Excerpt from IMMACULATE by Jennifer Harris

  

  

Jennifer’s first novel, PINK, was published in January 2006 by Haworth Press and reprinted in 2007 by Bold Strokes Books. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies nationwide. She is an active literary organizer in Chicago and recently served on the Board of Trustees for the Poetry Center of Chicago. She earned her MFA in Writing from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from the University of Arizona. She is a PhD candidate in Community Psychology (spring 2012) at National Louis. Currently Jennifer is the founder of JackLeg Press and is the poetry editor at kissedbyvenus.ca.

'A Song for Sophie' by Jennifer Harris

 
 
i.

The fear I always had was that my parents would die.

I remember my first funeral was Pop’s, my father’s

father, who died of a heart attack in Ohio, 1973.

I was four and kept looking for sand, asking

Where is it? Where is all the sand? I was looking for seagulls

and shells and other things I remembered from Mother’s Beach

in Kennebunk, where we would bury people on a temporary basis.

But of course, we weren’t going to the beach and

the burial would be final. No resurrection involved.

At least not one we could see, like at the beach

when you simply jump back up all sand-covered and run

to the waves and let yourself be immersed in all that rage

and churning water. That’s what you think at four.

That a burial is a summer vacation. That your Grandfather

is just playing games. You have no comprehension

of permanence. Of the world un-manifest.

It was the perfect name for a beach, Mother’s Beach.

Because of course, that’s what it was. Mothers and children

playing bocce ball or chasing the surf back and forth as the moon

transitioned pulling the tide along with it. I remember a private

club at the north end, just across the street, there was a small

playground with swings and we would run over the asphalt

in bare feet burning our skin crusted with Coppertone 15.

Even at four, we knew we didn’t belong. We snuck in

to use the bathroom. I remember because I often had accidents

at the beach. And the shame and humiliation of pooping

in my bathing suit stung. Like getting stung by jelly fish,

which was common enough. But it’s something you remember.

Sharp. Livid. Exposed. That is, I suppose, the trauma of growing up.

Not realizing everyone goes through it. Everyone has accidents.

Dies. Gets buried. It’s hard to think of my childhood without

remembering the beach and all that sand. Wiping up to go home,

sand stuck on me everywhere washing off before we go inside

my grandparents’ home. Carrying sand in my hands, making

balls of wet sand. Wondering where it all came from.

And why Pop’s wouldn’t get back up. Wondering why people

had to die at all. I remember at his funeral running into a big glass wall,

because I have no depth perception and couldn’t tell it was glass at all

or how far away it was from where I was and running and smacking face first

into the glass and falling over. And everyone who was crying came running

up to me. To see if I was alright. I was, of course, dazed and a momentary

distraction to the fact that Pop’s was really gone. That death was

what was meant by impermanence. And that I wasn’t immune.

ii.

So here’s what I want you to know: You’re not alone.

As small and as alone as you might feel on some future occasion(s),

when I am not there, when Susan is not there, when no one you love

or know is there: to put their arms around you, to comfort you.

To whisper to you that it is alright, that everything is. 

Our absence is only circumstance. A tangible result of the world

and all the obstacles that present themselves, but we are here.

If not in being, in sprit. If not in reality, then in mind. If not of the world,

then of the world beyond this world: that intangible thing that is life beyond living―

that is inexplicable except in terms of faith.

This is what I want you to know.

That you will lose someone. That you will lose many a someone

you love or like or hate or fear or desire or want. If I could protect you

from this series of facts it would be my greatest and most unfortunate feat.

It’s what we do: lose, fail, surrender, defeat, gain, die, fail, succeed.

Synonyms and antonyms―becoming in the terrible doing.

iii.

Sophie, we are not just one person. We are the people embedded

in the history of our story. In the history of what we choose to do.

How we carry something forward. No matter the field, the study.

One body in a cycle of thoughts, words, and deeds…

iv.

I pray I am the first to go in our family

I know it’s selfish, but one can only grieve so much.

Because there is a part of me that thinks

I would become something of a nova.

That I would simply implode with my own weight.

And someday perhaps, you will understand that.

Someday perhaps you will give birth and understand

that odd gravity between mother and child.

I never did understand before.

Even though, of course, you hear stories

you see it in your own mother’s eyes―

but the weight is easy to overlook.

It’s almost as if you want to shield your eyes

from so much love. Such a glare.

v.

It has come to my attention that I am inadequate.

I keep waking up with the same song in my head

the same beat beat and thumping of guitar and bass.

I like old country tunes best, the ones where you think

it must always be raining wherever the singer is from.

Some sad place like Seattle, where suicide outnumbers

accidental deaths. I’m not sure this is accurate, but with all that rain

I would bet I’m not far off.  What is it about rain that makes us feel

so much? For years I have tried to feel less, not more.

I have avoided areas with heavy downpours, I have plotted against

nature. And then there was you, this beautiful, glorious thing:

from me, of me, from the world around us, space ad infinitum.

vi.

Do you know you were born completely intact, full of this core being

4.9 pounds of body, mind, spirit―traits that only now at three

seem normal for a child. But you were fully self-possessed. 

I’m not making this up. Your eyes were sharp focused. You trailed

every move, glance, touch. You watched everything you could.

The way I danced with the radio turned way up, the blinds shut

closing my eyes, hips swaying, head rolling. The constant

drumming of rain against the window. I could see you struggling

wanting to cry out to anyone who would listen. So impatient to begin.

So impatient to get on with it: learning and falling and soaring.

vii.

You have been sick for a week now. Amidst an epidemic

it is terrifying to consider.  Last week a girl died. She was ten

not even old enough to ovulate for the first time. She missed

her first kiss, acne, raging hormones, crying because she

wasn’t allowed to go to whatever heartthrob concert it was.

It was the flu. And you are feverish and coughing and I can’t

do anything. I am helpless and sick too, but don’t care.

It no longer matters what I do or do not feel or experience

this is the curse of being a mother. To feel so much.

Buddhists call it attachment to the world, Samsara. The world

of suffering. Of clinging. Of words, thought, sensation.

viii.

It’s true. It is a suffering of our own invention―the pulling

of gravity on our bodies, of weight without end, of madness.

Everlasting. Eclipsing. Ecclesiastic. A sweetness.

A letting of blood. A letting of hands, letting it all go.

This is the truth: there will never be a circumstance too great

or too painful or too sweet in which I will not love you.

I watch you sweat and cough and I pray it will pass.

You will flower again, you will, you will, you will.

ix.

I am a wrathful deity: I am my mother, my father’s mother

who killed herself in an insane asylum, 1967. Two years

before I was born she hung herself from the rafters

thinking At long last, I will have peace! But there is no

peace for mothers, is there? There is only worry and

more worrying. Pieces, rather than peace.

Pieces of it. Glimpses of calm. Glimpses into a future

where you can take care of yourself when I will no longer worry.

I resented my mother for so many years for her worrying.

It made me feel so inadequate as if nothing I could do

was good enough but it’s not that. I get it now.

A mother’s love is a fierce thing. I need to be so careful―

to always be gentle about it. To cultivate only the most gentle

of touches, not to let worry turn into something ugly

something controlling and strangling where love becomes

this terrible gravity. Where love becomes something

that makes me need to climb onto a chair and tie a noose

around my neck because I can no longer tolerate what is called “love.”

I wonder if she knew what she did―Louise, the one who hung herself.

I wonder if she knows that her granddaughter missed her

looks just like her, that her son cannot even bring himself

to talk about his mother. To say her name. For years I didn’t know her name.

Is this what love does? Does it turn into a nova and simply implode

so that no one can bear its touch?

Let me be wrathful. Let me burn all the fetters away.

Burn so bright that all you feel is the leftover embers

a sort of pinkish glow. Orange in the dimming light.

x.

Before we ever met, my lover was told by a gypsy

a sun was coming her way, a giant red colored sun. 

I think this was you, Sophie. I would say you―

there is a lightness about you, your entire being is

light light light. Such a gentleness, you hint of pure joy.

Something unbridled, something innocent like a monk

who spends hours sweeping sidewalks so as to avoid

stepping on ants. It’s this sort of gentility

I hope keeps in your heart, always, that you

let nothing deter you, that you blossom, bring comfort

to the comfortless. That you never turn cold.

I want to keep you safe so your heart is nothing but wildflowers. 

Pure joy, a sort of gold among the ruble of broken parts.

But we are human and part of that is to feel it all,

not just this joy of being but the pain of it, the sorrow too.

Suffering is not just about sadness and aching and fear.

Suffering is joy as well, to feel so much your heart burns with it

throbs deep inside you burning and burning and burning.

To shield you would rob you of who you are

beyond the skin and bones. Beyond the body of self.

I want you to feel all of it, not to avoid things the way I did.

Running as fast as I could.  I carried bricks. I carried

concrete, dirt, ash. I made a mess of it. I felt nothing.

xi.

I surrendered. I let go absolutely…

Let go completely, even when you think you can’t

When you think you have given every bit of yourself

Sophie, yield and yield and yield.

(I hope you understand this some day

I hope someday you will burn with it.)

xii.

Yesterday “Jesus and crackers” was your description of going church

I can’t help but think how appropriate it is that you equate church with doing

eating the wafer, taking God deep down into you. It’s what you see. 

Of course I’m a Buddhist and have a certain bend. I’ve heard it said God

is either everything or nothing. Buddhist or no, it’s true.

For so long I’ve let language alienate me:

THERE IS NO GOD.

You should know, I sometimes think I’m just trying to cover the bases.

I am terrified of dying and finding out I was wrong. That all along

I was just too stubborn to consider the possibility. I hope you are never

conflicted about this. I hope for you, faith is an immediate thing.

That you can have faith always, forever, without doubt or fear or recriminations.

 

(Originally published in the Venus Salon at www.kissedbyvenus.ca)

5 Excerpts from SWEET SPOT by Lorene Delany-Ullman

Lorene Delany-Ullman is a native Californian, and received her M.F.A. in English from the University of California, Irvine. She formerly worked as a technical writer for the Boeing Company and Impulse Research, a public opinion and marketing research firm. Her book of prose poems, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, is forthcoming from Firewheel Editions in Summer 2012. She currently teaches composition at UC Irvine.

The five posts excerpted here are from a work in progress tentatively titled, Sweet Spot. 

Lorene writes: ‘Sweet Spot is the memoir of my life as the wife of a minor league baseball player during the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. As a hybrid form of short prose pieces, this collection endeavors to tell the story from the wife’s perspective in language that is both lyrical and candid. The vignettes strive to address not only the domesticity, but also the adventure and tragedy of minor league life—from food stamps and league championships to murder and divorce.’ 

  

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Spring Training)

 
 

Spring Training

St. Pete, Florida, 1979

For the first week, we rented a motel room with a kitchenette. No sink, a stove with two burners enough to warm the baby’s bottles. An hour into our stay, Denis left for practice, hitched a ride with another ballplayer. The woman who showed us the place told me to keep the screen door shut or the chameleons would get in. I didn’t know she was talking about lizards. I took the baby for a walk, pushed the stroller to the end of the lot, into the new world—flat and feverish

 

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Good Cotton)

 
 

Good Cotton

          Little Rock, Arkansas, 1979

Marie’s pregnancy sent her home to Savannah. Her left-fielder husband was a power hitter; carried the gentleman of himself in his pocket. I borrowed his car just to smell his cologne. I let loose a sigh—it was easy—we were all hungry for something. His clothes were heaped in the front seat, freshly laundered. Fingering one of his cotton sleeves, I remembered what Marie said: it all comes out in the wash.

 

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Sinker)

 
 

Sinker

          Little Rock, Arkansas, 1979

Hand over hand, I lathered and rubbed with water and soap, my kid climbing my leg. The groupie next to me washed, too, then smacked gloss between her lips. I’m gonna sleep with every player on the team, she drawled. I checked out the sink—its white notion of enamel and cast iron, the fine crack near the drain—listening hard. She and her friend giggled like girls getting ready for their Debutante ball. The sink being fine and all, I picked up my child, and quit.





   

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Sacrifice)

 
 

Sacrifice

          St Petersburg, Florida, 1980

In St. Pete we studied the Bible. A dentist and his Mrs. called the players and wives together for devotionals. Because we rented a house with two couches, the lessons were held at our home. The shortstop came clean—he was looking for dope near a fence, and found a palm-sized Bible instead. His girl, Mary, came all the way from California to wed in a fan’s backyard.

The more schooling we had, the less we’d believe, the dentist said. He pinned a map of the holy land on our living room wall, pointed and smiled while we followed the feet of Jesus. That summer I asked Him to forgive me—we bowed our heads, held hands, and prayed to win.





 

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Road Trip)

 

 

Road Trip

August 31, 1981

His mother was murdered—I called our Little Rock neighbors first, asked Liz to check on Denis. His older brother phoned him with the news. After nine innings behind the plate, Denis was alone, probably smokin’ a jay, a frozen bag of peas on his left quad. I was in California with our daughter and infant son. That night he drove straight through—Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico—must’ve stopped somewhere for gas—maybe all cried out by Arizona. Before Denis hit our state line, husband number seven had her cremated; later, Ray showed us her plans for their new house.

We never talked about her—only the yellow nylon rope around her neck, carpet fibers in her hair, the Arizona desert road where a man riding a scooter found her. How she was robbed of her cash and credit cards. Later, the words that meant the most were “circumstantial evidence.”

She’d bought life insurance a few weeks before. We bought a Volkswagen bus with the money she left us. The orange-brown plaid curtains swung with every turn.

'Guzzle' by Amorak Huey

 
 

There’s a saying about the wisdom of being drunk in a small boat.

There’s another about sex under a full moon, possibly also on a small boat.

Or is it sex with an ex? Or breakup sex? Or a bottle of Boone’s Farm Kountry Kwencher.

You can’t believe it’ll be that bad. Until you’re puking over the side of a small boat.

1989, her driveway. She said we were ruining our friendship. She was right.

At Scott’s lakehouse in Pell City, she stayed ashore. It was, after all, a small boat.

My favorite summer: the year I worked at a bait shop. Learned to talk like a fisherman.

Didn’t write a word. Got a good tan and my first muscles, from dragging around small boats.

A question of ethics: When you break up with someone, should you be honest about why?

What if it isn’t very nice, or makes you look bad? It’s a long way from here to a small boat.

Ghazal, I’m told, is Arabic for “talking to women.” The couplets should be linked, like couples.

They should also be detachable units. Like, for instance, a series of small boats.

If I said I was never very good at talking to women, I would want you to think me a liar.

I once drank a bottle of wine while nightfishing. The story ends like that, in a small boat

in the dark – I’m breaking the rules here; detachment isn’t as easy as it sounds –

where was I? Oh, yes: in the moonless dark, moaning her name from the bottom of a small boat.

"Guzzle" appeared in Gargoyle 56 (2010)

'Short History of the American South' by Amorak Huey

 
 

                    “Blood where the sky has opened.”

 – Jorie Graham

“You may bury my body, ooh

down by the highway side

So my old evil spirit

can catch a Greyhound bus and ride”

 – Robert Johnson

Up early. Water level low enough to walk

a hundred yards toward horizon: mud flats

crack and squelch underfoot. No one

                                      else is here

this morning. Unfamiliar sun awaits,

hungry dark lingers against gulf’s goodbye kiss,

last girl in the dance hall, first one

to meet your eye. A wink is a promise

and a threat: follow or sit down.

In this part of the world we are never

alone and this is not my story.

How many songs before you understand

why a body must keep moving?

That when you stop, you die. This is said

of certain sharks, though it might be untrue –

but we do all of us sense blood. Imagine:

single drop: one million gallons of saltwater. Still,

there is nothing evil in this world –

your chances

of being divine so small as to be invisible –

                           to peel back

what is known about the visible

requires a sort of wisdom,

an awareness of danger – you find yourself

in this spot where the last rivers end

and sky folds into ocean –

closer & closer, then farther away.

"Short History of the American South" appeared in Blue Earth Review 8.2 (Spring 2010).