Barbie-heimer

I must admit that I don’t have an overwhelming desire to see the “blockbuster”movie Barbie. Sure, I had a Barbie doll. But I didn’t relate to her. She was tall, and impossibly thin with a long blonde ponytail. I took a blunt pair of scissors to her ponytail at one point. Her head came off so easily. As did her arms. Pieces easily went on walkabout.

I couldn’t afford to buy Barbie clothes, she came dressed in a zebra striped bathing suit, and nothing else, other than tiny white high heels. So I made clothing for her but eventually I became bored with her and abandoned her for Tonka Toy (Breyer) horses.

I don’t remember who gave me the doll, I think it was a Christmas gift from our next-door neighbor, ca. 1959 or 60. I was short and dark, and had no boobs to speak of, they were a long way off on the grown-up horizon, so I didn’t relate to her all that much. Besides, I hated the color pink. I think she met her demise via a 4th of July firecracker. Her graffitied carapace became housing for a tiny bomb.

I will probably go and see Oppenheimer, because some of my family history is tied up with Los Alamos—my mother’s cousin, who was brilliant in mathematics, was whisked away right out of high school to work on the bomb. 

We only found this out much later after Marie had died of cancer. In 1990, I made a pilgrimage to the Delgado Bridge in Santa Fe where the Rosenberg spies were captured, and also a visit to the Pajarito Plateau, where we visited the petroglyphs of T’sanque/T’sankawi, and Los Alamos where a spare shells of Fat Man and Little Boy still doze in the museum. 

The place names still haunt me. Los Alamos, Alamogordo, Stallion Gate, Trinity, Oak Ridge, Fermi Institute. I am a child born of the Age of Light. Meanwhile, on the rock outcrops, near Los Alamos, the petroglyph of Kokopelli, playing the water sprinkler, abides.

My cousin’s name was Mary—or Marie—Walsh, as we called her. She was the daughter of Wild Bill, the gambler, and grew up on Home Ranch, in the Reese River Valley. I think she was also my grandmother’s goddaughter. 

My grandmother sometimes received postcards from her, addressed from New Mexico, but no PO Box, or return address. I remember there was a letter with words cut out of it, clearly censored. Like little blank eyes. My grandmother hid them in the top drawer of the bureau beneath her handmade Irish lace, and all her sewing scraps.

In the mid-1970s, I worked for “Crappa,” retired politician Roger Kent, whose father was Senator William Kent (who gave Muir Woods to the Department of the Interior) and Roger’s brother “Buffalo” that is Sherman Kent, was head of the CIA, and they both admitted the Manhattan Project was the best kept secret. 

Even the Kents didn’t know about the Manhattan Project until it was declassified. For a government that didn’t keep secrets well, it was the best kept secret of all. And Sherman—if anyone should have known, it was him, after all, he was a CIA. But Sherman was also in the dark.They were surprised to learn that my cousin, who was gifted with numbers, had worked on the bomb at los Alamos.

Sadly, the math gene blithely skipped over me, is, despite having an Olympic gold medal winner try to teach me, but I do remember the bomb drills where we hid our heads under our desks at Lagunitas School. We covered the back of our necks with one arm, and our eyes with the other, and waited for the drill to be over. The day they were detonating atomic bombs over Jackass flats in Nevada, the entire school went outside to the playground to witness the light. 

We were in West Marin, a long way from Jackass Flats. The sky did go white. And it did sound like you could hear a muffled bomb go off in the distance. 

Later, when I tried to look this information up, I was told the detonation was underground. That what we witnessed was impossible. Maybe so, but we did hear and see something that day when the sky was robbed of color. And we were 500 miles away on the northern coast of California. It made the presence of the atomic bomb far too real for me. I was haunted by nightmares for years to come.

As it turns out, the last above ground nuclear test was July 17, 1962, so yes, we could have witnessed an above ground blast. And every year on Labor Day weekend, I can’t help but think of all the artistic hordes intent on radical self expression, gather at Black Rock Playa to ignite a Burning Man— to burn away the corporate sins of the world. (I attended the first burning man at Baker Beach in San Francisco, 1986.) 

Each year, my old college friend, David Best, erects a phantasmagoric wooden temple—just downwind from that radioactive Armageddon of Jackass Flats. prayer flags in the wind. I can’t help but think of all those radical isotopes on the wing. And how we are all glowing from within during this Age of Light.

see my atomic poem list below

Remembering Marty Kent

Facebook is like one vast John Guare experiment. Guare wrote the play, Six Degrees of Separation. The idea that we are merely six degrees separated from everyone. Say, Kevin Bacon. Facebook periodically brings that idea home.

Someone posted on a Marin page, a book that she had found, and wanted to know more about it. I was surprised to discover that I knew the poet as I had worked for her family a long, long time ago.

I worked for Roger and Alice Kent during the early 1970s. One of my jobs was running the office for Western Star Press. I remember the name Marty Kent. Still trying to line up a face. I can almost see her.

A floodgate of faces: there was Neili, Kenny Kent's ex-wife... There was Molly Kent & Max, who had two kids. Max was an architect, and turned a squash court into a cool house. And there was Molly's baby sister, Alice, but we called her PeeWee.

So how did Marty fit in? It took a while to place Marty, but by happenstance, somebody told somebody who told somebody who told Marty's daughter about the post, who enlightened us. It turns out Marty was a cousin.

Marty's daughter, Littlest Alice and I struck up a Facebook friendship. It turns out that Alice and I both worked for Western Star Press. We began to swap stories. One thing led to another, and lo! and they've a few copies of Marty's book, and she'll mail me a copy.

How small and lovely the world, that which separates us also brings us together with few degrees of separation.

DARK SHORE

DARK SHORE

—from Matisse's Goldfish

—for Roger Kent

Philodendron, hibiscus,

and a lemon geranium jungle

explode on a tropical sunrise

against the pink wall.

Four bored tangerine-colored fish

in a round tank mouth food

and spit it out again

where it settles on pale green rocks;

a luminous fog on the pink table

near the rattan chair

filled with blue shadows.

In the black & white tiled hall

of the colonial mansion

we stir baskets of fragrant maile leaves.

The basement elevator shaft

belches decay into the hall.

The wheezing lift

and Roger's emphysemic breathing

keep time as he shuffles to the bedroom

for his late afternoon nap.

Thin-ribbed philodendron vines climb

to the tall ceiling, piscine leaves

fan delicate membranes,

slow dancers feeding on air.

The hissing oxygen tanks

reflect fiery hibiscus fish;

the small pebbles of their eyes

along a dark shore make no sound

against the barely discernible rise

and fall of sheets.

2/22/1985
rev. 6/85
after a CPITS class with Duane BigEagle

LETTER TO “CRAPPA”

For Roger Kent 1906-1982

Who are we, and where are we going?

—Gauguin

We called you Crappa with a “C”

& you roared with laughter

until your milky eyes watered & your lungs failed.

You said, A toothless son couldn't get it right,

& like a typo, the name Crappa stuck.

While the oxygen tank stood guard by your bedside,

you returned the war trophies:

the New Guinean stone axes to the Bishop Museum,

& the yosegaki banner of heavy raw silk,

with its faded orange sun, to Japan.

Beneath the signatures, rust stains,

or was it old blood?

I wanted to ask: What village, whose son?

Someone translated: Given to ____

in the Great Pacific War fought to the end.

If you believe in it you win.

With the flag, you sent a snapshot of you on the beach:

a young man holding the enemy flag

& the Japanese prisoners all smiling

smiling for the unseen camera. Silent, posed.

Like a knife, the shutter severed a moment from time.

These tropics suck marrow from bone.

You told us about those boxes of freight

marked TYPEWRITERS—FRAGILE, DO NOT DROP.

Inside those boxes, whiskey.

The news nearly leaked out

when someone dropped a box & said, Damned heavy!

Why the hell you need all those typewriters for?

In our dreams we are always traveling towards paradise.

All those dead waiting in Iron Bottom Bay,*

their bones like coral—

All those names calligraphed on the sun,

& the islands: Guadalcanal, Tinian, Iwo Jima

needed witnesses.

But you never told us how it really was:

the ocean, the palm trees & the inevitable waiting.

Generations of fish have spawned in the iron reefs,

grinning skulls, & stained coral sand—

rusted war trophies no one will return.

As coral ages, it whitens like hair.

Like the sky must have done

that terrible second dawn.

Who will tell us the stories

when all the old men are gone?

When the Japanese sent a photo

of the family & flag reunited,

you tried to keep your hand

on top of the new flag from trembling.

The alizarin disc was brighter

than new blood without history,

the thin silk breathed & quivered,

waiting to make an escape.

Honolulu, HI

6/1984,
rev87 (was there a first draft in 82?)
rev. 8/95