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.

POET OF THE DAY: DORIS DAVENPORT

My friend doris davenport now teaches at Albany State University in Albany, GA, where she directs (and is the creator of) the annual Poetry Festival. Her collection Madness Like Morning Glories was published by LSU Press. Her other titles include Voodoo Chile, Eat Thunder, Drink Rain, and Soque Street, as well as several chapbooks. She's a powerful performer of her work.

(Photo by Doya Outlaw)

The two poems that follow are definitely season-related! I've also included one of my favorites from Madness Like Morning Glories.

(...brand new, came to me a few days ago - spring is pretty & glorious but LAWD! Pollen-itches-allergies . . .]

(untitled)

millions of things bloom

billions of life forms return

singing green, green, green

***

millions of microscopic

organisms

in each pollen

grain stuck to

my skin shouting

"Suppertime! Everybody

git some!"

Now, I know you remember so and so

meaning somebody who rode through town once, ten
years ago or who lived and died before your birth. They
expect you to remember, to know, just like your mind is
their mind and if you don't, they might take it personal.
Get so mad at you, they can't get on with the story.

Not like Fannie Mae. She will get all into a story and
catch herself: "But that was before you
were born." Great Aunt Fannie Mae will pause, grin for emphasis
and say, "And I just wish you
coulda seen it!

not me.
When i get through
when i am done
won't be no wishing
you could see.

You gone see.

(Photo by Doya Outlaw)

PHACELIA, from BLOOD MOUNTAIN (BLACK SHAWL)

Quite a few years back I began a short story from the viewpoint of a young mountain girl "taken advantage of," as we say, by one of the timber "cruisers" sent into the southern Appalachians to scout the best stand of forest to be clear-cut. As in Ron Rash's novel Serena, these timber companies brought ruthless exploitation to the mountains. The story never made its way to completion, but the situation was echoed in a later poem, as part of the sequence "Blood Mountain," from my book Black Shawl. This sequence has been set to music for soprano and piano by my friend Harold Schiffman and premiered a year ago in New York City. It will soon be released on cd.






PHACELIA


Gently, as if swabbing
wounds, she scrubs
stains left from

where they lay down
in the grass. She remembers
her fingers plunged deep

into crushed green, the odor
of light rain, the moldering
leaves going up in a fever

of white flowers till she
can hear herself babbling
such words as forever,

forget-me-not, full
moon, her mouth
like a dovecote of syllables

forced open so she can
taste every sweet
nothing melting away

into silence as she lay
beneath him like trampled
earth already trying

to cover itself with a veil
of such snowy white
as what a bride calls (oh

why can't she hear
what she says?) Sheer
Illusion.

FULL MOON

FULL MOON

Full moon says look I am
over the pinebreak, says give me
your empty glass, pour
all you want, drink, look
out through your windows of ice,
through the eyes of your needles
observe how I climb, lay aside
what you weave on your looms

and see clouds fall away
like cold silk from your shoulders,
be quiet, hear the owl coming back
to the hayloft, shake loose
your long braids and rise up
from your beds, open
windows and curtains, let light
pour like water upon your heads,

all of you women who wait, raise
the shades, throw the shutters
wide, lean from your window ledge
into the great night that beckons
you, smile back at me
and so quietly nobody can hear you
but you, whisper, "Here am I."

by Kathryn Stripling Byer, from BLACK SHAWL, LSU PRESS, '98

BIRTHDAY GHAZAL

BIRTHDAY GHAZAL


Why this old Persian form for today, of all days?
Why not sonnet or blank verse to help me take hold?

Down to the wire goes the season’s gold,
late this year, so long it took to take hold.

I don’t care that my days tumble down
to the compost pile. I want to look, to take hold.

Seize the day. Carpe Diem, if you like.
Bite down hard on the hook and take hold.

Down the creek float the leavings of what I once was.
Just a girl. Mostly waiting for luck to take hold.

Last night rain kept the roof busy scolding
me, wake up you dumb cluck and take hold.

I’ve already answered my e-mail, my voice
mail, my snail mail. My real work? To take hold.

Kathryn died too young. Age twelve. Now she tolls
in the dust of my name: to come back, to take hold.

(from COMING TO REST, LSU Press)


The ghazal has a long and storied history in Persian and Islamic literature. Now it is becoming part of our own. The late contemporary Kashmiri-American poet Aga Shahid Ali wrote several beautiful ghazals, in the traditional form. Adrienne Rich's "Blue Ghazals" are looser in their construction but well worth reading. And there is more to learn about this difficult, yet evocative form. I hope readers will do some exploration on this topic.