River of Time, book review, Simone Wilson, The Paper, Aug 30, 1990

REGIONAL LOVERS AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE

REGIONAL LOVERS AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE

                  —for John Oliver Simon, who really put me through the wringer

At the national conference I nearly succeeded in avoided my ex-lover

altogether, but fate intervened to unravel the mystery

of what we'd become a year and a half later

Flying down a blind curve of stairs I ran into him

saying, Well, I guess I had to talk to you eventually.

He was on the way to the poet's baseball game

We sat on a log, under the shadow of an incense cedar

our backs to the westering sun, at a loss for words to break the silence

of unraveling the mystery of what we'd become a year and a half later,

we rehashed old lines as if it were possible to erase pain by clarification

I had to sift through the ashes to find out what was left of me

His confessions offered little solace or clarity

He says he's cured of 20-year-olds truth itself got twisted

He made me into the bad guy wanting someone to blame for his guilt

He crows about how the therapy has helped,

but is in the same pattern with woman # 3, or is it #43?

He hugs me, runs off to play baseball,

and the tears, dry for nearly a year,

break free of the dam imprisonment

I can't believe he sold my lamps not wanting contact,

and returned other ex-girlfriend's dishes

I had no tools to make sense of this carnage

Women ask if we'll reconcile,

some part of me wants something that doesn't exist.

They tell me how they seduced their ex-lovers, then said goodbye

we never went back

that doesn't exist

for once I was more important than baseball

We sat on the log tittering, knowing tongues were wagging

Devorah Major came over, saw us, abruptly turned away

Volcanic she muttered

Kathy Evans says her ex has a new family

Elizabeth McKim described John as a Peter pan,

a puere, the boy who never grow up  cycles of co-dependency,

like with Etheridge Knight who's dying of lung cancer 

Ingred says You need to process for a while,

Instead I run off to join what I thought was the multi-cultural caucus.

Francisco Alarcon's eyebrows raise like birds.

Tobey Kaplan says What are you doing here?

this is the gay caucus. I said Who cares?

We're all human aren't we?

At a time like this people's sexual persuasion

hardly mattered I needed to be with people

Luke Breit goes to get me a beer,

I barricade myself in the bathroom, easy tears

I could hear him shouting my name

When he found me again he said, This time don't disappear

when I get you a beer. More tears at the dance,

I abruptly turned and walked into the night

between the dark haunches of cars did John follow me? No

I'm swigging my beer and crying, finished my beer

reentered the hall like a space walker

then danced madly as if my life depended on it,

and it did. He enters, yes he did follow me.

I danced wildly all night with men, women, & champagne bottles

I was a marathon runner, the dance floor, my track.

I covered miles that night

gyrating and shimmering oozing sex and pain from every pore

I was like a bright flame of heightened intensity

his eyes upon me from across the room on the dance floor,

and from outside     blind I was always tracking him,

I didn't even have to look to see where he was

I could sense him with my eyes closed.

Once he danced too closely behind me, his toe under my heel

how he watched me as one man  played with my long scarf,

spinning me, tying me around the waist spinning me like a top

He was taking note. speculation & jealousy

Last dance— he stood alone in the middle of the room, hangdog

I took a healthy swig from my champagne bottle

danced into his arms  He gathered me in  "Goodnight Sweetheart"

perhaps this was the final ceremony we were seeking

Perhaps we were reluctant to take the final step severing the ties.

This dance was something I could offer him

the outfields of my body, a reminder of that close animal warmth

we shared. Impulsively I kissed him on the neck.

I was high, I was drunk we held each other close as the dance ended,

I didn't even look at him, just turned and walked away

my rules my game metamorphosis, the anorexia,

My writing literally saved me that year.

Kathy said seeing us dance together made her all weepy

We were all family and there was nowhere left to hide

and so it really is goodbye sweetheart this is the end at last

someone warned me the process in doesn't stop

even when you both have new mates

clearing the air  yes now I understand the pattern.

8/90

Dominican College, San Rafael

A WOMAN IS LIKE A PEAR

A WOMAN IS LIKE A PEAR

The pear holds memory of falling—

invisible when green, the bruise ripens,

spoils the fruit from within.

8/22/90

WHY A WOMAN IS LIKE  A PEAR

The pear holds memory of falling—

invisible when green, the bruise ripens,

spoils the fruit from within.

8/22/90



first draft

WHY A WOMAN IS LIKE  A PEAR

how the pear holds memory of falling—

the blemish, only to appear when ripe

spoiling the fruit from within.

8/22/90

TAMING THE MINOTAUR

TAMING THE MINOTAUR dream sequence

I was buying 2nd hand sheets in the Avignon pattern

I will only have to pay my grandmother 
for what I take with me

but I have to wash them first

I'm sorting my jewelry in the wet black dirt

by stone and color and metal 
Sifting through my heritage—

a hammered brooch with a ruby garnet 
the triangle of the goddess

like an eye, the eye of the bull in Sephanie's barn

and I'm washing my jewelry at the laundromat

My mother comes out, 
I'm afraid she'll steal them and we're fighting

I scream do you know what it's like 
to be the daughter of a schizophrenic?

the shame, and in public
she gets more outrageous,

it's an act I tell her, we are close to blows

my truck turns into a horse 
wheeling and snorting when I try to get near.

Inside my truck is my bed but it is frozen

I want to put my amulets 
and jewelry in it but it won't let me

I can't return them to the frozen womb.

when my brother chases it, it makes it worse

he challenges the monster into the barn

a great dark beast with foliage

sage shaking from his body

the Minotaur come thundering out of his lair.

I'm hanging from two meathooks on the barn wall

as he smashes into it, his hot breath on my heels

my brother tricks it into another ring

he continues to run until he severs a foreleg

and turns into a small bronze bull

but still we can't stop him

even on three legs he charges

why were we teasing him, coaxing him

out of the darkness when he was in a pure rage

no reasoning here

we had to transform him, capture him

so he wouldn't ambush us

he said, this is where my father 
enters into the relationship

when it gets real. 
This is where my mother enters into it

the shame of family madness

I won't carry the burden, 
I owe that allegiance to myself.

8/21/90

KPFA interview on censorship and the arts with Ken Larsen

 

PARASITIC WASPS

PARASITIC WASPS
Love, where is thy sting?
—after St. Paul
 Death where is thy sting-a-ling
   —from a 30s song
Nature is non-moral.
—Steven J. Gould

We abhor the notion of the parasitic wasp
burrowing blind through live flesh.
Resembling a dormant seed, it lies asleep
in the larval stage, awaiting the cue
to fill its bounteous desire.
When its appetite is glutted,
it emerges, winged into sensuous air,
free at last from the prison of host-carcass,
having satiated the blood-lust
and the consuming desire that indulged
its cannibalistic instincts—
We learn nature is non-moral,
but the religion of love
is based upon the unprincipled plundering
of the soft underbelly of the earth;
we dream our vanities into being.
That insidious questing hunger
glistens phosphorescent in the dark,
that imperfect prey; spent passion abandons
the husk of its crippled army,
scatters corpses like leaves to the wind—
the ghostly remainders of our lives.

8/20/90 & 5/91

Inanna, Searching for the Goddess at CMA, The Paper, Aug 16, 1990

Journal entry, 8/8/90,Wasting time

8/8/90   On Wednesday I go up to Mendocino for a Wasting time meeting, and a mini vacation. The following weekend it’s my high school reunion, and then the National Poetry Conference, followed by a trip to New Mexico two weeks later. And I was afraid that I would have nothing to do over the summer. I’ve barely begun to tackle most of the projects on my list, namely the translations, and my taxes. I also have two articles over my head, plus the final revision of my censorship essay. I feel overwhelmed. Of course I still haven’t finished my packets to the USSR, and they have to go out on Monday. Along with everything else, and I’ve frittered away a whole week. And my neck and back are now threatening to go into spasm so I’m physically uncomfortable to boot.

Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost

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