Denim and Linen

Beneath my bracelets,
my blood moving.

On my fingers this morning,
just one ring.

Denim and linen
softly familiar.

Lie on your back--
I will be white and blue of cloud and sky.

What did you do with your life, they'll say.

I wore bracelets,
rings,
denim and linen--

I lived.
I breathed. 

For you.
_____

a 55. Visit the G Man for more.

Bedtime Story

Have you ever tripped at the top of the stairs,
to find you weren't at the top of the stairs,
but in bed
startled awake?

Have you ever watched a girl in sailor dress and shoes,
a spinning ballerina in sailor dress and shoes,
on the slick rocks
by the side of the lake?

I dreamed of blonde hair spread on the water.
I dreamed I was running, screaming,
by the side of the water,

then I was awake,
destroyed and
gasping.

______

for Mama Zen's Words Count at Real Toads. I blew past the word count. Forgive me, MZ!

inspired in part by Lauren Belfer's novel "City Of Light", which my BFF Hedgewitch so kindly gave to me.  

Book Review: "City Of Light"

City of Light by Lauren Belfer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My goodness what a novel. If you want to be utterly immersed in the world of Buffalo, New York in 1901, the year of the Pan-American Exposition, and to see that world in unflinching terms, then this is the book for you. "City Of Light" is no sentimental, simpler-times world that never was. It is a gritty and complicated world of the famous, the powerful, the not famous, the powerless, and all told through the eyes of Louisa Barrett, headmistress of the Macaulay School, and the bearer of a good many dangerous secrets.

This story is part murder mystery, part historical novel, and much more. I'll tell you, I identified strongly with the main character, and really, almost all the female characters, and it was hard to realize what a struggle it was, in that era, just to be one's own self. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that I felt myself to really be there, in 1901, and some of the things that happen just broke my heart. I won't forget this novel. It really moved me, but it wasn't easy to take, because I did care so much about the characters.



View all my reviews

Fever

In the day of the fever,
at the end of the war,
you'll take up my hand and I'll give up my place--
my customary place--
in the hall, on the floor,

to go riding with you.
Remember the days when willows leaned low
over the canal, where we girls used to go?
And oh, the things we liked to do.
But you, dear, my Only One, you already know.

In those days when the voices were sweet in my head,
the willows leaned low, as if putting babies to bed;
there were no air raids,
no rubble, cracked and sharp-edged--
just mama's little angels passed out in the hedge.

So now...what, My Pet?
Kisses to catch up on?
Rooms to let?
Do you want to fuck me slow and easy?
I'll take all I can get, I'm not so far gone
that I would say no to that.

In the fields at the far end
of the old road to town,
you can see the hulk of the Junker
that the home guard shot down.
I just like to think that it fell 
from its bedding of clouds
like a baby...My Baby...
where the willows lean down.
______

 

Moon Fable

Once upon a time, on the dusty plains of Africa, a lion chased a zebra.

"Come in to my mouth," urged the lion. "You can rest there. My teeth are like the rails of your childhood bed. Then, when you're ready, you can sleep in my stomach." The lion spoke gently, making all of this sound quite reasonable and appealing.

However, the zebra knew about lions and so she kept running as fast as she could. Even though the zebra was quick, and had marvelous hooves and strong legs, the lion kept gaining.

"I know what I will do," said the zebra. As dusk fell over them both, she used her black and white stripes to play a trick on the lion. She split herself, giving her black stripes to the night, and her white stripes to the stars. "Try to chase me now!" she cried.

The lion never missed a step, leaping up into the sky after the zebra, but, unable to see her in her split disguise, the lion leapt all the way to the moon, where he stood blinking and still hungry.

Now, lions are good climbers, but are better at getting up than getting down. "Won't someone help me!" the lion called, again and again. "I am just a poor kitty stuck in a tree." Close enough, thought the lion with a shrug.

Far below the lion, a Gypsy slept. The Gypsy dreamt that a lion was calling, calling for a song from his guitar. The light of a full moon woke the Gypsy, and he found that his dream was true; there really was a lion up there, calling for a song.

So the Gypsy began to play. 

Como canta la zumaya,...

(How the owl sings,
ay, how it sings in the tree!
The moon crosses the sky
with a child by the hand.

Inside the forge the Gypsies
scream and weep.
The air is keeping watch.
The air is watching over her.)*

The Gypsy became caught up in his song, playing and singing with such emotion, that without thinking, he raised the neck of his guitar so high that the lion stepped out onto the strings and slid back down to the African plain.

"Thank you," said the lion. "I am so sorry to have interrupted your sleep. Come, rest in my mouth. My teeth will be like the wicker shades the Gypsy ladies make. Then, when you're ready, you can sleep in my stomach."

The Gypsy was feeling sleepy and the night still had hours to go, so he agreed, and climbed into the lion's mouth. After a while, the lion burped and spit out the guitar, which made a musical sound when it landed on the ground. 

The lion's appetite was satisfied, but he didn't get off Scot free. After eating the Gypsy, the lion could never stay still for very long, and spent the rest of his life wandering the African plain, as his children still do to this day, chasing zebras and roaring at the moon as if they had been there, and remembered.
______

*the Gypsy's song is actually a section of "Ballad of The Moon, Moon" by Federico Garcia Lorca.

The top painting is The Sleeping Gypsy by Henry Rousseau. The bottom painting is Repast of The Lion also by Rousseau.

Written for Mag #209.

 

Old Fashioned

I'm an old-fashioned girl.
When I go down through the reeds, 
making my skirts muddy,
my high-button shoes neatly together on the grass nearby,

birds extinct for years except as specimens
flock to me, calling.
Butterflies and moths in all peculiar colors
appear once again,

and I speak to them in the lost language
of former summers.
Here, I am a girl again, with a different name
but the same soul.

I'm an old-timey girl, daydreaming beneath the willows.
This morning, I collected the hens' eggs,
and holding them in my hand, the white shells made me think
of snowdrops, and writing paper, and June clouds.

No one will ever join me here, I realize.
I am a firefly girl inside the jar of my body,
graced with an afternoon's worth of air, but floating out,
always out,

until, by bullfrog dark, I will be only a curiosity, 
like my birds, the butterflies and moths,
barely seen by a child leaning in her upstairs window not far away,
and she will wonder at what she seems to see,

a light on the water, there and then vanishing,
like her own summer days, though she doesn't know it yet.
______

May 28, 1908 Life magazine cover illustrated by Coles Phillips

Close Your Eyes And Think Of England

You said,
"stay in the compound,
mind the babies,"
but the babies grew while you were out in the cane fields.
Now they roll those laughing bones
and speak the local dialect,
distrusting the gendarmes like natives.

"What about the girls?' you might ask,
if you were ever here to ask.
That is the girls.
In the afternoon, they walk barefoot and hatless,
with a pack of stray dogs trailing behind,
hoping for a bit of biscuit.
The dogs are brown,
the girls are brown,
and neither have ever been to England.

Reach for me in the night; pretend I'm a receipt.
Drop your suspenders off your shoulders like a coquette,
while I close my eyes, thinking of the fox hunt
with me as the fox,
but this time
with a cane knife beneath my petticoats.
I've been in the trash again, yes I have.
Better strangle me now.
Howl, man-hound, though you never had the scent.

The household budget allowed for two Arabians.
Our oldest and I go riding,
but not side saddle. 
We are as wild as Indians, painted like Zulus,
shrieking in island French, 
our cheeks rouged with fresh chicken blood we get from the cook.

You complain about the fare every night,
addressing us as if we were the candlesticks,
blustering about everything being too spicy.
The girls and I,
we doctor our dinner until we hallucinate,
just to be able to bear it.

Still, how bold you are, how genuinely manly,
coming here and conducting a successful business
in this sweltering mosquito hell
where the women cast spells
and the men are weak and lazy.
How amazing what you manage to accomplish
wearing a sturdy wool suit
in this place where you couldn't claim to truly know
anyone at all.
______

for Fireblossom Friday, featuring the art of W.T. Benda.

"Close your eyes and think of England." Queen Victoria's famous advice to English ladies being depended upon to produce more population for the Empire.