Merciless

Listen, she is merciless as a Saracen.

My poor heart jumps for its den at the sight of her,
leaving me a little breathless,
wobbly, tongue-tied, what a mess.

'Scuse me Miss, what lovely teeth you have,
pretty maids all in a row,
the better to slay me with.
Her voice is cream to the cat, I'll fall off the fence.
dazzled and stupid, upside down on the ground.

She wears tortoiseshell glasses,
she's a rocket scientist distant as Mars
because I am shy, uncertain, starstruck, clumsy,
knocked over by the fragrance she wears,
gone from austere bookworm 
to clueless spaz
with no escape except into the stacks to recover.

Like a ninny I return to the shrine,
her reference desk lair
where I hope to inherit a word or a smile
to check out and take home and keep
like an overdue volume.
That's when I'll go back
and say to my librarian crush,
"Hi, I'm your fool, can you help me?" 
And hope, like an idiot, that she can.
________

for Skylover's word list.

Book Review : "Breathing Underwater"

Breathing Underwater by Lu Vickers
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lu Vickers can write--that's not the problem here. There isn't a tired phrase or a clanking paragraph anywhere in this novel about a girl growing up in the Florida panhandle in the 1970's. And Lily's slowly dawning realization about who she is is fine by me--I love a nice lesbian love story, though what there is of that is pretty darn scant. The problem here, for me, was that I just didn't like Lily very much and that made it hard to care very much about her. I didn't like her when she threw a rock at a caged monkey. I didn't like her when she beat the living bejesus out of her little sister. I didn't like her when she wanted to hurt the boy next door, annoying and wrong for her though he was. Oh yes, she has her reasons for being angry. Don't we all. That didn't excuse her mean streak.

The real main character in this story isn't even Lily at all. Her bipolar mother is, though Lily is the protagonist. Lily's mother is a woman who had pretty shallow dreams, but they were her dreams and when they were disappointed, she took it out on both herself and her family, with Lily becoming a special target for "not being the right kind of girl." I did love the line "She couldn't get inside me and make me different." I was the wrong kind of girl too, and fought the same battle with my own mother, so I could relate. I admired her will to be true to herself and her resiliency in the face of having repeated AFGO's. (Another F**king Growth Opportunity.) But I still didn't really like her.

The other main character here is the Florida panhandle in all its heat, kitsch and glory. While well drawn, the setting is like Lily herself in that it lacked something, lacked anything really valuable except a mulish will to keep on keepin on. So, if you want to read a good southern novel with quirky characters, try something by Joshilyn Jackson, not this. Not recommended.

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Athena and the Air's Machinations

My lungs speak, one to the other,
all night while owls tap at the window
sending Morse love poems to Athena.

They know I don't trust the air--not since Athena left.
I wear this bulky space suit everywhere, even into my dreams.

A fixer with a burlap bag gathered the owls and brought them back,
along with window glass, some putty, and a frame.
Now my lungs discuss the view, plan pilgrimages, and pointedly exclude me.

Athena loved the poems I could breathe out at will,
but wearied of my ladder collection and habit of communicating only by hieroglyph. 
Now everything is lungs, owls,
night, space suits,
and the stilling of the back door still redolent 
with Athena's scent and the trackless void of my own exhalations.
_____

(belatedly cos my I was off the grid) for Sunday Muse #79.

Book Review: "Name All The Animals"

Name All the Animals: A Memoir by Alison Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This reads so much like a novel that I had to keep reminding myself, at first, that it is a memoir. Alison is the youngest of two children in a very Catholic family. When she is fifteen and her brother is eighteen, he dies in a road accident. From that point on, at her Catholic high school and even at home, Alison becomes The Girl Whose Brother Died, even to herself. In fact, she begins slowly starving herself, hoping to simply fade away and join him.

Sad stuff, and I have to admit that it was hard for me to get through the first half of the book. It isn't bad, it just didn't ever make me want to go back to it once I set it down. Then Alison meets transfer student Terry, and over time she discovers that she is in love with her. Their connection, conducted on the sly, under the noses of Alison's rather oblivious parents, and the nuns at school, is the life of this memoir to me. I'm a sucker for first (lesbian) love stories, and this one was engrossing on its own while also reminding me of others I've read. Terry and Alison are so natural, so sweet with each other, and it is the one thing that brings light and joy into Alison's life, that--even though it obviously couldn't last, in such a fishbowl--I loved immersing myself in it. The details, the sly remarks from Alison's classmate, her mother's crazy over-reaction, and the discipline from the nuns, is deftly portrayed and inevitable.

The nuns are a memorable and unexpectedly colorful group! Not only is Alison the Girl Whose Brother Died, but she is a straight arrow (in a manner of speaking) who makes them all want to blame the girlfriend Terry for it all, and Terry lets them. Even though this takes place in the 1980s, it's still disheartening to see Alison feel like she's bad and wrong simply for loving another girl.

Alison takes a long circuitous path from emptiness to redemption, but in the end, this often sad story about grief finds solid ground and one feels that Alison will be fine. Even though the first half was rather slow, I still count this as a favorite of mine.



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Hospital Food

It takes a certain kind of woman
to make me give up a perfectly good spot out on the ledge,
but your voice was soft,
and you were wearing those cute glasses.
The rest of your clothes were all in the laundry, and so,
I folded my wings and came back to bed,
true as a swallow.

The Spanish established missions all over the west,
and brought with them rosaries and refried beans--
all the things that they loved best.
You'll say it was the native tribes
with the best recipes for every sort of hunger, 
and that the Spanish can claim only diseases and Catholicism;
still, you kiss my silver cross
where it rests between my breasts,
and you whisper that I am the nicest nun this side of St. Anyplace.

I was blue all day until you got here, honey.
I was fidgety and cross and off my feed.
But now, here you are,
your glasses on the side table.
I love it when your knees find east and west,
your fingers curl around my ears as if they were Indian jewelry,
and you say "Eat. It's good for you."
Well yes it is, sweetheart.
Yes it is.
_______ 

for Karin's mini challenge at Toads.

Book Review: "Olivia"

Olivia: A Novel by Dorothy Strachey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"Olivia" is the story of a teenage girl away at boarding school, and her intense feelings for one of the two women who run it. In some (good) ways, this reminds me of Nevada Barr's "Bittersweet" and Sylvia Brownrigg's "Pages For You", which are both favorites of mine, and both concern girls whose first loves are (somewhat) older women.

First love is gorgeous and awful and all-consuming and unforgettable; Olivia finds all that out first hand. Don't be misled...there is no sex and very little physical contact in this story, but the emotions burn red hot. It has the feel of a classic tragedy, and also of a really good YA novel of today.

The story is loosely based on Marie Souvestre's Allenswood Academy, attended by both the author and Eleanor Roosevelt, among many other notables of the first half of the 20th century. But this is not about anyone, really, except Olivia and Mlle. Julie. There were times when I had to set it down and just let a scene wash over me. It's very smoothly written, full of heart, joy and sadness; it simply blew me away. Highly recommended.



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Mexican Poet

You lay the Mexican poet down between us
on the fading blue moon and stars of our overwashed sheets.
You told me, open as a new bottle of wine,
how you loved him,
how he wrapped his words around your heart
like a morning glory vine around a nested stinger.

I should have listened to the skinny about bi women--
they will always leave you twice.
There is a reason why
sun and moon rarely share the sky,
and when they do, it is always in half-light--
that darling of killers, clergy, and affected stand-in bullshitters.

I know it was just a book,
just a moment,
just translated soul settling inside our skins,
turning them to sandpaper. 
The real blame belongs with my jar of hoarded scorpions,
scattered in our hair,
blooms on two brittle garlands lovely in any language
but never meant to last the night.
______

for Real Toads mini-challenge.

Travel Story For Girls

One had a boyfriend,
but never found Howland Island.
The other was an odd duck
looking for mermaids after every rainstorm.

One was Catholic,
the other Lutheran.
Both believed in female clergy
wearing Roman collars, and red hair long.

One lived at home,
the other in a flat where the gulls glide.
When they kissed the first time,
whole flocks moved in circles, like stars.

One liked Anna Ternheim,
the other, Eva Dahlgren.
When they made love the first time,
it was like piloting through easy clouds.

That May it rained every day for a week.
Water landings are dicey things;
Selkies find their buried skins and go back home,
forgetting they were ever human at all.

One moved away,
but the other stayed and wrote swells of storm-blue poems
about transformed women 
wearing Roman collars, and their red hair long.
_______

for Magpie Tales #238, and for Bjorn Rudberg's mini-challenge at Real Toads.

I've featured the this song once before on my blog, but it is so hard to find, and so cool, that I'm featuring it again. Plus, it fits the poem perfectly. Anna Ternheim is a Swedish singer who performs in English. 

Girl Sphynx

She doesn't know,
and I would never let on.

Didn't I tell you?
I stopped wearing my rainbow jewelry to work.
I act so straight
that I can't even bend to sit down.

So there's this woman.
She has no idea.

She's warmer than a San Antonio tiled roof.
She smiles whenever she sees me,
but she's just nice to everybody.
She's got a husband, if I forgot to belabor the obvious.

I like to make her laugh.
She's cuter than sunflowers in June when she does.

God can she rock that orange tee shirt,
or any of those summer sweaters she's got.
She has gray eyes
and a heart shaped face.

I never let on.
I'm a riddle, a Sphynx, an aviatrix under the radar.

Yesterday she was kidding me the way she does.
She winked,
and I wavered mid-air, but
I never blushed, I swear.
_______

for Izy's Out of Standard challenge at Real Toads: lies not well enough told.

image: Cristina Scabbia 

 

In A Strange City

In a strange city,
where the local language sounds like gravel poured from a wine glass,
I found her selling tiny blue swans made from azurite.

Her swans were unexpectedly soft,
but she warned me that their blue would fade
with heat and time.

One eye was hidden behind her hair,
making her partial to half moons and split natures.
A caged bird faced away from her on its perch, singing to the public square.

She told me she was a Habsburg, and partial to carriages;
did I happen to have one?
No. I told her I was the Swan Police, and she must come with me.

When she laughed, it was the same,
exactly the same,
as a woman in New York, or Bucharest, or any other place where Gypsies are.

No dealer in antiquities ever touched a vase, or a sculpture
more tenderly than she touched my breasts, that evening in her two-room upstairs flat.
No occupying army ever met less resistance. 

Later, on my back and insensible, I had just the strength to take her hand 
and move it from its craftsmanship to my face, where her fingers left a sweet shine;
she laughed again, this time as rare as a royal.

I had to leave in the morning, of course,
but I packed the swans carefully, like sleeping babies,
more beautiful and less blue than even the day before.

_________

the city pictured at top is Prague, Czech Republic 

Old Fashioned

I'm old fashioned, so people tell me.
I wear a wide brimmed feathered hat when the weather turns nice,
and I eat ice cream from a silver bowl,
as unhurried as a house cat.

I don't drive--
I stay by the side of the road, wearing my high button boots
and a sash of deep sky blue.
There are cirrus clouds that move faster than I do.
I like to watch them and give them names
like Gwendolyn, Lillian, and Marguerite.

Come calling, one of these days.
The glider on the wrap around porch has seemed poorly balanced to me;
it turns street-side by itself, as if to look for you,
when all I want to do is to listen to the bees in the honeysuckle or the catmint,
and to fan myself as I read my Emily Dickinson.

I'm old fashioned, that's the rumor.
Maybe that's why I hold my tongue and shade my eyes,
only dropping my reserve around Rose, the old calico.
She knows your ways,
because hers are the same.
So, if I'm patient and rub underneath her chin in exactly the right way,
she'll rumble and spill.

Pussy will undo you, like fingers pulling pink ribbons.
That's when I'll spring and make you mine, the old fashioned way--
believe me, little bird,
mark my words!
________

Concocted from a scrap of comment I made at Verse Escape, about something entirely different. Sometimes my imagination takes off without me!

 

Saph Says What

Like the old record should have said--
hit me, babe.
I'm nothing but a bell girl,
nothing but a plain spoken girl.

Hang me babe--
haul down on that hemp.
Swing me babe,
and I'll sing it, like truth down from the mountain top.

Ring me babe--
with a Claddagh or a Labrys;
or deny, and deal with my silence--
no more sugar on a Sunday morning, no more sweet talkin' tongue in the bell.
_______

for Marian's Music Challenge: "Soon Enough", the music of Aimee Mann. I struggled with this; it took me three days and a near-total rewrite, but I finally have something I am happy with. Here's a Til Tuesday song that I used for inspiration.

...and also the Doors song I referenced in the poem. Robbie Krieger wrote this song as "Hit Me", but Jim Morrison refused to sing it that way. If you listen carefully, you can hear that the band had some fun with it as they chant the old Ajax laundry detergent jingle "stronger than dirt" at the end.

I'm adding these images, as several people have mentioned having to look up what I was writing about.

Claddagh ring

Labrys ring.  

Book Review: "Twilight Girls"

Twilight Girls by Paula Christian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Two lesbian pulp novels from the vaults. The first one, "Edge Of Twilight", is surprisingly good; the best such novel I have read, having gotten started with Ann Bannon's "Odd Girl Out" which I found by accident in a used book store. In the 1950s and early 60's, there were no lesbian presses turning out books for gay women to enjoy; these paperback novels with their lurid covers were it. In "Edge", airline stewardess (they weren't "flight attendants" yet!) Val McGregor has a cool job, her own apartment, and male pilots wanting to paw her luggage. But Val feels like something is missing, and that something turns out to be another stewardess, the very fetching Toni Molina. The first story bucks the norm of the time, which was that the women in these novels could get a taste of honey, but then had to commit suicide, go mad, or end up in ruins. In fact, it has a sweet happy ending, much to my overjoyed astonishment when I read it.

But then it's as if the powers that be must have insisted the author atone for that by writing a sequel in which everything goes to hell in a handbasket. In "The Other Side Of Love", Toni inexplicably has morphed into a psycho stalker, Val moves back home where she can get terrible advice, and just to make the destruction of the first story complete, she goes to a (male) headshrinker and receives the most unintentionally hilarious bad advice ever. Val even mulls this stuff over and decides he may be right! The ridiculousness of all of this is tempered by the knowledge that this scenario actually played out far too many times back in the bad old days. Skip the second story, unless you just want to read it as historical dark comedy.



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Never Send A Man To Do A Woman's Work

Look what you done, babe
with the angels,
angels in your eyes...

Look what you done, babe
with those angels,
angels in your eyes...

You make me wild, like a devil's child
but all a girl can do is try.

Down by the reeds where the cat tails grow
where the river,
the river slides through slow...

Down by the reeds, where the cat tails grow
where the river,
the river slides through slow...

When you put your sweet sweet fingers to my lips,
if you asked my name I wouldn't know.

You give me pleasure like a rumblin cat,
and pain that makes me moan
Sweetheart,
Sweetheart,
I'll do anything
just to be with you alone.

See the sky, it's gonna storm real bad
send the lightnin,
the lightnin quick and bright...

See the sky, it's gonna storm real bad
send the lightnin,
the lightnin quick and bright...

Sweet Jesus love you all day long,
But he knows nothin 'bout the night.
_______

for the blues challenge at Real Toads

When Saints Emptied, White & Weightless, Out Of Heaven

It snowed.
(then it didn't.)

She stayed with him.
(then she didn't.)

The world turned.
The sky was wide and clear
Like a blue fat girl with good skin.

The traffic was rosary beads
moving up one by one,
a honking, half-assed Rapture.

She attended classes.
(then she didn't.)

She was a February gray angel.
(then she wasn't.)

She went out, wearing a pink scarf
and black leather boots.

In a cafe, she met a blue fat girl.
She called her "zaftig."
She said, "You have a beautiful face."

She didn't consider her.
(then she did.)

Again, it snowed.
They went home together,

orbiting each other closely all the way down the street,
like a couple of she-gods
with aprons full
of catnip.
________

for dverse open link #32

Pretty Things

Stars are heavier than dreams--
Five fingers are enough to steal most things.

A dream I'd not yet had arrived today by post.
The mail lady stood there, licked her lips,
Said I owed her.

Dark hair is the hair I like--
You've got the Gypsy kind,
It's always in my eyes.

Rain collects at the lowest point,
And yet it comes from the sky.
Birds' bones are lighter than their feathers.

I swapped the mail lady a stone for a stamp--
She laughed and tossed it in her hand,
Then fixed it in a ring to charm the weather.

Gypsy, do you see what you've done?
With the bright cardinal in your hair,
Who sleeps and sings?

Stars are heavier, less graceful, than dreams,
And five fingers are enough
To capture and keep the prettiest things.
_____

Three poems for Kerry's magical realism prompt at Real Toads

DRAGONS

Oh honey, good for you--
For the bread you won and the dragons you slew.
It's enough to make a feminine heart flutter.

Who is she?
Who is she?
No matter.

All day I read the Tarot--
Some cards up, some cards down.
Some turn their back, some show their face,
But the cards themselves do not change.
Every morning:
The Hanged Man.
Every afternoon:
The Lightning-Struck Tower.
(And the dragon's tail
Of hours.)

Perhaps this is why
The dragons came to me,
Despite the ones we ate, and the ones you slew.
There are more--
more more more more more more more more.
They filled the yard, rang the bell.
What was I supposed to do?

One at a time, I took them in--
To my confidence.
To my bed.
They told me how they grieve, and dream.
And, oh,
The other things they said to me!

Honey, how I admire you--
For the bread you won, and the dragons you slew.
The deep scratches on my skin are from baking.
The smell of cordite in my hair is from
The salon,
Or from taking the kids to school.

How glad I am,
As I cool myself in the limpid pool of our evenings together,
That you find my nattering pleasant;
Like a woman standing on the next-closest planet,
Singing to you in a pretty foreign language.
_______

KITTY

You like Kitty when Kitty is nice.
I love Kitty all the time.

You like to toss Kitty up in the air.
I love to let Kitty sleep in my hair.

When you call Kitty, she hisses and spits.
When I call Kitty, she comes close and sits.

You like for Kitty not to rankle.
I love how Kitty twists 'round your ankle.

Upsy-daisy, down the stairs;
When we land, brand new pairs.
_________

BLACK CATS

Here is where you were wrong--
Black cats are not bad luck.

I am a nice girl, and you should not have set me on fire.
Is that how your mama taught you to do?

Here is a bowl of dove tears--
Wash in them.
It won't do any good, but at least you'll feel like you're doing something;
Not just sitting on the tracks
Looking like you just lost your best friend.

So many times, we missed the boat,
Stepping into thin air, like wobbling bowling pins.

This is my hand, cupping your face.
These are our beautiful memories, like butterflies on a board--
Is it my fault that they fly right into your head
Whenever you don't keep yourself occupied?

We quarreled, and you set me on fire.
It happens, and I bear you no grudge;
But witch that I am,
My ashes grew eyes, and landed on their feet.
Do you see, now, how wrong you were?
Black cats are not bad luck.
______  

top picture: Gregory Crewdson. middle picture:Michael Parkes. last picture unknown source.

for Kerry's Challenge at Real Toads.  

Crow Against The Moon

Gypsy I was born,
And Gypsy I have always been;
Mama scrubbed the Gypsy out--
I sinned her back again.

Six claws a cat's paw,
And round the wagon wheel;
Oranges all in sections fall
When knife strips off the peel.

Red apple at your lips,
A seed lies at its core;
Sweet the fine forbidden kiss,
And sweet the needing more.

Meet me by the witch's pond,
November's coming soon;
My blood is up, my dress is gone,
A crow against the moon.

Stolen hens have seven ribs,
Now pull those ribs apart;
Fire the hen upon a spit,
How succulent the heart.
_____

St. Creola

St. Creola keeps canaries
and doesn't care if they crap on the
good
back-snapping
for-show
furniture
that's been rolled in here like coffins at a starting line.

St. Creola keeps cats
and that, dear little pie-eyed pilgrim,
keeps the birds from getting sedentary
or old.
Behold,
another miracle of the beautiful St. Creola.

So,
has rain afflicted your world until
great monsters leap from the guttering?
Does the devil
sleep with your girlfriend,
help herself to your make-up,
your feather bed,
and your little funky vintage Renault?

Tell St. Creola,
like she could care,
like the jelly buttered muffin would stop at her mouth
and she would say, her eyes filling with blessed tears,
oh,
angel...

Pffft,
sweet canary,
land here,
learn.
Today St. Creola has called the moving men,
so muscular that they ripple while standing still.
They will roll the coffins off the cliff at San Creola,
birthplace of Our Lady;
Honey, she will live forever,
as will her parasol,
as will all who love her,
cleansed in the spray of the coffins returning like swallows to the sea.

St. Creola is serene.
She offers her hand--
kiss it!
Tonight you will share her bed, and in the morning
sleep right through services.
Let your softness leave her boneless, beatific, even a little bruised;
certainly in no condition to notice how
when you pray now,
your gaze is always up
where the birds chirp and flutter
like excited virgins.

______

"Nothing is as vulnerable as entrenched success."