Posts Tagged: poem
from Broken Waters by Amy Bornman
EVE
of every woman I am first. imagine
me falling off a cliff. imagine me drowning
in the tide. my belly growing big, for what?
no one can tell me what’s going on.
nausea I don’t understand, weeping for
hormones with no name. prayer with
no answer, when before I looked up
and everything was there. desert
instead of garden, a green twig bending,
bending, never snapping, and I am in
labor forever. no midwife, no mother,
no sister, no friend. I say goodbye to everything
because I’m sure that I will die. this is mine
alone. I remember the curse, it made no sense.
no knowledge could prepare me for this.
it is not pain, it’s the end of the world. I walk
through it, screaming, to find somewhere new.
—Amy Bornman, Broken Waters (Fernwood Press 2024)
A friend sent me this poem today with the note, “Mostly I like this recognition that Eve would suffer from having no other woman to ask for information and support.” What a terrifying thought.
I like the lines,
“I remember the curse, it made no sense.
no knowledge could prepare me for this.”
Because all my own weeks of prepared childbirth classes could barely scratch the surface of what it was like to give birth for the first time. I went into it holding tight to what I thought I knew. I knew nothing. I was absolutely in for it. What a ride.
I have it all written down in a notebook I gave to my oldest daughter. I could borrow it back, the only journal I’ve ever kept successfully (surprise! a writer who doesn’t journal) but that’s okay. It’s enough to say that when it comes to giving birth for the first time, we are all Eve.
This poem does a beautiful job of capturing that.
“The Story as I Understand It” by Leonora Speyer
I think that Eve first told the callow Tree of apples,
And taught the adolescent Serpent how to hiss
Its first wise word.
I think the Angel with the Flaming Sword
Followed her with hot holy eyes,
Remembering the red curve of her kiss
As she passed out of Paradise.
See, how the apple-boughs are twisted in their pain,
Weighed down with many a red-cheeked little Cain,
And how the serpent writhes away
From man to this far day.
An angel is a lovely lonely thing
Of boundless wing.
They are the banished ones that grieve;
Not Eve!
Not Eve, her body quick with coming pride,
Nor Adam walking there at her white side—
A little heavily perhaps,
Because of things scarce known,
As yet not named:
New tenderness for Eve, but not for Eve alone,
Fears not yet fears—
And out beyond, the world untamed
Of which to make
Their surer paradise of tears!
But in the Garden is a hallowed emptiness
Of laws, forgotten now,
Concerning fruit and flowers,
That none shall ever bless
Or break;
And in the Garden is the one plucked Bough
That blossoms whimpering
Through a divine monotony
Of Spring on spring.
This poem is in the public domain. I thought this poem was so beautiful and oddly contemporary, considering it was published in 1926. I’m putting it here so I always have it.
Taxidermy – a poem of the pandemic
I wrote this poem in 2021, and the time for it to be published has long since passed–there is nowhere to submit it. And to be honest I wasn’t sure it was any good. It’s raw and no organic form emerged while I wrote it, which makes no sense if you don’t write poetry but makes sense if you do, so my apologies.
I found it today and it made me cry, so I decided to put it up here in the hopes that we never forget that sad and strange time, and the losses we carry forward from 2020. I used to be afraid that nothing would change after COVID, that all that loss would result in nothing but loss. Some things did change about how we live. I thank the universe that so much has returned.
Taxidermy
To say my dogs died is one thing but
to say they died during the shutdown,
another. You know what I mean. The losses
pile up, the day to day, lunch with friends,
singing in the car on the way to work,
avoiding eye contact in the elevator,
neighborhood hellos, that awkward dance
in the narrow office kitchen. Who knew
I would miss it all so much?
In the face of deaths haunting
coworkers and friends, pneumonia
and bronchitis and long haul,
disruption and disappearance of
entire industries, do I dare complain
of my losses? My husband lost his job,
and found another. My daughter lost her job,
and found a lover after she moved back home.
Another daughter moved away, taking
her son (of course) (but how dare she).
The other avoids flying, and stays in Brooklyn
with a grandson who knows me via FaceTime.
That is my list, and of course, the dogs.
My dogs. Between the two of them
it was thirty years and less than twenty pounds.
Six pounds of spite, fourteen of duty,
fangs and anger, a symphony of paw licking.
I can tell you exactly how that sounded,
like I can tell you how it sounded when
the one had her seizures. I could tap out
the rhythm of their nails on the floor,
mimic their whines, their barks (a
sharp yap, a strange quack),
trace for you the orange paths of their tears.
I can summon the exact shape
of a blocky head under my hand,
and strange thick ears like a lamb’s,
white brushy fur and a hard, round belly,
silky fur and a bare pink belly
with little black dots where
teats should have been. I know
their warts and snarls, nicknames,
foolish, charming games, favorite toys,
how they settled for sleep between our long bodies,
the swallowed barking of their dreams,
their night kicks and canine snores.
The morning sneeze of the mean one,
to say she meant us no harm.
The smiling, wagging approach of the other,
to remind us about breakfast.
All these details are part of the pain
I hold so carefully, cherishing the ache.
I want to feel this pain. Maybe forever.
For Christmas this year, my daughters
hired a fiber artist to replicate my dogs.
I didn’t know, of course. I opened the box
and burst into tears over a pink tongue
poking slightly out of a mouth,
a fixed and anxious expression that tracked
my every move, every moment of every day.
They are perfect. Too perfect.
How could I tell my daughters
I couldn’t bear them? I hid them for weeks.
But now, they sit before me, Memento Mori,
the daily pain that reminds me
of what I have loved and lost,
four dark eyes that watch me move
through this strange and empty world
where so much is peeled away.
Poem up at Panorama: Directions to the Six Virgins
I have a poem up at Panorama, the Journal of Intelligent Travel. That’s an excellent place to place a poem that draws on travels with my mother.
Italy
I was only 32 when I went to Italy with Mom. She would only be 55, then, in this photo taken by me on that trip.
Mom loved expensive handbags and good haircuts. This photo shows both, as well as the length and grace of her arms, and her beautiful smile. She’s standing outside the door of the Tempietto Longobardi in Cividale, Friuli, Udine.
the temple of the longbeards
This was taken before the Temple of the Longbeards became a UNESCO world heritage site. Mom and I were able to go in and look around in a way that you just can’t, now.
The temple was built in about the eight century, very soon after they left paganism and became Christians. It may be the only remaining Longobardi (Scandinavian) church. It was built on the site of an old Roman house with scavenged Roman columns, but the choir stalls are purely Scandinavian looking, which thrilled me. I have breed recognition for anything Scandinavian.
suave and mysterious
While we were there, I rented an audio tour, a lovely recording by a woman with a cool British accent. In describing the frieze, the narration said that they were “suave and mysterious.” No one really knows who these figures are supposed to be, but the commentary referred to them as them as “six virgin martyrs, bearing the gift of their lives to Christ.” Accurate or not, I loved that description so much, it made the hair rise on my neck.
This trip with my mother wasn’t easy at times. I’d recently found and started contact with my birth father, and she had so much anger over it. There were times on this trip when she descended into harangue, trying to leverage my love for her into hatred for him. Irresistible force, meet immovable object. No one on earth is as stubborn as I am.
her voice
But those harangues were spaced out over the course of three weeks. In between stretched days of Italy’s wonders, the sweet smoker’s voice of my history teacher mother in my ear, gently explaining what was noteworthy, special and important about whatever we were seeing with her trademark intelligence, wit, and barely perceptible lisp. Today is the anniversary of Mom’s death. I’d give just about anything to hear her voice again.
Read the poem here: Directions to the Six Virgins
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Spire Rock
Poem up! A coming-of-age poem set on the Squaw Creek Ranger station outside Gallatin Gateway, Montana.
Hope you like it. Spire Rock
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Homeless in Portland: Sidewalk Living in Portland’s Old Town
I took this photo from my former office window on the other side of the building. That’s a homeless person’s bedroom. Right there on the sidewalk. Nice view, right? That’s an everyday vista around here.
When I moved to Portland over thirty years ago, it didn’t take me long to pinpoint Northwest Portland as the place for me. I lived and worked there for the first years of my time here, and returned to work in the neighborhood fifteen years ago. So over half my time in Portland has been spent in the Northwest neighborhood.
There have always been homeless people in this quadrant of the city. But the problem, the population, the misery and the mess have spread to many areas in Portland. It’s grown from terrible to unthinkable, resulting in ugly clashes. Homeless camps in residential areas are a new thing for the city in general, but they are nothing new in Old Town.
Old Town — The War Zone
Old Town starts on the Northwest side of the Willamette River in Waterfront Park, at the end of the park that is more-or-less unofficially surrendered to overnight camping–especially the area in and around the memorial to those Japanese-American citizens who suffered through internment in WWII. It’s all cherry blossoms and bedrolls.
From there, you walk up through our gay bar district (still home to Darcelle’s), our shrinking original Chinatown (with its beautiful walled garden), and the majority of Portland’s missions and soup kitchens. There is also a huge weekend bar scene, so streets are barricaded against traffic, allowing the bar-goers to party hard and take Ubers home to the suburbs. This is where I work.
There are other businesses in my little patch of Old Town; offices and galleries and pubs and restaurants, and a skateboard shop and a comic book store and a high-end sneaker store. They struggle along in an area rife with drug dealers and users, mentally ill wanderers, homeless camps, streetwalkers, pimps and all the problems they bring with them. Business endures despite the guns, knives and drugs on every corner.
The Urban Canopy — Park Blocks
Old Town ends at Portland’s Park Blocks. This swath of wooded beauty stretches through the inner Westside, hosting a mix of homeless people and office workers seeking a sunny place to eat a bag lunch. The South Park Blocks terminate in a University, and are full of sculptures. In the North Park Blocks, there are fewer sculptures (though the elephant in the photo above caused a stir when it was installed), and there are basketball courts, bocce courts and a playground used several times per weekday by a neighborhood charter school.
The playground is right next to an area where homeless people have been camping. And they really make themselves at home, fighting, playing music, drinking and having sex with each other in broad daylight. Right by the playground, actually. And no one does anything.
I wish these blocks were calmer. I worry about the kids and the campers, and I also worry about the future of our urban canopy. No one ever thought about what would happen when these trees neared the end of their life cycles.
Conspicuous Consumption — The Pearl District
The Park Blocks end, and the Pearl begins. It’s a nearly magical line of demarcation. This urban enclave of prosperity has all the boutiques, galleries, yoga studios, lofts and upscale restaurants you’d ever want to visit. Entitled people walk blindly into the streets, Anthropologie bags dangling from their wrists, on their way to Andina for cocktails, oblivious to the squealing of brakes.
Powell’s City of Books is here, and a fantastic old-school diner called Fuller’s. These are beacons of the old days in a neighborhood given over to tiny boutiques. I love the Gerding Theater, which houses Portland Center Stage in a reclaimed structure that used to be the old Armory, where way back when, Portland’s professional wrestlers did their thing. This area used to house warehouses, a train yard, and several breweries. It was rough, and I remember walking to work through here early one weekday morning and feeling distinctly unsafe. So I should like that it’s clean and safe now, yes? But I sort of hate the Pearl District. I take this transformation of our seedy old Brewery Blocks personally. It makes me feel old, poor and grumpy.
Old Northwest — Beauty, Gentrification and History
Above the Pearl is the old Northwest District. Listen, old Northwest is just the best. It’s a gorgeous neighborhood of shops and restaurants, there to serve the residents of the beautiful, massive old homes and apartment buildings that fill this area.
I worked and lived here in the early eighties, and was upset by the first wave of gentrification that hit the neighborhood, depriving it of a pharmacy, laundromats, all the normal trappings of a functional neighborhood. Some stalwarts remain, like the Nob Hill Tavern and Cinema 21. But I remember the music store! The bookstore! The wonderful thrift store! And of course, the vintage shop where I worked on and off for a decade–The Shady Lady on NW 23rd. It was such a great, crazy neighborhood in the 70s and 80s. But the charm here is so strong, the personal nostalgia so overwhelming, that I can forgive what’s happened.
Northwest — The Whole Piece
These are the strange strata of Portland’s Northwest, spanning a mere 30 blocks from river to the beginning of the heights, where the neighborhood ends. It’s always been a dense and diverse quarter of the city, and it suffers from strange compressions and interminglings. People who think they’re still in the Pearl District find themselves too close to the river, and start consulting their phones to get back to a safe place. Young people headed to the Barrel Room are harassed on their way back to their cars by crack dealers who resent the intrusion into their territory. Cheerful tourists roll their suitcases off the train and wade into the Old Town war zone on their way to the Lan Su Chinese Gardens, baffled by the human misery heaped on every sidewalk of “America’s Cleanest City.”
After fifteen years, I am still taken aback by my homeless neighbors in Old Town. I am appalled, repelled and moved by their misery every single day, every single person. And the whole point of my lengthy neighborhood portrait is to point you to a poem I wrote about coming to work each morning.
So, here you go: Working in Old Town