Wisteria, or, La Pasión Flamenca

photo by Rosegg (www.flamenco-vivo.org)

Last night the magic of flamenco came to Cullowhee.   The seduction.  The eroticism.  The exquisite yet passionate interplay of music, voice, and movement.   La Pasión Flamenca brought its touring performers to WCU's Fine and Performing Arts Center, and let me tell you, it was hard to sit still in a small auditorium seat during the performance!  My body wanted to move, my fingers wanted to coil around the rhythms, my palms wanted to drum against my blue-jeaned thighs.  I wanted to be part of it all!
  
I discovered flamenco music since I was in high school.  As a freshman at Wesleyan College, I signed up for Spanish because I'd fallen in love with Spanish music, and although I never learned to speak the language with any facility at all, I still love the sound of it, particuarly the voices of its poets.  Garcia Lorca.  Octavio Paz.  Jimenez. Cernuda.  I've always wanted to be able to dance flamenco, and in the following poem, I imagine doing so.  After last night's show, I am imagining this even more fiercely.  I think I'll try to order some flamenco dancer shoes.   I have plenty of shawls.   Now, let me dig out my old flamenco guitar records!



Wisteria


The hands.  The secret lies in the hands,
the dancer from Andalucia explains
on the afternoon radio program,
the secret of everything opening
over and over again.
Even these windows,
sealed shut over too many winters,
through which I can smell the wisteria.

Soleares,
Seguiriyas--
the guitar strings throb
through the static and  I feel
my spine arching,
arms begin twining
around me, my fingers seducing

the air.  Stroking emptiness.  Oh,
to be wrapped like a gypsy in endless black fringe          
I would slowly unwind from my hips and let
fall to the floor.  Kick it out of my way

and get on with the real work of dancing
this song to its end, drunk as always
I’ve wanted to be  with the scent of these blossoming
vines that my mother said ought to be  ripped
from a tree before they have enough time to kill it.

From Catching Light, LSU Press 2001)

Freeze Warning

So cold this morning, down to 22 degrees!   Shivering as I pulled myself out of bed, I remembered this poem I wrote years ago for the collection that became Catching Light.

Nightcap

        Freeze warning.

  Leaves curled on emptiness

         crawl across

        sidewalks.  My gatepost

surrounded by wind jangles

         nonsense.

           I’ll stay put

          and kindle

        some fat wood

     with yesterday’s

   newspapers ripped to

        confetti.

    But what if the matches

won’t strike, the chimney

     won’t draw?

   What if  goose flesh

      I hug to my breast

 shivers not from the ice

        

 waiting outside but inside

 where no slug of whiskey 

       can thaw it?   

         

             Hush!

   I’ll take  a  jelly glass

    down from the pantry.

          Now stand back

        while I  pour a jigger

         of bottomless fire   

           

                    water,

               straight-up.

                 Last call.

EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

  

Frida Kahlo

 El Dia de los Muertos

In Frida’s house, it was every  day.
She doted on skeletons,
contraptions of wicker and colored paper strung up
with twine, letting one hang alongside her bed
and another recline on her canopy.  Mis companeros,
she called them.  Compadres.
She’d stared back at Death,
nose to nose,
frente a frent ˙e,
for so long she called him
El Viejo.  Just part of
the household.  She knew he would
nudge her too soon and say Lista?
Esta lista, mi'jita?
No wonder she scrawled
on the last written page of her diary,
I hope the leave-taking is joyful
and I hope never to come back.

Forty years later,
I almost believe her.
It’s November second again,
and again I imagine her grinding
her teeth on those last words,
(despite being nothing but ashes
Diego sealed into a clay pot)
still trying too hard  to resist the fiesta
that’s dawning, its candy skulls hawked
from the corners, the jiggety-jig
of the bone-men in every mercado.

At nightfall, the cities of graves
with their pink vaults and blue stucco archways
will come back to life with the pictures of lost children,
wives, fathers, husbands, while flowers cascade
over gravestones where, nestled in baskets,
pan dulce and still warm tortillas
the living once loved to hold inside their mouths
keep the taste of life fresh for the dead
to come back to,  if only as wind playing
over the grass, blowing
out every  candle
before moving on again,
not having answered the question
we’re left to ask, begging the  darkness
that takes us,  Adonde?  Adonde?


from Catching Light, LSU Press

Candied skulls on sale in Toluca in the days leading up to
El Dia de Los Muertos
The link will take you to a great site on the culture and history of Mexico, with some stunning photos of El Dia de los Muertos celebrations.

Eavesdropping: Magpie Tales

Willow asked me to put my Eavesdropping (from Catching Light) on the Magpie Tales link, so here goes. This poem got its start as I was leaving Red Lobster, but I up scaled the restaurant just a bit. The poems in this book are spoken in the voice of a woman named Evelyn, in her late seventies, and originated as a response to a series of photographs by Louanne Watley.

EAVESDROPPING

He was trembling so

and his lips were turning blue,

she speaks into the pay phone

as I pass, in search of the ladies'

room hidden somewhere

in the hotel bar's posh

outer dark. I can't stop

myself wondering what was he

to her and why was he

trembling, his blue lips about to say

something this woman, struggling

to make herself heard over

happy hour, might or

might not be about to confide

as I shove my way through

the inevitable end

of her story and into

the door labeled Mademoiselles,

where a plush carpet,

rococo mirror

atop a pink vanity,

welcome me.

I pull out my lipstick

and slowly apply it to top lip,

then bottom lip.

Look at my mouth in the mirror.

The color I like,

extra long lasting.

No smears.

My hand's steady.

Nothing about my hand trembles.

MAGPIE TALES: A WOMAN'S HAND

Thanks again to Magpie Tales (http://www.magpietales.blogspot.com/) for bringing this poem up from my memory. It was inspired by the photo below it, courtesy of photographer Louanne Watley's Evelyn Series.

Of all the bones, these the most eloquent, lying upturned on the windowsill, holding a woman's life mapped in their grasp, every pulse-beat her heart's story. (photo credit: Louanne Watley) The following poem is from my volume Catching Light (LSU Press), based on Louanne's series of photos documenting the last months of a woman who wished to be call Evelyn. Or Eve. Vanity
Without hands a woman would stand at her mirror looking back only, not touching, for how could she? Eyelid. Cheek. Earlobe. Neck-hollow. The pulse points that wait to be dusted with jasmine or lavender. The lips she rubs rose with a forefinger. She tends the image she sees in her glass, the cold replication of woman, the one who dared eat from her own hand the fruit of self-knowledge.