MAP
#162-1 Theme: Partnered Poets
1.
And now, consider the combustible quality in the poems Diane Fleming
and Larry Thoren have woven together:
Five-Minute
Romance by Larry Thoren
Disagreeable
by Diane Fleming
Larry:
My
fourth cup of coffee
I
just sat there and stared into it,
just
sat there and sipped it
between
drags on my cigarette.
I
nodded yes when
the
waitress suddenly appeared
with
her pot.
The
kind of woman who waits tables
in
the graveyard understands
silent
men with blank faces.
I
didn’t want to come out of my fog
but
I did.
Diane:
I
invite him to lunch. I think we hate each other. I've never met him.
He
responded
to my personal ad and he is married. I'm not sure how we can have
a
relationship, but he tells me this can work-with the right attitude.
We
meet at a Mexican restaurant. His skin is pockmarked; he looks sad.
There
are
many things we disagree about. One is -- his relationship to his
wife. He
claims
he cannot divorce her because she’s not a bad person. I guess only
bad
people get divorces.
Larry:
She
was pushing 40, I figured
just
like me -
plenty
of miles on her
and
lots of them hard ones.
I
studied her.
She
was still a pretty girl.
I
wondered how many knights in shining armor
had
carried her off into the sunset,
only
to dump her.
Used
up and disillusioned once again,
in
another coffee shop,
or
another graveyard shift.
She
looked up from her stack of napkins
and
our eyes met
in
a self-conscious glance,
and
we both looked away quick.
But
again, our eyes met
and
held this time.
We
looked deep
into
each other.
It
was impossible to look away.
Diane:
He
says, “My wife and I, we never have sex. I go to prostitutes.”
Sometimes,
I think I am Jesus. I act as though I am Jesus. I listen to the
most
outrageous stories with compassion, without judgment. Why do I do
this?
I'm
not trying to be this way. Where other people see TROUBLE, I see
softness.
Now,
he tells me about his sexual fantasies. It isn't as though he
fantasizes
about me, not the real me. If he put the real me in his sex
stories,
those stories would be full of everyday heartache. I say, "Why
don't
you just tell your wife that you're not happy, that you need more
sex?"
He
looks at me, astonished. How can I be so stupid? You don't just tell
people
these things. You leak details slowly, in subtle painless pointless
ways.
Larry:
I
began to groan inside
because
I wanted to look away.
Because
right then
she
was all the lies
I’d
been told by women
who
didn’t know any better.
Just
like me, they did the best they could.
But
that didn’t change the fact
that
they’d promised me their hearts
and
other things
and
didn’t deliver.
And
I knew she was seeing the same in me.
She
saw the carpenters,
the
salesmen,
the
cab drivers
with
visions of grandeur
promising
the same damned things
they
wouldn’t give, couldn’t give
not
because they didn’t want to,
but
because they didn’t know how.
I
could hear all the times she’d said
“He’s
a good man.
He
treats me like a queen.
Here’s
what he bought me the other day.
This
time it’s different.
This
one’s different than the rest.”
Diane:
We
talk about HOMO SEX U ALITY-the big subject we discuss to avoid
talking
about
why we are here in the same room. Why isn't he with his wife,
blasting
her
with his secrets of prostitutes and dreams of divorce? Why am I here?
Why
do I go down dead-end roads again and again, sometimes even building
houses
and cities on those roads, establishing myself on a path that leads
nowhere?
But here we are, talking about HOMO SEX U ALITY.
He
says, "It's unnatural. You don't see it in nature-in other
animals."
I
say, "Well there are a lot of things you don't see in nature.
How often do
animals
get married? Do animals kiss? Do they send each other love letters?
Does
a male dog beat and batter his bitch until she brings him his bone,
the
big juicy bone that he loves, whenever he barks?"
But,
I don't want to talk about his wife or gay people. I want to talk
about
loneliness.
That's what hangs here.
Larry:
I
sat there feeling like shit
because
I wanted to go over there
and
tell her
the
right kind of lies
just
so I could
climb
inside her britches with her
but
the price of not sleeping alone
was
too heavy these days
and
I could tell she knew that too.
Our
stare had started
with
contempt and quiet rage
then
went into a kind of desperate pleading.
Diane:
"Look,"
I say, "I'm lonely. My life is a long train ride of events
uptown
and
downtown. I'm either running away from something to save my life or
I'm
running
toward something in a desperate needy fever. I'm tired of it. I want
to
get off the train and sit quietly, with someone or not, and watch the
water."
Larry:
My
joints were stiff from
all
that sitting.
I
crawled from the booth
and
left a dollar on the table.
At
the cash register,
she
gave me my change.
I
said, “Thanks.”
She
said, “Thank you.
Come
back and see us.”
In
the parking lot,
dawn
was getting close.
I
stood for a minute thinking how
I’d
never look a graveyard
coffee
shop waitress
dead
in the eye again.
Diane:
He
whispers, "I think this was a bad idea." I know this was a
bad idea. He
leaves.
Larry:
I
got into my truck
and
headed north toward Waco.
I
heard there was a big job
coming
out of the ground up there
and
they were needing hands
and
they were paying scale.
Diane:
I
know why he left. Who wants to know how lonely they really are? Who
wants
to
spend their time knowing this?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2.
Next partners: Wendy Woodruff and Thom the World Poet
Moon
Round
shining, full-bodied moon
I
reach out to touch, hold you in my arms
Your
spirit too great for me to surround
©
Wendy Woodruff
What
Do Men Want?
I
want to reach into your very skin
Pull
out all those red roses of dull pain
Make
magic with you that will free you again
From
ever desiring your own demise -
Bridge
the silence between us
Let
us start conversation
free
up all possible solutions
Sing
in the shower
and
never regret
One
birdswing of our life
Together.
©
Thom the World Poet
3.
Brandon by David Meischen
She's
all cheekbones and playful
swagger,
jeans slung 'round hips
that
strut the stuff she's stuffed
inside
her shorts. She's Brandon now: He
is
Brandon, so carelessly
at
home inside these clothes,
this
tender banter, this boy's life
the
girls believe him
too,
his husky sweetness--
they
want to sip it slow
like
bourbon, reaching for his belt
to
unbuckle beneath a brazen moon.
©
David Meischen
Artichoke
by Scott Wiggerman
An
artichoke is
the
chart to this heart.
This
heart is dangerous,
a
thumping, thistly
fist
of a thing,
a
pumping, prickly
knot
of green.
This
heart is hidden,
its
pulp protected
by
spiny locks,
its
pith secured
in
a safety box.
This
heart is demanding,
a
convoluted, arduous
trail
to venture,
a
deep, delicious
delicacy
to savor.
The
art to this heart
is
an artichoke.
©
Scott Wiggerman
4.
Sexy at Seventy by Sonya Feher
Today
there is nothing. Today there is nothing
I
want and I wonder what I'll look like at 70.
Will
I be one of those women, bones
scaffolding
for the breath? Will I
fill
out like a worn balloon, in orange
polyester,
allowing lumps where
I
should be smooth?
Will
I keep my figure or improve my skin
instead
of an atomic suntan like the leather lady
in
my dad's apartment complex, a blue string
bikini
and bright Hawaiian print towel, below
her
bony body, slathered in iodine and baby oil,
basted
like a turkey for Thanksgiving.
Everyday
the oven's opened with a metal
reflector
to better cook her face, those special
plastic
eye covers to protect her cataracts,
pointed
toes with coral nail polish, lipstick
brighter
than her towel, everything
preparing
for a night at Bingo or the VA,
well,
you get the idea.
I'll
be one of those old women who wears
skirts
too short, top that is tight, still firm-breasted,
perky,
making people think I am sexual, wanting
to
have sex, wanting, making men, the older ones
want
me, my mauve lipstick to stain starched
collars,
reminding my sons I am sexy at seventy.
Somehow
no one speaks of this, much more
disturbed
to outline the body of an old woman -
no
longer fertile so no longer female? -
than
a fifteen-year-old, like the girls I watch now
in
my high school classroom in shirts, cut to
reveal
a belly button, a rib; shirts exchanged for
maternity
dresses she's growing into,
the
same ones her daughter will wear at fifteen.
So
it's okay to have sex when we're too young
to
know how. We spend the bulk of our lives
twisting
beds into jungle gyms trying to learn
how.
But by the time our skin is textured
with
experience and we have no choice
but
to undress for each other slowly,
by
the time we know how to be sexy,
we're
not allowed -- the sex of teenagers
easier
to accept than the desire of the old to keep.
I
will keep.
©
Sonya S. Feher
"Sexy
at Seventy" was previously published in The Temple, Volume 3,
No. 4.
Cancer
by Mike Henry
I
know it is his voice on the phone before I pick it up, "Hello,
Michael," he says.
I
hold the phone a little away from my face,
like
I don't know what it is,
like
I have never seen one before,
because
I don't know what to say to the gaping silence.
I
don't want to ask him how he's doing or what's new,
because
I know nothing is.
So
I ask him if he knows any good jokes,
"It's
a wonderful life," he croaks in his telltale earthquake growl
and
we laugh together about how that's a good one. Funny every time.
Pasha
has cancer. His blood sours around the tumors,
knotted
knuckles burying into pristine meat of muscle, slobbering
predators
grawing away from the inside, tearing meat from
the
bone leaving spare scraps clinging bravely like Texas
barbecue
burned carbon black when paper
plates
soak with blood and the sun adds insult.
I
remember when I started reading poetry in Austin
and
I walked into Chicago House
thin
and arrogant, sweating vinegar and spitting bullshit,
thinking
I didn't need those old guys and what do they got to say to me?
Pasha's
words wound like smoke around my spine, drew my breath in quick,
destroyed
me and built me back.
That
was the first lesson you taught me, brother.
How
tempting now to fall caterwauling
to
lift my angry eyes and shout at the deaf sun,
wasn't
it enough,
the
spinal meningitis that crumpled him,
bent
his back into a question and
made
the years shuffle by to a dirge of slow consumption,
wasn't
it enough
that
doctors said we'll give you chemotherapy
and
it'll either kill the cancer, or you?
Wasn't
it enough
to
trade pain for addiction, swap suffering
for
martial arts and hallucinogens,
spirit
sailing out of acid eyes to wrestle and rut,
as
crystal meth yanks taut Christmas morning marionette strings?
Wasn't
it enough
the
terrible suffering shared by two? Teresa talks to the doctors and
they
prescribe medicines that collide in her brain,
snap
reality like saplings in a storm and paint her wrists
a
stream of poppies spilling onto the bathroom tile
for
Pasha to find her there,
Wasn't
it enough?
Well,
I guess not.
"I
don't play my guitar anymore...
I
don't write anymore, Michael."
The
loss is a fist that reaches rudely into my chest
and
I am selfish, I am sad
that
your words might not sweep thunderstorms
into
my thirsty ears anymore.
He
tells me of the peyote ritual with a medicine man.
Not
there for healing, but to make peace with
god
and ancestors.
His
failing voice chokes out visions of badgers bristling,
baring
teeth, how it seemed... familiar.
He
says he is not afraid of dying,
he
is afraid of dying poorly,
not
dying well. He doesn't
ask
how much time he has left anymore
because
he doesn't want to know.
He
only hears about a new plague of
inoperable
tumors up his spine,
and
how words like cure and recovery ran
like
cowards from the doctors' vocabularies long ago.
And
me? I sit with the phone receiver
buzzing
a monotone goodbye, my promise
to
do better by my friend
who
showed me that there are things
that
you can write poems about, and things
that
you have to write poems about.
©
Mike Henry