From every human being
there rises a light
that reaches straight to heaven.
And when two souls
that are destined to be together
find each other,
their streams of light flow together,
and a single brighter light goes forth
from their united being.
(Today’s poem is in the public domain, belongs to the masses, and appears here today accordingly.)
The Baal Shem Tov: Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer (d.1760), often called the Baal Shem Tov, was a Jewish mystical rabbi. He is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism. (Annotated biography of the Baal Shem Tov courtesy of Wikipedia, with edits.)
Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is a quote from the Baal Shem Tov that gives rise to the age old question: What is poetry? If poetry is beautiful lyric that speaks to the human condition, that considers love with eloquence and a care for words and ideas, today’s quote is most certainly that. Today’s post is dedicated to my husband, with whom I am beginning a journey as a “united being.” May we shine brightly together from our single light.
At the edge of an island, shore
shave to bedrock, bulwarked
by tide, sweat clouded our eyes,
our bodies disguised in the markings
of plague. Gauze of darkened fog
uncurled a taste of sweet rot
from burning cane. We heard wind
splitting stalks across fields,
heard hard-breathing horses dragging
wooden wheels over sand and gravel
as we lay in sheds like spent animals.
Inside this other island, one voice
among us spoke of God and the devil
as one faultless being, spoke of dawn
gathering light from great distances,
from each border we crossed,
the single body of us yet to rise
past these walls into a lowering sky.
***
Serenade
If I could invent anything with words,
with music, I would be with you.
It’s Christmas, and the rains are chilled
by gusts from icy shores. I think
of places where war has taken our world
into fire. God turns from such agonies,
human, desperate. I ask only you, will you
take my hand, leave your home? I don’t have
much time. Soon I’ll be sent to another island,
or to a city in Europe where snow falls on starving
men. I offer very little. I’ve worn the same shoes
for seven years. Damp cold is always lifting
through the soles of my feet. I walk past
your window, shuttered. Your father refuses
the sight of me. If this war ends, wait for me
at the cove where we met, where waves
roar in with courage, recede in fear. Wait
on the hot sands during summer where you never
wear your white ruffled dresses. Kiss me
there, or glimpse my dark form passing you, gone.
***
Swipe Wine
Kahului Camp, Maui, 1924
Molasses, water, and yeast turned
clear as gin bottled and buried
in dirt floors of quonsets under cots.
In this wine, a numbed delay
of pain to the backs of field hands
from black snake whips of lunas.
Songs of blood thirst rang, drunken
rage in the camps rose as workers
circled in revenge, one blow given
for each bear mark on torso, on limb.
Weeks without rain, cane brittle
as kindling, they pulled the luna
off his horse as shade deepened
toward evening, beat him through
drifts of dust, ten pounds
of stalks dropped on the body,
flame lit in the coming night, winds
carrying thick smoke muffling the cry
of a man gone missing, the singing
drowning the sound of the sea: Watch me flee, I am done,
I am done cutting cane.
***
Karen Carissimo was born in Berkeley, California, and educated at Mills College and The University of Southern California. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Western Humanities Review, American Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Puerto del Sol. Her fiction has appeared in Green Mountains Review, and her nonfiction in The San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is currently at work on a novel and a second collection of poems. The above poems appear in her debut collection, Dream City.
In the bleak hours of an afternoon in Spain,
I sprung free from my grandpa’s kitchen,
the smells of peppermints and pears, and headed
to town for an afternoon of people watching.
The streets were hand-cut paper forests, flush
with tawny kids in flat sandals and psychedelic
friendship bracelets. Feminine footwear obsessives
in custom-made minis smoothed on rice vapor
lotion, delicate contessas fit for a summer wedding,
see-through and filigreed. I dreamed of leaving home
for an evening at the Tropicana, sexy and dazzling
in a glamorous dress—understated, ethnic girl
plucked from an under-the-radar haven; someone’s
graceful holy grail, soft ephemera on his fingers.
SUMMER
I could write a paper on the topic of lip balms,
groovy grandma that I am. With ’60s playfulness
and a flapper’s flounce, I stick to the Great Gatsby,
intensive scalp treatments, and statement-making
tchotchkes. Cat boxes and flea markets don’t
satisfy me; I roll around in sea foam suede, take my
Rolls Royce on an unexpected trek around Morocco.
I’m more of a jump-or-you’ll-miss-it haute hippie,
a sucker for patent trim and embroidered-in-Bali
sequined corsets. I’m looking for a biker-gone-boho
grandpa—rugged but genteel, with an air of London
street-cool—for stomping through exotic gardens,
splurging on tie-dyed wedding cake. Two spicy,
rock-and-roll piglets rubbing bohemian noses.
VANESSA
How often can you wear a bleeding heart
and get away with it? I spend most of my time
getting calls from complete strangers who want
to run around with a Fitzgerald heroine, architectural
and sweet, unbearably twee—or an unstoppable
rock star, a morbid candy-colored centerpiece,
loose and right at home in a disheveled bed.
I step into another world and feel like nothing;
off-hours, I’m a timid violet with a limp handshake
that peeks out of my coat sleeves. No one ever
detects the potential of a wispy girl lost in her clothes,
so I audition for drama, slip on some sugar. The line
between adorable and alarming gets thin, thin, thin.
I slouch and watch the layers flutter, lit from within.
Today’s poems are from the forthcoming Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, Fall, 2013), and appear here today with permission from the poet and the press.
About the Book:Getting Lucky is a collection of sonnets culled from the editorial copy of Lucky, a newsstand publication about shopping and style. By adopting the magazine’s gendered and glossy language, Nicole’s poems explore contemporary ideals of beauty and femininity, as well as female-specific narratives we see in media, culture, and everyday life.
Editor’s Note: Let’s Get Lucky! It’s a beautiful love story. A small press dedicated to publishing women poets meets the kind of witty, thoughtful, cheeky gal whose poems literally step out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Both are determined to give voice to the underrepresented. In seeking out a luminary to spearhead today’s female poetry contingent, the publisher finds a poetess who brings the cultural misogyny inherent in today’s society to its knees. While wearing a fabulous pair of heels.
The arts, in America today, are in grave peril. Poetry in particular is under-read and scathingly underrated. A Corporatocracy is on the rise, and the core of humanity is being marginalized. There is no money in art, and less money for the arts. Those of us who write poetry, who publish poetry, do so out of pure love and unwavering passion. We depend on our community for support—to read our work and to enable its very existence.
Getting Lucky is a fantastic, cutting-edge book that critiques the culture of fashion and shallow materialism by giving feminism a whole new meaning. Spooky Girlfriend Press is a self-described “tiny two-person operation” with huge vision and an impressive track record of publishing forward-thinking, critically-acclaimed works. The two have come together to make magic, to make dreams come true, and they need your help.
Via Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform that empowers ideas, Spooky Girlfriend Press has started a campaign to fund the making of Getting Lucky. Take a stand for art today. Show the world that poetry matters. Help the voiceless sing from the rooftops. Our government is not going to do it. Big corporations are not going to do it. It is you—readers of poetry, writers of poetry, lovers of the underdog, believers in vision and heart—who are going to make the difference. Donate to this campaign today and let’s Get Lucky!
Nicole Steinberg is the author the forthcoming collection Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013) and Birds of Tokyo (dancing girl press, 2011), and the editor of Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011). She is also the founder and former curator of Earshot, a New York reading series for emerging writers. She hails from Queens, New York and currently lives in Philadelphia.
Constitutionality of Recent SCOTUS Decisions — DOMA and Voting Rights
by Matthew Nelson
The Supreme Court has been getting a lot of attention lately. With the deluge of end-of-term decisions over, it seems everyone is taking turns surveying the damage. But while most commentators ask “helping-or-hurting” questions – How big of a setback was the Prop 8 ruling for marriage traditionalists? Did racism win the day at the University of Texas? – I want to draw attention to a different set of questions raised by two of the year’s biggest decisions. These decisions, on gay marriage and voting rights respectively, offer an excellent opportunity to revisit our government’s famed system of “checks and balances” and ask just what we expect the various branches to do to get along.
In United States v. Windsor, the Court struck down a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that prevented even already-married same-sex couples from receiving the benefits of a federally acknowledged marriage. It did so because it found that the law violated the so-called “due process clause” of the Fifth Amendment. So far, so good – this much accords well with our ordinary conception of how the federal government works – the legislature enacts laws, and the judiciary reviews their constitutionality. But in order to get to a place where they could even rule on DOMA’s constitutionality, the Court first had to answer a strange procedural question – was there even a real case to decide?
The problem was that the two sides seemed to agree on the correct ruling. Both the plaintiff, Edith Windsor, and the defendant, the U.S. Government (as represented by its Executive Branch), agreed that the law was unconstitutional. Accordingly, Ms. Windsor ought to be entitled to a refund of more than $350,000 in taxes that she was forced to pay on the estate of her deceased spouse, Thea Spyer, because under DOMA her same-sex marriage did not qualify her for surviving-spouse tax exemption. This led Justice Scalia, in oral arguments, to ask why the case had made it to the Supreme Court at all. What made it different from a debt-related lawsuit where the debtor agrees he owes money but just refuses to pay? In that case, there is no case – the debtor owes the money, no questions asked.
But the Executive Branch disagreed…kind of. Although they refused to defend DOMA’s constitutionality, they insisted on enforcing it and requested that the Court continue with the case as if everything were normal. However, because the Executive refused to defend the law, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group from the House of Representatives had to step in instead. Their representative, Paul Clement, pointed out that this convoluted scheme had already led at the District Court level to “the most anomalous motion to dismiss in the history of litigation: A motion to dismiss, filed by the United States, asking the district court not to dismiss the case.” Justice Kennedy noted that that is enough to “give you intellectual whiplash.” Indeed.
From here things return back to normal. The Court decided to look past the legal acrobatics necessary to keep the case alive, and went on to strike down DOMA’s key provision. But let’s not follow them there. The behavior of the Executive Branch should give us pause. The Executive argued that it had a constitutional duty to uphold and enforce duly enacted laws, such as DOMA. On the other hand, it did not believe DOMA itself to be constitutional. What this leaves us with is a contradiction: a claimed constitutional duty to uphold an unconstitutional law.
This goes against not only logic, but also the intent of our “Founding Fathers” in drafting the Constitution. As Akhil Reed Amar notes in his detailed “biography” of the Constitution:
Accustomed as we are to seeing the judiciary – particularly, the Supreme Court – as the sole and unique interpreter of the Constitution, many modern Americans might bridle at the idea that the framers envisioned the president as America’s first magistrate, with important and independent authority to construe and defend the Constitution. Yet even Court-centered observers should recall that a president’s principled refusal to enforce a law that he in good faith and after careful consideration deemed unconstitutional could often be the vehicle for bringing an issue before the courts…Even if the case could otherwise reach the judiciary, a henchman president executing congressional orders that he believed unconstitutional would often be placing an expensive burden of initiating litigation upon an innocent private party rather than upon a powerful (and to the president’s mind, offending) legislature.
Readers sympathetic to President Obama might balk at the idea of calling him a “henchman president.” After all, he and Congress are not always on the best of terms. We can even come up with a number of sound political reasons why he might have done as he did. Perhaps further antagonizing Congress would have cost him more political capital than it was worth, especially given that he anticipated that the Court would set things straight. But this strategy ought at least to give us pause. Do we want a president who bends over backwards to have his cake and eat it too, even at the possible expense of basic constitutional justice? On the other hand, we may not want the alternative renegade president who loses his legitimacy in the eyes of Congress.
The question may not be as simple, moreover, as whether or not the president lacks “the courage of his convictions,” as the Chief Justice put it. We might understand Obama’s actions here as a good-faith attempt to respect the will of the people. Obama is but one man, while the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the (Democrat) president who signed DOMA into law were many. To refuse to enforce a duly enacted law might seem hubristic, not only to Obama, but to the American electorate as a whole. And here is where we must face the difficult questions entailed in the separations of powers. If we laud Obama’s support of gay rights, must we also laud his bow to Congress? Just how independent do we want the Executive and the Legislative Branches to be?
Thankfully, we don’t have to (or perhaps, frustratingly we don’t get to) approach these questions in the isolation of a single case. Another major ruling, Shelby County v. Holder, also raises questions about deference and political strategizing between branches. In Shelby, the Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which defined certain districts that would be required to get approval from the federal government before making any changes to voting procedures to make sure the changes were not racist (either in intention or in effect). Only the formula for determining which districts were covered was struck down, the actual pre-approval process (Section 5) was left unchallenged. The problem, as the Court saw it, was that the formula was outdated. It did not include states or counties based on the discrimination they were guilty of now, but on discrimination at play in 1964. According to the majority’s mantra, the law “imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”
Many have noted that this effectively cuts the legs out from under Section 5. An op-ed for The New York Times nicely summarizes one common understanding of the Court’s ruling: “The court pretends it is not striking down the act but merely sending the law back to Congress for tweaking; it imagines that Congress forced its hand; and it fantasizes that voting discrimination in the South is a thing of the past.” That the ruling deals a major, perhaps mortal, blow to Section 5 is obvious and not very controversial. What is striking is that everyone seems to agree that this fact is relevant to the ruling – not just that the Court knew it, but that it should have acted differently for that reason.
Let’s consider the implications of this carefully. In effect, such a stance suggests that not only should the Court consider each part of a law separately to determine its validity, it should also take into account likely political fallout in Congress of the decision. If it did so in this case, it would see that Congress would likely never agree on a new formula for Section 4. Accordingly, it should have decided that the need for an effective Section 5 was great enough that Section 4 should not be examined at all, because to do so would jeopardize Section 5. I don’t want to suggest that this reasoning is necessarily wrong. I only want to emphasize the extent of its implications and just how far it deviates from the normal picture of an autonomous Court that coolly and judiciously picks apart laws to determine where, if at all, they fail a constitutional test.
Of course, it is possible that Section 4 is constitutional on its own grounds, but most critical attention has conspicuously avoided that question and relied on a logic similar to the one above (an exceptional case, that perhaps comes close to establishing Section 4’s constitutionality, but tellingly fails to even mention it, can be found here). Let us also bear in mind that many who hold this position, including Justice Ginsburg in her dissenting opinion, are at pains to mention just how close to unanimity Congress came in 2006 when renewing the Voting Rights Act, and how diligently they pursued renewal. This deference to Congressional consensus is tricky, because it leads in the opposite ideological direction in the DOMA case.
This is why it is important that we see these cases as more than just isolated moments that help or hurt our favorite causes. They are also part of the much larger, on-going processes of Supreme Court jurisprudence and federal governance. There is a wide variety of stances we can take – from three branches with blinders on, each ignoring the other, to everyone bowing to Congress unless their job description explicitly tells them to do otherwise. The proper solution is probably somewhere in the middle, but it is worth our discussing how we should figure out where.
***
Matthew Nelson is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois. His interests range from Modern Sanskrit to Martin Heidegger, but his dissertation focuses on translation as a form of cultural memory in contemporary India.
roses, black birds rising
from the Live Oak. How the children
ran alongside as they drove past, waving.
The open windows. A man with a camera,
an umbrella
that opened. A raincoat. In the car,
her body covered with bone,
hair. The bright pink suit against the gray
November. And all that red inside her hands.
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2012 Perugia Press Award, and of The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College. She is currently at work on a memoir about adoption and the foster care system, What Took You So Long.
Editor’s Note: There is a certain ease in the presentation of today’s subject matter that makes the devastation somehow more powerful. A softness in the notion of “The bright pink suit against the gray / November” that at once heightens and dulls the impact of the poem’s final blow. It is as if the poem is a grenade exploding flowers.
all teeth and hot,
wet breath stomping about
on my new-found squatness.
My body was torpid, outward elbows
moving skyscrapers, that
scene in a nightmare
where the director Slows. Everything. Down. for effect.
But then, everything
was vibrant, crashing
and I was alive
mud-yellow ivories snapping shut
on the rubber tent stake
of a flamingo leg,
feathers muffling the splintering noises,
crumpling pink and red on my tongue.
***
Jessica Dawson is a modern-day Wendy. She lives in California with Peter Pan, a baby bear, and a future Supreme Court justice. She’s ecstatic to see her first book of poetry now e-published by Verve Bath Press/ Words Dance.
She has had poems published in Thunder Sandwich, The Hold, Passenger May, killpoet, Words Dance, remark., The Seed, MEAT, Triptyph Haiku, Lit Vision, Mastodon Dentist, Nefarious Ballerina, The Montucky Review, Red Fez and Slurve Magazine. Download your copy of her book here.
The long national nightmare is finally over—or, if “nightmare” is too strong a word, then at least the really bad national daydream. The final Twilight movie has been released. Audiences horrified at sparkling vampires and angst-ridden teen melodramas can now safely consign both books and movies to the oblivion they deserve. Already the bookshelves at Wal-Mart have removed their depressing shelves filled with teen vampire romances. Still, with the nostalgia industry being what it is, perhaps the memory of these trying times will never entirely go away. Certain consequences will endure—sometimes even personal consequences.
Some time ago my younger brother Nick approached me with intriguing news. He had, apparently, read a book. “Not just a book, either,” he said to me, “but an entire series!” Suitably impressed, I naively asked which series. As a doctoral student in English literature, you see, I had several times over the years suggested books that he might like, but I gave Nick up for lost after he ignored even Harry Potter. So I was curious to see what great piece of literature had finally broken through to him—what stunning plot, which colorful character had finally reached through to someone bibliophobic since being forced to symbolism-hunt The Scarlet Letter in high school?
My brother beamed at me. “Twilight by Stephanie Meyers,” he said.
Not literally the entire series, he hastened to assure me before I could disown him. He’d only read the final three books of the tetralogy. The first Twilight movie had utterly absorbed him, for whatever reason. He could not wait until the release of the second movie, so he decided to turn to the books. (No need to read the first book, he patiently explained, seeing as how he’d just seen the movie.) Habitual book readers will understand what my brother felt, though—that keyed up feeling of gotta find out what happens next.
Typically, we call such books “page-turners,” and such experiences usually drive our love of reading. Movies much more rarely facilitate that what-happens-next? experience, however. First, movies almost never come out in a series. (Sequels do not count.) Second, and more importantly, movies tend to rigidly control the viewing experience. Books are page-turners because readers know that faster reading will get them to the end quicker. Films offer no such incentive; they are inflexible in their refusal to give up control to the reader. Thus we might say that books are a liberal democracy while movies are a totalitarian regime. So I could scarcely believe that my brother received a book-reading experience from a (mediocre) film.
My shock worked on a number of other levels as well, which leads to why I think this incident so revealing about contemporary notions of American masculinity. Cutting down to the heart of the issue, Twilight is a romance novel. You know, the genre of heaving bosoms, restless passions, excessive adverbs, etc. Judging by the covers of the newest books, the genre plays a little more subdued now than in its Fabio days, but the basic formula of a woman finding fulfillment through a relationship with a man remains the same. More importantly, romance is a female oriented genre. The first mass market publishers began distributing romance novels in supermarkets and drugstores precisely because it was easier to reach the “bored housewife” demographic that way, and feminism has done little to change the basic selling patterns. The success of 50 Shades of Grey—originally fan fiction for Twilight—in fact pays tribute to the generic roots of its parent. The Stephanie Meyers novels had created a teenage market for romance, and now that audience—older and more mature—has contributed to the success of the Twilight imitators.
And Twilight’s romantic roots are what make my brother’s literary revelation so startling. Nick is a guy. Not only that, but he’s a guy’s guy. While the Romance Writers of America (RWA) reports that more men are reading romance fiction than ever before (about 9% of the total romance audience in 2012), the genre nonetheless remains strongly gender specific. Does Nick feel embarrassed about liking a convoluted, cardboard, conventional teen romance? Apparently not in the least. When I tried to explain why Twilight was so bad, Nick cut me off and excitedly began a plot synopsis. This coming from someone who in his younger days was the quintessential clubber and male socialite! Although he never drinks, he dances well and dresses even better. Like other suburban white boys, he loves hip hop. Girls often find him irresistible. Even now that he has turned 30, he is most comfortable with people in their 20s. I have often been amazed at how positively people respond to him. He rarely meets anyone he dislikes. My little brother is a charming, gregarious crossbreed between Will Rogers and the Backstreet Boys.
Guys are not supposed to like romances. The general “go to” stereotype of masculinity entails watching ESPN or sports, drinking beer (or drinking beer as a sport), tinkering with cars or motorcycles, or venturing forth into lush woodland areas to shoot at Bambi’s mother. Any random survey of the History Channel’s programs will show anyone “typical” guy behavior. (Good luck finding any actual history on there, though.) Granted, general notions of masculinity have shifted over the last few decades. Toby Maguire has replaced Sylvester Stallone as the conventional Hollywood action hero, and nowadays only video games and toys have those hyper-muscled sorts of heroes. What does not go into this general image of male-ness, however, is novel reading.
Even stranger is that my brother—like myself—grew up in an area of the country where standardized notions of masculinity hold great sway. Western Pennsylvania is a predominantly working class area on the fringes of the Rust Belt. Sports and drinking are our largest community-building activities. When Art Modell, owner of the Cleveland Browns, moved the team to Baltimore in 1995, the event marked something like a regional tragedy. Likewise with Lebron James—who had temporarily made Cleveland basketball a national force—deciding to “take his talents to South Beach.” Our population, additionally, is rapidly aging. Many of our young people leave to more economically flourishing areas as soon as they are adults. Now that I no longer live in Pennsylvania, my facebook newsfeed is my primary way of keeping in touch with people from home. Overwhelmingly, their posts are about the Browns or the Pittsburgh Steelers or some other sporting events. To complete the standard stereotypes, western PA is also even one of the best places in the country to hunt deer.
Given such an area, it seems perfectly rational that my brother never became a novel reader (and perfectly odd that I did). Once, a long time ago, I stumbled upon a marketing website that offered to “define” any area for prospective businessmen. You simply type in the zip code and it provides the three most popular activities. One of the things that Western PA excelled in, apparently, was “video games.” Then out of curiosity I entered in “90210.” Interestingly enough, Beverly Hills emphatically did not excel at video games. This could have given us some regional pride, I suppose, as it is nice to excel at something. Still: video games, sports, drinking. These are the pensions of a rust-riddled region populated by blue-collar workers. The nearby city of Youngstown—a miniature Detroit, semi-abandoned, which was once known for its levels of mafia-related crime—has a small theater and a few other outlets for “high culture,” but generally such things are not typical for us. The book culture does not flourish to any exceptional degree. There are small pockets, of course, but never to the extent of any of the college towns I have lived in.
As such, although I complained about my brother reading Twilight of all things, I was nonetheless secretly happy that he had read anything at all. Any books, even bad books, are good for people. But I also felt real surprise at how much he actually enjoyed the series. When I asked my brother for an explanation, his answer was both obvious and enlightening. “Yeah, Dennis, but the books had good plots. They kept me interested. I wanted to find out what happened next.” And that was all he felt needed to be said.
Those are important sentiments, I think, and they show how our stereotypes of “masculinity” often fail to live up to the richer and more complex reality of maleness. Yes, my brother likes sports and clubs and poker. And yes, apparently, he also somehow likes a cheesy teenage romance novel. Growing up, both of us knew our fair share of working-class sports junkies, and today they’ve become adults with families and political passions. (Indeed, most of the conservatives I know today were high school classmates.)
But the stereotypes—as stereotypes always do—fall short, as the case with my brother shows. It is altogether too easy, sometimes, to attribute a fondness for ESPN and deer-hunting with a certain type of masculinity, ignoring how our categories are never really set in stone. Room exists for Twilight. Since that experience, my brother has ventured out into other books, and he recently bought a Kindle. Does he feel himself any less of a guy? I have never bothered to ask him because I knew he would find the question ridiculous. He likes what he likes, tending to follow his instincts in such matters. This is a healthy attitude, I feel. And, personally, seeing his example helps me avoid the various prejudices that evolve when all one’s friends are graduate students or university affiliated. And his attitude helps me remember that even a book-lover like myself, who no longer remains passionate about sports, can still feel a special knife-twist when the Baltimore Ravens win the latest Super Bowl, even eighteen years after Art Modell stole our football team.
***
Dennis Wilson Wise is a PhD student in English at Middle Tennessee State University.
Tear the line into pieces.
Open it out:
Let silence be
part of all that must be
said.
I can’t. I can’t.
It looks so disorganized. I want
to move it like furniture
back into place.
It’s a curse, your obsession for order,
my lover says, wanting me
wild—
So, to justify myself, I point out
that light in the night sky
may be traveling, but the stars stay
where they are.
Or do they?
What if some night Cassiopeia
fell apart,
splashed down like water?
What use the well-appointed bed,
the vacuumed rug,
the alphabetically arranged books
if a star came splashing down
like water, fiery water,
burning everything in its path?
All my molecules about to scatter—
just the thought of it makes me clutch
the sheets, press myself into the mattress—
but ah, the wonder of it, to be
moving inside my lover’s
arms then, any second bound
to explode—
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Lynn Knight‘s fourth collection, Again, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2009. Her previous collections are Dissolving Borders (Quarterly Review of Literature), The Book of Common Betrayals (Bear Star Press), and Night in the Shape of a Mirror (David Robert Books), plus three award-winning chapbooks. A cycle of poems on Impressionist winter paintings, Snow Effects (Small Poetry Press), has been translated into French by Nicole Courtet. Knight’s awards include a Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, an NEA grant, and the 2009 RATTLE Poetry Prize. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Editor’s Note: The desire for order and the need to control. So tempting. And yet, what control have we in the face of nature? In the face of love? We can try to keep this life as tidy as we like, but what use are our efforts in the face of a falling star? From the macro to the meta, today’s poem takes us on a wild journey through the mind of a poet who struggles against the wild, only to succumb to the wonder of what is beyond her control.
Acerca de mi costumbre de leer varios libros simultáneamente, consigo dos en el mismo período de tiempo y los leo en forma alternada hasta finalizarlos en lo posible en la misma fecha. Es decir, mi cabeza ronda esas dos lecturas por unas semanas, incluyendo muchas veces una vuelta y releída de secciones de mi interés y anotaciones de reflexiones. Por lo general los libros no se vinculan uno con otro en tema o en estilo, más bien intento sean diferentes. Sin embargo en esta oportunidad a pesar de la divergencia encontré -y fue mi motivación a escribir sobre ello- una cercanía respecto del uso del espacio de las personas, en un ejemplo tan primitivo, limitado físicamente y discutiblemente necesario: la casa.
Casa. ruca. huaca. maison. house. haus. ev. huis. domus. oikos…etc.
Edificación material donde viven una o más personas. Lugar donde abrigarse del inmenso exterior abrasivo y permitir el interior abrazador.
***
Interior/ exterior.
Aquel que está afuera quiere entrar, el que está adentro quiere salir. Le agrego: lo que está en el medio quiere existir.
La casa ofrece un lugar seguro fuera de los espacios de encierro que por lo general comprimen demasiado: sea oficina, hospital, cárcel, la sociedad parece volverse individuo entre una continuidad de paredes familiares. Las paredes de mi cuarto me recuerdan quien soy cada mañana al despertar; el tapiz colorido que en ella colgué rememora mi viaje a Machu Picchu, la mirada congelada de un Jimi Hendrix con sombrero de ala ancha flota en ese aire, mis auriculares desde un clavo penden y serpentea su cable largo hasta la alfombra del piso; ahí mismo descansan mis botas negras que me llevaron por estrechas calles del afuera el día anterior. Para el interior elijo pies descalzos y la comodidad de saber que cuento con mis dedos para patear segmentos de espacio; desde el cuarto hasta la cocina, desde la cocina hasta el baño, desde el baño hasta la cocina y vuelta al dormitorio. Sin más que ascender a los extremos del cielo raso, ahora estoy en mi pieza tomando mate y contra la ventana se fuman las horas.
***
Privada propiedad/ público impropio
Existe un carácter urgente y determinante del anhelo de la clase obrera por ser propietario de una casa. En esta fracción social se incluye tanto el pequeño burgués, el proletariado, los artesanos, maestros, muchos más y varios conocidos míos. Todos ellos en una sociedad donde el perfeccionamiento de la tecnología priva de trabajo a multitudes de obreros generando un gran ejército de desocupados y por otro lado echa a la calle periódicamente a grupos de trabajadores que se amontonan en los márgenes de las ciudades. Y como esto sucede mucho más a prisa de lo que se edifica para ellos, entonces siempre es fácil encontrarse arrendatarios para las más feas locaciones. El dueño de una casa tiene el derecho y hasta el deber de exigir sin consideración los precios de alquileres más elevados para su inmueble. De este modo deviene que el problema de la vivienda no es producto del azar, es necesario, con sus varias repercusiones directas, por ejemplo sobre la salud del que alquila la pocilga.
Cabe mencionar, que es además oportuno, participar a la tierra donde se construye una casa y reposa al menos unos 100 años. Imaginarse solo que cantidad de personas podría habitar en el pasar de los años los espacios de una sola casa, por supuesto tomaría muchísimas lunas.
***
Orientación / desorientación
Ahora salgo un poco de las ciudades. Fuera de ellas las personas pertenecen a la tierra, y la única forma que tiene la gente de conservar la tierra es pisándola, porque si no se vuela. Como el campo abierto no entiende de renta y uso del suelo, se deja adornar y equipar para que el ser y estar de un grupo humano produzca y siga adelante.
Es común observar en el campo dos tipos de casas, la nueva de techo a dos aguas, revoque liso y urbano; la otra casa, vieja con paredes construidas de adobe, techo de ramas y barro. Muy claro observo, la artesanal representa el pasado, la nueva el presente, una copia de la ciudad llevada al campo. Las de adobe parecen devenir espontáneas, entonces se orientan a protección del viento, buscando la mayor iluminación del sol. Las casas nuevas se instalan de acuerdo al capricho de algún personaje político con ganas de seguir la ruta que viene desde la ciudad, como si hubiera sido remolcada desde allí con la intencionalidad del momento y luego olvidada.
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Entrada/ salida
El marco y la puerta. Arco que anuncia los limites de un espacio a otro y obliga a decidir cual dirección tomar, hacia el interior o hacia el exterior. Ya no se trata de una edificación, es un espacio libre pero estrictamente regulado, hasta con medidas estándar de 1.20 cm. por 2 metros aproximadamente. La puerta no es muro, la puerta es flexible se abre se cierra, se entorna, cuantas veces se quiera. Por eso en el marco, el espacio libre, su puerta no molesta, hasta en muchos lugares es vaivén o de vidrio, tiende a desaparecer, parece ser solo un accesorio.
Me vienen a la mente los desgastados candados que cierran algunas grandes puertas en la ciudad de La Paz o en Cuzco, frente a la Plaza de Armas. Puertas resueltas en madera sin picaportes, solo cerrojo y gigantes candados, donde esto solo es el aviso de presencia o ausencia del alguien en su interior.
…luego vuelvo del viaje casero, como despertada suavemente por un golpeteo y pienso: -quien vendrá a llamar a mi puerta?-
***
Lecturas referenciales:
La poética de espacio. Gastón Bachelard. (1957)
Contribución al problema de la vivienda. F. Engels. (1873)
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Sobre Pat Moggio:Nació en Patagonia Argentina, libre escritora de poesía y prosa desde niña. Leyó en vivo en ámbitos underground, realizó suelta de libros espontáneas en estaciones de bus, tradujo letras para música, redactó notas de prensa musical y para revistas digitales sobre temas culturales. Bailarina, exploradora de diversas técnicas, dio clases y participó en performances y flash mobs. En paralelo estudió y trabajó en gestión de turismo cultural. Viajó como mochilera por parte de Sudamérica participando en proyectos voluntarios. Actualmente vive en San Telmo, Buenos Aires, escribe y proyecta improvisación de danza contemporánea con músicos experimentales. http://residualplan.tumblr.com/
Who sells used sex toys at a garage sale?
I knew I had to pull over
as soon as I saw that table full of dildos
just to hear this woman’s story
A whole bed was for sale
and a claw-footed bathtub
a motorcycle, a large stack of books
lingerie and ten photo albums
Photo albums?
Leafing through, I could see that they were all
happy couple love photos:
their trip to Hawaii
backpacking through Europe
mountain climbing in Tibet
And I shouldn’t forget to mention all of the love notes
three huge cardboard boxes full of them. I picked one up: I stood outside your window for hours last night
while you were sleeping
hoping you would feel me there, and pull open the curtain
I approached her as she sat by the cash box
wearing a pair of oversized pink sunglasses
So, this is everything he ever gave you? I asked her, trying to be nonchalant
She nodded
I was going to light it all on fire, she told me
But what’s the point?
True, I replied, not sure what else to say
She seemed so peaceful about it. Almost happy
Just then I noticed a pile of cds:
Jane’s Joy Ride Mix
Jane’s Taking a Bath Mix
Mix for Jane for When She’s Feeling a Little Blue
And one called
In Case of an Emergency, I LOVE YOU
It was sealed with yellow CAUTION tape
and had obviously never been opened
Can I buy this? I asked her
$3.50, she said
I gave her the money and put the cd in my car
and cried and could not open it
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, where it was a 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Lytton Bell has published five books, won six poetry contests and performed at many California literary venues. Her work has appeared in over three dozen journals, web sites and e-zines. She lives in Sacramento, California. Lytton earned a poetry scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts in 1988, where she studied with Deb Burnham and poet Len Roberts. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1993. Feel free to send Lytton an email at lytton_bell@hotmail.com.
Editor’s Note: Clear, narrative, and heartbreaking. Lytton Bell has a knack for relaying the real. What a fascinating moment, the intersection of these two lives, and how breathtaking the way their shared story speaks to us all.
As It Ought To Be 