MOUNTAIN WOMAN: MY FIRST MEMORY

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: MY FIRST MEMORY

POET'S FEATURE: unsettled by Jodi Barnes

Jodi Barnes recently received second prize in the Poetry Council of North Carolina's Book Award.   Her chapbook Unsettled was published by Main Street Rag. Please visit their website and order a copy!   I've met Jodi only in passing and have stayed in contact through facebook.   I'm delighted to be able to feature some of the poems in her chapbook, as well as a few new ones. First place winner was David Rigsbee, for The Red Tower, and Honorable Mentions were Joseph Bathanti and Nancy Simpson, both of whom I have featured on this site earlier.  You can link to their features to see poems from their outstanding work. 




Jodi Barnes is a poet and writer in Cary, North Carolina. She has a PhD from The University of Georgia and has taught graduate and undergraduate students all facets of human resource management, ethics, leadership and change management at three Research I universities. She has also been a journalist, an HR manager and a consultant.

When she is not writing, Jodi helps teens understand how group identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender) differences and commonalities enrich confidence and competency. She has been a writer-in-residence for Wake County schools for the past two years.

Her favorite author is Tom Robbins and her favorite teachers are her daughters Sarah, Ali and RaeAnna, and her aiding/abetting husband, JB Maddox. Jodi has moved households 24 times--that she can remember.

Denial Lost and Found (from unsettled)

After I lost the 12-week thing

declared inanimate tissue—

removed by gloved hand— 

you mentioned we didn’t

have to have the wedding right away

that first you could move to the coast

that I could come second, find you later

and it was just an idea but I must

have known this was your way

to say let me be unfound.

I tried to forget until our eighth

married year, when you left—

a memory of small, arrested life—

the unviable matter once 

and always between us. 

The ninth year, I revived

what we were not able

to name or bury. 

Holy Magic Goat Shit (from unsettled)

I asked my sixth-grader what she liked about mythology.

She picked Persephone—a damsel lost,

swallowed seeds, a mother's grief,

fascination with hell and frost. 

What do you like? She echoed.

I broke my rule, my language imprecise,

“All of it.” (At least I hadn't lied.)

When she was asleep, I replied:

Hope. The story never has to end 

or remain the same. 

There is holiness in the unfixed. 

Their gods are full of flaws – 

hubris, favorites, fickle laws.

We mortals hold some sway.

They can't resist challenge,

like dads who say, “Go ahead. Take a swing.”

You can get a god's goat – which

eventually shits on you – but it's

god's goat shit, not a pope's.

And wouldn't Yahweh tend toward sheep?

The other thing is magic:

nymphs into cows,

winged horse from mortal blood,

one guy gender-switched, twice!

Can you imagine Jesus asking,

Man or woman: who has more pleasure in sex? 

(But she is eleven; 

that part I’d slice.)

Implacable parent, perfect offspring, 

unshakable ghost in one god

is too much pressure, 

He's too remote.

Souls are never stolen or saved.

Suffering spawns each sacred season. 

And I believe this is true:

The devil only wants his due.

Hera and Zeus, that miserable pair,

can’t keep their distance.

Familiar as family, we know their sins

and those they bore too well – 

Thank whatever god you, my goddess, will. 

The smallest things (from unsettled)

Unless you’re lucky

each box comes furnished

with rattling tears,

a giraffe’s jagged ears 

chipped off your baby’s ceramic arc 

you meant to glue back these 20 years, 

an errant button, two beads of glass,

a photo pass to Frampton’s I’m in You, 

a matchbook from Amsterdam, 

your Sanskrit name in wood,

resolutions made in Birmingham

and a poem you read when your friend 

chose to leave this world. 

All good intentions come to pass 

like things too small to wrap,

too large to be confined to content.

Work Themed Poems  (2)

ON-THE-JOB TRAINING

It used to be good here, Myrna says,

time-and-a-half, double holidays.

It’s my first week, so I nod my head,

hoping to make rent, see my kids again.

Myrna says her kids came from the same

no-good-never-handed-her-a-dime-

didn’t-want-to-see-his-kids—

now he’s in the ground.

And she looks at me like I could be him

so I smile and tell her I just fell hard

on hard-luck times. That I want to

help their mama with bills

but a man can only do so much.

You can’t bleed a turnip, she says

and I agree. Then Myrna turns on me:

But you can dig a hole, throw in the seed.

She rolls her sleeves, grabs two brooms.

I barely have a handle as she sweeps circles around me.

Straight time and toting dirt, she says,

better than waiting for a root to bleed.

-published 2011 by MSR in The Best of Fuquay-Varina Reading Series 

From management professor to bakery salesgirl

At 5:30 a.m. I drive to work, that place 

I manage to burn my fingertips, schlep bread

from rack to rack, stack croissants, sweep

up crumbs of the bourgeoisie. 

If I were still at State, I’d have two more hours

to sleep, teach them what to pay the masses, 

when to sac them, where to outsource brooms,

how to sweep over burnt spirits. 

-published 2011 by MSR in The Best of The Raleigh Reading Series 

The Last Morning Glory

With so much fiery light filtered through  autumn leaves, I was startled to see this lone morning glory blooming at my window.  Not intimidated at all by the wildfires of autumn.  My first batch of glories died while I was away with my mother this summer.  I replanted, and soon I had my green leafy vines back, spreading over the backroom windows.  I never expected them to bloom, though.

So this small flower took me by surprise.   I wonder what I would hear if I put it to my ear.  It does have the shape of an old-fashioned telephone earpiece or a delicate megaphone, through which a whisper might be heard.  If you leaned close enough.   Like the conch shells on my grandmother's table, holding the sound of ocean in their depths.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.  ~Basho

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: PEPPER POT SOUP

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: PEPPER POT SOUP

DRIVING INTO THE CITY

Lee Friedlander

This poem followed upon the drive into Chicago where our daughter had chosen to go to college.   Thanks to Magpie Tales for reminding me of that experience.

Empty 

                          So tender, I said, “Remember this.

                                 It will be good for you to retrace this path

                                  when you have grown away and stand at last

                                  at the very centre of the empty city.”   

                                                      Seamus Heaney,  “Changes”               

                 

                     Crossing the Skyway bridge

        for the first time, I see what she’s chosen,

       alabaster city  floating clear of my clinging

 as  station by toll station, we drop our  coins into baskets,

         a half dozen lanes running over with cars.

        I forget to look over the railing at lake water,

       bright  sails, I forget everything but my mother,

before the train left for New York,  pinning even more money

   inside my bra, warning:  “Don’t wander  too far

     from the group. Don’t get caught in the subway doors,

 don’t stand too close to the tracks. Always deadbolt 

     the hotel door.”  That was the last year our school

sent its Seniors to  New York.  It’s  nothing but  jungle now

  I hear my  father  say.  Wouldn’t want one of mine living there.

   

            This is Chicago,  I tell him. Not New York.

 And isn’t your grandson now living in Brooklyn?  My father shrugs,

              settles  back into the hum of my own questions.

Where will she live and how far from the campus?  How many

            armed  robberies this year? And  traffic,

               how will she cross streets without 

         being run down?   “Lock your doors,” I say

       as we exit the Skyway.   She  laughs at me.

               Let her.  I can’t let her go without leaving my

    mother’s fears with her, they’re all I can muster right now.

                   We will  climb in our empty car soon enough

    and drive   home without her.   So let us unload  books

           and clothing, her numerous boxes of earrings,

                    my bundles of medicines she shrugs aside

                when I warn her she’ll need them come bitter

                       times.  Icy stairs.  Frigid streets she’ll walk 

                without my knowing where.   This is her city now,

                     let her stand at the heart of it, hearing its

                sirens,  arterial rumblings of El trains

                      and buses.  Its  welcoming emptiness.

from Coming to Rest, LSU Press

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: ROOTED

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: ROOTED

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: BLACK LUNG, by R. T. Smith

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: BLACK LUNG, by R. T. Smith

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: SUNDAY FIRE: Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves.... Elinor Wylie And so it has seemed, watching the wind scatter the fiery leaves...

LITTLE KING

To be monarch of the news,

from Magpie Tales

even a tiny one,
fat-bellied as my grandma,
red velvet snooding the belly,
brooding, brooding.

My scepter behind my back.
I'd stand over the latest atrocities,
the latest punditese (those teases!)
the  faces of political hacks
and their victims.  And underneath
always the crossword. The longbows
of language aimed just so,
my minions, my jongleurs,
my last line of last-ditch defenses.

They say coffee's good for cognition.
A ten letter word with a B,
Z, and T?  And the clue?  A lost
denizen of the Andes!  So drink up,
old girl, I say.  Slurp it down.  Your mug's
waiting for you.  Cuppa Joe,
my main man, my little monarch
of wide awake, can't you give me
more than a condescending frown?

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: GUEST BLOGGER: BARBARA BATES SMITH

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: GUEST BLOGGER: BARBARA BATES SMITH: When I first saw Barbara Bates Smith do her one woman show based on Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies , I was so overcome that by the end...

MAGICAL CREATURES

Walking alongside the Atlantic one morning last week, I saw how tides had created in the sand a pattern of infinite play that stretched as far inland as the ocean could reach.  Underfoot they massaged my bare soles, that outer layer of my imagination,  and set my senses spinning into the surf itself where anything is possible, the ocean herself the artist, the beach her fabric from which she might raise up the most magical creatures, the ones  we hear as we fall asleep with the window open, the surf's voice singing its caravans of  imaginary elephants thundering like freight trains, only to take to the sky like gulls when we rise from our beds in the morning to look, to verify, to go running out into the  landscape of water kneaded signs, ocean

 language for what goes on underneath 

the eyes of moon and sun, whitecaps pulled to shore, reaching their lacy fingers toward where we lay in darkness, dreaming the earth back to its beginnings, for there is always more than one beginning.  And always will be, as long as the ocean has its way with the sands we walk upon.

(with thanks to Magpie Tales)

Guest Poet: Anora McGaha

Anora McGaha is my featured poet this week, come to spend some time in my kitchen, along with--yes--a frog!  She is fascinated by the natural world, and as you can see from the poem that follows, she finds poetry in it.  She now lives outside Raleigh, a transplanted Yankee who plans to stay in the South.   I think she knows that North Carolina is the best home a writer could have.  Anora gives a brief portrait of herself:

I was born in Boston and my grandparents home in Cambridge Massachusetts was the most constant home I knew. My father was a diplomat, and my mother was half Italian and half American, and the daughter of a diplomat. We grew up moving every 9 - 24 months around the Mediterranean. Studying a little Arabic, a lot of French, some Italian. I majored in Chinese at university, and did my time in the corporate world in Boston, New York,DC and Raleigh, and now have my own business doing writing and multi-media content development for online marketing and publicity. I've been writing poems since high school. I draw from many traditions, and have been influenced by too many languages and places and experiences.

Kitchen Keeper's Emerald

Frog-frog

leaps onto

the back door

window pane

every other night

Brown eyes peering

into the dark

white skinned belly

pressed against the glass

Little finger toe pads

gripping

as if made to belong

on the back deck door

Frog-frog’s pale throat

pulses like a baby

feeding

Waiting

for the flyers

to draw near 

the kitchen light 

slipping out

into the night

Frog-frog

embodies green

spring green

brilliant green

precious green

Exotic as

the rain forest

poison frogs

or the latest jewel-tone

enameled smart car

Frog-frog 

came from Cary

twice before

a guest at the Cary 

back deck door

Kitchen keeper

didn’t know he

made the move

to Apex

'Til

one winter morning

hidden in a pot

under rotting

dark browned leaves

a green as fine

as emeralds

Two years later

Kitchen keeper

left  the shades open

after sunset

and there he was

Frog-frog

on his sitting spot

on the deck door glass

Frog-frog doesn’t like

the camera’s flash

and springs away

like Barishnikov

in ballet

Nightly

Kitchen keeper

peers into the glass

that keeps the bugs

at bay

Hoping to see

North Carolina’s

leaping emerald

Frog-frog

July 30, 2011

Anora's frog