AGNES

I dab her pigment with a cotton swab,

soaked in alcohol.

Check for craquelure --

It seems she is the real thing:

a grandmother 

who, I can hold in memories eye

and study.

I must look at sketches

made before my form was conceived.

I must recall a photogravure image,
We shall call it “Woman with Bun,”

hair balanced softly above

a face reminiscent of my mother’s.

Who were you Agnes?

I hear there were horses.

I hear there were men

who shared your brief life.

What was it of Milton

that made you chose him

to father your daughter and son?

But then,

there was no choice for you.

You were of a different age.

What came to focus

briefly before your death?

What were your hopes

and dreams?

Did you worry on your deathbed

of a daughter and a son

left alone?

Did you consider the day

when I might follow you

in life?

You were of a different age.

Is it purely fancy to think we

would have had much in common?

WHEN LOVERS MEET

She translates herself

into a virgin.

The milk that would have fed

the god

flows from her breast

with the fluidity of modern French.

“Tu J’adore Monsieur Cochon.
You love me!

I travel on to mystic shores," she sings.

"La fleur de lis stitched to my heart,

The door to oysters’ sustenance awaits."

FEMINIST WRITING AS IT RELATES TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

In order to present the feminist perspective in your writing, you must teach your reader to reinterpret (eurocentric ? male?) cultural paradigms. 

  The writers of post-colonial third world nations strive to break from the imperialist-taught interpretations of the classics in order to write their own people’s reality. Similarly, the feminist writer must break away from canonically taught male pedagological interpretations of life.

  Actual relevance of life from a feminist perspective can only be projected when your reader is able to interpret your writing outside of the canonical male pedagological parameters. 

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his article “A Globalectical Imagination,” applies this concept for developing a relevant reading of the European  (imperial) classics in postcolonial cultures:

“Today, a Fanonian reading of Shakespeare would yield contemporary relevance even for students outside of the imperial perimeters.”

  Thiong’o then notes how through an imperial interpretation “Macbeth’s bloody dagger” could be explained as “the result of blind ambition, a fatal character flaw.”

  Freeing the reader’s interpretation from that imperial paradigm, allows the reader to see the bloody dagger as reflecting how “imperial nations had taken power by the sword, maintained it by the sword and the colonized could only grab it back by the sword” he writes. 

  Thiaong’o continues, “It’s not just Shakespeare, Goethe or Balzac. A certain reading of postcolonial literature can equally straitjacket the ethical and aesthetic vision (I would add, “of your reader as she interprets the postcolonial writer’s work.”)

  Similarly, a reader of the feminist writer’s work can equally be “straitjacketed” by interpreting what she reads in canonical eurocentric paradigms and miss the concepts the writer is presenting. To avoid this happening, you must train your reader to reinterpret outside of that straitjacket.

MERCY FOR THE YOUNG

A boy lies near death in a hospital bed.

Who cries for him?

Who shares his pain?

A city celebrates, people cheer.

The pain of human suffering is lost

on the psyche of Boston.

I am sickened as I see

their joy

At his demise.

A child of 19,

What could he know

of his actions?

What  could he see in broad perspective

of the complexity of the world,

of the weight of guilty that he might carry

one day when maturity came 

and memory gushed with the screams of his victims?

I cry for you Jahar.

I feel your pain.

I absolve you of your crime.

Many have sinned
each in our own way.

*Days after the Boston bombings in April 2013
the youngest of the two brothers involved was
hunted down and taken prisoner after being
barraged by gunfire while hiding in a boat.

DEFINITIONS FOR A POET

Mitochondria: 

hope of converting the energy of verse

to sustenance the nucleus of society may use. 

Sophism:

Not the implement of deceit that it has come to represent,

Rather the Art of successful living

it came to mean in 5th Century philosophy--

or a nod to the Greek.

Onomatopoeia:

Fluidity of utterance, flowing o’er a reader’s ears,

A tete-a-tete in a sidewalk cafe

where we shall echo life’s variances,

Murmuring into each other’s ears, 

The Abrakadabra that brings hope to life.

Syrian Family

They live in caves,

The dust of their ancestors

filling their lungs,

covering each day 

with alms from the past.

When will we 

join them?

They must have thought

as bombs exploded

around them.

When will this dust

mingle with our own?

*In Syria, people are digging out

ancient graves in the hillsides and

living in therm. Safer to live underground.

March 2013

THOUGHTS ON THE POLIS (with a nod to Lyn Hejinian)

Eudaimonia rushed

to the gathering

before me,

Tresses flowing,

rainbow colored bird

on her shoulder.

Children gathered

round her skirt --

little hands reaching

toward the fragile bird.

I snuck in,

unseen,

unheard,

unnoticed 

by the guests.

Laughter,

frivolity escaped

from tiny lips.

They basked,

drinking in Eudaimonia’s

essence.

I thirst behind their chorus.

*Eudaimonia is ancient Greek. It literally

 means “to be with a demon;” one “who accompanies

 each woman throughout... life, who is her distinct

identity, but appears and is visible only to others.”