Red Persuasion

 

The Composition

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

RED GHOSTS

emanating out of the last rim of sunset—arms raised in
gestures that could be imploring someone to save them,
or waving last good-byes—faces stricken with calls

we cannot hear—mouths frozen open on those silences
that cover everything—blending together as if conjured
out of the far-red hills that hang in red perspectives

as the sunset deepens—perhaps only cloud shadows,
wavering together like old nightmares, grown so thin
that we know they must be starving. But a tide of dis-

tance is pulling us away, as if we are carried off in time-
less boats, as the red ghosts of sunset stare, and writhe,
and flare with dying light as we drift out of sight of them.

 

 

 

Vision

 

SPEAKING IN BLOOD

The words are all red
this morning, red for love,
and lack of love, and for the
word itself. Look how intense
they appear on the page—shaped
like that—awkward like that,
meaning what they mean,
even as they question
what they mean.
How
fierce
they are,
as if to win by
their very boldness
—their red persuasion.

 

 

 

Here

 

RED HAIR

Natural redheads. Natural
response. Mirrors confirm.

All eyes go toward, admire,
hair of fiery look.

Audacity of self-assurance.
hair that lifts to light,

has sheen, pulls self and
others in same distraction.

Admiration : Hey...! Red…!
Target for helpless hearts.

Advertisements
love that look. Movies, too.

Little Egyptian bottle.
Henna.

Promise to cure dullness,
ignite with sexy color.

____________________

RED LIPSTICK

Lipstick would never
stay on my mouth,

wearing away
as soon as applied—   

even the
liquid black lipstick

of the 1940’s
that went on like nail polish.
 
I never learned to smoke,
either,

so could not be
sophisticated—

leaving my lip-prints
on smoldering white cigarettes.

 

 

 

The Arrival

 

THE FAMILY FRIEND DROPS BY

The family friend stands in the doorway
watching the children play dress-up
from a large tumbled box of clothing
in the open closet.
The girls feel like movie stars
as they costume and pose for each other.

Then they realize he is standing there
watching them
and they grow silly
and don’t know how to act.
They feel a power from his interest.
They say they are hot and thirsty
and ask him to go buy them some ginger ale
from the corner store before it closes.


(prev. pub. in Medusa's Kitchen, 10/16/10)

 

 

 

The Role of Darkness

 

GAME
           
Something holy lifts us, takes us—
on a long white board to a playful
cemetery where death is a laughing
child, clapping its hands upon our
reality—our yelling falls silent,
we stare at the coming rule
of darkness, full of stars . . .

Mothers ! call us in . . . 

(prev. pub. in Calliope, 1990)

______________________

GESTATION

Part of her is broken
by the incompletion of his eyes—a visual
fragmentation from the engrossment of his art.

She holds her child in the cradle of her lap.
Gaze to gaze.
They center their connection.

Inside the composition
she protects her stillness while he
agitates the colors in his desire to complete her.

Color by color he depicts her,
but he cannot touch
the child.

The child is in a white center
that she safeguards with the power of her life.
Her eyes stay centered on the child.

He dare not damage this. It has taken him too long
to be born of her—to let her out of
his mind and free them from the torment of his heart.

 

 

 

 Whence

 

SPOTLIGHT

You sit in the floor-light
of the lamp and talk to me,

saying how madness claims you.
The doorway outlines you

to a graven performer—
I cannot recede into mind-darkness,

you have it all
at the gesturing end

of your fingers that twist so
in your agitation . . .

while I am the one
in bent and inconsolable sadness,

curving inward to a deafness
while you articulate

and perform
your charming pain for me.

 

 

 

The Candle

 

REFRACTIVE

My fear talks to me in a different mirror,
haunting my image with his,
if indeed there is a gender.  

His under-voice is a hum in my head
as though thinking to himself
but knowing I hear.

Whatever
is behind me in the glass
is behind him in the opposite glass.

Why two mirrors
for this? I think. And his eyes
respond. Must I console him? I wonder.

____________________

THE TRUTH
After The Still Life with Ginger Pot II, 1912
—Painting by Piet Mondrian

Lines break apart to explore the center, which is calm,
which is ‘thought’ in moment of ‘clarity’, where a
round thing defines—is defined—a union of answer
and question. The lines maintain their design of being—
whatever they are to meaning, which is not immed-
iate—or meant, which is only chaos of beginning and
continuance. All is relevance seen by blindness, form-
ing the center truth, which is and is not, what you
thought—curved and perfect—circular—on the ledge
that supports it safely, will not let it topple into the
compositional chaos of lines around it, that allows it
the revelation that reveals and protects it.

 

 

 

Gilded

 

 

GETTING THE POINT

I think one had to be there. The joke was private,
the reference obscure—it didn’t quite come off
as gossip, or as anecdote of relevance to gain a
chuckle at, no, one really had to be there in
the original experience.

The story had a lag to it—required an explanation,
or revision to accommodate its newer audience. It
might as well have been Greek—or dialect—with
foreign terms interspersed throughout. The innuen-
do didn’t work.

Well, we laughed anyway because the others did,
and others seemed to get the point, though we did
not, and who wants to look foolish in sophisticated
gatherings of charming talk-swap that one is not
quite up on. The joke? It doesn’t bear retelling
and anyway, you get the point, don’t you?

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THE CHILD OF SPRING
—Joyce Odam

Here I come with my words in a bonnet to 

fling at winter across the warming weather 

. . . white rose petals . . . strewn by me . . . 

anxious to be liable for all this joy you are 

feeling from the po-e-tries . . .  

______________________

Spicy red Ginger is our Seed of the Week, and Joyce captured much of it on the page. She even thought of a ginger I missed—ginger ale—and used it in her poem, “The Family Friend Drops By”. Thank you, Joyce, for the red-hot poems and pix!

Our new Seed of the Week is “Nonsense”. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

 

 

 

 

(For a dandy list of nonsense words, see editorproof.net/and-other-nonsense-words-youll-want-to-know/.)

 

 

 

 

______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

The Still Life with Ginger Pot II, 1912
—Painting by Piet Mondrian, 1872-1944
(www.piet-mondrian.org/the-still-life-with-gingerpot-2.jsp)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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