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Lie Lay Lain

July 5, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
[with poems from LITMOSPHERE 2024]
 . 
The evening darkens and comes on
+++ for James Wright
 . 
++++++++++ 1
 . 
I have a good friend who doesn’t like birds.
She says it’s the flapping. I say how can you,
a first grade public school teacher, not like birds?
I say it every time we meet at the bar
for a French 75 served in a crystal flute – How
Can You. Not Like. Birds. They’re too loud,
she says. God. I need her to be reasonable.
 . 
++++++++++ 2
 . 
Three cardinals in the hedge have fledged.
They peep in surround sound, one in a flower pot,
one on the low branch of the magnolia, one smack
in the middle of the street, the mother hopping
like mad to nudge it to the safety of boxwoods,
her waxy orange beak a crayon of devotion,
her road baby terrified out of its bird brain.
 . 
++++++++++ 3
 . 
I’m sorry, Mr. Wright, I ever called your poem
worthless, the famous one with the hammock
and the horse shit flaring like gold in the waning
of day. I hear your voice read through the night.
We have not paid attention. Birds slam into glass,
into windows we are not looking out of. Every
new poem, every new life, such a warning.
 . 
Jenny Hubbard
from Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit, Charlotte NC; © 2024.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
I can picture it lying on the hutch where she laid it not long after they bought the beach house in 1993, and where it has lain ever since. A novelty dinner plate, memento of her years as a teacher, sometimes buried under other plates or the detritus of grandkids visiting and large noisy family groups dining together. There it lies yet, solid and steadfast, secure in its lesson. Every year or two we rediscover it and laugh, so obscure, so obvious, the motto glazed in its simple school marm font: Lie, Lay, Lain. Who but a school teacher actually knows the correct usage, Lie vs. Lay, much less uses it consistently in conversation? Who but a teacher or a teacher’s child?
 . 
Linda jabs me in the ribs when the murder suspect on TV says, “I left the gun laying right there” and I expostulate, “Lying!” The gun, not the suspect. Am I such an ostentatious stickler that I have to correct every grammatical impropriety I encounter? Or am I maybe saying it out loud to re-teach myself? I check its feel on my tongue as the intransitive slides across. An homage to mom and all she taught me. Never forget, never forsake your upbringing. In 100 years the OED will list “Lay, laid, laid: verb, intransitive” as acceptable common usage, but until then I’m not going to lay around waiting.
 . 
 . 
❦
 . 
This evening, behind me, Dad is lying immobile where the nurses have laid him. Wake Forest Baptist Hospital- we’ve finally settled into his tenth floor room after 36 hours in the Emergency Department. He’s asleep, comfortable, the hard collar that is protecting his fractured cervical vertebra no longer agitating him. I’m reading a little poster beside his bed , the Johns Hopkins Mobility Goal Calculator. Level 5 is stand unsupported; Level 10 is walk 250 feet. Oh no, not Level 1: lay in bed! We’ve laid Dad in bed but he will have to do the rest of his lying there on his own with no help from Johns Hopkins. Lie still, Dad. Tomorrow I hope we can say that you lay restfully all night and will have lain free of pain throughout the day. I’ll be sure I say that right when I report to Mom.
 
  .  
 . 
. ❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
A Universe, in Revolution
 . 
My patient thinks he’s the new messiah.
++++ He’s got the key to the cosmos,
just had to listen to the signals
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ‘til they harmonized.
 . 
He says that I am part of the plan, play a role
++++ in his rise
++++ ++++ ++++ if I will only read the scripture
he sent me off the Internet,
 . 
if I will only hear him out tomorrow. I should believe
++++ he’s delusional, but this night
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ makes all thinks possible.
A sound in the sleeping house and my heart races,
 . 
as though the prophecy is already here, rolling
++++ like mist beneath my door.
Who is this, speaking
++++ ++++ ++++ from the wilderness?
 . 
Through the passage, a small boy kneels
++++ on his bed, facing away, fully asleep. Not wanting
to wake him and afraid not to,
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ I kneel beside him.
 . 
He holds the corner of the blind, looks out the window
++++ where a new moon blackens the street, the driveway,
the neighbor’s yard.
++++ ++++ ++++ I want that, he says. I see nothing.
 . 
What do you want?
 . 
I want that, he says, resting one finger on the windowsill.
++++ I should believe he’s imagining things,
but this night
++++ ++++ makes all things possible, dreams
 . 
existent on a perceptive continuum and not the ghetto
++++ of reality. I lay my son upon his pillow, aspect slack.
In sleep, we are possibility,
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ emptied of our devices.
 . 
In the morning, he’ll ask me to play. Nascent diction
++++ blurs diphthong, implores me
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ to pray with him instead.
Thank God, this understanding. My patient awaits
 . 
with his urgent need. And what am I, on this brink?
++++ A windowsill. A secret dark. A universe,
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ in revolution.
My son’s cheek. My lips pressed deep.
 . 
Morrow Dowdle
from Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit, Charlotte NC; © 2024.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Language. Usage. To get all hot and bothered when someone writes he ‘laid in bed all morning” is maybe as silly as rejecting on principle the dozens, hundreds of new words that enter the lexicon each year. English, world language, is endlessly pleomorphic, evolutional, contortionist, lush. Nourishing and delicious – relish it! And what better way to serve up novelty, invention, and sweet surprise than a healthy helping of poem?
 . 
The poems, fiction, and non-fiction in LITMOSPHERE 2024 have been selected from Charlotte Lit’s final Lit/South contest. As of July 1, 2024 Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts has discontinued the contest but expanded LITMOSPHERE to a twice yearly open submission journal. Submissions are open NOW, July1-31! New horizons and new opportunities are growing from something already strong and rich. Even a newly coined word will show its roots in some sound or utterance, some offshoot from fertile linguistic loam; a new poem also sprouts from the deep soil of music, rhythm, image. It may leave formal gardens to weave and sprawl across the page as a new thing; it may branch and bud into some unexpected inflorescence never before smelled or tasted.
 . 
This current LITMOSPHERE is a meadow, a forest, diverse and fruitful. It is the best of Southern creativity. This verse is not just fresh and new, it is biting and piercing. It makes me think new thoughts. It takes me into new places. Like language, poetry must be ever changing if it hopes to remain necessary and alive. To remain vital – from protoitalic gwīwō, to be alive, through Latin vivo, I live, into vita, a way of life: viable, vitality, revitalizing. This poetry is vital – relating to or characteristic of life . . . absolutely necessary.
 .
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
High John (Ipomoea Jalapa,
Bindeweed, Jalop Root)
 . 
Like King Arthur of England, he has served his people. And, like King Arthur, he is not dead. He waits to return when his people shall call him again. . . . High John de Conquer went back to Africa, but he lift his power here, and placed his American dwelling in the root of a certain plant. Only possess that root, and he can be summoned at any time. – Zora Neale Hurston in “High John De Conquer”
 . 
High John manifests
running wild in fields
crouching low in gardens
eve burrowing underground
heeding whispers and chants
for more, for better, ignoring
those who doubt his power
to restore health, to improve
conditions, to bear the fortune, to find courage
He has followed those stolen, those sorrowed,
those steadily holding hope that he will find
them, and his power will transcend their trouble
 . 
Over here, High John
 . 
High John, so high
the Saints still call him
The Orishas cry out, rumble ‘round
to find him, to guide him, to reveal
him, he, unassuming, lowly, powerful and
holy, he moves through, from tall grass to clearing
and arrives holding fortune in one hand and
healing in the other, pours assurance from his
mouth and illuminates love to the seeking
and the scorned from lips dripping in honey and humility
 . 
Oh, High John
 . 
High John come
He could’ve stayed away
but he could not leave his
people, as they entreated, danced
in clearings stump drums thumping in the night
 . 
Yea, High John
 . 
High John arrives
Golden straw crown gleaming
Making ways for his people who
have wailed, wandered, waited watched
fatigued and faltering . . . He still sees the holes to fill
that they might somehow become whole, as whole as he who has scoured
the lands and the seas
 . 
Draw near, High John
 . 
High John finds and fixes
and pulls from robes a
 . 
Conqueror’s Cure
 . 
Regina Garcia
from Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit, Charlotte NC; © 2024.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
A Long Time Ago This Was a Rich Man’s Backyard 
 . 
Now the trees own their dirt
This morning, a woman and her dog wear silent circles in the pavement
We struggle to make a meager living
In the meadow
I watch a spider thread gossamer between two trees
A collection of crushed paper cups in the brambles
and the spit of the ghosts who gummed them
Anyway, it’s an ant’s world now and always will be
Everyone is pregnant and sharing articles about how to parent through an apocalypse
Of course I want meaning, too
And by that I mean a child of my very own
To walk with through these trees
My child who gathers leaves and never speaks
Maybe at the end there will be no sound
Just gestures of love and violence
The grass shifting slightly to accommodate the breeze
 . 
Rebecca Valley
from Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit, Charlotte NC; © 2024.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Jenny Hubbard (Salisbury, NC) manages a used bookshop that raises money for her local public library.
Morrow Dowdle (Hillsborough, NC) hosts “Weave & Spin,” a performance and open mic series featuring marginalized voices.
Regina Garcia (Greenville, NC) has contributed poetic and vocal content to the Sacred 9 Project of Tulane University.
Rebecca Valley (Durham, NC) has written a collection of true crime stories for children which include dognapping, museum heists, and cryptozoology.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2021-03-23
 . 

Posted in Imagery, poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Coexistence?

June 29, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

[with Pilot Snake by Mary Oliver]

On June 21, I wrote in Tangled my distress at killing, by trying to protect nesting bluebirds, a four-foot long black rat snake. It became entangled in the collar of plastic mesh I’d attached at the base of the birdhouse pole to keep snakes from climbing up the pole to the nesting box. I never saw it there until it began to stink.

The snake’s presence explained the bluebirds’ agitated behavior over the past several days. Once I discovered the dead snake at the base of the post, though, I didn’t see the parent birds visiting the nest any more at all. Had they abandoned the chicks they’d been feeding so obsessively for two weeks? What would I find inside that house? I couldn’t bring myself to look. I hadn’t wanted to kill that snake; I didn’t want the death of birds on my heart as well.

❦

This morning I take down the bird house. I unscrew it and open it for cleaning: an empty nest. A few smears of bird lime but no desiccated baby bird carcasses. They have fledged and flown.

And now in the humidity and sweat of this heat dome morning, I’m moving the cleaned birdhouse to a new location and a new pole. This torpedo-shaped baffle should prevent snakes from climbing to the house, and I’ve added a spiky frill to deter the most persistent climbers. To deter, not to harm. Eat all the mice and voles you desire, O Snake. All my weedy property is yours to roam. Just let me enjoy Bluebird Song this summer.

 . 

 . 

❦ ❦ ❦

Pilot Snake
 . 
had it
lived it would have grown
from twelve inches to a
hundred maybe would have
 . 
set out to eat
all the rats of the world and managed
a few would have frightened
somebody sooner or later
 . 
as it crossed the road would have been
feared and hated and shied away from
black glass lunging
in the green sea
 . 
in the long blades of the grass
but now look death too
is a carpenter too how all his
helpers the shining ants
 . 
labor the tiny
knives of their mouths
dipping and slashing how they
hurry in and out
 . 
of that looped body taking
apart opening up now the soul
flashes like a star and is gone there is only
that soft dark building
death.
 . 
Mary Oliver
 . 

Posted in Imagery, poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Love-ology

June 28, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

 . 
[with 3 poems by Claudine R. Moreau]
 . 
Lesson on Cryovolcanism
 .  . 
How can a moon cry?
I wonder as I display the face
of Enceladus, the Saturnalian moon,
to students pecking on cell phones.
Their saltwater brains
enmeshed in everything
but this moon dressed
in bright fresh eruptions
of sow fall, pockmarked
craters, and frozen blue
rivers of tears.
 . 
It is January, my season
for venting and remembering –
the snow packed mountain
road which winded up
to the Flat Rock Church
that my father rebuilt,
post and beam. Every nail
hand-hammered,
every cement block place
and trialed with his patience
in finding God in hard work.
 . 
I want to tell the class
that humans are the only
species known to cry
from emotion.
Instead, I get locked
inside my mind’s
digital inventory –
to see a wooden pin
box engraved
with his name next
to the pulpit, wreathed
with baby’s breath, steam
and smoke escapes every seam.
 . 
Claudine R. Moreau
from Demise of Pangaea, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte NC, © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Here’s how science works: observation – hypothesis – test – revise – test again – etc. Even gravity, which so far has bruised me every single time I’ve fallen, has chinks in its unassailable wall of theory. Revise – test – revise again. Science is less about nailing down and more about thrusting open.
 . 
What would happen if a scientist were to investigate love? A review of the literature would be in order, but the theories of Masters & Johnson and the Kinsey Report are to love as Newton is to Heisenberg. Perhaps the poetry of love would be more helpful, but wouldn’t that be like trying to map the cosmos without a standard candle, no reference point from which all other distances can be calculated? Uncertainty indeed!
 . 
And yet poets just can’t quit writing love poems. (And death poems. I argue that without an awareness of mortality there would be no poets and no poems at all. Perhaps knowing that all of this that is me will one day cease makes me even more desperate for love.) How would a science of love work? Is it a two body problem? Where each body’s mass and velocity keep changing and changing without pattern or predictability? A recipe for crashing or flying apart. Or, on some more beneficent cosmos, might each body practice its love science – observe, contemplate, revise – and at least on some days experience a stable orbit?
 . 
Clearly the chance for a unified theory of love is pretty slim. And yet, in the cold and darkness of space, how can we not be drawn to warmth and light? Each love poem is another data point. Each fond glance is a photon arriving from the void. I will allow myself to be encouraged and not afraid of infinite complexity in this expanding universe.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Red Nebula
 . 
The doctor examines
every inch of me, every defect
I’ve collected on this skin.
When she gets to my breasts
she sees it –
a spoonful of jam dropped
by mother at birth,
beacon of wonder or disgust.
 . 
All my life I”ve wanted it gone.
I lied about it like a bad tattoo.
The doctor measures,
collects data on her notepad –
radius and diameter,
sketches its blurred perimeter.
 . 
Her eyes are cosmic cameras
lit even now by the big bang
of my birth. They rove the dried
alluvium of hips, descend
into the canyon of my C-section.
 . 
She zeroes in with calipers
to the belt’s middle more – my Alnilam.
Without warning,
she scoops it out,
as if it were a black hole
and would consume me
atom by atom.
 . 
This is when I am certain
that I love my mark of Cain –
imagine the nebula
going into a lover’s mouth.
Its sweetness, red
texture like cotton candy,
its wholesome intention
swelling the brain.
 . 
Claudine R. Moreau
from Demise of Pangaea, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte NC, © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
I recall my one conversation with Claudine Moreau some twenty years ago, learning she teaches physics and astronomy at Elon University, and saying to myself, “Hell, Yes!” Poetry is required to grasp modern physics; physics requires a poet to convey it. A beautiful equation is a crystal of metaphor; reality is no click of billiard balls but a cloud of imaginings. Every decade or two I re-read The Dancing Wu Li Masters to marinate myself again in what cannot be touched but only felt.
 . 
Like these poems. Demise of Pangaea – Moreau’s lines contain hard images which one might collect like fragments of iron in permafrost after a meteorite explodes, but the collection, the whole, is the flash and steam and momentary brilliance of matter and atmosphere colliding. Halfway through the book I grumbled, “These are not at all chronological. How am I to connect these poems and make them make sense?” Exactly, exactly. Whose life makes any sense at all as it unspools? Contemplating my life is like looking through a telescope – the moments that seem separated by only a fraction of an arc-second are actually years apart, light-years distant. These poems are raisins in a pudding: as it cooks and expands, they separate so that when we open it, each sweet, pungent moment stands out by itself. Galaxies in an expanding universe.
 . 
And so I return to the title poem for my reference point, my Alnilam in the center of Orion’s belt. Once the earth was whole, a single land mass, and seemed surely destined to remain so forever. But deep forces and dark machines work on us and our desires, and no one can bridge every chasm and rift as the continent splits in two. Hold on to the bright moments. Seek a high point from which you can embrace the Milky Way. Every star burns out, as it must. Fix it in your memory. Perhaps in the glimmer of a star, in a poem about love, you may for a moment forget how heavy / Earth makes all of this.
 . 
❦
 . 
Sample additional poems and purchase Demise of Pangaea at Main Street Rag, HERE
 . 
 . ❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Demise of Pangaea
 . 
It’s June and the sky never goes dark –
the solstice sun entombing night.
 . 
An endless red dusk
seeps like a wound,
 . 
bleeds through Oslo’s
barcode skyline.
 . 
Harbor fjords become gnomons,
track the day’s slow radioactive decay.
 . 
We are in bed, midnight sun exposes
the long ridge between our bodies.
 . 
I watch your chest rise,
a hundred tiny moles move outward –
 . 
the continents pull apart by slow churn,
some invisible thing rising through rock.
 . 
Claudine R. Moreau
from Demise of Pangaea, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte NC, © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
IMG_0880, tree
 . 

Posted in Imagery, poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

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