#122: "Home for the Funeral: a pantoum" by Lita A. Kurth

  

~This poem was previously published in The Santa Clara Review (1991).

Home for the Funeral: a pantoum

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy

I have to go to a place where I can't stand to go.

God, give me strength.  Aunt Mary, give me whiskey

I can't stand the heat.

I have to go to a place where I can't stand to go.

The storm is herding us to a horrible end

I can't stand the heat.

Let's drive on and on till we are past it.

The storm is herding us to a horrible end

We can't bear it.

Let's drive on and on till we are past it.

We must have wine before we go.

We can't bear it.

We can't stand the heat

We must have wine before we go.

Aunt Mary doles out the whiskey

We can't stand the heat

In her charity she includes a valium from her private reserve.

Aunt Mary doles out the whiskey

The kitchen is gold as we come up the back path in the dark.

In her charity she includes a valium from her private reserve

Our days are like an evening shadow.

The kitchen is gold as we come up the back path in the dark.

We wither away like grass.

Our days are like an evening shadow.

What are all these people doing here?

We wither away like grass.

I cry in front of all of them.  I have to.

What are all these people doing here?

"Was that fifty or a hundred, Shirley?- the money you got for the body?"

I cry in front of all of them.  I have to.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Was that fifty or a hundred, Shirley?- the money you got for the body?"

"And Uncle Ole sent those pretty flowers.”

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"That must have cost a pretty penny."

"And Uncle Ole sent those pretty flowers."

They will perish but thou must endure.

"That must have cost a pretty penny."

Let this be recorded for generations to come.

They will perish but thou must endure.

(Shut up, Grandma, shut up, shut up.)

Let this be recorded for generations to come.

"Boy, crying really takes the pounds off."

(Shut up, Grandma, shut up, shut up.)

Am I a God at hand? saith the Lord.

"Boy, crying really takes the pounds off."

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Am I a God at hand? saith the Lord.

"Aunt Josie said I was probably suffering the most."

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

"Why should you have his diary?  I gave it to him in the first place."

"Aunt Josie said I was probably suffering the most."

No thought can be withholden from thee.

"Why should you have his diary?  I gave it to him in the first place."

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

No thought can be withholden from thee.

He came back and started rocking the rocking-chair right where he used to sit.

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

Joy got sent home because she started stapling her hand.

He came back and started rocking the rocking-chair right where he used to sit.

"That's one less present to buy."

Joy got sent home because she started stapling her hand.

"What was it? Delinquent diabetes?  No, juvenile diabetes."

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy

God, give me strength.  Aunt Mary, give me whiskey

  

*****

#121: "Ahmed" by Ihab Hassan

~This story was previously published in Chelsea (2006).

Ahmed was happy when I first met him; only gradually the sweetness in his smile drained.  Sweetness?  He held it back, as some Egyptians do, history trampling on their lives.  Slight, elfin—or was it ferret-like?—he had long, black eyelashes, genetic memories of desert storms and pitiless light.  So, what was Ahmed doing in New Zealand, the Land of the Long White Cloud? 

                                                                        *

I was staying at the Auckland Hilton, a white, angular structure jutting out from Princes Wharf, like a cruise ship that never departs. 

Good morning, sir, where shall I put the tray?  Those were Ahmed’s first words, spoken in labial English.

I pointed to a table by the window—it was all I could manage.  An interminable flight from San Francisco had erased two Greenwich Meridian days from my life, and I felt both drowsy and jaggedly awake.  But I would have a week to recover—I consulted for a manufacturer of plastic hulls, specializing in sloops, all expenses paid—during which I would breakfast in my room every morning, high in the hotel’s gleaming prow, watching the ferries glide in and out of Waitemata Harbour. 

#120: Three Poems by Lynne Thompson

~This poem was previously published in ArtLife  (2005).

A Famble

If you listen, you will find me

between tomorrow

and a dream-hole.

I’ve heard all about you:

your devil-shine, your heart-

spoon and your farbuden

and I’m waiting for you

in the darkened flesh-spade

where farlies flurch on a copesmate

just beyond the smoors.

I’m waiting for you to remove

my frample & muddle, my murlimews

& pulpatoons.  Look, I’m no paranymph

and this is no beautrap

but I know a gandermooner when I see one!

Relax your half-marrow

and turn your countenance to the twatterlight.

I am framp on this light-bed—frike-lusty

for your mally-brinch.  Come here

my belly-friend, my lusty-gallant, let’s

brustle and fream, let’s ablude our fleshment

on this sweet care-cloth.

*****

#119: "Against Bric-a-Brac" by Elizabeth Bales Frank

~This essay was originally published in Epiphany (2006).

The lobby of the building where I live contains two huge breakfronts which house the sentimental items of former tenants.  The building is a good value pre-war co-op with a contingent of renters which grows smaller every year, as they move into nursing homes, retire to Florida, or die.  They leave behind the little somethings for a shelf, the small vases, the prancing figures, the engraved bowls, the statuettes of animals. Our superintendent takes what he considers the best of the selection and displays it in the breakfronts, bric-a-brac as memento mori.

I hate all this stuff.

My father had a talent for transforming an ordinary word into a profanity simply through pronunciation.  One such word was “junk.”  “Get rid of all this jjjjuuuuuuuunk,” he would command.  “Junk” became a curse, a German curse, a bad cinema German curse, the kind that Hollywood Nazis shout at the uncomprehending conquered in war movies.  Junk!  Junk!  Get rid of all this jjjjjuuuuuuunk!

And there was a lot of junk to sort through.  A widower with three teenagers, my father married a divorcee with four.  In the interest of strict accuracy, I should point out that my sister, the eldest, had just left her teens and I, the youngest, had not quite entered mine, but you get the idea of our baggage — dolls and toys, tea sets and train sets, tennis racquets and skateboards, abruptly obsolete 45s and eight-track tapes and the equipment that played them, abandoned worlds of aquariums and terrariums — the normal flotsam of childhood.  But in addition to the boxes and boxes of things we had been exhorted to sort through before the great move to the combined house on Ironstone Road, there was their stuff — the heirlooms, the wedding gifts from three different weddings — his, hers, theirs — the treasured mementos.  Or the junk.  The value of bric-a-brac is in the eyes of the beholder.