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