For Non-believers

Your notion of psychosis

acquiesces to my construct of poetry

astonishing spirit flies

Travel

I am building a bridge 

to close a gulf in the night, 

rickety boards held up 

by nothing more than my steps

on them. When there is no light, 

I must use my other senses. 

Feel me reach for you over 

the inky water. Let the breeze 

of my fall from the planet move 

your hair. Walk with me fearlessly. 

Let our faces give the moon a place

to reflect when she is disappearing. 

But, as we know, she is never gone. 

Oh, occupation! Lifetime endeavor! 

Join me as I travel the un-certitude 

of the happy yes of loss brightly.

Memory

II 

At about the height 

of the treetops, 

my flying coach chuckled at me

when I told her 

I’d always believed 

I’d need actual wings to fly. 

“Solar plexus, Solar plexus.” 

She whispered. 

 IX 

She was too young 

when a man took her innocence. 

When she got it back, 

it was broken. 

 LII 

Windblown curtain, paintbrush, 

budding forsythia, whistling 

tea kettle. What did I 

come in here for?

Shaindel Beers

    Shaindel Beers is a teacher, a poet, a mid-westerner, and she's a friend of mine. So I am excited to host Ms. Beers on her whirlwind virtual book tour "On the Hood of a Cutlass Supreme," wherein she presents her first book of poems from Salt, "A Brief History of Time," released in February of 2009. Shaindel Beers earned a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago in 2000 and her Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Vermont College in 2005, where I met her. 

    Her startling new book is a dense collection of time travel that carries the reader through decades and centuries and spans the geography and psychology of a young woman's life. And though she is only 32 years old, Ms. Beers' life, one could say, seems as densely packed and successful as her first book of poems. Shaindel Beers lives in Oregon with her husband. She teaches English, poetry, and creative writing classes. Beers also does her farm work, personal training, an online radio show, "Translated By." She edits for "Contrary," a poetry and fiction webzine. In addition, beers is the poetry reviewer for "Bookslut," an online monthly devoted to literature. 

    In "A Brief History of Time," Beers deftly blends incongruent elements such as love and samurai. Her poetic voice is frank and multifaceted. She tells her life's stories while enchanting the reader with her use of language, form, imagery, stunning emotional insight, and social empathy. 

    This first book, composed over ten years, includes award-winning poems in various styles: sestinas, plainsong, free verse, and the exotic ghazal. Beers' poems give voice to a range of characters, from the pedestrian to the sublime. Through this poetry, we see the world from a virtuous and honest narrator, as in the poem "Return," "I lived there, and now I need to go back, feel my legs merge again into fins/ and swim through time. Have tea with the Lady of the Lake, / laugh with the sirens at their stories. Shudder at tales of / strange men cutting holes to the realm above." 

    Shaindel Beers' second book is a work in progress, forthcoming from Salt, and tentatively titled "The Children's War." I had the opportunity to ask Shaindel a few questions about "A Brief History of Time:" 

Bluemoon Northeast: Your book's title comes from the poem, "A Brief History of Time," an appropriate title for this collection in which time recurs as a theme: "for the nine o'clock break (6)," "songs from my childhood sprang back..(31)," "because I have you this weekend..(61)…." There are many examples of time references in this collection. Can you say a bit about time and how it emerged as a theme in this collection? 

Shaindel Beers: I think of time as something we can't escape. When we come into the world have a birth date. And, if we are buried, there are two dates with a dash to represent everything that happened in the interim on our tombstone. That dash is everything. Time is utterly fascinating. Our lives are shaped by it. We wish we could go back in time. We want time to slow down. We want time to speed up; we wish to see into the future. We regret not valuing time. I remember, especially when I was a teenager, waiting for a boy to pick me up for a date and thinking that the time when I would hear his car in the driveway needed to GetHereNow! Then, one day I thought, someday I'm going to be eighty and regret all the minutes I spent just waiting. As I get older, I realize how relative time is. A year seemed like forever; now, it's hard to believe it's 2009. 

I'm also a theoretical physics geek, as evidenced by the title of my book (an homage to Stephen Hawking). I daydream about things like the Grandfather Paradox and (yes, in Star Trek terms) the Temporal Directive. What if you could go back in time like in my poem "Rewind" and change these events? Would the world be any better? Would we (humankind) just find different ways to destroy ourselves? Or, would we have good intentions but do more harm than good? 

Bluemoon Northeast: In the title poem, we are taken on an odyssey through a history of love that seems random yet delivers the reader to a very deliberate location. Tell me about this poem. 

Shaindel Beers: I wrote this poem while studying with Richard Jackson at Vermont College, now Vermont College of Fine Arts. Rick is a great associative poet. He asked me to look at other poets who write this way: Dean Young, Robert Bly (the father of Leaping Poetry), and many Eastern European poets who write this type of poem. Think of stream-of-consciousness in prose if you're not sure what I mean. I began writing about love—specifically, the crumbling of my first marriage—and then I started thinking about other times' and cultures' concepts of love. It was a fun poem to write. Anything that popped into my mind I went with, without self-editing. I did research the poem; thank G-d for Google! I went from marriage being a war of attrition to wondering about warriors. I've always been fascinated by the samurai. I studied various classes of samurai. I thought about how my (romantic) relationships with people never seemed to work out. I tried to think of what I really love that will be here forever (theoretically, at least). I thought of mountains and researched when certain mountain ranges were formed. This poem took me on a journey more than I wrote the poem. I love that I ended the piece with Jenny sitting on the hood of her 1983 Cutlass Supreme. Those were some of the best times of my life, speaking of time. 

Bluemoon Northeast: I noticed that while much of the work here is free verse. However, there are a few instances in which you use a form, particularly the sestina and the ghazal. How does your poetic expression in formal conditions differ from expression in free verse? 

Shaindel Beers: I think that strict form is a maddening exercise that hones the poet's skills. Whereas, it's difficult to ride a motorcycle, at least for me, since I haven't had much practice. It's difficult to jump a motorcycle off a ramp and fly perfectly through a flaming hoop to land safely on the other side. That's the difference between free verse and prose to me. There's a lot that can go wrong with all of these restrictions. I'm aware that some of the form poems in this book might not seem as strong to the reader as the free-verse poems. 

    I'm still sort of waving to the crowd going, "Okay, a little singed, but I made it over here alive!" I hope they're rooting for me instead of pointing out the burn marks on my suit. Some forms work philosophically with their content. For instance, sestinas seem obsessive because of those six repeating end words throughout. I think it works to have a sestina about something obsessive, like love. In "Moonlight Sestina," the end words are you, moonlight, real, touch, infatuation, and once. In a love poem, you, "the beloved," is important. Moonlight is blamed for lunacy, which could be obsessive; there is also moonlight in snow, which reflects, hence the repetition. We often wonder if love is real. This is also an obsessive tendency. Touch is an end word for the same reason. I shouldn't have to explain why infatuation keeps repeating. And, I think there's fun irony in the word once repeating throughout a sestina. This wouldn't be close to the same poem if the parameters of the sestina weren't there. Although poetry is beautiful and artistic, the sestina is like algebra. The formula is laid out; you just plug in words. But they have to be the right words; in a Ginsbergian "each word = right word" sort of way. There's no room for mistakes, especially when trying to stick to the iambic pentameter! 

Bluemoon Northeast: Also, can you say a bit about the ghazal as a form and why you chose it? 

Shaindel Beers: The ghazal (pronounced like "guzzle" in English) is a hard form to explain. It is an ancient Persian form of poetry, and there are certain things that one can do in other languages you can't do in English. Therefore, if you're writing in English, you choose which rules you want to follow. For "Weekend Rain Ghazal," I tried to write couplets with no enjambment and where each couplet stands alone as a poem. I also used the same end word in both lines of the first couplet and followed through using "rain" as the end word for the second line of each couplet. I signed the poem with a pseudonym in the last line. Traditionally, the ghazal is about illicit, unattainable love. My poem was written in the early crazed infatuation stage of my relationship with my husband. I guess it fits; he was supposed to be working across the state building a fence right after we met. Instead, the rain kept him with me. If your readers Google "ghazal," they will discover lists of rules and examples of poems to last a lifetime! 

Bluemoon Northeast: Natasha Saje said that "your poems stitch together an autobiography whose questions of gender, race, and class remain open." Would you call these poems confessional? Can you talk about writing autobiographical poetry? 

Shaindel Beers: The problem with calling my poems confessional is that this label seems to be a way for men to not take women's poetry seriously. Someone says, "Oh, she writes confessional poetry," and it means we don't have to hold the writing to as high a standard, or it means that it will never reach the same standard of quality as other types of poetry. I think that a lot of my poems are rooted in autobiography. I'm a firm believer in the 1970s-personal-is-political-brand of feminism. Many women write relationship poems because their lives are viewed through that lens. In parts of the country, women are still so-and-so's wife or so-and-so's mom. I don't know if we've come as far as a lot of people think we have in terms of gender equality. What I worried about most when this book was released were the people who are mentioned or alluded to in the poems, reading them and freaking out. I never thought about this as I was writing the poems. I guess I was a pretty selfish writer. 

    My loyalty is to the art; life is a raw material for poetry, anything goes, sort of thing. I do believe that, to an extent. But when my parents told me they had ordered the book, I had this sinking feeling. I thought, "Ohmigod! They're going to sue me!" In the first poem, I mention my mother trying to stab my father. (I've never asked either of them about it. It was something I heard from my brother). I also mention my mother being in jail for two counts of attempted murder. These were actually reduced to manslaughter charges. Such is poetry. But my mom emailed saying, "We received your poetry book, and we think it is very good," which is not at all the reception I had expected. I'm slightly relieved that my next book is ekphrastic poetry, where I am looking at children's art. There will be less of me out there for a while. But, I'm sure I will still be writing confessional poetry. I feel like one of those people who won't go to Europe until they've been to all fifty states. Sure, I know there is a giant world to explore, but I don't even feel like I know myself yet.

A Work of Art

A woman’s body is the rent payment. 

It is a map of the earth. 

A woman’s body can be divided into parts 

which can then be used to name a type of man, 

as in, a tit man, a leg man, 

as opposed to just an Ass, man. 

The commercial-ideal

of a woman’s body looks like 

a very tall, skinny adolescent

boy with tits and no penis. 

It would appear. 

A woman’s body is found 

murdered in the undergrowth.

A woman’s body is available

on Craig’s List, tattooed, 

scarred, stolen, unacceptable. 

Not her! She’s a child, 

not a woman yet, pal.

A woman’s body is more

than you can handle. 

Is that why you take her

in sections? 

She is the tunnel from which you emerged. 

The soft mountain of your infancy. 

This is your mother we’re talking about here. 

A woman’s body is a place of art, 

a form of forms, asymmetrical wonder. 

Sexually perfect, she belongs to herself 

like the earth belongs to the earth. 

And speaking of the planet on which you stand, 

that body was fashioned by the same great Mother 

who made the work of art that a woman’s body is.

Vestigial

Heart's a parasitic twin,
calcified from the wounding.
A missing rhythm, hardened
other, the broken love story
between the warrior girl who
hunts the captor of her heart's
imagination and the boy
who loves to run his
fingers the length
of her scars.

My Own Beloved Child

Detail from "More Love Hours Than Can Ever be Repaid," 1987.

artist Mike Kelley.

 

On April 6, 2009, the body of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu was found inside a black suitcase floating in an irrigation pond in Tracy, California. Sandra had been missing since March 27, 2009. 

 

My Own Beloved Child 

I do not know you but I shall hold you like my own beloved child. 

I promise once I’ve cleaned you I will cover you like my own beloved child. 

From the black case, I lift you and lay your modest form upon a white sheet. 

Painstakingly, I comb through your tawny hair, like my own beloved child’s 

Gently I hold each hand and scrape foreign matter from under your pink nails 

Your tiny breathless nostrils and still breast makes me ache for my own beloved child. 

I photograph your cuts and bruises, set your twisted limbs aright, 

Map every inch of your lovely form as I might my own beloved child’s. 

I swab where I must, reassuring you that this will be the last assault upon you. 

I eliminate all infection from you as I would from my own beloved child. 

Every fiber and hair is combed from your hello-kitty top and black leggings 

as if I were grooming the lovely angel wings of my own beloved child. 

You are clean now, though no amount of wickedness could ever really stain you. 

Dearest, you are my angel, my angel; forever my own beloved child.

Dirty

He turned, walked away from the murky pond, left behind the dirty. 

Wash out the muck a few more times. he hates to be dirty. 

It's out. He drained it away as he was shown to. For a time, he won't be hurting.

It breaks him. It makes him glad. He cleans his car. It's gotten dirty. 

Ashes to ashes--mud to mud. He saved himself. He was helpless. 

The fault is hers, she skipped in childish ways that made him feel dirty. 

Fold inside another time when the boy is used tortured ways yet returns different 

from the man he is today, this altered man would shield a child from what is dirty. 

He wakes, this dream's not real, and hope's false too. Like nonexistent light is in a black hole. 

He buys candy. He's lost his dog. He takes all sweet things. He makes them dirty. 

He means to eliminate his own stain with ransom of this untouched child. 

Inside him, there is a hole where a soul might be. It is black and deep and it is dirty. 

This earth is blessed with angels oblivious to the beastly things that hunt them.

One cherub spared any memories rose to divinity; she exceeded every grasp at dirty.

It is said, she comforts the bereft, with profound and graceful wings. Though unseen to her, 

She sings for souls adrift in nightmarish imaginings of dark and impenetrable things so dirty.

Missing

    I first ran away when I was five. My father sat on the stoop with a grave goodbye. He respected my conviction but was sorry to see me go. I'd packed my orange and pink flowered vinyl suitcase, underwear, clean shirt, Thumbelina... I didn't want to hurt him, but I'd be moving on.

    He watched me trot down Mifflin Avenue, my back straight as I passed Mrs. Easley's Dwarf Irises. In the next yard, the black lab, Sylvester, chewed a tattered yellow tennis ball, a few more paces, and I passed the mean lady's house until I was near the corner of Overton, my heart racing along with me.

    I didn't look back, sure my eagle-eyed father could see me this far down the avenue. Relieved as I turned the corner by the Ritter's house, now I could let my belly full of fear and melancholy heave through my chest and throat. I bent over in tears, sad to think of my mother's heartbreak when she discovered me gone. The site of the chain-link fence around Ruth Ritter's yard, her father's vegetable garden, the swing set, the sandbox still built with our afternoon imaginings, all this filled me with comfort. I thought for a moment to turn down the Mifflin alleyway toward what used to be my backyard.

    Instead, I took steely steps down Overton toward Trenton Avenue and stood on the corner doors away from the Caliguri's on the border of a dozen strange houses. I ventured on. A slow car passed my low wet vision on this unfamiliar street with fewer trees, the lawns were bare, and the hedges were overgrown. Aging Victorian homes with peeling paint and dark-eyed windows advanced my tiny feet. When I reached a familiar house on the corner of Trenton and Hutchinson, the Bailey sisters who sold homemade cookies and who I'd often visited, back in the day.
    

    "Mom says I can't ask, but if you offer, I can have a cookie."

    I hadn't known this alternate route to the Bailey's. The back of their house was a kitty-corner to my former home. I'd traveled this long and far, only to find myself nearly back where I'd started. I was sure my father would laugh at me when he saw me turn the corner of Hutchinson back onto Mifflin. But, instead, he welcomed me as if I was returned from a long and arduous journey. He offered hugs and celebrations.

    The second time I 'ran away,' I was seventeen, pregnant, and upset with my older siblings. They'd been hassling me, trying to influence the choices I was about to make. I'd left Mifflin Avenue in a whirl of tears and drama for the apartment of a public health nurse who lived in an unfamiliar part of town but had offered me help and kindness. There were tenements, two and three-family homes, parked cars lining the street curbs, and no trees in her neighborhood. My father discovered my whereabouts and called me to visit for a talk. He was considerate toward me and respectful in a way that confused me. I thought he'd be angry with me.

    We sat together in the dingy kitchen of this strange apartment. I cried, and so did my father when he asked me to come home, assuring me that no one would bother me with opinions about my plans or my baby. When I labored to give birth to a daughter, it was my dad who held my hand all through that long life-altering night. A father of five, he had never seen a woman in labor. He later told my mother if he'd seen her endure one childbirth, she would not be the mother of five. I don't recall his words when he met his new grandchild, yet more than forty years later, I remember his face as they wheeled me and my daughter from the delivery room to meet him.

    On Father's Day, dad left Mifflin Avenue in an ambulance I'd summoned there for him fifteen months later. I yelled at curious neighbors to stop staring and go back into their houses. My lately walking daughter clung to my leg. So here was my remarkable father, fallen. I felt so protective yet helpless to shield him from his fate.

    Dad never returned to Mifflin Avenue, and somehow, I, too, have since been missing.

Landmark

Landmark is a small college in Putney, Vermont. After years in a baffling academic sea, the men and women who study there compare it to a beacon – a sign of land. Pedestrian learners aren’t admitted here. Students bear the badges of ADD/HD, Aspergers-Syndrome, Nonverbal Learning Differences, and Dyslexia. It’s unfortunate we commoners can’t share this campus. We’d likely discover incredible things about learning, the world, and ourselves here. Some travelers see lighthouses as quaint attractions. A friend collects miniature versions, Currituck Beach, Bloody point, Bodie Island Light, conical replicas of the seafarer’s solace. Putney is an inland village. The Landmark campus draws international travelers who know they will find their way, just as their ancestors did, given light to follow ashore.

Origin

The conditions of a solitary bird are five: First that it flies to the highest point. Second that it does not seek after company; not even its own kind. Third, that it aims its beak to the wind. Fourth, that it has no definite color. Fifth that it sings very sweetly.
(John of the Cross: Sayings of Light and Love)

Clouded Leopard

To begin, it was thought she was a bird,

raven, or solitary spotted owl.

Next, her tree-dwelling ways,
how she slunk under branches,
lunged headlong down tree trunks.
Of this, it was said simply, squirrel.

Perhaps not fauna at all, theories grew.
This coat of gray elliptic shadows
and the sorrow provoked
by her poised against the bluest

afternoon sky. Cloud species: alto-cumulus.

Yet hearing of her saber-ic canines,
the gift of balance, her long tail,
and that she’d gone mad in captivity
first killing, then devouring her young,

prowling the corners of her keep,
disappearing entirely and for days,

and how her mate became aggressive
after sexual encounters.

I recognize, but do not declare,
this cousin of mine.

Forestry

Mirrors double
what they reflect.
Hang them only
upon trees.

Love Poem

Every poem is a love poem existing only to speak softly in the mind’s ear of the beloved.

Queen of Heaven

Brando, on his knees, yells
a woman’s name.
Felt more like a tango,
slim in my dress,
remembering that bus ride
and Hoffman’s palms
on church-glass.
He was screaming
a woman’s name.
Jesus, like other stars,
rose up and whispered,
a woman’s name.

Imagined Kisses

Imagined kisses recall and project. Reincarnating past kisses, mixing with future kisses. Imagined kisses are almost, and they buzz there. Imagined kisses are everywhere and anything you’ve got in mind. Make them and take them. Read these lips; you wrote them. Then, when you see these lips, imagine kisses.

(Blushing Butterfly, Reduction Print by Jessica Stuart Harris) Real Kisses

Real kisses in the tongue-tied darkness
expectant brushing lids and lashes

Fumbling lips licked stretch to meet
chins knock beneath urgent tongues

Real kisses in the awkwardness
of sheets and ravaged pillows.

Real kisses blaze a path for fingertips,
spill amid rustling, above the chafe of denim.

Real kisses are unimaginable.

Michael

The apartment walls were stark white, the carpet and your hair
the same auburn. Reds were big then, like your bloody anger
over tomato soup. How long and lean and cool you were. Steely eyes
and icy attitude topped with hot: hair, head, and pursuit of passion.
Michael, the enigma, my nemesis, the electric switch of my libido,
you could beat me down and eat me back around to belief.

When I finally left, you held up in my apartment for three days.
I returned to find no stones rolled back, only twisted sheets,
bedroom a ransacked wardrobe, drawers pulled open, every
ashtray spilling over. Nothing hid from the un-shaded lamp's glare.
To end your rampage, you ate the medicine chest – swallowed it whole,
and spewed it on the rug. I can see you there, rocking on your heels,
bent on begging me back in. After the sirens died in the distance, I was left alone with that comforting vomit stain. I drew strength from the weakness of your gut. You couldn't hold death down in your belly long enough to let it take you. I always believed you fed me. You didn't. You fed on me. For a time, I enjoyed your feasting. Your tongue sent hard and soft messages at once. 

Have other women split in two? Or was it just the mix of me and you? 

Michael, Aries of fire, I remember the light that shone from lamps you broke, that worn-out couch sprayed with the shattered glass of a framed print, phone call, after phone call, after phone call, the only words from the receiver, "Meg, Meg. "You at my window or door, pressing your fingertips and face against the pane. 

And I remember lovemaking on the living room floor, the open window's wooden shade tapping in the summer night wind. City sounds, voices, and barking in the far yard are lit by the licks of fire between us. Or in the bedroom, convent lights glowing across the street, showing the sisters what they miss about their brothers. In those years, we were too busy posing to take a photograph. I am left with the tiny silver charm you gave me, letters I never sent, and the brown clay pot you made in grade school, which is now my favorite ashtray. I cover my knees with the quilt we once covered with flames.

Michael, do you hear my whisper call? Do you see me pressed against your window? Does my specter roam the moors of your warm thought? You vowed no other woman would flare you up as hot. Speechless and angry, we'd go to bed and awake unchanged. Yet between the dark invisibility of night sheets, how needs erased pride and postponed apologies. We rubbed sticks to fiery blaze. Exchanged kisses, fluids, and places. At dawn, the wall between us rose as if our passion were only dreamt. 

Michael, are you my invention? Something I created and erased and re-create tonight on paper? You do not answer. Now, a summer night's wind taps on the window, the neighbors chat, a dog barks in a distant yard, distracting me. In the brown ashtray, I snuff you out with my cigarette. You linger there in the last glow of its embers.

It was Nothing

Is nothing empty? Nothing love? No beginning or end? Nothing is that did not begin. Oh, nothing, you dark star, You white dove, You are everything to me, my love.

Incantation for Vernal Equinox

Spring is caught—frost cloaks baby crocuses. The junk of winter’s needle slows the flow. The poem does not come. We call the laughing God. The divine hunter whose reckless arrows wound the thunderclouds. You, the guzzler of ambrosia, The blood-letter of buds, announces spring! All the walled-up of winter melts down with you and the heavy rains. The Goddess maiden is on your heels. All flowering, the Earthen Goddess reigns. You plant yourself in spring, under the gray roots of a lightning sky; you make love to her. Hidden only by blankets of air and sunlight, the grace of your desire spills from the edge of your whirling bed. Every living thing, her stone, her leaf, knows—spring!

February Gerund

Still, time-traveling

the frozen sunlight 

casting a dusty column 

on the morning 

rug seven below 

circling the air 

nothing exists animated 

space disappearing

Eden

We remembered passion is good fruit,
not sleep with innocence snake.

repeat-imprint-pattern-experience

the doing of undoing
give being history

Unpick. Duende.

There’s a hole in my underwear, Eve, old girl,
the garden was our lovemaking.

I didn’t care apples. You were thirsty.

I gave you fruit, would have given anything,
just kiss. All hell broke loose.

You disappeared. Love was impossible, dreamt, illegal.
Walls flew up. Buildings appeared.

Eden was eons ago. Galaxies apart.
Dreamt before it happened.

Still, under that tree lips yield to ripe desire

and hissing.

Incantation for Candlemas

O light, your weightless streams reflex through prisms.
Come light, mix with your daughters, water and earth,

reach into the mouth of the soil & pull up the flaxen hair of spring.
Sweet light, recommence! Shine upon your dark sister.

Wake the sleeping seeds of blossoms! Move stones to trees of fruit!
The earth wants moisture. Make yourself a cloak of rain!

That dark girl awaits her playmate - come light; make merry with the night!
Fleet-footed morning bringer, levitate spring, for all living things!

Seep through the numbing wind, we ask your nimble spirit in.
Fiery Light, blaze the furnace of the sun, forge the blade of spring.


Surround our heads: a nimbus. Enter our minds to enlighten us.
Stream our veins. Elevate our spirits! Be with us.

Oh radiant one. Light! Come!

Answers

You were a confused handful

of soil with tenacious worms. 

You needed opposition, 

and the river rose 

with the gift of thorn. 

You wanted gravity 

like a rock, and the wind 

answered, sweeping all 

around you away. 

Your life depended on death. 

You tortured yourself 

with flowers.

Freaking Love and Other Oddities

Photo by Clare Coco

A double Sestina

Summer barely gave way to fall the year 

snows filled up the Truckee mountain pass 

and was the sun’s first day in Sagittarius, 

in San Carlos, Mexico, one thousand miles away, 

That the stars bode well the birth of tiny Lucia Zarate 

No bigger than a mouse was she, yet live she might. 

Elephant ballerinas and ripped men of great might 

The Big Top swept her up in her twelfth year, 

the greatest star of small dimensions, Dona Lucia Zarate 

The girl remembered less of her home as time did pass 

She dined with carnies and wiled her nights away 

with freaks born under the sign of Sagittarius. 

But JoJo, the dog-faced boy, was not a Sagittarius, 

in this, he differed from the tiny General Mite 

And, he stole the fair puppet girl's heart away. 

Still, Barnum planned a miniature wedding in a year. 

Imaginary engagements could never pass 

for love as that between JoJo and Lucia Zarate 

Step up for the nuptials of the Pygmy Lucia Zarate! 

General admission to bans of these Sagittarians. 

The wedding invitation is your circus pass! 

Eat cake, catch bouquet or garter, any guest might! 

For Barnum’s take in smalls is big this year!

Until the night Lucia and Jojo run away.

And on the night Lucia and Jojo ran away. 

The dog-faced boy pledges himself to Lucia Zarate 

They make a pact to marry in a year. 

Back at the big top, the freaks and Sagittarians, 

keep company with the jilted General Mite 

and promise him his heartbreak soon would pass.

Touring alone, Dona Lucia travels Truckee Mountain Pass. 

Locals and miners dig for days to clear the avalanche away. 

Many souls were saved by God's wisdom and his might.

and engine steams forward, onboard is the lifeless Lucia Zarate 

It whistles away under the Harvest Moon in Sagittarius. 

Then, Jojo, the dog-faced boy, left the sideshow for a year. 

For freaks and oddities through this world will pass, exhibited but unseen, 

as Lucia Zarate might have, born in the year of the Cock, or in the sign of Sagittarius. 

 

Jojo (the dog-faced boy) was born on the cusp of Aquarius; 

he lived his life in places where it was cool to be a freak, 

like Province Town, the Circus, and glittery New York City. 

Jojo played the fiddle and raised homing doves.

He spoke Russian and several other languages. 

Jojo made his living as a freak who knew better than most, 

that the oddest people are more ordinary than most 

This makes sense to him in this bizarre age of Aquarius 

and in a world where differences transcend language. 

Jojo thinks about his grandfather in love with the tiniest freak 

Named for his grandpa, Jojo and Donna Lucia, his two favorite doves. 

He launched them with his desires into the city.

The pair carry Jojo’s intention to the dawning city 

as if wings bear magic and impart enchantment most. 

Upon the slanted eaves of love and possibility lit the doves.

Above a granite statue of the water-bearing Aquarius, 

In time, Jojo and his intended will recall this day as a freak 

that love is spoken in such unspoken languages. 

For who and how we love is a private language 

of country birds or those from New York City, 

and complete love does not make Jojo a freak 

knowing love means Jojo is more fortunate than most 

But even in this new age of open-minded Aquarius, 

Some hate the feathers and freedom of such doves. 

The hearts of lovers tremble like the hearts of doves, 

as desperately they search for an expressive language,  

love can hide the truth or bear it like an Aquarius 

especially when the moon hangs in Scorpio in the city, 

and the one you cannot have is who you want the most, 

circumstance to make an ordinary man freak. 

Jojo, the-dog-faced-boy, some thought he was a freak, 

He built his nest with extraordinary and colorful doves, 

His blood was red, and his heart was purer than most. 

He pledged both in many ways and several languages, 

Jojo gave up his home and fled the bustling city 

to be with his one true love in the age of Aquarius. 

Some wonder at the freak happenstance of love in many languages. Or, doves finding a way back to the city when return is lost to most. Perhaps their wings recall a granite statue of water-bearing Aquarius?

Bear

    Bear first appeared in Willows Wept Review (Spring 2012)

Day Twenty-one

    Bear likes the way I let ladybugs walk on my fingertips. There are hundreds of them in the cave we’ve decided to stay in for a while. Most are dead or dying. Bear loves them. He eats as many as he can. I am using them to teach Bear to count.

    We found this place when we wandered up a steep pathway lined with pines. If there weren’t trees to prevent my falling, I would never have gone that way. Bear says it never occurred to him to think of falling, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a bear fall unless on purpose.

    The path leads beyond the pines and along the face of the mountain. I wanted to turn back, but Bear discovered the cave. From late morning until late afternoon, we are in direct sunlight. It is warm, and I’m sure this is why ladybugs live here.

Day Twenty-one

    I’ve set up housekeeping, and Bear loves to watch. I made a pine broom. I sweep the hard dirt floor. There are bones from the bodies of small animals that came here to be eaten. Bear is happy about this. He tells me this by carving an X on one of the tiny skulls. He says that a mountain cat must have lived here and that her maternal power and the power of her eating small animals fill the place. All of this is still in the cave, and don’t I feel it?

    “No,” I say.

    

    Bear will not let me take the bones out of the cave. Instead, he allows me to arrange them in a pattern around the cave’s perimeter. He says he never thought of that and that I am a clever witch.

    Today he showed me how to find winterberries in the snow bank. He also showed me how to mark the cave, so others know it is ours. I can tell he is preparing me. He wants to sleep.

Day Twenty-six

    Bear fights his instinct to hibernate and eats everything in sight. I sometimes wonder if he’ll eat me. He says we are from the same clan. We both have changing eyes and brown hair. 

    "And sharp teeth and wit," I say. He does not laugh at my joke.

    He is like an overtired child kept from his nap. He won’t talk with the birds or watch the moon. All-day he wants me to tell him what I see. So I write this poem for him,

Today is beautiful, gold-eyed Bear.

Today can be dreamt of if one sleeps.

Today wakes on the shores of tonight.

Today is the day gold-eyed Bear.

Tells me his name. 

    It is Bear. It is Tree. It is Heavy-footed Hungry Beast. Bear says it is so. And with an ivory claw, he carves a circle in the breast of a pine tree. That circle is how I know what he says, what he means, and his name.

Day Thirty-one

    Bear tells me about tree ghosts. Not trees haunted by people, he says, sniffing. What a nose, I think.

Tree ghosts stand in the place where their tree once stood, sometimes forever. Apparently, tree-ghosts are part of why branches grow as they do and why certain animals move around in the forest in specific ways. There is something to see everywhere you think there is not.

    “What can’t you see today?” Bear asks.

    “The end,” I say.

    “It’s been here forever,” says Bear.

    “The beginning.”

    “It follows the end. It’s where you are from.”

    “The spring,” I say.

    “You can’t see that because you are standing on it.”

    “I can’t see what is behind me,” I say.

    “Turn around.”

    “Or what is before me,” I say.

    “You are always arriving there.”

    Bear stops. He presses his muzzle to the back of his paw and bites his wrist. Damn fleas.

    He asks me, “What do you see today?”

    “The snow prepares to melt.”

    “You don’t believe it will,” says Bear.

    “I see that you love me.”

    “But worry that we will part.”

    I change the subject. “I see mountains on our path.”

    “You dread the climb,” he answers.

    “I see what you give to me in what you take from me.”

Bear is pleased! He strokes my face forgetting his ivory claws. I will always wear the scar of my thoughtfulness. I am alive at that moment again, Bear’s apologies, his great coarse tongue on my face, the heavy stink of his saliva. He does not allow me to wash my face.

Day Thirty-three

    I realize the journey is about things not immediately seen along the path. Bear lets me build a fire. He trusts me more than he fears flames. He is drunk on fermented apples and full from eating things he sniffed on our path: a cocoon, a spider, pineberry. His fur is golden. In the firelight, it looks like an aura. In his drunkenness, he shows me his swagger. He stands on his hind legs and extends his claws. He bares his horrible teeth with a rumbling slobbery growl.

Day Thirty-seven

    We walk the path beyond the cave and over a narrow passageway.

    “What are you so nervous about? You are making snowmelt. It is too soon,” Bear snarls. 

    “Will you just forget to be afraid of heights?” He says this by nudging me up the pathway. There is a sheer drop for a time but soon the way retreats into the woods.

    I am not nervous. I am not.

    Some pine forests are dark and damp, with exotic mushrooms, mosses, and swallows flying. This wood holds the afternoon sunlight and breeze magically. Whole families of cardinals and many types of woodpeckers live here. Both are fun birds according to Bear.

    Bear says that the pines here are majestic and tall because they feel great about growing in a sunny spot. They are always trying to reach the sun. He points out different shapes in the pine and shows me how to hide should an enemy approach. I stand perfectly still. He is right; a wintering cardinal comes to sit on a branch just above my right shoulder. Bear says the cardinal and the pine both love the sun. How else would you get that particular red and that particular green? Back in the cave, Bear asks me to tell the story of the cardinal as I know it. I recite a poem.

    Harrumph! Bear is snoring! Later, he tells me that this is the best compliment a Bear can pay a poem to fall asleep upon hearing it. This is so true, Bear says, that poem and lullaby mean the same thing to bears. He tells me this by running his claw down the side of a tree to make a long squiggly mark.

Bear says the world is perfect the way it is.

Fishing Upstream A Linoleum Block Print By Jessica Stuart Harris