Fiction, happy rejections, and a poem

Sometimes an e-mail will bring a pleasant surprise like the one I received earlier this week informing me my 2nd chapbook would be published.  More often than not, the e-mails are the standard rejections with the occasional but increasingly rare, personal note attached.  Yesterday I got an e-mail from Carve ( a literary magazine) announcing the winners in its fiction competition.  At some point I must have sent something to this publication or I wouldn't be on their mailing list.   http://www.carvezine.com/issue/2011/fall/fall2011.htm
   First prize went to Liesl Wilke's short story, "Stalled Symphony" which is set in the stalls of a women's restroom in a shopping mall.  It must have been the shock value or novelty of the theme that made it the winning entry though there was nothing the least bit novel about the story except its location.  And because it's a women's bathroom, there is nothing illicit or interesting happening like the footsie or outright sex you might find in a men's room.  Just bodily functions.  Can a writer get away with that?  What happened to the idea of conflict or resolution?  In this story there's a bulemic girl and an obese woman among others in the various stalls though nothing original happens to any of them.  Maybe if they'd gotten together it would have been more appealing.  Maybe the editors thought the theme would be enough to get a reader's attention so I guess in that, they succeeded.  Glancing through the runners up, I didn't find anything that stood out as great writing. 
   Whatever I may have sent to Carve, I'm glad it got rejected!




One of the Latvian ladies- I'm moving past the story...

Apolonia Painted 

We pointed out the flaws,

Look, a dog as big as a house

in the background,

no perspective here,

But Apolonia painted

and danced,

Her wig askew

after vodka shots,

Apolonia painted

and promised love.

Neptunian Dreamworld

Descent into the oceanic dreamworld.  A fuzzy space where I think I’m doing everything the way I do in my usual orderly slightly anal fashion only to discover that though I think I have, it’s not true.  Case in point- I was outside of the city for an interview last Wednesday armed with maps, papers, schedules, only to discover I had a Saturday bus schedule in a territory with blocks that stretched seemingly for miles and almost no way out.  Two days I’ve mixed up schedules for the TOEFL testing online that I do.  By luck I was checking my e-mail yesterday and discovered I was supposed to be working. Missed a meeting at my other job.  Sent a letter with no stamp.  I keep repeating the same poems on this blog.  How is this happening?  The list goes on.

   Fuzziness- a Neptunian transit to everything in my chart or menopause?  Hard to say.  I want to put a big post it over my desk- Pay attention!  Now! 

    The other side of fuzziness is a vague love of everything.  I’m enjoying my teaching immensely (for however long that lasts).  A roomful of students from 20-75 (the older ones I call the lifers) from about 14 different countries and I am happy with simplicity.  My idea is that calendars, weather, and goals can give them a hold on life. In that contained world it may be enough.  I used to teach university students so I am sometimes surprised this is enough.

I love the green of the park, the last of the summer sun touching my skin.  I love this life stripped of so much of the activity and excitement that once defined it.  So, for however long it lasts-  love this summer stretching into fall.

An old poem.  Am going through files. 

Sun and Moon Struggle

The sun and the moon struggle

on opposing sides of the sky

which tugs more

orange red dissolution

or the slow silver dance?

Full moon morrow,

my own wars

like the world's multiply.

No remorse,

I still search for a pen,

delight in floral innocence,

and in what brings the body

a smile.

                   

Apples and gifts from the sky

Years ago when I was studying Spanish, the teacher asked us to describe our favorite fruit.It was one of those typical language exercises.  A German girl praised apples - their crispness, the satisfying texture and their taste .  It struck me as pedestrian to talk about such a common fruit.  I went on about the sticky sweetness of mangos which at the time were the ultimate in exotic. 
Years later I agree with her.  Apples caused the fall from Eden; in the 15th century William Tell shot one off the head of his son.  Cliches and sayings about apples abound.  I started to appreciate them in Spain where the tasty ones were grown for export but the ones in the shops were mealy and dry.  Golden delicious were ubiquitous and Granny Smiths were just starting to be imported.
   Now, an apple is a welcome gift from my refugee students,possibly my favorite since an apple embodies appreciation and utility all at once.  In Varysburg, I stand among the gnarled neglected apple trees on the edge of our farmland and remember a line from a poem - "all flavors of red."  The trees still produce small imperfect specimans in abundance.  This is in return for nothing that I provide (well, I could function as a vehicle for transporting seeds but I have ignored this orchard for decades).  In this world there are still gifts that fall from the sky.

THAT LIFE

                        I.

No strangers appear in that life

and we are the crazy Russians

on the hill,

enough to deliver us

from the rural town-

gas station, hotel, store in pairs.

Here in safety

golden fruit,

perfectly formed,

droops in bounty.

Blossoms brush my window,

daylight hypnotizes a hawk

hiding in the branches.

Apple trees provide

pink blush, green, all flavors of red.

And goldfish last

slumbering through long winters

in the pond,

where today

my uncle reflects sunlight,

imagining his cold gray sea.

 II.

The children of angels now,

my mother wears a dark blue suit,

instead of apron and headscarf.

We fly over the mountaintops of Crete

and lunch on city walkways

My father reappears as general

and still brings shivers.

III.      

There on the hill we tangoed

to the record player

after clearing fields of rocks.

                       

                                   

Inukshuks and finding my way home

On my last trip up to Canada on the northern highway which was cut through stone, there were little piles of stones perched on the rock set up on the sides of the road. After seeing many and wondering what they were, I asked my Canadian relatives.  "Inuk" means person and "suk" means substitute in Inuit languages and the rocks are piled on each other to create an abstract form of a person.  These forms have become a symbol of Canada and were used as the 2010 winter olympics logo.  Inuits used them as markers in areas that didn't have many natural landmarks. Markers could show the location of routes, sacred sites, and food caches but now everyone seems to want to leave one behind. 
  
 
    <sup>For more information from Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk


My own idea of direction and what shows the way:</sup>

Finding My Way Home

The Hmong bury placenta,

close to home.

Danger rises in direct proportion

to their distance from it.

The Navajo began

the long march home

where each tree,

each stream tells the past.

The spot that fixes me

to the ground, floats.

Lost in the birches

and pines of the Baltic,

following the storks south,

to nest in the bell towers

of Castillian churches,

I´m finding my way home.

                                   

   

Chicken feathers, bats, and polar bears

      How close do we live to nature or the natural world?  For urban dwellers, unless we live with pets (or dare I say, children), not very.  Yesterday when I got a haircut I came home with a feather attached to my hair, a chicken feather, dyed in different shades of ginger (hairdresser's description). beige, and black, but a humanely obtained, chicken feather.  The feather makes me happy as if I had earned a feather in a traditional culture.  The earliest forms of adornment were objects such as these and these objects made us feel part of the world around. Years ago, in the middle of a rolfing session, I saw a flash of a polar bear along with my grandmother and I thought, this is my totem animal, if such a thing is possible.  So in honor of all life, and for the baby chicks that are coming to Cold Springs Urban Farm, I am wearing a feather proudly.

Here's a poem about a beautiful place in Colombia:

Santa Fe de Antioquia

The smell of decaying fruit hangs

in the hot sun,

A green as strong

I´d never seen

in years of temperate moderation.

Ceilings beyond reach

in a room very old,

matching the inhabitants

busily fashioning

caskets out of wood,

the family trade.

Neatly stacking them

just beyond the bedroom

where I sleep in coolness,

for babies, tiny and white,

for adults several wait.

This night double church bells

announce another loss.

Bats flutter, then

rest flat

            blotting out

            paradise in palm trees.

Beaches- Barcelona, Buffalo, and Beyond

Going to the beach in Barcelona often meant going to a nude beach with nothing titilating about it, just a glimpse into the variety of human shapes and forms.  This served as an important antidote to the airbrushed and anemic images that constitute bodies these days.  The beach was also a busy place with vendors hawking beer, coke, or water up and more importantly, if it was July or August, more people than you thought possible, squeezed onto the sticky sand.
Buffalo- in my previous life in the US, I went to the beach in Canada but now with border headaches and long bridge waits, I discovered local beaches.  Woodlawn is a park with a boardwalk leading through a forest to the beach, creating one of the weirdest beach scenes I've ever experienced- hawks circling.  I imagined following them to a path in the woods where I'd discover a body hidden under a tree. Could be the start of another story. 
Of course there is no nudity here- even little girls wear tops.  In Europe they get away with just bottoms, as do their mothers.  No vendors, no huge crowds - I can see cultural differences; African American families come dressed fashionably and everyone in a certain age range sports tatoos.  
A beach is still pleasure wherever it is.  Other beaches flash by- the South China Sea near Melaka with poisonous snakes and a monkey collecting coconuts, Cartagena with women balancing huge bowls of fruit on their heads, and Jones Beach with crowds, volleyball and the ocean.

I discover such interesting things here (Thanks Pat for this) http://paintingforpreservation.blogspot.com/2011/08/painting-for-preservation-in-parkside.html  Wonderful- painters, photographers and others paint, take pictures, and write about distressed buildings to bring attention to such architectural wonders.

And a poem, for nostalgia:

A Remedy of Touch

            Immediately after testing

            green bamboo for smoothness

            my hands burn,

            Quick, rub dirt on them,

            a passerby shouts.

            Jackfruit, with its flavor

            of mango and banana

            glues my fingers together

            in sweet stickiness.

            Run your fingers

            through your hair,

            urges the vendor.

But each night

            you hold my hand

            tightly across your chest.

            For this there is no remedy.

I talk, therefore I am

I'm an independent person but this has been the longest period of time I've lived alone.  I was in a longterm relationship and before that, roommates and a couple of short lived romances.  Living alone doesn't mean loneliness- I felt that more acutely in my relationships but there is the factor of BEARING WITNESS (as I call it). 
You need someone to bear witness to your life or you might disappear from existance.  I can immediately tell when a friend calls and recounts all the minutiae of the day to me that she has no one to tell.  At work, a fellow teacher interrupted my class to tell me the long details of how her car mirror was clipped in a parking lot. 
My witness is the endless notebooks I fill with precisely this kind of information- incidents at the laundromat, how I felt slighted by a waitress, lists of what I need to do but may never get around to.  It's written down, it really happened, and thus I exist.
     I had the strange experience (on Facebook, of course) of a friend who died but her picture kept popping up even though I had (cruelly, perhaps?) unfriended her.  It was her birthday and wonderful memories were posted on her wall.  Facebook has a function its founders would never have imagined.

Suzanne

Secrets of green grass, backyards

and painted faces.

this California child remembered.

Then, Mediterranean blue,

Barcelona, a new love, captured.

In the streets of the Gothic,

on terraces high,

winding up caracol stairways,

You are present-

in the cool drink of cava,

the waves rolling in

from Badalona beach,

or the rocky view from Montsant.

Too short, this life

but  aprovechada.

Mitochondrial DNA and Momma.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110713/full/news.2011.413.html

This has been one of my favorite news stories- about mitochondrial DNA traced along the female lineage. Years ago I wrote a poem about it which was published in The Fossil Record.  Here it is:

Momma of an Ancient Time

    Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited through the mother.  we could trace ourselves back to one woman in Africa.


Momma of an ancient time,
fur-covered, huddled in darkness,
warmed me with her breath,
in the indiscernable shadows
of a cave,
her breast spoke comfort, calm
every syllable in silence.

The time when fathers had no word,
warmth, darkness, love prevaded,
Now they invent
frantically, furiously
-a rope and pulley pull us up.
We dangle experimentally.
Nodes attached, measure the care
they can't create.

And when she returns
in union with riverbeds
and mountain air,
blood clots
on node after node.

I want to thank Iara Lee, filmmaker and activist for posting the DNA story and reminding me about the poem. Check out her work on Facebook or here:
http://www.films.culturesofresistance.org/
She has been in some of the most incredible places in the world at eventful moments.

North Country

How close do you live to nature?  I just returned from my relative's cottage up at Little Whitefish Lake up in Canada.  Thom Thompson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Thomson  painted very similar landscapes almost a centure ago, setting off with his paints in a canoe which is how he mysteriously died while on a canoing trip.
In these northern landscapes, birch trees abound in their white and black zebra like presence.  Rocks stick out of the hills that descend to the lakes reminisent of the land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.  But here the light is northern, giving the color of wildflowers a special intensity. 
Canadian wildlife is fearless.  Chipmunks shared the cottage, stealing chocolate off the table (truffles, no less) and a deer stood and watched us just as we watched him- a young buck with budding antlers.  A loon made sounds like mourning cries and then it sounded like wood clacking as it took off to fly away.  And the beavers- 5 acres of land under water because of their meticulously constructed dams and lodges.
The visit finished with a trip to a Toronto baking in 97 degrees.  Travel often makes you see your home in a different light.  As I pushed along with the rush hour crowds on the subway I realized- I never have to do that.  I walk to work!
My friend Pat is working on a fundraiser project of haikus.  Check out her link:
http://boxofhaiku.blogspot.com/

And for fun:

Step into deep mud,

beaver dam silt and branches-

unplug, let life flow.

Art and Place

This Saturday I attended an Art Fair in Buffalo.  The organizers have hopes to put Buffalo art on the map right along with Basel and Miami.  It took place in the city's old train station, a magnificent building of 15 stories, in a state of decay in a difficult neighborhood.  Walking through the exhibits, especially those of the photographers I noticed a common theme- pictures of Buffalo's past architectural wonders which are now in various stages of ruin.  I myself have many photos of the grain elevators lining the lake and I recognized a shot of the old Bethlehem steel plant. 
Which leads me to the question- how much does the place you live affect your art?  If I used the art fair as an indicator, I'd say quite a bit.  My own poetry has taken on shades of anger at the economic decline around me and a tinge of despair.  If I were in the bright sun of the Mediterranean, I suspect my themes would be different but perhaps the industrial decline suits my temperament.  When I close my eyes, I can still see the icy edged sidewalks of winter and we're almost in the middle of a hot July.  I remember the line of an old poem I wrote about a town in Mexico I'd visited - "with no future, but a fruitful past."  Of course, there is a future here but will it ever compare to the early 1900's? 
   Tomorrow I have the priviledge to participate in a poetry reading with John Roche.  Please check out his new book- "Road Ghosts".
  http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780964734296/road-ghosts.aspx

The Unexamined Life

I'm about to plunge into the unexamined world of memoir writing with a workshop I'm taking.  What I do know is that what you don't say is as important as what you say.  I recently read Patti Smith's "Just Kids" which like its title implies, reflects innocence despite the struggles of poverty in NY and Robert's hustling.  What it doesn't tell is what is it like loving someone who is gay and how it could feel to be one of the only two people at the Chelsea Hotel who went off to work every day.
  What are the themes of your life story?  What will you carefully omit? 

   Here's a poem from my chapbook which is from the long lost days of my life in the country with its Latvian twist.


                                  THAT LIFE

                        I.

No strangers appear in that life

and we are the crazy Russians

on the hill,

enough to deliver us

from the rural town-

gas station, hotel, store in pairs.

Here in safety

golden fruit,

perfectly formed,

droops in bounty.

Blossoms brush my window,

daylight hypnotizes a hawk

hiding in the branches.

Apple trees provide

pink blush, green, all flavors of red.

And goldfish last

slumbering through long winters

in the pond,

where today

my uncle reflects sunlight,

imagining his cold gray sea.

 II.

The children of angels now,

my mother wears a dark blue suit,

instead of apron and headscarf.

We fly over the mountaintops of Crete

and lunch on city walkways

My father reappears as general

and still brings shivers.

III.      

There on the hill we tangoed

to the record player

after clearing fields of rocks.

                       

The Other Side of the Coin

Last week I promised I would write about what's positive in the US so here goes:

1. Language- English wasn't my first language- I spoke Latvian at home until I started school but it is my love.  I revel in the accents and eavesdropping on what people actually say to each other.  I studied other languages: French, Spanish, Catalan,a brief stint with Russian and even briefer, Chinese, but as a writer, I need doses of English.   Living in Barcelona I discovered every utterance was a political statement.  Did I risk speaking in Spanish and potentially offending a Catalan or use my far more limited Catalan and risk sounding foolish?  Often I didn't speak. The message was the language used, not communication. 

2.Nature.   There is an abundance of wildlife encroaching on suburban (and urban) America- wolves, coyotes, bears, and alligators.  In my city I see white tailed rabbits in the yard,hear woodpeckers in the morning, and see deer when I ride my bike in the cemetery.  In all the years of hiking in different areas of Spain, I saw only an occasional snake,a fox once, 2 wild boars, and of course, the lizards that plagued my dreams.  A Chinese student said alligators would be no problem in people's backyards in China- they would simply be eaten. 

3.  The Bill of Rights though I would immediately eliminate the second amendment.  And I'd stop the Supreme Court from decimating Miranda Rights and everything else.

4.  A sense of community.  I have attended more fundraisers than I can count that range from supporting a victim of cancer to compensating for the state's budget cuts in the arts.  Community struggles to compensate for the lack of a safety net or public funding.
Living as an expat you have the freedom to observe without participating in the decisions that influence your world.  Here I have taken some responsibility- I vote in every election however, small and local. 

I have thought the happiest person is one who has never left their place of birth.  There is nothing to judge it by or compare it to.  Thus, it is perfect.  If you've lived in different places, nothing quite lives up to your expectations.  Here's a poem from my chapbook.  And yes, I'm still looking for that elusive place.

                                                Finding My Way Home

The Hmong bury placenta,

close to home.

Danger rises in direct proportion

to their distance from it.

The Navajo began

the long march back

where each tree,

each stream tells the past.

There is no landmark,

to mark America as mine.

The spot that fixes me

to the ground, floats.

Lost in the birches

and pines of the Baltic,

following the storks south,

to nest in the bell towers

of Castillian churches,

I´m finding my way home.

Europa, Europa

Sometimes I'm asked what are the differences between living in Spain (which I have generalized to include Europe) and the US (specifically Buffalo which is similar to many American cities).  I've narrowed them down to 5:

1.  Universal health care in Europe (and in many other parts of the world).  You won't find the tragic story of a family losing a home or land because of medical bills in Europe.  This did, in fact, happen to my family here in the US. 

2.  Vacation.  If you aren't working freelance and you have a job (from the lowest level position to the highest), you have a minimum 4 week paid vacation in Europe.  Enough said. 

3.  Safety.  I could walk in Barcelona at any time of the night and feel safe.  There is gun control so that element of danger isn't present.  Here in Buffalo, I have personally witnessed 2 shootings (at a community center where I worked) and a lockdown (also at work). 

4.  Public transport.  In Barcelona I could arrive wherever I wanted by subway, tram, bus, or walking.  Here in Buffalo a car is necessary for shopping (most places including big supermarkets are outside of the city) or to have some semblance of a social life- going out at night.

5.  Food.  In Europe, food is still a pleasure, not guilt inducing.  Even at the largest holiday meals I never heard someone regret the delicacies they'd just consumed.  Portions aren't enormous but flavor often is.  Food is a celebration, not just fast.
     Of course, there are positive things to being here but that's for another blog.

So then, a poem from my chapbook:

What I´ve Lost  

                          Leaving Europe                  

Paths lead

from town to

medieval town,

cathedral bones

stick out,

bells toll centuries.

The solemnity

of a saint´s day

procession,

We crowd to touch

the body of christ

while drums

pound out

God´s arrival. 

Ocean jet buzz

brings me across

to America,

empire of things,

following the white

highway line

into deep deep sleep.

Secrets and Shadows

What is your deepest secret?  That was the question in an online writing workshop I attended and the very fact it was online and not in a classroom made it possible to answer and explore what made it a secret without having to share.  What is yours?  Writing it down may set you free.
   Of course, the illusion of secrecy can lead to all kinds of internet follies (Weiner) or worse.  Tom McMaster blogged under the identity of a lesbian woman, Amina Araf in Damascus.  Finally caught, he showed little actual remorse for the havoc he wreaked on the Syrians who were trying to help Amina get out of the country, the young lesbian he was planning to meet in Italy, or his wife, who apologized to the press.  In an odd twist, McMaster flirted with with Paula Brooks online, who was actually 58 year old Bill Graber also pretending to be a lesbian.  McMaster claimed the false identity was a simple writing exercise in which he was trying to get his voice.  I'd say unlikely to that.
    So keep your shadow side to yourself or express in ways that don't harm.  Don't let the ego make you feel you're above all human concerns or societal norms.  And above all, be careful on the internet.

Meditation

A door clicks shut,
a clock ticks
competing with
a distant screech.
This is silence.
Or this,
Under a wave,
my head bashed
on the sea floor.
Absence of all.

Farmlands, Ceres, and a Poem

The urban farm returns us to the ancient tasks of planting and weeding with the sun warming our backs.  The idea of a farm requires a community, or a family unit at the very least. Solo you could starve and the more members the more you can grow.  Kingsolver in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" describes the year she and her family went local- eating almost exclusively from a 50 mile radius around their farm.  The now popularity of raising your own animals and slaughtering them is definitely not to everyone's taste.  Who would have thought the way I was raised in my combination Latvia/Varysbury farm would now serve as a model way to live?  Not that I'd want to repeat it.  I'd go vegetarian first.
There are some farms so remote in rural Spain that, as a friend put it, even with a family you're lonely.  That won't happen at the Cold Springs Urban Farm with volunteers digging and planting on Thursdays and Sundays.

Uncovering

Cells capture

the ancient rhythms of

the cycles of  Ceres.

A shovel of dirt unearths

A  moving mass of red ants,

the squiggle of fat worms.

In a Russian dasha

I’d uncover Stalin’s roses,

the corpses rising

after winter’s thaw.

Here, bricks and rocks

of a city once alive,

where lunch pail in hand,

workers lined up for the bus

that still runs on a near empty Main Street

save for a Delta Sonic carwash

and revival temples

promising God’s salvation.

It’s what remains

of my city

turned into a garden lot.

Bilingualism and Melaka

Bilingualism is touted as bestowing special abilities like easier multitasking.  Most recently  Ellen Bialystok has said regular use of two languages can help delay Alzheimer's.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html?_r=1
For me, being bilingual meant I knew Latvian without ever conjugating a verb or poring over long vocabulary lists. It meant that when I arrived at the airport in Riga the customs officer asked if I was from Latgale (my mother's province) though I had never set foot in Latvia before. 
    And my bilingual Latvian brain colored my world.  There are plants I know the names of only in Latvian and animals are always named in the diminuitive.  All nature is still infused with spirit since Latvia was Christianized in the 13th century after it replaced a pervasive animism. 

    So I could have posted an essay on the theme but I've been going through an old leather covered notebook (the gift from Eulalia in Spain, the hatmaker and singularly strong woman). 


The Straits of Melaka

The straits churn up
porcelin vases, Japanese mortar
onto the crystal calm
of a kampung beach.
Straight ahead lies Sumatra,
behind, the centuries
reminise on each street
in many tongues.
Old stories,
old anguishes
burn in an oil lamp
brought up to bed each night.

Utopia

The last week of peaceful protests and thousands occupying the main squares of cities in Spain brought to mind the idealism of the 60's.  Protest before we are sunk in the total mire of banker and corporate greed with no concern to mother earth or the future generations. The effectiveness is yet to be seen but I can hope "that better world" of health care, social justice, and opportunity extends to the US.  After all, utopian ideas were part of a foundation of the US and vestiges of those communities still exist in this area- Chautauqua, Lilly Dale to name two. 
And a poem I dug up on the theme:

Utopia

Sometimes with your presence,
I dream creation,
cottonmouth babies
in a city of bliss,
Floating further than the Lusitania,
far off in panicked seas.
I dream seafoam
on a perfectly set Sunday
in which kindness, the absolute, reigns.  

Congo, Peace Corps, and Dominique Strauss Kahn

What  do the Congo, the Peace Corps, and Dominique Strauss Kahn have in common?  Rape. The crime that exists so many levels- political, personal, social, and military.  The news about the Peace Corps hiding rapes was surprising- the women were convinced not to report the rapes that occurred in the different countries they were serving in.  One woman was told to say in the report given to the organization that she was drunk.  And these were college educated young women dealing with a United States agency.  Yet they were unable to speak out.

Which leads to Dominique Strauss Kahn.   He was notorious in France for being a sexual predator.  One woman who had worked with him said she made it a point to never be alone with him.  There is probably no doubt he is capable of sexual assault but was it a set-up?  I’d like to think we’ve reached a point where an immigrant woman who cleans hotel rooms (a job my mother did when she came to this country) could stand up and accuse an international leader of this.  It’s difficult to picture- she could be afraid of losing her job or the repercussions of such an accusation.  Bravo to her to overcome all of that!   If it is so, we really have made progress.  A small bright point in the midst of horrors.

  Then there is the Congo. 400,000 rapes in 12 month period of 2006-7.  The mind boggles. 

It was Adrienne Rich’s birthday.  Here’s her poem:

http://nongae.gsnu.ac.kr/~songmu/Poetry/Rape.htm

Pleasure

What defines pleasure?  Here in Buffalo, it's simple.  Nature, in a word.  A cardinal spotted from my window- the splash of red against the total cover of green.  Color after such a long winter.

There in Barcelona (my life left behind) pleasure was a constant stimulus of people, new architecture, art, and music.  A walk to the sea past the crowds in motion, a coffee on a terrace, a 3 or 4 course meal in the countryside or on the beach, the breeze off the sea.  A glass of cava- watching bubbles rise up the side of the glass, a mountain hike with the scent of thyme or rosemary with each step, or a nightlife with no end. 

Here apart from nature surrounding I've had to create almost every single stimulus, looking for any inspiration that might lead to a poem or a story.  I understood as soon as I arrived - I exchanged the life of pleasure for one of service.

Here's a poem:

Another Look at Happiness

Not the shock of orange leaves,

autum so bright it hurts,

Not your eyes tight on mine,

the stomach fall of your kiss.

Nor my country, Spain, distant

steeped in red wine and salt,

nor your Burma,

smell of woodsmoke and green,

when you close your eyes.

But this small space within

where solitude cushions

each fearless act.

Urban gardens and an hommage to dirt

   It's spring finally and despite the endless rain and chill, the earth is warm.  This I found out when I worked in the urban garden on Sunday.  We planted lettuce and kale- one of those hardly tasteless vegetables that nonetheless has cute curly leaves especially when it's this tiny.  My hands had a memory of their own, placing each plant in the dirt that we first weeded (can weeds survive even a Buffalo winter?) and then broke up the clumps of dirt.  This is a city garden that Jessica and Dan organized on vacant lots, the most recent lot, the result of a crack house that burned down last summer.  As a matter of fact, we watched the smoke rising from its roof.
   There is a romanticism in a garden like this, save the neighborhood with vegetables and that is one step from saving the world.  There is also (more frighteningly) an idea that peak oil will hit and we'll all be converted into survivalists.  I go towards romanticism and my own love of the dirt of life.  After all I did grow up on a farm. 
  

 Here's an old poem (that needs a lot of work) from my Barcelona days. 

Terrace Series

                                               

One by one I pull out weeds,

roots a straight white line.

Plunging fingers into earth,

even store bought,

protects.

A lizard flashes behind

the stark white planter

his  regrowth

I'd claim as mine,

He reminds what isn't,

no temperate easing

into bright summer skies.

The green parrots

arrive all in a flurry,

surprise guests from afar.

Terrace Series Part 2

The tree, geotropic

leaves a crook to sit on,

Tarzan rope

swings down the hill

next to the house,

the only one,

recreated from an exile’s

memory.