The Lit’ry Life 2015: Poetry by Lucinda Bowen

Midsummer

My daughter has made a list for us
of things to do.

Curl our hair is first,
followed by Paint all the unpainted toenails 
and Take a long walk up and down the driveway with No One even coming.

Her list is illustrated, and organized –
she held it up for me a few minutes ago,
as I sat distracted
at the computer, cursing silently
because I could not remember my password,
and she impatiently pointed to her own head,
demanding to know Is my hair even curly yet?

I look at her yellow bangs, 
her baby hair so fine 
even the crimp of a wet braid
slides immediately down the shaft and settles
into damp, straight hanks,
and feel genuine panic.

These long summer days have been hard on my mothering.

I have forgotten how to be present to my kid
when the present moment drones on so incessantly.
I catch myself all day fantasizing about taking a second shower,
or mowing the lawn by myself,
the engine’s thrum encasing me in a cocoon of impenetrable noise.
It is an ugly feeling,
this begrudging tolerance
of a small person who, really, just wants me to notice her
and cook her noodles for every meal.

I want to write about how I stand from the crowded desk
and join my child for a walk.
I want to write about how we collect flowers and leaves,
and hear the afternoon bird sounds,
and see how another generation of mice
have made a nest in the grill.

But I don’t do that. At least, not immediately.

First I continue to sit at my desk,
hunched and grumpy,
pulling this poem out
tooth by tooth,
and it isn’t until I’ve almost finished typing these words
that I notice the reflection
of my curly hair in the computer monitor,
and the new blue polish on my toes,
and glimpse out the window
my straight-haired child
dancing barefoot in the driveway by herself
as she waits and waits for her mama
to notice her back.
 
 

Revolution

The thing about art and music and dance and poetry
the reason you start now, I mean –

The reason you must make that space today, of all days,
in the midst of the clamor of everyday life
bustling around you,
in amongst the near misses and lack of urgency
and the sink full of dishes
and the open sense, always, of more time,

Is because someday – make no mistake –

Someday, there will be a Revolution.

And when the revolution comes,
there will not be time to start your learning then.
There will only be time to play the music
you’ve already practiced,
to stand on the legs you’ve already made stronger
by habit.

There will only be time
to break the heads off the stalks you planted
seasons ago,
that have been growing from seeds
you barely remember laying down.

Then, in the context of oppression and history,
your music will be subversive.
Then, your rhythm will be powerful.

Then, revealing the poetry you’ve nurtured in your soul
will count in the reckoning as a radical act,
another sliver of weight on the scale,
another silver dime lining the coffers of justice.

Only if you start practicing today,
when the stakes aren’t high,
when the worst thing you have to lose is your fear of being humiliated,

Only then will you be sure to have a voice
when the singing starts.

Hide

“Every woman in public life needs to develop skin as tough as rhinoceros hide.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

In your mind the rhinoceros is deliberate and fierce,
with fearless, rough hide.

You imagine donning grey rubber and
rolls of stiff cells,
a ridged plate you would wear
across the tender fullness of your breasts,
your softness bulletproofed
in fearsome warrior skin.

You feel admonished by Mrs. Roosevelt, a lady you admire,
and fear, not for the first time, that you’re failing.
Public life leaves you raw.
In your nightmares you are naked and falling.
You are repeatedly pierced.
You can feel everything.

But because you are a writer,
and are willing to spend your time doing anything besides writing,
you research.

You learn how fast
and exceedingly shy she is—the rhinoceros, not Mrs. Roosevelt—
demuring to strangers unless hotly provoked.
She doesn’t amble so much as step gingerly, skittish as a doe.

That fabled rhino shield
is famously sensitive to sun and insect bites,
and bleeds profusely when irritated by rough touch.
Rhinos wear the black tar of their blood.
Their skin bleeds without being broken,
like Jesus in Gethsemane, sweating blood.

You imagine the rhinoceros as
a large-horned geisha.
If she could cover her mouth when she laughed, she would.

To have the hide of a rhinoceros, then,
is to walk around in the most excruciatingly sensitive armor imaginable—
thick folds of nerve endings and capillaries
ready to burn or burst at the slightest attack.

Rhinos very nearly wear their skin
the way some of us are accused of wearing our hearts on our sleeves.
Perhaps that is what dear Eleanor may actually have meant –
not that we must insulate ourselves
in numbing thickness,
but rather our armor must be as sensitive and irritable
as the rawest hide,
as moved by blood
and sweat
and pain
as if our hearts themselves were stretched
over our pulsing innards,
blood-letting, injury prone.

And this, then, is how to read your beloved Rosey,
how she finally convinces you about how to wear your hide.
What she means is:  
Wear your heart out.
Stretch it thin and wide.
Let your most excruciating desires
lead you into the world,
slow and mincing, fast and charging,
fully expecting to be broken and wounded and covered in blood.

Remember, darling, underneath
you are still the Great Rhinoceros,
ancient and terrible and very, very fast.

You are the most fearsome salad eater,
not even at risk from the pride of cats.

Shelf Space

“The world will not end if you let the honeysuckle have the side of your barn.” – Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

I have been wrestling
with the indulgence of poetry,
questioning what business I have 
spending so much time lost in my journal
when my kids are clamoring for my attention
and the laundry needs to be folded
into piles
I will shift
from the basket
to my body
to the basket again.

Is there any shelf space for poems
in my perpetual reorganizing of the fridge?

Is there room in this dance of
    pick up
        put down
            purchase
                throw away

for the wild blossoming poem,
for its motion, like summer honeysuckle,
tendrilling down and around
and up and through,
wrapping itself around the side of the barn
until it eclipses the very wall it rests on,
until it rips the old foundation out with its roots?

Will the poems overtake me, if I let them?

I keep wondering,
how can I live a spacious enough life?