Super-Sized Series

 Transformation Part 1

 

 

That’s not my Survivor, I tell the Animal Whisperer by Sharon Waller Knutson

The cat in the photo on his phone
resembles a plush stuffed animal 
with a bright orange coat,
a fluffy white beard and booties
and a white streak on his nose.
and the tip of his tail.

My Survivor is a tiger striped
tabby with a scruffy coat 
from scrounging for birds 
and rats in the heat and cold.
My husband feeds the feral feline.
But he will only eat raw meat.
When my husband leaves earth
I can’t take care of the tabby.

“That’s the same cat I rescued 
from your property,” says the sixty
something big man squinting
like he did when he hauled
away a squalling Survivor
out to his car and held him 
on his lap as his wife
drove the 3 ½ miles to town 
on the bumpy dirt road.

“Survivor has his own apartment 
and two meals a day of salmon
and sardines as well as wet
and dry cat food,” he reports.
“He’s so heavy I can’t lift him,” 
he says. Still I cannot
find the scrawny skinny 
Survivor in this fat cat.

I worry Survivor is dead 
or roaming and might turn
up again starving and scratching 
on my glass. Then in our photos, 
I see a flash of white on orange.

But what convinces me
is when he meows 
and does the Dippity Do Da dance  
when he sees me. 
“That’s My Survivor,” I say.


Anna Christina by Terri Kirby Erickson

After Andrew Wyeth’s “Anna Christina,” 1967

They could sit for hours without the need
for words in the ancient rooms of the Olson 
house with its crumbling plaster, peeling 
wallpaper, and layer after layer of dust and 
soot. Here, Christina lived with her brother, 
Al, a landlocked sailor who yearned for the 

sea he left behind to manage his father’s farm. 
She could not walk but refused a wheelchair,
preferring to pull her body across the floor 
with sticklike arms. But Wyeth did not judge 

them. Alvaro was as much a part of the New 
England landscape as the rocks, the hills. And 
his sister was a monument to self-reliance, 
an icon, a queen. So Wyeth painted his friend’s 
face with all its crags and hollows, her stern 

and unwavering gaze, the lidless eyes that stare
at the viewer with such defiance, as if daring 
people to pity her unkempt hair that falls like 
splintering timbers to her shoulders, her faded

dress the color of moss and mold, her useless 
legs that dangle off-panel like the limbs of 
a marionette. But she was still a formidable 
woman, carved from the stone of her ancestors. 
Wyeth would not insult her with lies, mixed his 
medium with yolks, water, pigment, and truth.


Chrysalis by Tamara Madison
 
Newly freed from high school
my daughter spends her evenings
alone in the living room 
with Grey’s Anatomy. Life 
is so different now, classes 
at odd times, friends scattered 
like jacks. Opaque as ever, 
a deep well, she rests on the sofa 
in blue TV light. I can almost see 
her wings developing, intricate, 
folded like an origami moth 
within her close cocoon.


Then by Lynn White

She’s standing still 
pale as England, 
slim and serious
as I stood 
then.
Hair chopped 
above her shoulders
with a little curl allowed
as mine was 
then.
A little curl allowed,
in memory of it’s ringlets
earlier than
then.
Then it grew longer 
and we pulled it straight.
So now, it’s more like it was 
before then.
Before then, 
when
it was longer still,
and ironed straight
under thick brown paper.
It had been shorter still before
then
it’s feminine length curtailed, but
with a little curl allowed,
a reminder of it’s ringlets earlier than
then.
Of it’s earlier hated ringlets
grown  from loose curls.
Ringlets cut 
when 
father died.
Not until
then.

First published in Silver Birch Press, Looks Like Me series December 2015


A Champagne Headscarf by Abha Das Sarma
 
succeeds thirty years
of my white-
beads set in silver,
the colours
rose, black and turquoise-
oh, the danglers I so loved
help me fight.
 
Now when the dreams combine,
the window besides
shines the sun inside, a flight
to my rooftop holds the time-
a kite high on the coconut tree,
yellow bunting on a mango branch tip
and the squirrel carving its path in between. 


All the Names I’d Like to Give Myself by Arlene Levine
 
Call me what you will
but I have names for myself
wishes of who I want to be
dreams of an open face dancing whole person
able to take the heat
Call me Luna, call me Sol
I’ll answer to either or both
because they are me in its entirety
Call me resilient ground cover, murky tide pool,
encouraging firmament, fiery diadem
spinner and spun in the cosmic maze
There is always a world for me, of me, by me
from the words I chose, from the singing
syllables of sound strung together into thought
I imagine myself: a velvet rain forest
in the Amazon at dawn with a dozen squawking
lime-sherbet parrots dining on mango flesh
ripe as the morning
Call me crazy, call me shadow, call me
the beginning of an idea stirring
on the tip of your medulla oblongata
as succulent as fresh bee whiskey
capable of stinging senses
jolting the overgrown glade of your
sleepy life back into existence
Call me what you will

Transformation by j.lewis
 
when dreams are better
than waking to a day
where every task
is a nightmare
when those who know you
know you not at all
and loneliness multiples
with every person
who crowds around
crying save me -
there is a single answer:
cocoon
 
i watched your focused feedings
saw your depression devour
everything green
until all you thought good was gone
the lines you wrote
wrapped around you
thicker, harder
you escaped
inside your poetry
 
i waited
and i watched
 
emergence has its price
demands remolding of mind and body
old forms and feelings abandoned
as you climb up into sunlight
fan blue-gold wings uncertainly
then fly
free from past notions
of who and what you are
finally aware
of the beauty you bring
to those who sit quietly waiting
 

The Oracle Speaks by Gary D. Grossman

At the back of the thrift store a clerk is feather dusting a Magic Eight Ball. With the fourth swish over this 20th century party prophet, a pop-up squall sweeps me back to 1972 and LA, couched in Jules living room, her parents weekending at their Malibu beach house. Linda, her sister, stands and cools in front of the open refrigerator in black lace panties and bra. She asks is there any pie left, I could eat a horse? Her blood sugar at ebb tide, an aftereffect of the three bowls of Cambodian weed we’ve just finished smoking. Jules brings out her Magic Eight Ball, our Pythia of Delphi, with its score of foretellings ranging from: reply hazy, without a doubt, to simply, NO. It is our Einstein when befuddled and baked, and I am befuddled on whether to transfer to university at Berkeley, leaving Jules, the current owner of my heart, behind. I query, shake the Eight Ball, turn it over, only to read a definitive NO.  The left and right corners of Jules mouth slowly slide upwards. Facing the girls I say The last time I used the Eight Ball, it told me not to go to college. And bang, like a power line transformer exploding in Georgia's August heat, I rematerialize in the store, shake my head left and right to clear it from my thirty-year old abandonment of Jules and the oracle, and then recall the Wednesday in 1987 when I was granted tenure at the university down the street. 
 
From Objects in Mirror May Be Closer Than They Appear


Peter Pan by Rose Mary Boehm

It was after he set the CEO’s hair on fire
when he was ‘let go’ for the first time.

He'd wanted to stay forever young,
but slowly the surgery failed
and he was going south in a big way.
He knew why he’d been so reluctant
to leave Never-Never. 

Wendy broadened at the hips and needed
glasses. Her hearing wasn’t so hot anymore.
She got a bit upset when he took up
with the fairies. He knew his particular
game was up when even they giggled
behind those busy hands which fluttered
like large butterfly wings. And they whispered.

So he looked among the mothballs for his
suit, but he’d forgotten how
to fly. When he got to the place, the hinges
had rusted and nobody was in.

from DO OCEAN’ HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS


Illuminated  Places  by Martha Ellen

The night she died 
I had a dream.
I saw her walking 
in a pleasant landscape
on an uphill footpath
toward an illuminated place.
Her back was to me.
She turned and saw me 
watching her leave 
for the last time.

Thrilled to see me,
she smiled and
waved with the familiar 
excited anticipation 
I had seen so many times 
before when I arrived
at her sheltered home
and we would go for coffee.
There were days I thought
this a chore, a boring task
that subtracted
from my important life.
But, in that moment, 
in her joyful smile, clarity.
She knew I feared 
to carry on without her.
“You will be OK. 
I will wait here for you.”

Everyone had believed
I was the stronger sister.


Transformation by Rachael Ikins

I worried as the paper stack grew, all the faces with earnest instructions while my mind lifted off like a helicopter. Bewildered. Home in 24 hrs. Glued, taped, stapled and stitched.


Paper doll. 
Art project? 

He said it was “really bad in there” 
that he was glad I let him in,
him and the glue gun, the saw, titanium and plastic. Did he invite the robot after all. 

He reminds me of a teddy bear for all the brutality of what surgeons do, there is softness 

After all the thousands of instructions, 
white noise, at home 

I remember who I am. 
Pain another word for fear 
drains away, just one night. 

Today I let the dogs out. 
Step in my garden 
we watch the sun rise. 

not the same woman who limped
out of the house last Friday morning,
nothing stays the same does it? 

I wish he  had given me the pieces 
a decorative urn to bury in the garden 

what carried me
so far, so long until it wore 
its own heart out. 


Coming Out of Retirement, Age 70 by Joe Cottonwood

A milestone 
like re-losing my virginity 
as I crawl under a deck
among spore-puffing dirt, 
as duff prickles my navel 
as I jack up a beam, then pound and pry 
with unsure muscles to remove a rotten post, 
install another, then lower the jack again. 

Humping toward me over curling fern, 
a wooly bear caterpillar who knows inborn 
of construction, of transformation, 
who seems to say —

Welcome back to funky earth, 
to sawdust in nostrils, 
to splinters under fingernails, 
to blood-seeping scratches 
discovered in the shower. 

Welcome back to a world 
built better by your body.

Verse-Virtual 


Biscuit Love by Joan Leotta

Biscuits transubstantiate 
from buttermilk, Lily brand flour, 
Clabber Girl baking powder
into a heavenly delight.
First food passed
following prandial prayer
communion of love 
between baker and diner.

Plucking one, still warm
from the colored woven basket,
my fingers tingle.

Slowly I separate a
lightly crisp top half
from soft layers below 
on this bread of perfection.
Then tamp down a pat of 
real butter, swirl honey 
on each cloud-like half.
I sample, slowly, 
savor honey's thick
sweetness aided, 
indeed, abetted by the salty, 
creamy, butter beneath,
let my tongue capture each
tender biscuit crumb.
Edible perfection.

In a slightly different form it was selected for the Poetry in Public Places a few years ago in North Carolina and appeared on posters all over Winston Salem.

Encore Series

 Luanne Castle 

 

Every Object a Story

by Luanne Castle

Personal heirlooms speak to me, reminding me of memories that, while never gone, have floated to the bottom of the deep ocean of memory. Family heirlooms have their stories—stories which originated with other family members or ancestors. Every object can generate a poem, story, or essay. If you are interested in writing about objects with meaning to you and have not already discovered it, you will want to read Dawn Raffel’s The Secret Life of Objects.

I had a poem in my first book, Doll God, called “YouTube Interview of the Life-Sized Toddler Doll,” about a personal heirloom, the life-sized walking doll that my grandmother bought me with her store discount at Marshall Field’s flagstaff store at State and Washington in Chicago. I have kept the doll to this day. When my kids were young they believed she was alive. 

For this project, I decided to write about my aunt’s pearls, which arrived for my wedding when I hadn’t seen or heard from my aunt since I was five years old. I started this poem almost forty years ago, but never finished it until now. I wrote three new poems--about the snack bowls we used when I was a kid, the glass pitcher my grandmother poured potato pancake batter from, and the antique doll and rocker that belonged to this same grandmother. I write frequently about my maternal grandparents, but the grandmother in this batch of poems is my paternal Chicago-based grandmother. Clarification note: “Grandma’s Kestner Doll in the Oak Rocking Chair” is the doll Grandma bought for herself, whereas the doll in the YouTube poem is the one she bought for me.

Grandma’s Kestner Doll in the Oak Rocking Chair

I remember back so far 
my daddy plunked down
the little caned oak rocker
and the old-fashioned doll
with yellow hair sitting in it
in the corner by our couch.
Don’t touch. It’s Grandma’s.

I remember beginning school
and Daddy moved the chair
with the doll into my room
after I picked up my books
and tucked them on the shelf.
Be careful. The chair and doll
are very old and fragile.

I remember coming home 
for Christmas from college.
The doll in the chair back in
my parents’ larger living room.
She’ll be yours one day, Lu.
“One day” was never, at least
that’s how I felt at the time.

I remember years later 
opening a large UPS package
and pulling out the bubble-
wrapped chair. A box held
the doll in her hand-sewn dress.
The note in dad’s handwriting
said, They are yours now.

The doll had other outfits, all 
sewn by my grandmother. Long-
distance, Dad explained: growing
up, Grandma didn’t have a doll.
She bought her with her first pay.
This would have been in 1907,
living in a boarding house.

The sturdy little chair came from
the farmhouse. My baby grandson
rocks himself as if to blast off.
I tuck the doll into her tissue paper, 
overwhelmed with responsibility. 
Who will care for her as I can
when they never met Grandma.
 
Trying to Connect with Grandma Fifty Years Later
My grandmother cooked my favorite,
potato pancakes, crispy, not too thick.
She poured the batter from a bowl
I thought necessary for the process.
The milky green glass swirled
into a lip where the concoction slid
onto the sparking oil-sheened griddle.

I suspect my parents sold the bowl
when Grandma moved into a “home.”
What I recall is seeing her sad little
belongings—crocheted potholders
and scratched pans--on long tables 
in our garage for Saturday’s sale.
But I don’t think the bowl was there.
Or did I just not realize its importance?

Grandma was born next to a vineyard
in Rhineland and learned a potato batter
more like flour pancakes than latkes.
I pressed the memory of that green bowl
far down in my mind, along with many
from those days—until one day I didn’t.
Could I find that piece of my childhood?
There was my bowl online: a vintage 
Anchor Hocking jadeite Fire King
batter bowl. It’s in my cupboard now,
but I wish I had the recipe to go with it.

 
I Haven’t Seen Aunt Marge Since I was Five and Now I’m Thirty

Her patent leather eyes 
reflect me with visual acuity,
as if she can read my thoughts.
The puffs of white hair,
are the same we brushed
back five years before from 
Grandma's deathbed forehead.

Even her hands are her mother's--
small and round with tapered,
shiny fingers, dressed
up with rows of rings.
They pull and fuss at each other
like malcontented siblings.
They separate from her,
pale birds chattering in the air.

Why now? Why is she here
after a quarter century of silence?
For so long she was a silence
in our house, my father’s silence.
Cousin Leah whispered how Grandma
met her at the train station, 
but I had to keep it secret,
like a raw egg rattling in my mind.
My father’s anger might’ve cracked 
him and all around him into fragments.

The only sign she had sent me
during the reign of secrecy
was the strand of bridal pearls,
pallor-white, her mother gave to her 
years ago, now shared for my wedding.
Memories repeat out of order,
but we are not stringing them.
Rather we let them light as bubbles
on our shoulders, watch them dissolve. 


 
Estate Bowls

My husband calls to me in the kitchen
When you come this way, bring me 
popcorn in one of those estate bowls.
Someone who overhears might imagine
a Royal Doulton sprouting rosy roses.
Or perhaps pewter from the sixties.

Our estate bowls are faded melamine
speckled like our old kitchen linoleum.
They feature little melamine handles
to ease snacking for small fingers.
When my parents moved to a senior
community, Mom tossed them away.

To her they signified a time of her life
long past, but as I plucked them out, 
memories flooded me: fresh popped
corn or ice cream gooped with syrup,
the chocolate chips and baking walnuts
I snuck to my room and under my bed.

I also remembered shaking out BeMo 
potato chips for my first serious boyfriend, 
dabbing in a dollop of French onion dip.
The same “boy” now calls out to me
to pour him some low-cal Skinny Pop, 
the bowl a reminder of our shared history.


 
YouTube Interview of the Life-Sized Toddler Doll

Do I entrance you?
Do you think I'm adorable?
Watch these lids pop like shades over
my round baby blues.
Feel the spring of my mohair curl.

I belong to her but I own
her children.  When she's downstairs
I pop my lids just for them.
The little one laughs
with terror; her brother
bothered, retreats down
to his mother

who refuses to believe
I who once was her darling
would harm her darlings.

She dressed me in flower-
edged socks, and when she bent me
over to spank me,  a bouquet of lace
ruffles sprang from my seat.
Her granny sewed us matching
dresses--my kneeless legs
stiff under the crisp pink sateen,
her legs marred by red scabs
at the knees, her pink cotton
diminished with washes.  I held her
beauty, a flawless twin.

Now I sit on the rocking chair
in the guest room
signaling those who can see me,
forcing them to look into
the stones that are my eyes.
Look into my eyes.
See how it was for me, my history.