The Witch Series

 

Tex

I was the witch of Religion class,

because my hair curtained

my face, when I read aloud,

and when this nun interrupted me

to ask whattt? I didn’t get it,

and I repeated my version of

what, with its softer ending,

back to her three times,

until she turned red and said,

I was saying that word all wrong.

My T’s, back then, were Paterson T’s.

They fell short of the sound on purpose.

They were about a slow fade

which is better than the sudden

death this city was trying to avoid,

and so was I. What with no money

for college, the future was pretty uncertain.

But she insisted I hit those T’s

so hard, every time I got to a what

or a that in the Old Testament,

that I giggled throughout

my passage, which was

sacrilegious on top of ignorant.

That’s when she called me a witch.

So yeah, this felt like Gunsmoke,

and her bullets bounced right off of me, 

because I was a witch, a strega, in fact,

from a big Sicilian neighborhood.

I pictured her shredding her veil

every time she passed a nail, and

wished it so. Then I made myself

disappear for the rest of the year.

I scried into the future and knew

some day at a high school reunion

I would walk right past her,

and her little cowboy swagger,

as if none of us had ever been

afraid of her, as if she were

just a rerun on TV.

The Witch series

                                             Drawing by Rima Staines
Nana
 
Her voice curdled milk, her words hatcheting

the air around us, as we sat, big contemplative
lumps around the TV. She, the antithesis of ennui,
couldn't see the cloud hanging over us.
Forget sympathy. Too many things needed doing, 
shadows and creepings everywhere.

She put hexes on our father, for making too little,

and spending too much at the gin mill,

gave our mother venomous handouts,

drove her ashen with vexation,

cleaned our filthy house,

breathing incantations, rag in hand,

poking around with the vacuum wand,

spraying us all with Windex, and condemnation.

Only the baby was innocent.

To babies she was a smoocher, a laugher,

all goodness and light. At two it was all over;

they turned rogue, like the rest of us.

No candy houses to tempt us into cooperation.

Only vinegar, spitfire, a daily poison mushroom

to toughen body and spirit, a list of standards

that flew like a flag from the rooftop,

and orders barked out by the hour,

with a minute hand’s patience.

If we didn’t jump, she was a stubby cyclone,

doing whatever it was herself, then calling us

names until we wanted to hurt her too,

to startle her into silence, until she threatened

to put her head in the oven unless we let up.

She pushed, and we pushed back, until she went

blind at the sight of us. Then we haunted her

like the ghosts we’d become, howling with
laughter as she went about her rituals, sewing
God knows what into our clothes, as she 
did the mending, stirring the steaming
cauldron, or wielding her broom.

Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published by Umbrella in 2010

Frida Holds A White Rabbit

like a baby. She doesn't 

smile for the camera, 

as she cradles 

el conejo blanco,

como un bebe, in her arms,

the white rabbit of her longing

like the infant she never carried to term,

the fat white conejo of infidelity,

little effigy of Diego, its flat contented face

so much like his: the barren 

moonscape of his apology.

She looks tired.

She rests her head on her hand,

her mouth a small horizon in the shadows

She is thinking about the engorged 

conejo of his politics,

the fuzzy impersonality of his vision,

the little female comrades in his murals.

Where is her anger? 

Does it leap through the agave now

swift as the jackrabbit of Tehuantepec? 

Does it burn in the desert?

No because el fuego de Frida’s

resentment is gone for good.

No more galloping around here,

keeping up with the horses.

No more bites on the cheek

for you, you selfish rider!

Frida’s just plain worn out.

She’s taken el conejo back,

and she’s holding him like the baby he is.

Frida squeezes him so close

he’s short of breath. Come on,

smile for the camera, Frida. Smile,

as two crows fly above your eyes.

After the photograph: “Frida Kahlo With A White Rabbit,

Blue House, Coyoacan, Mexico City”

1949 by Hector Garcia

Tuesday Poem: previously published by Feminist Studies in 2003

painting by Phil Wood

 Hunger Report # 117

It was when he stopped the car

and shouted that I could get out

and walk the rest of the way home,

there on Mohawk Street, which was miles away,

that I started craving cream cheese.

Cream cheese with bacon and tomato

to be exact He bought it a couple of days ago

to eat with the dozen bagels.

Cream cheese, smoke, and salt on Triscuits.

That’s how I wanted to eat it,

crunching them like bones between my teeth.

His, mine, the bones of our contention,

each slathered with  his love

to help me choke them down.

Tuesday Poem: previously published in the anthology: Women.Period in 2008

                                                                                     Painting by William Blake  
Sleeping Beauty

Like a frog out of the water,

like a big clumsy fly caught in a screen,

I entered womanhood

flailing my long legs.

Jumping Double Dutch in sneakered feet,

pounding a Morse Code of denial into the sidewalk,

so it echoed throughout the neighborhood:

not me, it said, not me,

I'll play with dolls forever,

I'll be a boy

if I want to,

I'll go off and play

by the railroad tracks.

Or spinning crazy like a top

in the grass of the backyard,

almost mowing mother's roses down with my arms,

then swooning beneath our peach tree

heavy with ripening fruit.

Dizzy it always made me dizzy,

and sleepy too, this newly tilting

pigeon thrumming inside me.

Thought I'd never want

a prince bending over me,

his face so much like a brother's

with its teasing wheedling eyes,

and mouth that kisses too hard.

 

Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published in Footwork 1987

My Mother Always Seemed Bigger Than Me

her face as round as a Russian Doll’s.

She even wore a babushka when it rained.

And her mother bigger still, enveloping her

in the do’s and don’ts of the world,

all the frowning dimpled faces and stocky bodies,

with wagging stubby fingers: No, no, no.

And my grandmother’s mother before her,

wearing cabbage and bacon grease perfume.

All the way back to Holland they go,

All of them closing over me, each 

generation more massive than the last.

All of them cast from a similar mold,

their arms painted on, akimbo over aprons,

faces barely holding in the rage they feel,

about working, working, always working

for children who don't appreciate.

O lineage of matriarchs, who tucked
your sheets too tight, I see you floating 

above me as my shadow comes down,

round as a bell jar,  grim as the final 
hour of night over my daughters, 

passing on that darkness, 
whether I want to or not.