Blog

Waiting. room.

24 March, 2011

Dear Dad,

–

I miss you terribly. You died three weeks ago today as sun was spilling over the timberline of the Rocky Mountains. Since then I sit awake at night. Reading or watching bad television or simply staring at the spinning ceiling fan blades as it is spring here in Georgia (is there pollen where you are, and if so, do your sinuses still get aggravated?) and the dank warm air can use a good stirring, now and again. I sit awake waiting. Waiting for you to visit with me. For you tell me that three weeks ago today after 12 hours of not opening your eyes, or speaking or responding beyond a lank squeezing of the hand or twitch of the brow, that in last breath you lingered over us like canopy of radiant light smiling, if only for a sliver of a second, knowing we were with you and wanted nothing more than to keep you physically. Here. Surely, even death angels with all their orders and protocol are equipped with grace enough to have allowed you one last glance at your family asleep at your bedside – the four of us scattered about the hospice suite like ribbons of moonlight.

–

There is something I need to tell you, only that something eludes me and the faster I chase after those snatches of that something I need to tell you I discover another and then another something until my list of somethings fill a well the size of a black hole in the universe. And so maybe, had you have known, or even if those death angels sent to collect from your broken body a gentle soul had known, of the many somethings left over and feathering in the belly of a daughter needing to be told to a father, you might have been allowed to stay a little while longer. Here.

–

Daddy, did I mention, I miss you terribly. You died three weeks ago today as sun…

Review: Ain’t No Grits by Cambridge Jenkins, IV

4 October, 2010

…When the words lie down/and soak into/recycled canopies/of jungles past,/they reflect what is/nearest to your heart/what frightens the blood/from you…/

You do not know Cambridge Jenkins, IV.

Organic tea leaf, whole cream sweet, hot on the tongue. Frayed edge of denim stained with red clay, moss and stank of city. Hair like rough silk, black on gold skin. Lit clove rested on bed of lip and silver smoke swirl.

But, when this poet speaks of life and its eventual death:

…there on the blue sofa,

body stretched,

arms spread wide…

and warns with the foreboding only genuine devotion can deliver:

There will come

a time when your

vocabluary will fly

away from you

like a mouse hair

in gale-force winds…

the ethos embraces you. And you will kick off your shoes and move gently beyond the first poem in Ain’t No Grits, whet for the meal.

Ain’t No Grits captures my favorite aesthetic: a petite chorus of poems seeking to move, breathe, and shift you in your seat. It is not a large collection bound by glossy covers and gilded-edge text. Highfalutin metaphor and lines scattered about the white space do not reside here. It is a handful of poems like winding river ebbing against the approaching frost.

These poems are Bukowski’s Americana–sinewy hands like rope and whiskey spittle. A pretty girl in a cheap dress folding origami to leave on the brick wall behind your house. They are gentle and dirty and pierced with teeth marks.

Ain’t No Grits is poet undressing for his most passionate lover – words; we are staring through the window to his room:

Words are blankets

for the lost-minded

shivering tipsy as

guardians of the night

It is dancing:

…just under the foamy swells

of the cotton fields,

there were cocktails

painted magnificently like

cosmic dust clouds floating

It is fable:

but we never mind

the bees or the ants

or the trees or the family

of possums crossing the road –

their road,

which was clear river,

chunk rock,

clover patch

before highway

It is danger

in freedom

in women on

Periods

in women – period.

It is self portrait:

…southern poets

posing nude

in hotel rooms with

pungent heating

and limp pillows

and hymn:

falling asleep

with a busted pen

in your hand and

waking to scripture

on your forearm

And when it Ain’t No Grits, it is:

the vagabond

at home wherever

there is wash rag

and tooth brush

and ball-point

Simply put, if you are so inclined, it…is…poesis.

You do not know poet Cambridge Jenkins IV. But you will.

========================================

Order your copy of Ain’t No Grits the e-book for $3.99

on Motherhood

15 May, 2009

I love being a mom. That is not to say motherhood is all roses and candy, it is not, but I love it. I always thought I would have a gaggle of babies, imagined myself with double strollers, bouncy seats and baby babble swelling the rooms in my house. Picture one in a bassinet, one in a sling across my chest, and two toddling behind me and now you have a good snapshot of my motherhood fantasy at the age of 25.

However, life didn’t quite work out that way and now I cannot imagine the craziness of having more than one, though I am sure I would have lived up to the challenge and joys of the aforementioned gaggle.

My first Mother’s Day fell on the same weekend as my baby shower. I was 7 months pregnant, stuffing my face with all the fresh green chiles I could get my swollen fingers on, and wading through, rather buoyantly, my in-law’s pool in the desert sun. I was sublimely happy. I was given an emerald ring (my birthstone) as a mommy-to-be gift which I still wear today (it is the only ring I wear since removing my wedding ring 9 years ago).

My daughter loves that story, the story of her in my belly, the desert baby shower, and the ring. The ring will eventually become hers when she is older and I like to think someday she might have a little girl to whom she can pass it.

This Mother’s Day (#12) was as lovely as the first and all the ones in between. My daughter adores the holiday, begins preparing for it weeks in advance. This year she played a song for me, composed especially for the day, baked maple french toasts for breakfast, polished my fingernails a tart shade of red and took me for a nice walk in the park.

Every few hours, she’d stop to ask, “are you having a good day, mom?”

I am one of those women who enjoys the paper crafts, oddly shaped bowls, and all the I-love-Mom jewelry a child’s hand and heart can create.

Every year I write to her a letter on Mother’s Day and tuck into the lavender writing journal I found at a gift shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico the weekend of my baby shower. One day I will give her the journal book full up with letters on this woman’s work.

Waiting. room.

Like this:

Review: Ain’t No Grits by Cambridge Jenkins, IV

Like this:

on Motherhood

Like this:

The personal narrative as shaman

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

The personal narrative as shaman