Proverb

    
     for Belle

In the garden,

There is a basin

On its pedestal

For the birds.



When the days turn sharp,

And it rains,

Red and yellow leaves collect there,

Making a strange dark tea.



The sight of it makes me remember you

And the time when no less wicked touch would do.



It makes no difference whether you deserved the love I gave you--

It was thrilling, and that is enough;

Because, my dear,

It's like you always told me:

A bird in dirty water

Sings just as beautifully.

________

For One Shot Wednesday

Old Postcard Wednesday: Pucker Up!

Welcome to another Old Postcard Wednesday! OPW is the baby and brainchild of Lydia over at Writerquake blog. Lydia is engaging, friendly, interesting as all get-out, and if you're interested in joining us, ask the lady herself. I'm just the copycat around here. ;-)

This week's postcard is a 1900's-era card featuring two ladies (almost) kissing, with the legend "Sometimes the girls kiss each other in Detroit, but it's only between times." This is not a "French" postcard at all. Though my detractors insist that I simply have Bosco walk across the keyboard a few times and, voila!, new post, your intrepid girl reporter actually does research this stuff. And my research revealed that this postcard, in various permutations, was generally available at the time, even ubiquitous. As for the veracity of the text, I can personally vouch to an absolute certainty that at least some of the girls in Detroit kiss each other to this very day, and not even just between times. Not even just in Detroit! I know, I know, it all just keeps getting racier, doesn't it? 

This postcard reveals that, across the ocean in Aberdeen, Scotland, girls were kissing each other there, too. Actually, and I warn you so you can cover your eyes if you don't want to know this, the little felt pennant could be made to say any place at all, and attached to the postcard to suit. 

You might be surprised at a postcard like this being sold in the starched olden days, but "lesbian chic" has been around for quite a while. As long ago as the days during and after the American Civil War, women faced with a dearth of men due to the tremendous loss of life on the battlefields, turned to what was known as the "Boston marriage." This was a socially acceptable arrangement in which two unfortunate spinsters could set up housekeeping together. Some even viewed it as a higher form of devotion. I don't know about all that, but I have no doubt, to a certain portion of these ladies, the lack of available men was  nothing but a boon. Goodnight, Jeeves, that will be all. We'll manage somehow until morning!

Around the turn of the century, lesbian attachments became trendy once again. President Theodore Roosevelt had a lively and attractive daughter named Alice. One day he was discussing matters of heavy import with some bigwig dignitary or other, when Alice came blowing through the room chattering and carrying on. The dignitary suggested that Teddy might ought to exercise more control over his girl. T.R. famously responded that he could run the country, or control Alice, but that he could not possibly do both!

Alice grew to be quite an attractive young woman. A gossipy friend let it drop that another girl had declared herself to be in love with Alice. To her everlasting credit, Alice answered, "How lovely. I'm so glad that she is." That must surely have taken the wind out of the gossip girl's sails! If you don't know about Alice Roosevelt Longworth, hers was a fascinating life, well worth finding out about. She was famously credited with the line "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me." I would love to sit by her. I admire her tremendously. The image of her above is from a 1906 postcard.

But back to our almost-kissing ladies. They seem to have gotten around, because here they are again, on a 1904 postcard with the legend, "Starving In The Midst Of Plenty." Poor fellow, he certainly does seem to have been forgotten in favor of other pursuits!

I hope that you have enjoyed this little foray into Old Postcard Land. See you next week!

_________

The Witch Of Waxahachie By The Numbers

The Witch of Waxahachie makes it rain.

Safe under her railroad bridge, she talks nonsense to her familiar, an ocelot she found while prowling the flatlands one night.

The Witch of Waxahachie is a hundred and fifteen years old,

And one hot babe.

Go ahead,

Say something smart.

You'll be green and living in the mud down where the cat tails grow, never to go home again.



The Witch of Waxahachie knows fifty-two medicinal roots,

Can make two hundred and twelve powders for spells

And a mean cup of tea.

Her eyes are black.

She can hook a squirrel skull through an open pick-up truck window going by at sixty-five in the dark.

She can imitate the calls of owls and crows, the howls of coyotes, and the sigh of a righteous woman about to fall.



The Witch of Waxahachie has been married to five different men,

All of them buried after midnight at the crossroads of Rural Route 5 and Grange Hall Road.

She has loved just once,

Given her dusky-feathered heart to a woman who made sure she would never forget her,

And then left.



"She loved the magic, not me," the Witch of Waxahachie confides to her ocelot.

She is a hundred and fifteen years old,

And one hot babe.



She will not love again.

_________

The Irish Girl At Close Of Day

I tried to wash a small rug,

But the fringed ends got hung up with the agitator,

And poisoned my machine from within.

By the time I heard the buzzer,

There was only black water that wouldn't drain

And a hot smell in the air.



Things break down--

I can't fix them.

Things fall apart--

I can't even pay somebody to fix them.

My car is old,

Not looking so good--

I know just how it feels.

I know

Things go to hell and there's nothing I can do.



I had a love--

Now she's gone,

And time just goes on.

If I knew it was the last time,

If I had even thought it was the last time,

I'd have quit my job;

Smashed my watch;

Started living in my car.



I have all these poems,

Like faces in a movie house.

Last summer, they set off fireworks over the park,

And, with the rest, I oohed and ahhed.

Then we went home, each a different way,

And summer dragged on.



Now it is September--

Things break down,

And I can't fix them.

Things fall apart,

And I can't even pay somebody to fix them.

I am sober,

But I want to get high.

I want to listen to Joni and Melissa,

--those familiar songs--

And forget.

But my stereo won't play the way it should,

So I did dishes in the silence

And recited Yeats in my head as best I could recall it--

Until the day gave it up, fading, irretrievable,

And it was late enough to go to bed.
_______

Dancing With Myself + My Adopted Girl

The non-reaction to my last poem, Virginia Dare, which I thought was just pret-ty damn good, has me feeling like throwing away all my pens (I'll pierce myself and use blood if I need to make a grocery list) and throwing the chains around the door at Danny's Coffee Shop. Whose idea was all this poetry-writing junk anyway? So that's it, no more poems in perpetuity, or until I stop being a pissy, impossible bitch, whichever comes first.

I am thinking of starting a self-help group for Women Whose Emotions Sometimes Lead Them Around By The Nose. There is no venue large enough in Detroit, and so we are thinking of using the Rogers Centre in Toronto. There will be no speakers. You just get up there and shriek or cry or swear, as the spirit moves you. Or, you can just refuse to leave your seat, huddled miserably with a tub of Ben & Jerry's on each armrest. Everyone's former lovers will be trooped in, roped, and then trucked to a landfill. Horrid Lifetime movies will be shown on a big screen. Anyone who survives the weekend gets to go back to work on Monday. Yeah, I know....I'm still tweaking it.

So, poetry is out. But my hands twitch if I don't write. So let's try this: the story of my adopted girl, Delilah. I have posted this story a couple of times in other people's comments, but here it is on the Word Garden stage for the first time. Enjoy. Me, I'm going to go look in the mirror and cringe, then cut all my hair off with a jack-knife. You know....girl stuff.

DELILAH

There is a place hidden between two apartment complexes that I used to deliver the mail to. It's easy to miss. From the street, there is only a sign and one narrow driveway leading up through overgrown greenery. You can't see what's back there without driving down it. It starts out black-topped but quickly turns to gravel, or, in the Spring, mud. But if one perseveres, after about a quarter mile, there is a cemetery there. I used to like to eat my lunch back there.

It's quiet and there is never anyone there except perhaps another person sitting in their car, seeking a moment's respite from their day. I've been going there for fourteen years now and have only seen one or two people, ever, visiting a grave. Sometimes city workers are there, but that's not the same. 

Time seems suspended in this place. The trees are large and ancient. The stones date from the early 1800's. Entire families are buried there. The stones go right up to the edge, facing the wild bushes and nuisance trees that conceal the apartments beyond. There are hedgehogs and crows there. When I first visited, there was a great deal of statuary on top of the markers, weeping angels and innocent cherubs forever watching over their people. Not long after that, though, all the figures disappeared. I don't know if they were targeted by thieves--I know this happens--or if they were removed to foil the thieves, but the effect was the same; the little cemetery's "soul" was injured. I can feel it. It weeps.

Near the place where I used to like to park, there is a family plot. There is a large central marker for Cornelius and Nancy. Arrayed to either side of them are their children. On the right, tilted in the ground, is a heartbreakingly small stone with the name "Delilah" on it and nothing else. A check of the side of the larger marker beside it reveals the words "Our daughter. Delilah. Died Dec. 26, 1840. Aged Four mos., 20 days." Little Delilah was someone's precious baby. Her first and only Christmas was almost certainly marked by illness and grief, as she passed the very next day, her life spanning only from late summer to early winter. 

Something about this one little girl, in this hidden and forgotten cemetery, went straight to my heart and has stayed there ever since. It would be fair to say that I have adopted her. I visit her and talk to her. I keep her marker clean. I want her to know that, though she lived only so briefly, so long ago, that she matters to someone, even now. It would be fair to say, I have come to love her. I don't think that is morbid or crazy. It is just a gift that costs me nothing.

Her mother, Nancy, lived until 1890. Doing the backwards math, she was just a girl of eighteen when she bore her daughter. How hard it must have been to love her and have to let her go so soon. And now Nancy herself has been gone for more than a century, even after a long full life. 

I went to see them yesterday. I think they know that I do this, wherever their spirits are. Then I drove back down the long gravel path and out, the dust rising behind me like a ghost. See you next time, ladies. Then I was back to my day, with work to do. Life goes on. For me. For now. You know?
_________

Virginia Dare

Virginia Dare quits Dunkin' Donuts and walks across the street to Danny's Coffee Shop.

Only God, the waitress, knows who she really is.



Virginia Dare has survived ravenous winters on nearly nothing.

She has walked through tall stalks of fast-growing corn under a late-summer sun, easy and content with herself.

She has brought blue-eyed, bronze-skinned babies into the world, and raised them well.



She sits down and tries to collect herself.



Virginia Dare has had to adapt to a changing world.

She has worked toward and received her G.E.D.

She has filled out dozens of employment applications,

Writing "Virginia Dare" in the space for her name on each.



A few prospective employers make remarks.

"Virginia Dare!" said one fat one. "I love your donuts!"

She forced a smile.

"That's Dolly Madison."

Another said, "Yes, there really is a Christmas, Virginia," and laughed at his own tired joke.

She stood up and left without a word.



Virginia Dare remembers her mother, barely.

She told Virginia the story, how she had had to leave her husband and friends behind her, dead in the snow.

Carrying her daughter, wrapped like a mummy in everything she could find,

She had paused only to carve the word "CROATAN" into the trunk of a tree,

And then disappeared among the bare branches, into an unimaginably different life.



The bell above the door jingles and the manager from Dunkin' Donuts strides in wearing his little brown tie.

He has a silly-looking blond crew cut, and stops right in front of Virginia Dare.

He says, "What do you think you're doing, Dare? You can't just fucking walk out in the middle of morning rush! Come back with me right now and you can punch back in. Otherwise you're S.O.L. honey." 

He sees apprehension in her eyes.

Ha! It's working! he thinks smugly to himself.

What he doesn't see is the fully grown female black panther crouching silently on a table right behind him.

It is the Queen Of The Vampires, shape-shifted into her favorite form.



Twenty minutes later, the assistant manager from Dunkin' Donuts,

A mousy brown girl,

Comes in, looks around, and asks, "Where's Dave?"

The hot chick sitting over by the windows asks, "Who's Dave?"

It is Chloe,

Serial murderess, escapee from women's supermax, and the undisputed darling of Danny's Coffee Shop.

"No Dave here, honey."

It's true.

Dave has vanished, and his disappearance may remain a tantalizing mystery forever.



Meanwhile, Virginia Dare is smiling and sound asleep in a tattered booth,

Watched over by a Dark-Haired Chick drinking a pumpkin spice,

And a contented-looking

(and very full)

Black panther.

__________

Dream Interpretation

It is necessary to have long hair in Fall.

I speak only for myself, of course...

You may present your head to the shears or join the circus--

That is none of my concern.



In the Autumn, long hair pleases me.

It is like cat's whiskers, or an old Arizona telegraph line--

It sends itself out on the air as I close my eyes, hugging myself through my sweater,

And it tells me what the breeze has been dreaming.

_______