Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Llanera

I've recently taken to calling myself a llanera (girl of the llano). Growing up I knew I lived on the llano estacado. I knew I lived on the Staked Plains and I knew Coronado on his infamous and ultimately empty expedition in search of gold had come across the western plains of Texas and the eastern plains of New Mexico. They drove wooden stakes into these vast stretches of llano, otherwise they would be lost -- lost like Cabeza de Baca perhaps. I knew only the llano. I knew tornadoes in spring and ice and wind in winter. I knew to watch for rattlesnakes and porcupines.  I knew the smell of saddle soap and rich oats for the horses. I watched my dad fit horses for their shoes and I saw him fall and fall and fall every time we got a new horse -- a new, dangerous horse to break. I hung back, pretended not to be scared when the clouds churned or coyotes howled. I learned to be quiet and terrified. My dad? Well, he loved every single terrifying inch of the llano.

Breaking a Horse
                                    for Dad

Already sold,
you have no choice
but to hold;
and although fit with iron and leather,
he will not break.
Perhaps this is your first
mistake.

Hands knotted into an impossible shape
conceal their frailty
with tape.
Still, I am unable
to escape.
Caught in your grip
a calf in barbed-wire, to stand
is my only desire.

A rattlesnake coiled on a shimmering
rock
taking stock.

To attack or not?

The wound is not deep,
the poison is all we reap.

Quiet . . .
our secrets are back to sleep.

Necessary Break

This one caught my attention today while I was skimming my bookshelves. I admit I haven't read a lot of Adriennne Rich's work, but I do know the power and utter uselessness of the photograph.

"For an Album"

"Our story isn't a file of photographs
faces laughing under green leaves
or snowlit doorways, on the verge of driving
away, our story is not about women
victoriously perched on the one
sunny day of the conference,
nor lovers displaing love:

Our story is of moments
when even slow motion moved too fast
for the shutter of the camera:
words that blew our lives apart, like so,
eyes that cut and caught each other,
mime of the operating room
where gas and knives quote each other
moments before the telephone
starts ringing: our story is
how still we stood,
how fast."

-- Adrienne Rich

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Another one of my favorites, Part II

I was around 20 or 21 when "Il Postino" previewed in Amarillo or was it Austin? Austin seems like the more likely place.  Regardless it was Texas. George W. Bush was governor. I had no idea who Pablo Neruda was outside of the film. I left the theater, stopped at Hastings, bought the soundtrack and listened to different celebrities read all these poems. Then when I got to work, I looked up every Neruda book there was. I used my Barnes & Noble employee discount and read them all. Still I'm hungry for more.

"Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: 'La noche esta estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.'

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella tambien my quiso.

En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
Le bese tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo tambien la queria.
Como no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche inmensa, mas inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae el alma como al pasto el rocio.

Que importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche esta estrellada y ella no esta conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos aguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazon la busca, y ella no esta conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos arboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuanto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oido.

De otro. Sera de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo clara. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma  no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque este sea el ultimo dolor que ella me causa,
y estos sean los ultimos verso que yo le escribo."

-- Pablo Neruda from "Veinte Poemas de Amor y un Cancion Desesperada"

One of my Favorites, Part I

It was 1998 and I was living in Austin. I don't remember what kind of conference I was attending, but I remember driving to San Antonio with Sandy and I sat in this dark auditorium and watched Joy Harjo play the saxophone and read from her work. I had never heard any of it before and I loved watching her hands. I can never forget what I head and the way I heard words that night.

"I Give You Back"

"I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now, I don't know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of
my children.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my home, beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.

I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won't hold you in my hands.
You can't live in my eyes, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart   my heart

But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
                                             of dying."

-- Joy Harjo from "She Had Some Horses."

There's the Man in the Moon and There's the Rabbit in the Full Moon . . . Which do you see?

The geometry of your face


reveals a contradiction of lines and angles where
formulaic proofs collapse under the weight of your cheekbones so sharp
they betray pueblo blood old as the deserts of Chihuahua,
hard as mesquite,
beautiful as the waxy, yellow flowers
of a million nopales opening to a warm spring sunlight,
closing to a full rabbit moon. Your lines
me embrujan with words like knots too old to untie,
too brilliant to ignore.
Your raw corn stories haunt me, and I want to bring you into the rain
where your thirst will be quenched, your hunger
finally sated

This started out long and ended up quite brief . . .

Three Rounds
1.
We are the gap in our teeth –
almost there. I might swear
your hands once were serene,
offering respite from the fervor of the night
we stood thick as a swallowed sob,
solid against the ring and the blood it would bring.

2.
A knock to the jaw
and we became real as the grocery store candy I continue to steal.
Under the dingy light, your laugh
bit into the rich taste of each sustained hit.
A drop to the ground,
the clang of a bell and serenity fell.

3.
Delicate as the fine bone
of your familiar cheek, sixteen and anything but unique,
blood crystallized into sugar –
sweetened the bitter taste of innocence erased.
The law of fissure
made its first and final case; there were gloves to unlace.

I don't know about this one. I don't think I do a very good job of capturing this experience -- going to my first fight and watching my uncle get hit over and over again. I think I was four or five and I still can't get the smell of that gym out of my mind or the stickiness of the floor. Everything, the air, the floor, the lights was thick. Incomprehensibly and wordlessly thick.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Who knows the end of this?

The first time I read Homer's "The Odyssey" is lost. I know I liked its story. Penelope's tapestry, the songs of the Sirens will always be here with me. Much later, I read "The Iliad" and these words I loved even more.

"But it was shame and defilement Achilles
Had in mind for Hector. He pierced the tendons
Above the heels and cinched them with leather thongs
To his chariot, letting Hector's head drag.
He mounted, hoisted up the prize armor,
And whipped his team to a willing gallop
Across the plain. A cloud of dust rose
Where Hector was hauled, and the long black hair
Fanned out from his head, so beautiful once,
As it trailed in the dust. In this way Zeus
Delivered Hector into his enemies' hands
To be defiled in his own native land.

Watching this from the wall, Hector's mother
Tore off her shining veil and screamed,
And his old father groaned pitifully,
And all through the town the people were convulsed
With lamentation, as if Troy itself,
The whole towering city, were in flames.
They were barely able to restrain
The old man, frantic to run through the gates,
Imploring them all, rolling in the dung,
And finally making this desperate appeal:

'Please let me go, alone, to the Greek ships.
I don't care if you're worried. I want to see
If that monster will respect my age, pity me
For the sake of his own father, Peleus,
Who is about my age, old Peleus,
Who bore him and bred him to be a curse
For the Trojans, but he's caused me more pain
Than anyone, so many of my sons,
Beautiful boys, he's killed. I miss them all,
But I miss Hector more than all of them.
My grief for him will lay me in the earth.
Hector! You should have died in my arms, son!
Then we could have satisfied our sorrow,
Mourning and weeping, your mother and I."

The townsmen moaned as Priam was speaking.
Then Hecuba raised the women's lament:

"Hector, my son, I am desolate!
How can I live with suffering like this,
With you dead? You were the only hope
For Troy's men and women. They honored you
As a god when you were alive, Hector.
Now death and doom have overtaken you."

. . .

Then the old man, Priam, spoke to his people:

'Men of Troy, start bringing wood to the city,
And have no fear of an Argive ambush.
When Achilles sent me from the black ships,
He gave his word he would not trouble us
Until the twelfth day should dawn.'

He spoke and they yoked oxen and mules
To wagons, and gathered outside the city.
For nine days they hauled in loads of timber.
When the tenth dawn showed her mortal light,
They brought out their brave Hector
And all in tears lifted the body high
Onto the bier, and threw on the fire.

Light blossomed like roses in the eastern sky.

The people gathered around Hector's pyre,
And when all of Troy was assembled there
They drowned the last flames with glinting wine.
Hector's brothers and friends collected
His white bones, their cheeks flowered with tears.
They wrapped the bones in soft purple robes
And placed them in a golden casket, and laid it
In the hollow of the grave, and heaped above it
A mantle of stones. They built the tomb
Quickly, with lookouts posted all around
In case the Greeks should attack early.
When the tomb was built, they all returned
To the city and assembled for a glorious feast
In the house of Priam, Zeus' cherished king.

That was the funeral of Hector, breaker of horses."

-- Homer, The Iliad

I'll add this last note. Before anything else, there was always the name.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Half a decade in the making

Five years ago I flew to Amarillo.  My aunt Irma drove me to Lubbock. It was not far, an hour and a half -- 110 miles. It does not matter which measurement you prefer, time or space. I was too scared to drive. Too terrified I would die on the highway somewhere between these two Northwest Texas towns that are branded into me like the XIT into Panhandle cattle. You were faraway. Not with me, never with me. I hated you those days. I hated you. I hated Covenant Hospital. I hated the long nights. I hated the ocean water that swallowed up entire coasts in Indonesia, Thailand. For five years I tried to write this. It finally happened last August. And just a few weeks ago I drove without fear on New Mexico highways. It had been seven years since I got in a car and just drove on interstates, watching the landscape morph from southern New Mexico desert to eastern New Mexico llano. Death doesn't scare me anymore. It took you. You are there now. Along with so many other people I love. The empty llano doesn't scare me anymore either. I'll accept this brand. It is home.

New Mexico Homecoming


Fever brings the glitter of starlight.
Irises open to the night.
“Look in his eyes.”
And the doctors continue to advise.
Open and empty as the llano estacado,
we know.
The lines engraved deep
in our hands foretold this sleep.

Years of cotton and cattle are passed.
The unfamiliar work of silence and stillness is here at last.
“Listen,” I whisper, mouth against ear.
“The distant shadow of December is here.

The fields are red and bare;
our livestock was sold at the fair.
In Dilia, our families lay waiting for the story.
For you, we know, Texas is Purgatory.”

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Y . . .

a lesson in new world history



Your body
is a codex
unfolding beneath my hands –
a history of skin
revealed in hieroglyphs that cluster
like galaxies around a center too sacred to have
a single name.

At this moment,
you are sun, fire
and star
illuminating every corner of a dark
winter with your brilliant gaze.

Smooth as obsidian,
luminescent as silver,
you refuse easy translation.

One of the first members of my personal library

I worked at the Barnes & Noble in Amarillo when I was 18. I shelved books one night, and came across Simon Ortiz's After and Before the Lightening. I loved the cover. It was familiar. The winter plains of the Dakotas look so similar to the Texas Panhandle in January. From that collection, these lines:

Lightning IV

Why we should keep riding
toward the storm, we don't know.
It is right on the hills, short miles
away, the wind twisting the elms
furiously all along the road from Winner.
It is perhaps way past questioning,
past the moment when it's too late.
Our only certainty, when the horizon
is no longer clear, is our memory
of how our journey has been till now.
We bank on that as we watch the sky
and the prairie become knotted finally
into inexorable event. It is vast
and enormous before us, this knowledge
that we could have turned back and now
still could in fact before decision
is lost to us at last.

Yet there is
no such chance we give ourselves here.
The destiny on the unseen hills holds
us fatefully, and it doesn't really matter.
When we slow down on the thin strip
of the highway that is our lives,
the decision is now God's we believe.
The storm's spirit is brilliant fire
flickering deliciously on the horizon
that is no longer ours to reach for.

We don't know the storm anymore,
the fragile journey we yearned to take
homeward or away from it is ours now
because we cannot free ourselves from
where it enjoins us to place and place.
We do finally know why we don't turn
from danger or beauty or sadness or joy.
How completely we feel the tremoring
and shuddering pulse of the land now
as we welcome the rain-heart-lightning
into our trembling yearning selves.

-- Simon J. Ortiz

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

This one has taken some time

I have tried versions of this poem for over five years. It's strange how small words can take forever to find a home . . . even a temporary one.

February


Without us, the mirror is empty
there are no dimpled smiles –
no oversized ears
even our eyes have disappeared.

Our departure erased all traces of genetic precision,
only bare space remains
-- bare space and the reflection of a naked towel rack.

This is not how I mean to leave.
It is February and the wind is cold and brown;
too cold to move
a refrigerator or a stove.

Your birthday is so near.
I want to stand in front of the sink,
reach into the bitter mirror water, and fish us out –
bring us back to the speckled surface –
only the winter does not give –
we are fixed in its unmoveable
silence.

The spring will bring blooms of cheap
wine, fists against metal and glass as well as my first
confessions whispered before Mass.
Dad, I want to be through
except the reflection in the mirror is you.

Okay, so it's the middle of the day

In 1996, I was an undergraduate at West Texas A&M University. I took a general survey course on World Literature. Every day, I was becoming more determined to be an English major, and possibly do graduate work. When we read this poem in that course, I became a little more certain. Not completely certain, but closer to the idea of perhaps one day being a writer/academic myself. Beyond all those logistics was the simple reality that I loved this work. I loved the words, the sentiment, everything.

"There is No Word for Goodbye"

Sokoya, I said, looking through
the net of wrinkles into
wise black pools
of her eyes.

What do you say in Athabaskan
when you leave each other?
What is the word
for goodbye?

A shade of feeling rippled
the wind-tamed skin.
Ah, nothing, she said,
watching the river flash.

She looked at me close.
We just say, Tlaa. That means,
See you.
We never leave each other.
When does your mouth
say goodbye to your heart?

She touched me light
as a bluebell.
You forget when you leave us,
You're so small then.
We don't use that word.

We always think you're coming back,
but if you don't
we'll see you some place else.
You understand.
There is no word for goodbye.

-- Mary TallMountain

Monday, March 29, 2010

Y una mas . . .

I began this one at mass today. After several attempts I finished the poem and managed to fold my palms into three crucifixes.

Days of Lent


Lenten days are bare as church altares,
santos hidden beneath purple cloth.

I am hungry.

Four days ago, I awoke to snow and ice,
the sun weak behind steel cloud curtains.

Yesterday was bright with light,
the bend in my arms itched with sweat.

Shortened days have become long. Winter is done.
The ice has melted its last.

Tonight, the winds have knocked trash cans into empty streets.

Evergreens scratch against the bedroom window.
It is too hot for blankets, sand begins to coat the sill.
These early movements of spring are familiar as beauty
marks on your face.
I traced them once while you slept. The belt of Orion
moved when you laughed.

Palm Sunday brings red silk. I twist fronds into one
crucifix. Then another . . .
and another.

Next February, these palms will mark our foreheads,
the days of abstinence will begin again.
Except now, it is spring. Green dusts the bosque.

The fast is almost over.

I wait for resurrection.

Tonight . . . a love poem

Fundamentally I am a literature person, and what I learned first was the "canon." So from the canon (which of course I question the very notion of the word "canon) here is one of my favorites.

A Red, Red Rose

O my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thous, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
O I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And far thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my love,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

-- Robert Burns

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Lenten Days

For me, Lent occupies a place of both sadness and anticipation -- the end of winter, the beginning of spring. And always, always the wind here in Albuquerque, in El Paso, and in the llanos of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. El viento que nunca duerme.

"Lent in El Paso"

blows forty days
of dust-devils

lentil soup
capirotada

and the daily litany
of wind across the city.

Afternoons, the cottonwoods
tumble like sagebrush

the ocotillos creak
like crucifixes

and women walk
with their buttocks

tucked in tight
under their skirts.

All along the border
the river speaks

in wild tongues
the voices of the penitent

ululate in jail cells
and confessionals

and women weep
for their murdered sons.

At night the litany stills
on the branches and the grass

rises again, dazed
after the whipping

but stronger and more alive.
In El Paso the wind of Lent

blows forty faithful days
without contrition."


-- Alicia Gaspar de Alba

I love this poem. I come back to it every Lent and re-read and re-read. Gracias, Alicia.

Friday, March 26, 2010

And what got me through Wednesday Night

This is a passage from one of my favorite poems by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said), a Syrian poet living in Lebanon.

3

"Braid your hair, my boys, with greener leaves.
We still have verse among us.
We have the sea.
We have our dreams.
'To the steppes of China
we bequeath our neighing horses,
and to Georgia, our spears.
We'll build a house of gold
from here to the Himalayas.
We'll sail our flags in Samarkind.
We'll tread the treasured mosses
of the earth.
We'll bless our blood with roses.
We'll wash the day of stains
and walk on stones as we would walk on silk.

'This is the only way.
For this we'll lie with lightning
and anoint the midewed earth
until the cries of birth
resound, resound, resound.

'Nothing can stop us.
Remember,
we are greener than the sea,
younger than time.
The sun and the day are dice
between our fingers.'

Under the exile's moon
tremble the first wings.
Boats begin to drift
on a dead sea, and siroccos
rustle the gates of the city.
Tomorrow the gates shall open.
We'll burn the locusts in the desert,
span the abyss
and stand on the porch
of a world to be.

'Darkness,
darkness of the sea,
be filled with the leopard's joy.
Help us to sacrifice,
name us anew.
The eagle of the future waits,
and there are answers in its eyes.

'Darkness,
darkness of the sea,
ignore this feast of corposes.
Bring the earth to blossom
with your winds.
Banish plague and teach the very rockas
to dance and love.'

The goddess of the sand prostrates herself.
Under the brichthorn
the spring rises like clocynth from the lips
or life from the sea.
We leave the captive city
where every lantern is a church
and every bee more sacred than a nun."

Excerpted from "Elegy for the Time at Hand"

I read the first stanza of this poem over and over again. "Walk on stones as we would walk on silk." What could be more beautiful than that string of words?

Desire at the Sub-Atomic Level

Desire at the Sub-Atomic Level

is like an onion
each layer thicker
more pungent
than the last
except here
there is no core --
no definite place of being
only waves
of energy
crashing against a non-existent shore
like your mouth
against my neck
leaving bruises I love
more than myself

where is there more violence than this?

the sear
of your glare
reduced twenty-four years of my life
to nothing
but blurry shadow

one look and everything familiar
became ash
bitter and soft
on this tongue
that has split
me a thousand times
releasing a power
I never knew I had