Piece #1 After Cisneros' "Four Skinny Trees" (pp. 74-75)
She is the one who understands me. One old, smooth lamp, chiseled and chipped and cratered in places. She’s been around for a while. Even though she doesn't belong, she has made her place, always lingering nearby. Sometimes she hides. But in time, I look back up and she is posed all sassy, her hands resting on her hips, her chest high and bright. I barely catch her before she slinks away. She is that one hope, that one regret, the one last apology I will keep waiting for.
From my room I wake to her blazing-- her ghostliness as loud as metal. The rest of the house hiccups, then creaks itself back to sleep.
But her reliability? That's something else. She keeps a schedule until the last minute. Calendars and clocks don't confine her. Appointments she's made are easily broken, and for her in this instant, time and pleasure unlock. She shines. She is both familiar and strange, like a an old friend you don’t understand much anymore.
She reaches down toward me in my bed, her gauzy skin streaming through my window, striping first the fields, then sidewalk, and finally my own wrinkled sheets.
She can melt or simply vanish. She is fickle and righteous. She bosses around the tides. Even the sun can’t keep himself from her. She whispers to me. Her lips don't move, but I listen.
When I am too tired and restless, when I am gray and lost in earth's static, that is when I want to look up and find her. And sometimes, when it’s already a perfectly clear day, blue and bright and annoying enough to give me a headache, there she is, an ashen blemish etched into the sky. She who shines for no one but herself. She who beams but never just to please. She whose only words: listen, listen, listen.
Piece #2 "Where I'm From" after George Ella Lyon
I am from the sandy litter that sticks
I am from the sandy litter that sticks
to the linoleum and then
to the bottom of my feet and
wet whiskery kisses (don't bite!) at three a.m.
wet whiskery kisses (don't bite!) at three a.m.
I am from the salt of the icy streets
the absurd cold
whose welcome wore out long before
lost memory of clear sidewalks.
lost memory of clear sidewalks.
I’m from the Knapp Hill and Wichita Falls,
potatoes served at every meal
and sometimes spicy chili.
and sometimes spicy chili.
From my granddad’s flat feet
and my mother’s worry,
and the insanity my father pleads to keep from going hungry.and my mother’s worry,
I’m from TV dinners and thick bifocals.
I’m from Roald Dahl’s giant peach,
and Rowling’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
I’m from audio books and paperbacks
and pictures books and chapter books.
From fiction, biography, action and adventure,
and philosophy.
I'm from hard covers and library fines and
From fiction, biography, action and adventure,
and philosophy.
I'm from hard covers and library fines and
dog-eared corners and tissues marking the page
because just like food
nourishes the body,
stories nourish my soul.
I used to have an old saxophone.
Now, somewhere, she rests in a case,
scattered with dry, brittle reeds,
scattered with dry, brittle reeds,
in her a mausoleum of sound,
her growling blue notes muted and impatient.
her growling blue notes muted and impatient.
I am from pieces that fit—
and pieces that strike against each other
to make fire, and warmth
and destruction and memory.
Piece #3 "My Name" after "My Name" by Sandra Cisneros
My mom lost. No, my father would not agree to name me Lucy. That was a name for a Peanuts character and later our first dog, a runty beagle who left warm yellow spots in each corner of the kitchen and who we eventually returned to the pound. As a teenager, there were definitely times I wished I could have been just as easily been returned and therefore freed from my family, but instead, my name has always shackled me, more so than most, to my father. I hve received duplicates of his AARP cards in the mail since I was 19.
But still, my mother argues, JamieAnna, my full name, my true given birth-certificate certified two-part name staring with a 'J' is an homage to my granny, JimmyJoy.
JimmyJoy grew up in Oklahoma, out of tumbleweed and dust, where she left behind an older sister, Wanda, for a secretary job in Texas. She shut the door behind her with only a suitcase and an itchy ring finger.
And the story goes that the first of JimmyJoy's four marriages was maybe for love, or was it the second, to my mom's father, the handsome blind trumpet player? Definitely not the third, a scraggly drunk of a guy who sent a shotgun bullet into the headboard of the heirloom bedframe my mom still sleeps under today. And finally, my granny's final last name, froze on number 4, Content, the surname of a colonel. And today, at 88, Granny's just plain old granny and thank God husbandless, and she tells me that about marriage, you must be coldblooded.
Today it's rare to find woman a woman carrying two first names. You don't see any PollyAnnas or MaryBeths running business meetings or directing films. And over time and convenience, my own name's slimmed down to Jamie, and my full first name remains intimate, spoken to me only by cousins best known during childhood and of course, old grannies who know what I ought to be doing with my life.
and destruction and memory.
Piece #3 "My Name" after "My Name" by Sandra Cisneros
My mom lost. No, my father would not agree to name me Lucy. That was a name for a Peanuts character and later our first dog, a runty beagle who left warm yellow spots in each corner of the kitchen and who we eventually returned to the pound. As a teenager, there were definitely times I wished I could have been just as easily been returned and therefore freed from my family, but instead, my name has always shackled me, more so than most, to my father. I hve received duplicates of his AARP cards in the mail since I was 19.
But still, my mother argues, JamieAnna, my full name, my true given birth-certificate certified two-part name staring with a 'J' is an homage to my granny, JimmyJoy.
JimmyJoy grew up in Oklahoma, out of tumbleweed and dust, where she left behind an older sister, Wanda, for a secretary job in Texas. She shut the door behind her with only a suitcase and an itchy ring finger.
And the story goes that the first of JimmyJoy's four marriages was maybe for love, or was it the second, to my mom's father, the handsome blind trumpet player? Definitely not the third, a scraggly drunk of a guy who sent a shotgun bullet into the headboard of the heirloom bedframe my mom still sleeps under today. And finally, my granny's final last name, froze on number 4, Content, the surname of a colonel. And today, at 88, Granny's just plain old granny and thank God husbandless, and she tells me that about marriage, you must be coldblooded.
Today it's rare to find woman a woman carrying two first names. You don't see any PollyAnnas or MaryBeths running business meetings or directing films. And over time and convenience, my own name's slimmed down to Jamie, and my full first name remains intimate, spoken to me only by cousins best known during childhood and of course, old grannies who know what I ought to be doing with my life.
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