Oh, Wanted Words!

Mending
—Poetry and Original Art by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

NEW POEMS

Oh, wanted words,
streaming out in syllables,
shining like moon-slivers,

catching here and there
and changing into
blurry shadowings—

like fickle music
for dancers
who try to hold the music

that holds them together—
so young and so old,
desirous words

and sensual,
breaking apart
even as they are realized.

 Diplomacy

STAGES OF THE EVENING
After Le Baccarat a Deauville, 1928, by Raoul Dufy


The party was just getting started, mirrors flattering all the
faces. Polite laughter. Murmurings. Women posed for each
other—self-admiring in low-cut gowns and shiny stockings,
necklaces glittering at their throats or hanging down their
backs. Men grouped together in little conversational pre-
tensions, leaning attentively into the brightness and sound.               

The party was gaining its momentum. A waiter dropped a
tray. A woman put her hand on a man’s lapel; another fanned
herself in agitation. Someone laughed. Someone took offense.
The men gravitated toward the bar. A fading woman sat by
herself in the middle of the din—gradually coming apart with
each sigh of pity for her situation.                                           

The party was dwindling. The room’s brightness glared. There
were disconnections in conversations and in the way the rev-
elers glazed through each other. The women were tired of
posing. Waiters carried empty trays with professional dexterity.
Musicians had not returned from their break. Someone auda-
ciously told someone else’s fortune.

The party was over, the people just waiting for time to close
over them. Some stood with their backs to the mirrors. Some
stood rigid, and some just leaned against the silence. The
waiters carried heavy trays toward the doors. The room was
losing detail—all the color washed out—everything turning
into a scribble—only a sketch remaining.    

 Illusion

GOING INTO A PAINTING    
 
In the painting, the children are asleep in the quiet after-
noon. They lie across each other like tossed dolls—two
rumpled girls, having worn themselves out talking and
giggling.

And now the hour loosens its light around them and they
stir. They realize I am watching them, though I have
been sitting here drowsily making sketches. It is as if
they knew that I

would come and find them there. It is how they look at
me. They rise from their sweaty pillows and move,
dream-like, toward me, their eyes holding my eyes, their
faces strangely

serious, and when they reach me, they take my hands
and draw me back with them toward the shaded porch.
But we must hurry, for a border is closing in around us
—a feeling

only—for the yard stretches clear to the formless and
spacious end of itself. I do not speak to them for I do not
want to break the curious spell of their acceptance of me.

They pull at my hands to get me to go faster. The day’s
light is changing and they seem alarmed, insistently tug-
ging. They keep looking up at me, and I realize they are
pulling me from

a familiar distance that has separated us until now. I
move without sensation. For a moment I wonder if I
should be afraid of them. Now we have reached the
house—still not

having spoken—where they pull me inside the old
screened porch where we lie down together—three time-
blessed children, asleep in the quiet afternoon.

 What Will Break

TANGIBILITIES

We touch what is there with a certain
hesitation, as if it might break—the
hand go through—to some other world.

We crave sensation,
yet dare not learn of sharp, or sting,
we want the illusion.

Now soft winds sigh and rustle—
a shadow that disturbs and flattens—
makes a sound, I swear.

What is, is not. Or never was. But
what of real, we argue, and once more
let the hand withdraw from knowing.

______________________

JOURNAL

Why weeping. Why not. Have you not felt the sway
of great emotion; have you not felt time slip through

before you were ready; have you not favored regret
over favor? Oh, how you like the contradiction

of the mirror—that glass of lies. Break it, and it
multiplies. I say it twice—to catch up—to run past

myself, to run right through the mirror to the other
side of life—that parallel—where I am in the arms

of my mother. Time is on a wheel, rolling backward.
I go ‘round and ‘round myself, always ending up

back to the moment, which is smooth—oiled with
momentum. Ferris Wheel.

 Time Slipping Through It

SLIPPAGE

There will be no coming back
from this,
no turning-around place
in the breakage of our lives.

This is a road on a dangerous mountain,
steep and narrow,
rocks slipping off the cliff edge
and rain pouring down.

                                     
(first pub. in Atom Mind, Summer 1997)

___________________

YOU ARE THE ONE

pale down into haunted dark.
mark its edge.

press soft with your finger and thumb.
feel it resist.

grope past this flaw.
repair it with a shatter.

arranged and true,
like a bone.

you are a mender.
feel the power.

all breakage comes to you,
great hand and chance-giver.

all who are lost return their terror,
thin and difficult to measure.

do not be sad—all mockery is eager.
you are the one who will never.

yes, you are the one
who will never, never, never.

                                       
(first pub. in Celebration, 1987)

 The Shatter

A BREAK IN THE WEATHER
                       
The rain has lessened. Everything subsides.
The winds. The sirens. All the dreary news
the day began with. All that’s whole divides.
The silences stay silent to confuse.
We don’t know how to read each other’s clues
or all these pendings—not just if but when.
It rained. It stopped. And it will rain again.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

VIEW
—Joyce Odam

If windows
expand view
into landscapes and vistas
as real as mind can fathom
and release glass from
reality of glass—
what will break?

_____________________

Good morning and thank you to Joyce Odam for her visions of our Seed of the Week, “Broken”! Our new Seed of the Week is Quick Fixes, something everybody talks about during an election year. What do you think? Got any quick fixes in your pocket? Duck tape, maybe, or bandaids, or magic pills…? 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.

—Medusa

 —Public Domain Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com.
The snakes of Medusa are always hungry!