THE CRYBABY ~

FARMER'S WIFE ~

Farmer's Wife

Four dozen eggs under her arm,

That’s how she greeted us.

We weren’t coming for eggs

But for a currant bush

Waiting in the dooryard

Wrapped tight in burlap.

I lifted it into the back

Of the truck since that’s

What I was hired to do,

Waited in the early sun

Leaning against the tailgate

While the two old ladies talked.

And with the eggs still under

Her arm she also turned to speak

With me, eyes dazzled like light

In water, checkered blue flannel

Shirt, out-worn by all of her

Sons and now on her back; torn

At the elbows, but warm.

Everything is just right

On this hill farm and I’ve only

Been here 5 minutes. Crows flap

West to east from the wood’s edge

Long over the flat face of pasture.

A manure spreader is backed up

To the kitchen door stacked neat

With stovewood, the lawn is mowed,

And we’ve caught this farmer’s wife

In between the chicken coop and

The house; white hair combed back

With ruddy hands that pick eggs

Each morning, and when she talks

She mentions all of her family.



__________________

Bob Arnold
Where Rivers Meet
Mad River Press

KABIR ~

god my darling
do me a favor and kill my mother-in-law
Janabai (13th century).
trans. Arun Kolatkar



Chewing slowly,

Only after I'd eaten

My grandmother,

Mother,

Son-in-law,

Two brothers-in-law,

And father-in-law

(His big family included)

In that order,

And had for desert

The town's inhabitants,



Did I find, says Kabir,

The beloved that I've become

One with.




____________________________________
K A B I R
Songs of Kabir
translated Arvind Krishna Mehrotra 
New York Review of Books

TOM PACHECO AT THE COLONY, WOODSTOCK, NY ~

RALPH J. GLEASON ~

R A L P H    J.    G L E A S O N

Music in the air

The selected writings of Ralph J. Gleason

edited by Toby Gleason

Yale University Press 2016

Ralph Gleason was more than likely the first music critic I ever read back 50 years ago 

and his selected writings hold true to this day — from Jazz to Rock with much less

the authority on display of many current music critics and more an ease

and conversation and friendship with the music and musicians.

Few can take you by the hand from King Oliver and Louis Armstrong

to Bebop and John Coltrane as Gleason will, or right into

the home of the Jefferson Airplane and the California

music scene of the 1960s. He was instrumental at organizing

 one of Bob Dylan's finest press conferences as well

at being one of the founders of the Monterey Pop Festival

and the starting pistol to the original Rolling Stone magazine.
Plus he wrote about the souls of Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae
with more soul than anyone.
Icing on the cake — he quoted in 1966 the hip poet Philip Whalen —
everything was usable to Gleason if it had the wonder.

All the while well past the age of 30 back then and younger than yesterday.

He was gone, already, by 1975.

No one like him before or since.

This collection gathered up by his son Toby

will show you why.

RARE RECORDING ~

EDGE OF IRONY ~

Marjorie Perloff ~ Edge of Irony

Think Kafka, Paul Celan, Walter Benjamin, Joseph Roth et al 

O F E L I A     Z E P E D A

Just Like Home

The young woman buys

a piece of fresh fry bread from

the Indian Parent Association's booth.

"Oh, just like home," she says.

"Do you have any salt?"

I pour a small amount in her palm.

She sprinkles it on her bread.

She takes a bite, "Mmm, just like home."

She seems unaware she has her eyes closed

as she eats and talks.

The delicate bite of freshly cooked bread

takes her back.

She stands on a street in downtown Tucson

and thinks of women so familiar to her,

her mother, her sisters cooking outside.

In the distance the sound of someone

chopping wood, a barking dog.

Pinon smoke is so real for her right now,

her hair might smell of it if she moved

and the breeze caught her just right.



 Birth Witness



My mother gave birth to me  in an old wooden row house
in the cotton fields.
She remembers it was windy.
Around one in the afternoon.
The tin roof rattled, a piece uplifted
from the wooden frame, quivered and flapped
as she gave birth.
She knew it was March.
A windy afternoon in the cotton fields of Arizona.

She also used to say I was baptized standing up.
"It doesn't count," the woman behind the glass window tells me,
"if you were not baptized the same year you were born,
the baptismal certificate cannot be used to verify your birth."

"You need affidavits," she said.
"Your older siblings, you have some don't you?
They have to be old enough to have a memory
of your birth.
Can they vouch for you?
Who was there to witness my birth?
Who was there with my mother?
Was it my big sister?
Would my mother have let a teenager watch her giving birth?
Was it my father?
I can imagine my father assisting her with her babies.

My aunts?
Who was there when I breathed my first breath?
Took in those dry particles from the cotton fields.
Who knew then that I would need witnesses of my birth?
The stars were there in the sky.
The wind was there.
The sun was there.
The pollen of spring was floating and sensed me being born.
They are silent witnesses.
They do not know of affidavits, they simply know.
"You need records," she said.
"Are there doctor's receipts from when you were a baby?
Didn't your parents have a family Bible, you know,
where births were recorded?
Were there letters?
Announcements of your birth?

I don't bother to explain my parents are illiterate in their English language.
What I really want to tell her is they speak a language much too civil for writing.
It is a language careful for pulling memory from the depths of the earth.
It is useful for praying with the earth and sky.
It is useful for singing songs that pull down the clouds.
It is useful for calling rain.
It is useful for speeches and incantations
that pull sickness from the minds and bodies of believers.
It is a language too civil for writing.
It is too civil for writing minor things like my birth.
This is what I really want to tell her.
But I don't.
Instead I take the forms she hands me.
I begin to account for myself.


______________________

Ofelia Zepeda
WHERE CLOUDS ARE FORMED
The University of Arizona Press 2008


 

CATO ~

B U R T     K W O U K     IS     G O N E

HOAGY LANDS ~

WOODCUTTER, Part 3 ~

"Hands"

photo ~ bob arnold 

may 2016

Many Times

There is the absolute way

Of doing it, and we have done it

Many times and again —

How I will come to you

How you will meet me

The early morning sun

Perfect on the bed, and

Stripes in the Mexican blanket

Like blood, the sea, yellow iris petals —

And it is a silly lovers ritual of ours,

I hug you and you hug me and step onto

My boots, and I walk you and me around the

Sunlit room, the sway of patchouli in your hair,

And your face smooth against my lips

Like the inside of your hands

The Skin of Her Neck

Tonight, because her hand is in pain, the small finger

Swollen, yes, I’ll stir the

Batter, although she is better

And first taught me how

Something is done right.

And I came from behind

And smelled the skin of

Her neck, the long blonde

Hairs alive and the blouse

White and rough, tucked into

A thin summer skirt.

Winter, near Christmas,

3 feet of snow and her

Body moves across the

Cabin room with summer,

A clay bowl with

Colored stripes in her

Arms, the fresh heat

Of the flat iron stove.

Redtail

By the river I found her —

Long and short feathers matted by weeks of rain,

A soft spotted down on her chest,

The whole body twisted in the crotch of an ironwood

This hawk hung and not a right way to die.

Nudged out with my axe handle it fell with no life,

Eyes gone and the rotting smell of blood and grease.

I cut the claws for the first time, others I’ve left —

One talon broken off and the muscular flex of skin

No different than a man’s, except for the ruggedness,

The pale yellow of it, but a companion to my own.

And the tail feathers — still a beautiful tan — pinned

Open for flight on rough pine boards inside our cabin,

I only buried some of her.

The Woodcutter Talks

I’ve got to go pretty soon

So I’ll take my boots off

And shake out the snow,

Sit close to the fire you

Have built, then left for me.

I’m in no hurry until the sun comes up.

My snowshoes need new leather straps

But for now they’ll have to do,

Carry me to the woods where I work

Thinning out the half bowl of a hillside —

That’s what it looks like — and sometimes

I rest and watch it for what it is, with my

Wet gloves off, the clearness above me.



_____________________________

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET

FINALLY, ED ABBEY'S DREAM ~

The Glen Canyon Dam

UNPLUGGING THE COLORADO RIVER

ny times

BOBBY CHARLES ~

THE REAL THING ~

Remembering John Herald

The World of John Herald