of
other mate, were you disconsolate
to lose one who saw herself
not as mistake, but triumph?

*An old myth claims Adam had two wives. The first, Lilith, was thrown out of the Garden of Eden for being too much woman for Adam to handle.

MARY ELLEN MILLER

THINGS IN THE SHAPE OF OTHER THINGS

Heart-shaped rugs
Bookend hands
Santa Claus banks
Elephant mugs

I don't like that.

This thing in me
Shaped like a cat
Poised for attack
Hissing, back
Arched, tail
Up

I don't like that.

NANCY ROBERTS

BIRDWATCHING WITH AUNT HELEN

Bluebird, goldfinch, indigo bunting,
brown thrasher, scarlet tanager,
ruby-throated hummingbird.
World come through color, come through names!
I wanted to kneel at your feet
with a basket of these names and spill them
like an offering of beads, saying: Beautiful Woman,
see what you gave me; see me as almost your daughter.

Your sister, my mother, was gone in her mind,
as if the world had vanished in fire.
She walked unsteady as a child, unwell, unloved,
touching charred trees for balance, her weak
feet scuffing in ashes, eyes unseeing as stones.
How could I be a daughter in that ruined world?

You gathered me as I was, fisted into myself
like a fern trapped in its first coil.
You took me anyway, swinging the binoculars, took me
into the forest behind your house, said: Look up!
The birds flickered in the trees like eyelids.
You gave them names and songs and certain nests,
habits of migration, moulting, wingspans, colors.
Male and female, you created them.

It was so simple after that to see the stars whirling
in the night sky like acrobats, the rain leaping into
beads of light, the willows swooping like dancers,
to kneel down to stones by the river, butterflies, and flowers,
all with names real as water, close as blood.


ANNE SHELBY

MESSAGE TO MEN

We will begin
with two
simple
principles:

(1) Do not
lecture,
and (2) Do not
lie.

We will take these
one
at a time.

(1) Do not lecture.

Unless you are specifically
asked
for information,
unless we say,
for example, "Honey,
will you please
explain to me now,
at some length
and in a condescending manner,
the history of photography,
how vacuum cleaners work,
the root causes
of the War of 1812?"
Unless we say this you
may safely assume
we either (a)
already know
or (b)
do not
care.

(2) Do not lie.

If you are (a)
seeing someone else
or (b) just want out,
say so.
Do not say
you had to work late
every night for six months,
your answering machine
ate all our messages,
an emergency arose
in regard to your mother's lawn care.

The thing is, we'll believe you,
give you the benefit
of every doubt about ourselves.
Then when, inevitably,
we find out the truth,
we will
want to kill you.
It is only the threat
of a long and expensive
jury trial
that keeps you alive.

And so
in summary
(1) Do not lecture,
and (2) Do not
lie.

That's enough for today.
Future topics include:

Just because I'm Crying
Doesn't Mean I'm Crazy

The Importance of Proper Aim

and

Honey, Why Don't We Just
Pull Over and Ask Directions?


PEGGY STEELE

AT THE COSMETICS COUNTER

At seventeen, I worked there
with Mattie Lou to please
my mother. Bottles rose
at my back like organ pipes,
columns of Charles of the Ritz
in pink and white. Mattie Lou
called everyone darling
as she corrected their scent.
Easier for me to puke
across the counter. Puke up
maybe a whole olive the way
one child did in sixth grade
-it lay before us
in singing class as if she
had belted out an ovary.

I went for breathers
to the storeroom that smelled
of concrete dust and packing straw
feeling like a camel-
longnecked and stiff of leg
fastidious in soft-nosed
silence, rubbery-lipped
at words I could not say.

There was a pretense
that no house really has
a back porch where a gray
mop hangs on a nail and dries
to the shape of a shriek.
It was years before I knew
I bent to any shape
to please them.