Poem 3 (Scenes From My Life, Fade In)
Fade in
Eating beets
in a high chair
P.O.V. as seen from
Brooklyn apartment foyer,
I’m a Dr. Spock baby
My mommy maybe
Picks me up when I cry
So I feel in control
Although I’m not.
The withholding,
Holding in of
Emotions, hers,
bodily functions, mine,
Necessitates enemas
Administered on what seemed
to be or was
a near-daily basis.
Dare I overshare?
Song remembered (sung in
Brooklyn by some child):
My mother and your mother were
Hanging up some clothes
My mother punched your mother
Right in the nose
What color blood came out?
Green G-r-e-e-n.
Fast forward:
we live in a house
With a washer dryer and trees!
Wheeee I pump my legs
On tinny swing.
My sled stutters down
Snow clotted hills
Cars come cars go near me
But not too —
It’s a quieter time
or was, until Kennedy died.
Hopped up by the speed
But scared, I brake.
My cheeks red
Wind burnished.
Hold. Freeze frame.
This is of some moment
To be explained in a voice over
Later
Or by note to self.
The Civil Rights movement
comes, but I don’t know it.
Schwerner Goodman Liuzzo
Evers dead
Murdered.
Goodman lived
Three blocks away.
I didn’t know.
Did my parents know?
Why didn’t they tell me?
I needed to taste the dying ember
the slow death of hope
Or perhaps did.
My mother, ironing
Perpetually ironing
Growing large
Most days
Her door closed
Depressed
A sixties wife
Unmoored.
Jump cut, high school
I skip school,
Go to the Vietnam War Teach In
Mr. L. my teacher’s there.
Handsome, boot black hair.
Gay, they say.
An unexcused absence
For both of us.
The following day
I proffer my note
We smile, complicit.
I like Mr. Leach
Like the theater,
Go to The City to see
Sam Shepard plays.
More High School:
I’m a regular girl
Who girds herself like most girls do
With a girdle that
Curls up my thighs like kudzu
Sometimes I write
to famous people
Who write back:
Sammy Davis Jr.
Senator Jacob Javits
Who apologizes, says sorry
They don’t use girl pages in the
Senate.
A famous entertainment writer
Asks me to write his editor.
Got canned for some conflict
Which he says wasn’t.
I write the editor and feel important.
They still can him.
Fast forward years later
I interview him,
Bring a camera crew
Okay, one person,
But still, no longer famous,
he’s impressed.
Flashback:
Down the block a man in Brooklyn
Off Ocean Parkway Avenue Z
Has chickens.
Fresh eggs in Brooklyn.
The Dugan Man sells crumb cakes
from his Dugan Cart
Goes door to door to each apartment.
Convenient.
Fast forward or montage:
High school
A mass rally in Bryant Park
Against The War.
I’m with an exchange student
I met at a regional exchange club party
I’m chapter president.
He threads us through the crowd
Says he knows where we’re going
Goes to where people wear brass knuckles.
But nothing transpires,
It rarely does.
Now I wear a mask
A carapace
I dip
I dart, fancyish
I wear my invisibility like
A cloak
At times I shimmy it off
Damn, I like watching,
Absorbing life
As if it were sun
Sucking on myself
An incubus.