Writing Down the Bone Soup

A writer friend, Penelope la Montagne, posted on Facebook, that she was grateful for the "clean your refrigerator kind of soup." Nothing quite like homemade soup on a chilly day, made from fridge leftovers and a can of chicken broth. You can never quite replicate the exact goodness each time you made it. But it always warms the "ccckies of your heart," said Penelope. That made me giggle. What kind of cookies? Oreos?

I guess the fridge leftovers are crucial components of making decent stone soup. Sometimes it's called nail soup. But stone soup has a better ring to it than nail soup. Eww, not those kind of nail parings. Though if you had enough of hooves, I suppose it would work. Or you might wind up with a pot of glue to hang that hideous wallpaper you've been saving. 

How to make stone soup. First, you begin with a large pot, better wash it out. When's the last time you used it? I mean, really. Oh, the cat was hiding in it? Now, nearly fill it (the pot, not the cat) with some water, and then add your well-scrubbed magic rock. No, not the pet rock! Then wait for your guests to arrive bearing gifts for the pot. And maybe some pot.

I made some magic soup the other night. A poet friend was sick; but we were having a CPITS meeting at my house, so I offered to make chicken soup. 

First, I emptied the contents of my fridge into my soup pot, and then added a box of vegetable broth and another box of chicken broth. But, to my dismay, I discovered that I had no stashed chicken, not in the freezer, nor in my emergency food stash.  

And to add insult to injury, I'd used up the rest of the good garlic for the last of the summer pesto. I had garlic, but it was Chinese, and I wasn't about to use it. Never buy garlic sans roots, it's Chinese and it never sprouts, or grows, if you plant it. They do something to it, and that can't be good.

So I asked John Oliver Simon to bring me some real garlic. Then, I asked him to bring me some chicken. Then, I needed some celery, and parsley to go with it. Parsley is great for the heart.

Perhaps I should interject here that John is an ex. I never thought I'd ever see the day when John would be sitting in my kitchen waiting for the soup to boil, without my wanting to murder him. Ironically, I'm scamnning and transcribing bit of old journals so his name keeps popping up. Must be the homing pigeon return cycle.

Tobey Kaplan brought potstickers, spring rolls, and wine. Lots of wine. You know how poets are. We tossed some potstickers into the broth, drank some wine, and bowed down to the soup pot, grateful for its bounty. And we said yum. The thick chicken soup was divine, and it fed multitudes of poets. Well, it fed almost a dozen of us. The wine, not so much.

For dessert, Fred Dodsworth brought bananas and crisp persimmons that glowed like low winter suns on the horizon, no cookies, though. Speaking of cookies, nobody brought any—not even the Chinese fortune kind. No cookies or cockles to warm the heart.

(I've been obsessed with cookies lately: zapping computer cookies and obsolete deep file preferences, after I discovered a Firefox add-on I was using to watch BBC, was a disguised botnet.

All Maxine Chernoff's files were held hostage by Bitcoin malware and she had to pay a poet's ransom to get her writing back. That also happened to Eileen Malone too. I was terrified at the thought of losing all my writing. Maxine got all her files back. Eileen was not so lucky.

Sure, I've got all my files backed up on separate hard drives, but they're attached to the computer. Piece a cake for a botnet to access it via the back door port, firewall be damned. Yeah, I have a Mac, it's less likely to be attacked by botnet malware. And my friends are both are PC users. Friends don't let friends use Windows. I guess I deleted an important file, the Finder keeps crashing.)

Which led me on a circuitous path from cookies to cockles and muscles (stet), to canned soup, to a former neighbor's noisy young urban balcony-raised cockerels (no coop), whose bones probably made the best chicken soup ever.

I witnessed their demise (the chickens, not the Ethiopians) one Sunday at dawn. Well, I witnessed their shadow's demise on the wall, as the Ethiopian woman sang to the rising sun and held the unlucky fellows up to the sun before the coup de gras.

I was horrified to see an article circulating on Facebook by a young urbanite chef on how to make "bone" soup. And folks cooing: oh, I wanna learn that, or shrieking: gross! (There was even an "I know, I know," eye-rolling ewww /squee component embedded in the article.) The tin can generation is dumb and dumber. Even the phrase, tin can is lost on them. Foil-lined box generation. How do they think chicken broth is made anyway?

In our house, soup was a pilgrimage of sorts. My grannie never threw bones away. Into the pot they went. We always saved the skin, gristle and connective tissue too. Nothing wasted, except the squawk a doodle do.

Add onion skins, garlic, carrots, celery, peppercorns, bay leaves, and wine, or vinegar, and simmer slowly 1-2 hours, until the gristle falls off the rubbery bones, and skim any scum. Strain broth into a clean pot. Add fresh vegetables (see above list), orzo, or barley, bring it to a boil for 15 minutes (barley needs an hour), skim, season. If it jells when cooled, you made it right.

Well, what about the dawg bone, you might ask: fuggedaboutit. It was a case of get in line, after the stewpot. Sort of like Saturday bath night (one tub of water, and three people waiting in line). Yep, it was a stiff broth, all right, by the time my little brother got into it.

And what about warming the cockles of the heart? I always thought it had to do with spoiled mollusks, so that saying always puzzled me. Then I thought cockles were associated with Molly Malone's cockles and mussels in Dublin's fair city. Cookies and cockles, alive alive, oh. Uh-oh, the Cookie Monster....and the tart with the cart.

Then, speaking of pilgrimages of the heart, I thought maybe the cockles were a reference to St. James. Pilgrims wore cockle, or scallop shells around their necks as they walked the Camino.

So I joked, mussels is muscles, which is true, as muscle, mussel and mouse all stem from the same root word. Warms your mousy little heart muscle, doesn't it? I never associated it with ventricles, or cochlea. Some Easter egg hunt that was. 

All this to say is that writing is never a very straight line. 

The Mother House at Dominican

During the summer of 1989 we held our 25th annual California Poets in the Schools conference in the Mother House at the Dominican Convent in San Rafael. It was a a big international event with guest poets from several Writers in the Schools programs, and poets from the USSR and Mexico.

Dominican Convent, San Rafael, California, circa 1908 [postcard‘ Marin County Free Library 

The Convent, dedicated on July 21, 1889 in San Rafael, California, was originally the home for nine Dominican Sisters, four postulants and one novice. The same building housed a girls' school plus high school. The Sisters also taught children at St. Raphael's School at Fifth and A Streets. The college was increased to a four-year institution and the first class of Dominican College graduated in 1922. The elementary school and high school moved to San Domenico in San Anselmo in 1965. In 1971, the College became coed, and in April 2000 Dominican changed its name to Dominican University. The Convent burned in 1990, and the Sisters elected to replace the remains with a new, more modern building. —Marin County Free Library 

The Mother House, designed by San Francisco architect Thomas J. Welsh, was an intricate and ornate four-storey affair, built of solid redwood. A grand Victorian dame replete with cupolas, bell towers and widow walks. There was gorgeous turned woodwork, hidden nooks, lace-curtained vaulted windows and Greco-Roman touches worthy of any fin de siècle grand hotel. Massive grand staircases, fine tongue and groove, intricate tile-work, wall panels of black walnut, oak and rich mahogany patterned veneers.

The Mother House was a living museum. I was attracted to the early California plein-air pastoral paintings worthy of the Hudson Impressionist School, probably hung on the walls when they were still wet. There was a rumor of a Rembrandt. It also contained the usual array of religious iconography, stained glass, and wooden shields, heavy antique claw-footed furniture, and vast carpets of Persian rugs blossoming everywhere.

Why I Teach, or Why I am a Writer. 1st draft

WHY I TEACH, OR WHY I AM A WRITER

It's hard for me to choose or to make a distinction between teaching and writing as each process informs the other.

I was a poet before I became interested in teaching for California Poets in the schools, but just barely. The two events were nearly twinned. I arrived to poetry all out of breath, with things to say and nowhere to channel them. I wasn't a writer and I was a below average student in high school and college. I couldn't retain or access the information I learned in school. It was like a hive of bees swarming inside my head.

Poet Leonard Cirino (1943-2012)

         Most of my life I’ve been poor,

          I never lived in a house with gables.

          This year I’ll grow flowers.

          The movements change hour by hour.

                  —from The Moments Change, Leonard Cirino

I found out via a small Facebook comment posted by Crawdad Nelson that poet Leonard Cirino had died. I had no idea that Leonard was even ill. I was out of the loop and I'm completely stunned. No one thought to contact me—not Lee Perron, Claire Josefine, nor Crawdad Nelson. Donna Champion, who was in constant contact with Leonard, knew he was sick, but not the dying part. No Leonard-flavored instruction manual. He didn't tell Donna the news either—and we were among the ones who knew him the longest.

Apparently it was a quick diagnosis on January 23, Leonard's liver cancer had spread like wildfire. Leonard was given six months to wrap it up. Instead, he got only six weeks. Barely enough time to say hello to death, let alone, goodbye to life. According to his Facebook page, he said he wanted another 15-20 years more. He literally ran out of time.

So I am gleaning the web for links to Leonard in case others too didn't get the news. It may be a bit of a chaotic collection here but at least it's a start.

An Italian-American native of the San Gabriel Valley, east of LA, Leonard John Cirino was born 11 September 1943 and died 9 March 2012, in Springfield, OR. During the early 1960s, Leonard was a state champion pole vaulter in high school and in college. Leonard attended UC Berkeley during the FSM days—where he said his real education began. He tuned in, turned on and dropped out and did the Timothy Leary thing. Moved back to the land. Tried to clean up. Speed took its mordida. Went crazy. Was institutionalized for a horrific, violent crime. I remember the sun stood still the day he told me the news. It was a litmus test of faith. A watershed of loyalty.

Leonard was paroled in 1975. Rehabilitated, then repatriated. He reenrolled in college, and picked up where he left off. Leonard graduated from Sonona State University in 1978 and moved to Albion Ridge, in Mendocino, where he earned his keep as a jack-of-all-trades: landscape laborer, carpenter, solar specialist, a news reporter, and dishwasher. Writing all the while.

About that same time Leonard was at Sonoma State (circa 1976-78) I met him through Lee Perron and Donna Champion. I was organizing readings at Sonoma State. We hit it off like long-lost kin. Maybe it was an Irish-Italian thing, We had the same saints queued up along the portico. We knew when to genuflect.

California Poets in the Schools 47th Symposium in Santa Barbara 9/9-11, 2011

BREAKING NEWS: We have several "commuter" spaces available—attend the entire conference for only $200/150 for Sat only) and sleep off campus. All the single rooms are gone—but there's usually two beds per room. You could also risk it and show up—there will probably be space available somewhere. If not, then Motel 6 is your BFF. We are also negotiating for more rooms at Casa de Maria. Meanwhile, if you know a poet who is attending, you can always ask if you can share a room.

There are a few slots open for Steve Kowit's fabulous writing workshop on Friday afternoon as well. Call or email Tina ASAP to reserve a slot. info@cpits.org or 415-221-4201.
BREAKING:

Are you going to The Ballgame? Giants vs. Phillies? It's a very SPECIAL event for CPITS. The SF Giants will hand SF CPITS Area Coordinator Susie Terence and 12 Jr. Giants a big check for $10,000 to bring poetry workshops into the classrooms. Be there. Take pix, and post them on Facebook. Go Giants! Go Susie! Take me out to the ballgame...

DEADLINE TO REGISTER IS AUGUST 12. CONTACT CPITS ASAP IF YOU'D LIKE TO ATTEND

CPITS' 47th annual poetry workshop & symposium, "Writing Ourselves True," 9/9-11, 2011 @ Santa Barbara's La Casa de Maria retreat and conference center.

CPITS' annual poetry workshop & symposium is one of the most sublime and inexpensive writers' conferences in the nation. Poets, artists and teachers are welcome. Sign up for our action-packed weekend, "Writing Ourselves True," on 9/9-11, 2001 at the idyllic La Casa de Maria retreat, a former convent in Santa Barbara. Oh, and the food's divine too. 

Double click to enlarge

Visit http://www.cpits.org/events/ev​ents.htm or email Tina@CPITS.org to sign up.

Bucket list Freewrite, Tobey Kaplan, Montara Middle School

Bucket list Freewrite

I want to see the northern islands
I want to go to the Isle of Man,
the Outer Hebrides, the Aran Islands.
I want to see the graveyard of kings
on the Isle of Iona, and the Holy Isle ofArran.

I want to see Thailand before I die,
the place where the tsunami scoured
fragile atoles, the resurgence of palm trees,
leaves clattering in the wind
I want to bask in the sun of down under,
snorkel the great barrier reef,
see the gardens of fish bloom
in technicolor splendor,
sit beneath the Boojum tree
and admire its strong adaptation
to desert sun and drought.

I want to live in a house in the country.
I might get a cat, maybe some chickens.
A house if I don’t have to take care of it daily.
I’ve already done that. I’d grow a garden,
watch the tomatoes ripen.
I’d eat raspberries right from the vine
I’d beat the birds at their own game
for breakfast.

But I woke up an hour too early today
and I thought I was late for class
so I listened to ancient music,
Uillean pipes in the morning mist.
It took me off. The clock stood still.
Time slipped away.
I was trapped between worlds,
transported to the otherworld
where time stands still
and life is always in the moment.

4/11/08
Montera Middle School

CPITS 2006, AT THE COUNTY FAIR

REGENERATIVE WRITING —with Tobey Kaplan


AT THE COUNTY FAIR
—for Sharon Doubiago

The carnival straddled a limnal boundary
between civilization & endless fields of corn.
A miracle in the bright dust and mirrored lake
deep summer bloomed in cotton candy colors.
For a moment she was screaming,
& laughing against a bright sky
as the Fairest Wheel lifted her
weightless against the burden
of her father’s darkness.

In a constant elegy of ascent & death,
the Fairest Wheel dizzied them up to the stars,
& plunged them in o the dwarfed laps of broken families.
For a moment, she forgot she lived
the enchanted sleep of Snow White
where in dreams she rode a carousel pony.
Between her clenched teeth, not a rose,
but a blanket emitted a high-pitched sound
as a bright bloom escaped from her gown.

As she loosened herself from the horizon,
she was forever tumbling against a silken sky.
Her blonde hair, a temporary sun
eclipsed & eclipsing the retextured sunlight.

For a moment she forgot what she was
becoming, a black dahlia.
Dust & parched earth. You could taste it
in the air, acrid like carbolic soap & sweat.
Soon the rains would come.

—Maureen Hurley
Walker Creek Ranch, 10/15.2006

MAUREEN HURLEY who grew up in the wilds of West Marin, a watershed away from Walker Creek, was Area Coordinator for Sonoma County for a decade, at present, she’s learning her urban skills in on the shores of Lake Merrit in Oakland. Published in the 2006 CPITS statewide anthology


GENERATIVE WRITING
From Thoreau, TC Boyle. Oates, Wright, Merrill, etc.

We were observing
Replacing the old style cells
In which a window
Measuring 6 x 8 feet
More movement there
Perhaps I was not thinking coherently
In this state I was careless
Their faces showed consternation
I was confused, so I smiled

The color drained out of the treetops
It was like looking up at the emerging stats
But who was counting
For a long while she didn’t say anything
I don’t know what’s wrong with me
He foresaw every disaster so no was on his lips
Listen he said, speaking tot the sky
The spilled paint of stars
Softened his voice

I won’t give anyone another chance
It’s been a long dance with death
I realized that I’m possibly quite mad.
I know he is.
The world is full of people
separated from themselves by families
What was her favorite song.,
the name of the lover she took to the grave
I never adopt a person who doesn’t have

In the case of numbers
It allowed me a substitution
The trouble with Mike was
We had become middle class
But our dog had not
They turned towards us as if praying
She believed he betrayed mongrel origins

We were all, in all places
A picture of Brazilia,
a white mansion shining in the jungle
The music is powerful, blessed
In this fine white afternoon
Paying no attention\to our own little brick utopia
Sort & discard
The heavy-footed building
A lazy reach & sigh
These are the papers I need
It begins to thin in the air at dusk
The one, a poet, the other an action.


PERSONA WORKSHOP
MARGINALIA After Jarrell

I had started to walk down the path
These are the roads you find yourself traveling
Homesick for anything, she asked me in her windswept voice
Occasions for the grief that left me seething at the sea
She heard a lot of it when she came home from the hospital
Help me! The pain in her bones paralyzed me
So I wrote these words in the margins

Letter to Michael Kettner, Catalyst

Dear Michael Kettner,

I noticed that you're selling a book I'm published in, under Abebooks.com. I'd completely forgotten about it...and AD Wynans...Migawd! How did you obtain a copy of the book? Would you like me to sign it to increase its value? Hahah. Um, what poem DO I have in it?

Maureen Hurley

CATALYST #17: 3nd ANNUAL EROTICA ISSUE
Bookseller: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers
Contact: Michael Kettner
Address: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers, 1501 NE 68th, Seattle, WA, U.S.A., 98115
E-mail: mkettnerbooks@juno.com
Phone #: 206-323-7268

Dear Maureen, 

How nice to hear from you again. Lest you have forgotten, i was the publisher of said CATALYST. Have taken a few years off writing to insure i have retirement income - to set up an on-line book biz specializing in poetry and sm. pr. stuff. Only have a few dozen of Catalyst 19 left, and since so popular, am selling them one by one on line;

Your contribution to #19 was a graphic, "self-portrait". thanks for offering to sign a copy. however with periodicals, there is little value enhancement with signatures unless multiple contributors do so or if signed by editor or famous person. in the case of erotica, the mere fact it is erotica, is usually enough. 

You did receive a copy or two of #19, did you not? don't remember you being on list of copies returned with no forwarding address. check out my list on ABE by clicking on booksellers. have over 1500 sm. pr. titles on line with at least as many to go. also have large list of general titles since it's hard to make a living on poetry alone. if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, let me know. 

Take Care, M.

In a message dated 8/28/04 12:24:34 PM, mkettnerbooks@juno.com writes:
<< if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, >>

Hi Michael,

I've been thinking about it for ages, the books just sitting in my cabin in Forestville, some rare ones at that. And correspondence. Robert Bly/ Calliope Press...I put on that event at SSU. Lotta work & little gratis from himself.

Lee Perron--do you know him? also got into the rare book business--along with John McBride...who, if I have the story right, was laif off after 25 years from Moe's Books on Telegraph--recession, a sign of the times. As our friend Ken Bullock said, hell of a time to try & sell books. How are you doing with it? Are you still publishing journals? I did look at my resume and Catalyst is indeed listed--way back in the 1980s.

Ach, the book signing, It was merely a ploy to say hi via cyberspace...your name rang a bell, and certainly, Seattle....I'm trying to put a face/event/place to your name as I'm certain that we met...in SF? Or Port Townsend? I'm excellent with faces, even after 20 years...when & where? Obviously you've got my drawing, it must be a self portrait...

Gawd it's been a right long while since that epic journey we took north from Mendocino: Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Tobey Kaplan, myself and Moonlight the Alsatian shepherd, in a white station wagon named Roses. An anarchy of northern California poets crashed the Port Townsend Writers' Conference...Carol Jane Banks was having apoplexy right, left & center.

We were all sleeping on the beach, one full moon night, the tide came in and nearly swept us away. Leonard was floating around in his down bag like a cork. Bill Knott was living in a big Victorian on the bluff with Pamela Uschuk (sp)?, we spent a couple of nights on the porch. We later found some barracks that were open after that. CJ Bangs was trying to get us bounced out of the conference but we were like bad pennies. Meridel LeSueur took to us, said we stayed or else and that was that.

Meridel took Sharon under her wing, and that was the start of something, all right. I kept out of the way, feeling like a poetry impostor, and years later, Meridel was asking me why I stayed away so long, was I mad at her...by then it was too late for a prodigal daughter.

I remember Ray Carver, a long cool drink of, er...uisge beatha, chainsmoking and we were all singing Irish songs at some bar with Tess Gallagher... and Michael Daley. Empty Bowl. And Marina Albert...putting us up. All these names bubbling up. it was a spur of the moment event that irrevocably changed my life, somehow I always thought it would continue like that, mad confabs of poets...but then long distances of time and isolation set in.

After finally breaking it off w / John Oliver Simon, I wound up in the USSR doing a poetry & art exchange. It was there I began to translate the Soviet poets. I ran into Marina in Moscow, we were both living in Leningrad with crazy Soviet singers. We'd hoard our dimes and meet at the Seagull Cafe on Nyevsky Prospect, we'd pay an outrageous sum (a week's wages for some) for lattes, worth every penny. 

One time we met Mendelstahm's publisher, it was Glasnost and there was hope. He brought his samizdat publications out of hiding and we held a piece of history. For that one publication he could've been killed. In Moscow, I saw Akhmatova's frail sister feeding pigeons in the snow. But I had to let go of Russia in order to survive. I came back to the States.

I did get to Poetry International in Rotterdam a couple of times, and was in on the Breytenbach translation project...with the likes of Holub, Heaney, Dove...I was onto something, in that I loved the process of translation, then I was nearly killed in 1997, a car accident, and with the shock and healing and all that, poetry sort of left me. I still write, but not with the fervor of the past. Dabbling in prose too, but what's a dyslexic to do with linear thought? After the accident I went back to school and got a MA/MFA at SFSU, w/ a side of Celtic studies at UC Berkekey. Did some playwriting too. But I blather on...

Maureen

Hey Maureen, 

no, 12 years of publishing was enough for me. still writing. on-line is the way to go with book biz these days. more one has on line, the more you make. been learning on-line biz from a couple of the masters here in seattle. left Kathleen after 23 years a couple revolutions about the sun ago. tough at first but had to be done. 

quit job of 16 years and decided to set myself up so i'd never have to work for someone again. just write and sell books. if your poetry collection is anything like mine, i'm very interested if you truly want to sell. i'm just getting past initial years of set-up and debt management it takes to get going and could probably work something out as autumn progresses. 

glad to hear you've recovered. the writing impulse is fragile. been observing it in others for years, studying, if you will, how to maintain it and have it thrive. not easy to do, especially as one ages and life's vicissitudes work on one. have to get ready for work (at Horizon Books). talk to you again soon. -M. P.S. No, we have never met. You were in town once but we didn't hook-up, if i remember correctly.

Take Care, M.

Seven Sisters

Flies pester the duckweed while the river converses with both shores at the same time. An ex-lover on the opposite bank, and the creek divides our past. A narrow tongue reaches to the bay where, as a child, I thought surely the gods must inhabit this place.

His eyes pester me like the river flies and midges and gadflies. A lizard does late-summer push-ups on a tree stump. Spring is over, lizard. No time to mate. But hope springs eternal.

First day of fall, the water holds the promise of the seasons. When John Oliver Simon vacates the opposite beach, I climb down to a rock in the river, bubbles and duckweed strike the submerged rock like migrating islands.

There was a time when I caught fish barehanded in these same tributaries. In the backwaters and eddies, bent light and dark oscillations fragment the surface. Stone pool and moss, miniature vortices, like lost conversations.

Below the rock, the crawdads wait for the dead. Water skeeters jet against the current, streaming bubbles of air. Migratory birds pester the alders for hidden seeds. Midges circle the palpable air, loose spiderwebs luff and stray.

Last night, we sat up late discussing the names of plants. The ridge, Wildcat Ridge, a watershed between my past, my childhood, and my present state. Cattails like young trees, guard the umbrella plants. I tell Arthur Dawson, they are related to papyrus. As we write.

Our eyes connect to where I come from and where I live. Scorpio and Sagittarius wheeling and rising in the sky. I relearn the names of stars under a full moon readying for the eclipse, September 26, the last eclipse of the century. Fin de sicle, how do we know where we're going with our art? Did the Impressionists and postimpressionist have foreknowledge?

Later, seven women will swim nude in the reservoir above the creek. And we will admire each other's bodies in the sunlight, breasts floating like lily pads, nipples beckoning. Someone says I want to suck them all. And this water within us is also part of the cycle. Who is peeing in the pond?

We are the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, who don't want to rush back to the daily grind, not yet. Ruth Gendler dries off. She is meeting a friend for Yom Kippur, but the water draws her back again in one last time. A baptism of sorts.

CPITS reading, San Rafael

CPITS meeting at the Falkirk Center. We're reading at Open Secret in San Rafael, Steve Garber, Toby Kaplan, Arthur Dawson, and myself read to an audience of four in the temple room, a wild and wonderful room with Ganesh and Buddha, and hundreds of Tibetan singing bowls.

Steve's wife was there with their daughter and though he occasionally philanders through the ranks of CPITS poets, Toby says they remain committed to the relationship because of the child. 

I look at the little girl, she's beautiful and looks Irish, I say to Steve, We are mostly Irish, especially when we fight, said Steve. Funny, I resemble that. I could tell instantly that she was Irish. Why is it that we Irish can spot each other so easily? 

Of course, no one can tell that I'm Irish. I tease Susan Wooldridge about being Jewish when she, Steve and Tobey all look at each other. Susan saying to Tobey and Steve: I didn't know you were Jewish! We laugh. Their blue eyes dancing, I laugh, saying, Everyone thinks I'm Jewish, and I'm 100% Irish. Susan instructs me to turn around, and slaps my butt, and says, Yup you're Jewish. 

Thursday night I'm going over to Tobey's for Passover. Someone asks, how do you get invited? and the tradition of the CPITS poets Passover dinner is born.

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

With its absent-minded stroke
upon the coarse woven skirt,
the knowing touch of an
arthritic hand, too old
for a middle-aged woman

The surety of her deft dressmaker's touch
reminds me of my grandmother's hands,
who made all my school clothes,
but this woman's other hand is missing

& I sense the presence of her twin limb
occupying space, still capable of feeling,
never aging, like the amputated limbs
of children.

As if in greeting and supplication,
her absent hand caresses this room
with the comfort and care of a hand
that lips of children dutifully brush.

Her daughters smooth their dresses
carefully over their thin knees.
I too remember how cruel the kids at school were
on the subject of home-made dresses.

7/11/1980
Port Townsend, WA
The Child in the Bell, CPITS Statewide Anthology, 1981-82