Tag Archive for: poetry

The War Against Women That No One Wants to Admit–and a Poem

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Trigger Warnings for child molestation and abuse and for sexual assault and domestic violence.

Whenever I read this poem in public, I preface it with a statement that there is a war against women taking place, followed by the current statistics on sexual assault, rape, physical assault, and murder, statistics that have risen every time I check them again and which are always worse for women of color and Native women. I don’t read this poem in public much, however, because it makes men uncomfortable–they shift in their seats visibly–and it brings so many women up to me afterward in tears to say that this poem was about their own lives. I have begun to feel that I should provide a therapist to the audience before I read it.

As we live through the nightmare created when Rowe v Wade was cast down by the Supreme Court, however, this poem feels appropriate. This is, ultimately, what patriarchy comes down to–women and girls at the mercy of men hurting them, simply because they can. We can always hope that they won’t–and not all of them do–but ultimately, they can. And they can get away with it over and over again, while women who try to keep them from getting away with it suffer and pay a huge price. Nothing there has really changed since I was a girl, except that women are generally less and less inclined to go quietly along. Our rage has grown too great. Though things were supposed to have changed, our current situation has shown us that they haven’t. But they will. They must.

P.O.W.

Before I fall into the past,

I drive to the library,

thumb open a book

about the death of a child

in Greenwich Village and

plunge

back

in

time

to trash-filled rooms smelling

of milk, urine, beer and blood,

doors locked and curtains drawn

against the world,

dirty baby brother caged in a playpen,

mother nursing broken nose,

split lip, overflowing ashtray,

and father filling the room to the ceiling,

shouting drunken songs and threats

before whom I tremble and dance,

wobbly diversion, to keep away

the sound of fist against face,

bone against wall.

 

The book never shows

the other little brothers and sister hiding

around corners and under covers,

but I know they are there

and dance faster,

sing the songs that give him pleasure,

pay the price for their sleep

later, his hand pinching flat nipples,

thrusting between schoolgirl thighs,

as dangerous to please as to anger

the giant who holds the keys

to our family prison. Mother

has no way to keep him from me,

but I can do it for her and them.

 

Locked by these pages

behind enemy lines again

where I plan futile sabotage

and murder every night,

nine-year-old underground,

I read the end.

Suddenly defiant, attacked,

slammed into a wall,

sliding into coma, death

after the allies arrive,

too late, in clean uniforms so like his own

to shake their heads at the smell and mess—

the end I almost believe,

the end that chance keeps at bay

long enough for me to grow and flee,

my nightmare alive on the page.

 

Freed too late,

I close the book,

two hours vanished,

stand and try to walk

to the front door on uncertain legs

as if nothing were wrong.

No one must know.

I look at those around me

without seeming to,

an old skill,

making sure no one can tell.

Panic pushes me to the car

where the back window reflects

a woman, the unbruised kind.

 

In the space of three quick breaths

I recognize myself,

slam back into adult body and life,

drive home repeating a mantra,

“Ben will never hurt me–

All men are not violent,”

reminding myself to believe the first,

to hope for the last.

 

II

 

Years later, my little sister will sleep,

pregnant, knife under her pillow,

two stepdaughters huddled

at the foot of her bed,

in case her husband

breaks through the door

again. Finally,

she escapes

with just the baby.

 

My daughter calls collect

from a pay phone on a New Hampshire street.

She’ll stay in a shelter for battered women,

be thrown against the wall

returning to pack

for the trip back to Missouri,

a week before her second anniversary.

With her father and brother,

the trip home will take three days,

and she will call for me again.

 

Ana and Kay, who sat in my classes,

Vicky, who exchanged toddlers with me once a week,

Pat and Karen, who shared my work,

and two Nancys I have known,

among others too many to count,

hide marks on their bodies and memories,

while at the campus women’s center

where I plan programs for women students

on professional advancement

and how to have it all,

the phone rings every week with calls we forward

to safe houses and shelters.

 

In my adult life, I’ve suffered no man

to touch me in anger,

but I sleep light.

 

Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

Linda Rodriguez’s 13th book, Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging, will publish in May 2023. She also edited Woven Voices: 3 Generations of Puertorriqueña Poets Look at Their American Lives, The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology, Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology, and other anthologies.

Dark Sister: Poems was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Her three earlier Skeet  Bannion mystery novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and earlier books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration—received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. She also published Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop.  Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, was optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rodriguez_linda  or on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/rodriguez_linda.

I Give You to River by Linda Rodriguez

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I GIVE YOU TO RIVER, a poem for National Poetry Month (reprinted from Linda Rodriguez Writes – April 25, 2019)



Like my ancestors before me, I love rivers. The peace of running water always calms me, watching it ripple past slowly, hearing the murmur of the water over rocks and
branches and the swish of it against the banks, spying the many lives that live along the river–fish, turtles, snakes, muskrats, beavers,   hawks, and eagles. For millennia, my people have always chosen to settle near rivers.
When I was growing up, I was taught to go to water when troubled or ill. Running water is strong medicine, good medicine. We pray next to it, and then use it to wash away whatever is troubling our hearts, minds, or bodies. Sometimes a creek or brook will work for me, but if I’m truly heartsick, I seek out a river.
This poem is another in a series of poems that I have posted to celebrate National Poetry Month. It is an exploration of this practice of going to water when troubled. In the worst kind of pain and grief, sometimes only a river can provide any release. For a healing ceremony, one needs to build a fire, say the right prayers, make an offering, but sometimes in the worst straits, it can be simply you and the river.


I GIVE YOU TO RIVER

Turning to the water for release
from my troubles, from you,
I write your name in my palm with my
finger,
then brush off the invisible letters
into the river currents passing at my
feet.
I ask River to carry them out of my
heart and mind,
carry them away from my life, remove
all that darkness
that is you infesting my mind against
my will,
replaying memories that were nothing
but playacting on your part,
though my heart tries to find excuses,
for all the deliberate pain.
I have to face it finally—there are
none.
Hard to believe, but even harder to
find
I still long for you.
This stubborn heart won’t give up.
So I barricade it, keep it safe from
its stupid fidelity,
while I wait for River to carry out
magic,
carry your name and games far from me,
set me free finally with the power of
moving water,
my own inborn element,
which carves memories of trauma from
the earth itself
and leaves wondrous scars.
Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

Moving from One Life to Another

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
I am currently in the final, panic-driven stages of downsizing before our final walk-through with the buyers of our house. I feel guilty even taking time to write this blog post because I know I don’t have enough time left, and we’ll be pulling all-nighters to make it. Those are a lot harder when you’re in your late fifties and sixties than they were in your teens and twenties, believe me.

I have packed up boxes of books to give to my sister and my friends, and that’s not too hard. It doesn’t hurt so much to give them away to people I care about. It’s the other boxes, packed to sell, that hurt my heart.

The same thing goes for the fabric for my art quilting. It’s all beautiful, and though I cannily bought much of it on sale, it’s expensive, high-quality fabric and will cost a bundle to replace. But I have reached the limit I set myself for taking to the new house, which is slightly less than half the square footage of our current home but without its copious storage (attics, basement, two-car garage, many built-in cupboards). It was agonizing to choose which to keep and which to let go. I know I should have sold it, but I feel so much better about the bags and bags of gorgeous fabric going to my friends and to an organization I’m deeply involved with.

I’ve already done this hard work with the glassware and china and silver–and with clothes and linens. I’ve been fighting the papers-and-books battle all along, and I suspect they’ll go on to the end. There’s just so much of both categories. I’ve finally finished the fabric and sewing supplies and am now in the midst of the knitting-and-weaving-yarns-and-needles stash, another heartbreaker. Fortunately, a lot of it will go to my daughter and son, and that will make letting go of half of it so much easier. I don’t even want to think about the spinning fibers yet. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

I’m a quadruple Scorpio, and one of the symbols for Scorpio is the phoenix, mythical creature that rebirths itself out of destruction over and over. I’ve always felt that I lived many lives in this lifetime. There was the life that I call Queen of the PTA while I raised my oldest two kids and a foster son. Then there was the life of the divorce years where I went back for degrees and frantically worked multiple jobs to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. Then there was the life of university administrator, running a women’s center and teaching. Etc., etc. I feel now that I’m coming out of the life of cancer patient and getting ready to move into another with this move from my home of 42 years, so here’s a poem for that process.


A PHOENIX, SHE MOVES FROM
LIFE TO LIFE

and leaves only the ashes
of her old self
behind. She plunges into
the dark
future from the glare of
her funeral pyre
that brightens the sky of
her past
for miles and years and
leaves a legend
told to generations of
children
of a vast golden one
whose gleaming
body rose from the
burning corpse,
blotting out the moon
with huge wings beating
against
the burning air to lift
the dead
ground to the living
night sky
and fly through the moon
to a new place with new
people
where she could be new
herself—
until the destroyer
strikes again.

Like a hunting eagle,
she lands, claws
outstretched,
golden crest and feathers
lost
in transit, her wings
already disappearing.
She grows backward,
smaller.
Now she can only crawl
into and out of shallow
holes
in the ground of this new
life.
Still, the wise avoid
trampling her
for they know
she drags death behind
her.

Published in
Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha, 2009)

Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and
The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family
Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police
chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear December 19, 2017. Her three
earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken
Trust, and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

A Poem for Mother’s Day

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
Paffi Flood was unable to post today, so Linda Rodriguez is substituting for her.
As we approach Mother’s Day, the airwaves are filled with commercials for gifts for mothers and suggestions for special ways to “spoil Mom” and celebrate this May holiday. You can’t escape them. So, this poem is for all those who, like me, have lost their mothers and find the day’s celebrations bittersweet. 


CONVERSATION WITH MY
MOTHER’S PICTURE
You and Dad were entirely
happy here—
you in purple miniskirt,
white vest and tights
(you always wore what was
already too young
for me), Dad in purple
striped pants,
a Kansas State newsboy’s
cap
made for a bigger man’s
head.
You both held Wildcat
flags and megaphones
to cheer the football
team who,
like the rest of the
college, despised you
middle-aged townies,
arranging for their penicillin
and pregnancy tests and
selling them
cameras and stereos at
deep discount.
But you were happy
in this picture, before
they found
oat-cells in your lungs.

After the verdict, he
took you to Disneyland,
this man who married you
and your five children
when I was fifteen. He
took you cross-country
to visit your family,
unseen
since your messy divorce.
He took you to St. Louis
and Six Flags Over Texas
and to Topeka
for radiation treatments.
I don’t think he ever
believed
you could die. Now he’s
going
the same way. And none of
us
live in that Wildcat town
with the man
who earned his “Dad”
the hard way
from suspicious kids and
nursed
your last days. For me,
this new dying
brings back yours,
leaving me only this image
of you both cheering for lucky winners.
Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

Reading vs. Writing

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by Bethany Maines

On Monday night fellow Stiletto
author J.M. Phillippe (visiting from Brooklyn) and I attended the local open
mic night from Creative Colloquy.  The
evening celebrated Creative Colloquy’s third anniversary and featured the
Washington State poet laureate Dr. Tod Marshall. Creative Colloquy’s mission is
to connect writers with their community and celebrate their works. And in
keeping with that mission, Dr. Marshall reminded us in the audience to both
battle for the arts and to rejoice in our creative communities. 
As with every time I
go to a reading event I’m struck by what different skills reading and writing
are. It’s difficult to differentiate the presentation from the work being
presented. For every rushed reading, there’s one that gives space for the
audience to savor the moment. For every mumbled poem, there’s one that echoes
from the rafters.  For every awkward and
misplaced laugh in the middle of a story, there’s one that ought to be a comedy
special.  Delivery, timing, and pronunciation,
all take a reading from blah to amazing. 
Or at least important enough to make people stop talking to their
friends at the table.  Are the amazing
readings better?  Or just benefitting
from better delivery?
It makes me wonder: what
could I be doing to present my own work better in live readings? Should we authors all be forced
to take public speaking classes? Improv classes? Should we be forced to listen
to recordings of ourselves (God nooooooooooo!!!)?  Is there a secret trick that I could be
using?  What if I just I hire an actor to
read for me?  In all probability I shall
simply have to rely on the very exclusive, top secret trick of practice and
repetition.  As long as no one makes me
watch a recording of it, that will probably be fine.

***

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales
from the City of Destiny and An
Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Hot, Hot Summer

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
It’s the first of September, but it still feels like August, and that’s gone on so long that my eyes are permanently raw from sun and heat and truly excessive humidity. This photo is me at sixteen in my senior play, Li’l Abner, playing Moonbeam McSwine, a sultry woman whose way of dealing with the heat of summer was just to give in to it–and to every man who came along. So it seemed like a good choice for this post all about summer heat and how it makes us feel lazy and… decadent.

Here’s a poem I wrote about summer heat and how it can turn good girls (and women) bad–at least in their minds and imaginations.


BLAME IT ON SUMMER

that I smile too widely,
grinning really, and
laugh
too loud and often; that
I walk
with spring and sensual
sway;
that I stretch myself and
twist
like a cat
baking in the backyard
brightness; that my brain
is sun-bleached,
all rule and thought
boiled away, leaving
only sensory steam;
that my feverish eyes see
strange dancing
flames in afternoon
shadows
along the sides of
streets and Bedouin oases, fragrant
with dates and goats and
acrid desert waters,
in every suburban garden
we pass
while you argue and drive
and I stare,
heavy-brained with heat
and too aware of my own
body
and every other;
that I take a lover,
brazenly, crazily,
too sun-stupid to be
careful,
in my dreams.
Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

A Re-Awakening

/in /by

by Marjorie Brody

The New Year arrived for me in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. A live band, champagne and chocolate covered strawberries accompanied a balloon drop at midnight. The cruise allowed me to escape telephone calls and the demands of emails, meetings, and deadlines. I took a speed boat ride

through the rain forest, climbed Mayan ruins, and swam in gorgeous blue, calm water. I relaxed and gained a fresh perspective on my goals for the coming year. As a guest on a cruise ship, I was treated like royalty.

The vacation reminded me of how fortunate I am—purely by accident of my birth—to belong to the privileged of this world. Even though I have at times experienced religious prejudice, my life is blessed. I live in a country where, even as a female, I can receive an education, earn a living, marry the person of my choice, and raise the number of children I choose. My cruise experience, and the countries I visited, reinforced my awareness of the difference between the haves and the have nots. Years ago I wrote a poem about the divide between the privileged and underprivileged classes in our country. I pulled it out to reread and I’m sharing it with you below.

The New Year and its tradition of making resolutions coincided for me on this cruise and I decided that this year, my commitment wouldn’t be to write more regularly or submit more often. My resolution wouldn’t be to lose weight or exercise three times a week. My resolution would push me to think outside of my own little world and do something to make the world a better place for those less fortunate than I.

May the New Year be good to you.

SIDE-BY-SIDE IN AMERICA: THE PLAYGROUND

Twisted gray weeds wrap around
rusted spikes
                                                      Manicured grass, plush, green
                                                      and well styled
where once the swings stood
                                                       under brilliant colored poles
Rats and roaches scuffle
among bottles, cans, and paper
finding their way to
                                                      Children laughing,
                                                      singing rhymes and shouting,
                                                      playing tag and statues
Termites on an endless feast
gorging themselves on
                                                      “See-saw Margery Daw”
Mosquitoes and flies hovering
around excrement and vomit
                                                      Uniformed nannies strolling flowered paths
                                                      pushing their carriages,
                                                      and gossiping sweetly
                                                      And the friendly policeman
                                                      tips his cap as they pass
a drunk beaten and robbed
lying under the bushes
blood inching down his mouth
and ear—his temple pulsing
                                                       the heavy thunder of roller skates
                                                       on cement
its redness turned brown by
an equal part dirt
                                                       “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
                                                       Humpty Dumpty had a great . . .”
“Help me,” faintly come
                                                        babies cooing as they have their
                                                        tummies satisfied with
                                                        bottles full of warm white
clouds turning black
as the chill of night sets in
                                                        And as the sun seeks the horizon
                                                        the nannies call the children
                                                        home
                                                        to an unappreciated dinner
                                                        and lush, warm beds
                                                        And the children laugh, and
                                                        run
                                                        “ . . . all the way, all the way home”
with the faint voice calling
                                                        “three, six, nine, I resign.”

Marjorie Brody is an award-winning author and Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her short stories appear in literary magazines and the Short Stories by Texas Authors Anthology and four volumes of the Short Story America Anthology. Her debut psychological suspense novel, TWISTED, was awarded an Honorable Mention at the Great Midwest Book Festival and won the Texas Association of Authors Best Young Adult Fiction Book Award. TWISTED is available in digital and print at http://tinyurl.com/cv15why or http://tinyurl.com/bqcgywl. Marjorie invites you to visit her at www.marjoriespages.com.