Wednesday, December 9, 2020

REMEMBERING HELEN LAFRANCE ("I couldn't say $100") ~

 



HELEN LAFRANCE





RE-READING JOANNE KYGER ~








Destruction



First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through

a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through

the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then

he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.



He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated

coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans

fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers

stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper,

paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.



                                                   He rips the Green Tara

poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills

the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes

a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and

drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu

and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching

a woman bathing.



                           Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue,

Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Trucks Tracks, and

Women's Sports into the oozing water bed mess.



                                                                       He goes

down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going

for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off.

Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash

of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium

and aspirin.



________________
Joanne Kyger





a forever classic ~ with its strength of natural storytelling and aplomb
combined with a sheer intelligence of what the poet knows from cultures
and the cabin