Piecework_Summer1987.pdf
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ABIGAIL KEEGAN
Summer 1987
Red Dirt Press, Inc., is the result of the v1s1on of eight women who wanted to provide more publication opportunities for
women_ The publication of this magazine of women's poetry,
aptly named PIECEWORK, which draws on all the images of
women's work that is done "by the piece," is dedicated to all
the women who write poetry, sometimes in spite of cheir lives
and families.
PIECEWORK (ISSN: 0893-116X) is published four times
a year. Subscriptions are $12 per year for individuals,
$16 for libraries and institutions. A free copy of
PIECEWORK will be furnished, on request, to the libraries of prisons and/ or mental institutions. Single
Address all correspondence tc
copy price is $4.
PIECEWORK, Red Dirt Press, Inc., P.O. Box 60693,
Oklahoma City, OK 73146.
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·~ PIECEWORK
A MAGAZINE OF POETRY BY WOMEN
SUMMER 1987
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4
Poetry Editors: Ann Carlton, Abigail Keegan
Production: Elaine Barton, Martha Hayes, Marian Hulsey
Distribution: Eloise Dycus
Public Relations: Peggy Durham, Eloise Dycus
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Published by Red Dirt Press, Inc.
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Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
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ccopyright 1987 by Red Dirt Press, Inc.
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No part of this publication may be
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permission
reproduced
without
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UCO Woman's Reaearch .t: BGLTQ+Cema-
100 N. University Dr
Edmond, OK 73034
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Featured Artist, Abigail Keegan.............................................
4
Poems by Featured Artist, Abigail Keegan
"Listening to a Mother's Death"........................................
"This Is".............................................................................
"The Myth of Narcissus"...................................................
"The Invitatory•. ....... ... .... ... ..... ...... ..... ... ... ... .... ... .... ...........
"V"J.Siting Prague"................................................................
"The Investiture"...............................................................
"Winter Trees"...................................................................
6
9
10
11
12
13
14
"Trees" by Pearl Koplin ..................................................... ~ .... 15
"I Always Sweat in Silk" by The Collective Unconscious ...... 16
"Competition Prayer, Indian Miss America"
by Mary Crescenzo Sim.(.ns.. .. .. ... .... .... ... .. .... ... ... ....... ......... 17
"Pow Wow" by Judith Rycroft................................................ 18
"Crossing the Border" by Susan L. Smith............................... 19
"Death of a Battle Ground" by Jay)ynn BaileY.••··············· ······ 20
"Belfast" by Susan Powell...................................................... 21
"Downward Mobility" by J. Arre................................ ~············ 23
"Evening Rituals of a Mexican Woman" by Belinda Bruner... 24
"Medicine Song" by Beazley Kanost ........................... ~ ........... 26
"Links" by J. Leigh Perry....................................................... 29
"Via Affirmativa" by Kennette H. W"tlkes............................... 30
"To Mary Helen" by Ruth Dishman ........................................ 31
"Her World" by Catherine J. Donnell...................................... 32
"On Her Garden" by Eve Lear................................................ 33
"Coming Full Circle" by Stephanie Booth............................... 34
"Logical Consequences" by Patricia Wade.............................. 35
"The Bitch" by Pat Weygandt................................................. 37
"The Devil Quotes Scripture" by Sharon E. Martin ............... 38
"A Psychotherapist Friend" by Susan A. VanSchuyver........... 39
"Read My Lips" by Mary Crescenzo Simons ........................... 40
Pase Z, SU1111er 1987, PIBCEWORK
"You Stand There Waiting for the Phone"
by Susan Po~ll.................................................................
"Earth-Throb" by Jaylynn Bailey.............................................
"Walls and Bridges" by Frances Fong .....................................
"Crossroads" by Patricia Wade...............................................
"Home" by Ellen Dudley..........................................................
"Dust Bowl Daze" by Marianne McFarland McNeil.. ...............
"The Ritz" by Lauren M. Barnes ............................................
41
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44
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46
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48
This issue of PIECEWORK is pleased to publish some more of
Oklahoma's younger poets. Lauren Barnes is in junior high
school, Jaylynn Bailey is a senior, and Stephanie Booth and
Frances Fong are recent graduates.
Works in this issue that were published previously are
here republished with permission of the authors.
(Cover photo by Ann Carlton)
PIBCBWORK, Summer 1987, Page 3
FEATURED ARTIST -- ABIGAIL KEEGAN
With pride and gratitude, PIECEWORK features the poems of one
of the women whose vision and energy helped bring this journal of
women's poetry into existence.
Abigail Keegan is one of the founders of this journal and through
her creative insight and effort, helped bring the idea to actuality.
She is well known for making things happen--writing workshops, political consciousness-raising groups, social action seminars, reading and
discussion groups, student field trips, parties and cross-country eating
adventures for her friends, being just some of these happenings. With
all that, she still has time to bring a major work of her own to the
press, the recently published first book of Red Dirt Press, Inc., THE
FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTIONS.
Speaking of her writing, Abigail says:
In my creation of art, I want to provide what religion
has in its best moments--a form that orders the chaos--the
hungers, desires, deaths, darknesses and weathers--and in that
ordering, I want to allow myself and my reader a moment to
see meaning, to have faith in our failures and our survivals,
and, at times even to have faith in our own immensity.
Through the art of language, to put it most succinctly, I
want to make us companions in what is most real.
Abigail, in addition to writing poetry, has kept a journal since
she was eleven. She also is working on a series of short stories, a
book about Oklahoma caf es, and a critical study of Sarah Orne
Jewett, a 19th Century New England writer.
She is not an Oklahoman by birth, but by adoption is saturated
with the vibrant red soil of the state, and she loves its beauty, a
love she reflects in her writing. Her inspiration comes from small
towns, city streets, people of the land, whatever gives her a heightened sense of existence. Abigail was a woman religious in a Benedictine community for ten years, and often credits this experience with
generating her insights and sensitivity" to the seasons of our lives.
She is currently finishing a master's degree in American literature
and teaching at the University of Oklahoma.
Page 4, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
Abigail has included "Listening to a Mother's Death" in this issue, for the three of us whose mothers have died during this first
year of our being together as a press. This shared experience has
made us "companions in what is most real."
We have also included "I Always Sweat in Silk," a poem which
was collectively written by the women who attended the first party
to celebrate THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTIONS.
Abigail has provided us with another example of the discoveries
that are made when women begin to talk about their poetry. When
her great aunt, Pearl Koplin, heard about her niece's poetry journal,
she admitted she had written poetry for years. Abigail persuaded her
to unearth some of it and was delighted by what she found. While
this introduction was being written, Abigail remembered that her
Greataunt Pearl was the one who gave her her first diary, so the
link runs in full circles, and this art becomes another way women
make connections in their relationships and visions.
We are pleased to publish one of Pearl Koplin's poems with
Abigail's in this issue of PIECEWORK .
(THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTIONS may be ordered from Red
Dirt Press, Inc.
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Page 5
LISTENING TO A MOTHER'S DEATH
I am at this home of ours
separated from you,
but not,
you send words to me
through electric wire links;
your intravenous cry
pumps through me
as you start past
the graveyard with your images
of her, your mother.
You looked at her legs
just a week ago,
thinking, as you said,
they ware "still pretty" at 91.
They are now inseminated in you-as she once bore you inside her-self,
you now bare her--body and spirit-inside your-self
with a new king of knowing.
When a woman's mother dies,
everything changes.
I've seen women
curl back into
their first body womb forms ,
drawing in, laboring with questions
they could then never answer,
or chopping the questions
like onions-pieces always on the divide-with tears and a reason to cry.
Pqe 6. Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
For years after the death
some tried to C-section
the time they spent
with their mothers
from the bellies of memory.
One woman awoke at 2:00 a.m.
exactly one year after her mother died,
feeling a presence, a hand connected;
it was the hour her mother bore her.
We are separate, become separated;
but connected,
for women know their self in connection.
Almost 1000 miles apart,
Oklahoma to Tennessee,
my world is responding
to your mother's death.
Yesterday,
I felt some kind of crazy,
deathy in my bones,
even before the call
from your niece came
to tell me she'd died.
This morning I rose,
still listening to your voice
describing your mother's breath
before her death,
hearing too the wind pain howl,
and branch bones clatter
against this house.
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Page 7
The daffodils outside our door
heavily press to the ground-spring froze dead
in the night of your mother-tulips, hyacinth, iris
eveeywhere I drove
drooped down
to the earth mother
who will now hold
your first love.
I don't believe
in pathetic fallacy,
but in an empathic world,
and it makes me want to tell you,
I'll be here, even be her
as I can, when you come home
after locking the doors
to the house
the two of you once shared.
Yes, things change
because the mother of a daughter dies.
What remains of her
will be what you hold
and what she leaves you;
at the death of a woman's mother,
daughter creates mother anew.
--Abigail Keegan
Pase 8, Suamer 1987, PIBCEWORK
THIS IS
living in mid-America,
being in the eye of the tornado
everything sucked inward,
the big buckled belt,
shuttered into image of
tall glass mirrored walls
bouncing gold and silver,
grain elevators lifting,
the St. Louis arch rocking
people in its whale belly
above the Mississippi,
red spinning police car lights
flicking over plains like fire,
long horns turned in on steers,
pink lights spread like icing
over hospital complexes,
yellow full lines and dotted whites
moving over miles of plained
and hilled highways,
leather boots covered red with clay,
stuffed under plastic red seats
in small town cafes,
horse hooves dancing madly
across exotic open grounds
where cowboys yet lasso
what once was free.
--Abigail Keegan
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pqe 9
THE MYTH OF NARCISSUS
(for Betty)
"I have promised to tell you of
ities of mature femininity ... we
narcissism to femininity ... The
share .. .in the physical vanity of
a few more psychical peculiarattribute a larger amount of
effect of penis-envy has a
women ... " (Sigmund Freud)
As children we pressed our faces
into mirrors, pressed
until features spread
beyond their boundaries,
pushed our heads til blood rose
to redden our surface skin
and the widths of us widened on
into a time warp-a Twilight Zone
we had watched on TV,
where the world as mirror
worked in reverse-ugly ones become beautiful.
beauty turned to treason ;
we worried the grotesque
might be the oppressor.
We pulled the sides of our mouths
with the index fingers of our paws,
stuck out our tongues,
rolled round our eyes
like Carrie the epileptic girl
who lived on our block,
then we'd burst with laughter
at our twisted selves-sad unquieted elves
without gossamer wings
to fly away .
Pace 10, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
And the myth has never passed;
at night I do it even now,
pull at skin, tug my hair,
look at the mirror for myself
but see only a refracted mother
of my distortions,
while I hear the Echo
of the TV voice name beauty in a cream.
--Abigail Keegan
INVITATORY
If you do come for a visit,
please do,
do come in the Fall,
when the trees are dipped
in molten magic-their leaves
with the scent of sweet moisture,
and love's
succulent and ripe as red apples.
--Abigail Keegan
1981
from THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pace 11
VISITING PRAGUE
If I lived in this small town,
I would take a male lover
who could tack down
the flapping window screen,
prop up the old chicken house,
pitch rusted metal trash,
and keep those guys who snicker
as I jog by them
out of my house.
On Saturday afternoons I'd drive
down our street, cluttered with old cars,
tilted houses and missing bricks,
stop in the grocery and hardware stores.
I'd look .at dresses
in a store front window, but pass on by.
Maybe I'd go to talk about him
in the cafe on the highway,
about his heart attack,
his football game, his pulled muscle,
and I'd most likely,
call him my husband.
At night stroke his fur
and smooth buttocks,
maybe catch his eye before sleep.
I would take a male lover
if I lived in this small town,
but I'm a stranger to it.
Pase 12, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
I live in the city,
hire a guy whu does his playing
in a band, to screw down storm windows,
and caulk the frames for winter.
But on Saturday afternoons,
I visit antique shops -in towns like Prague,
and eat apricot cobbler
in the cafe on the highway
before moving along.
--Abigail Keegan
THE INVESTITURE
Hundreds of wires stretch
miles and miles over land and sea
reconnecting me to my mother
like giant multiple umbilical cords.
We talk on the phone, make plans to meet
in a city unknown to either of us;
we'll eat our lunches in cafes
walk the myriad of shops and aisles
and she'll recreate me
with one outfit after another.
When we',re finished,
I'll go to my home, she to hers;
in my moments of frustration and weariness,
I'll try on shirts and skirts
over and over again,
thinking I'm looking for the look
that's really me;
she '11 run her clothing store,
suggesting to each woman who enters
just the right dress for the occasion.
--Abigail Keegan
from THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTIONS
PIECEWORK, SWDmer 1987, Pace 13
WINTER TREES
Long skeleton fingers
stretch forth toward sky,
Adorned Hke entombed ancients
with pearls and diamonds,
Dark dry limbs
await their resurr<- .., tion
While hidden roots
suck earth for life.
--Abigail Keegan
from THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTIONS
Pase 14, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
TREES
Tall and gaunt, stretching its fingers in the sky,
the wind gently caressing it with a sigh
sometimes swaying and bending like a weird lance,
then quiet, and still as if in a trance.
Whispering to God way up in the sky,
watching the world at its feet go by,
catching the raindrops in its arms,
sheltering little birds from harm.
A thing of beauty in its dress of green and gol<l,
but barren and grey in the winter cold.
Trees, a gift from God to all mankind;
protect and keep them through the realm of time.
--Pearl Koplin
Akron, Ohio
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pace 15
I ALWAYS SWEAT IN SILK
The solitude is broken by signs
oh, the daffodils and the sun ...
red streamers float a welcome on spring air ...
in your young/old life you struggle
again and again to center yourself.
Fruit ripens when it is desired,
where's the food?
Cycles and circles, rhythm and flow,
these days drip molasses in my boot
with hope.
I heard a white line being drawn,
La plume de ma tante,
la plume de la mer,
Le bloom of us all,
sun and light makes the d~~' bright;
my black cat sticks out his tongue and smiles.
"What grade 'ja gimme?"
Fruit and flowers do not poison;
only God poisons.
Living is meeting;
absolve me, sister confessors.
Blue moving across the stage,
if writing poetry is fun
why do I sweat with find: .1~ words?
Creativity comes only
when I am open to receive it.
run out of lines from the past,
past the needed words,
words we sense in the closet of our minds.
I always sweat in silk.
by The Collective Unconscious
Nancy Walker
Sharon Miller
Ginger Barton
Marian Hulsey
Muriel Perkins
Pat Colognesi
Sue Tatro
Beazley Kanost
Ann Carlton
Connie McDonald
Annette Van Dusen
Gail Addis
Nancy Viviani
Marie Nisson
Eloise Dycus
Elaine Barton
Norma Lewis
Dee Butler
Pace 16, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
Mary Black
Peggy Beavers
Carolyn Goodrich
Abigail Keegan
arranged by
Martha Hayes
COMPETITION PRAYER, INDIAN MISS AMERICA
(from "Totem Princess" sculpture by Robert Hc2ozous)
Marquee Minnehaha
about to dive into water or dance for rain,
one piece, two breasts,
a shadow of a belly encased in maillot,
studded head and heart.
Honey skinned,
frybread served instead of cheesecake,
eyeless, lipless with only a nose
to smell the scent of smoke signals
coming from a distant blowing fuse.
--Mary Crescenzo Simons
Tulsa
PIECEWORK. Summer 1987. Pase 17
POW WOW
Over in Tahlequah, Oklahoma,
the new chief of the Cherokee Nation
has been installed.
I read in the paper that the head
of the #2 Indian tribe,
68,000 strong, "wore a black suit
and carried a Bible." Okay.
Times have changed and so have chiefs.
This one is a lady named Wilma,
Wilma MANKILLER.
Don't you love it?
Now, me, I'd rather have a little pomp
and play-it-on-the-tom-tom ceremony.
I can drop the Bible and the black
and see Heap Big Chief Wilma
eagle bonneted and leather fringed,
red-painted toenails hidden
by her beaded moccasins.
In that tree climbing,
pistol packing,
bow and arrows made of
sycamore and string,
always having to be a squaw
part of my mind
I see her, Mankiller,
stand before the tepee council
head and cheekbone high
in tomahawkish splendor.
Hot damn, the woman has made
every tomboy's dream
come true.
--Judith Rycroft
Edmond
Pase 18, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
CROSSING THE BORDER
We're in the territory
of danger, the place between embassy
diplomats and machinegun rebels.
Don't check on my passport,
leave us alone-we' re just touristing through,
como esta?
just seeing the sights-mexican rag shops
big-breasted mamacitas
selling carnitas
spicy-tang aroma, menudo
bubbling to a ranchero sung
by a mariachi band somewhere,
corner newsstands flap
like laundry in the breeze.
we're getting
closer
walking on razors
nerves scream, bullets whine
leaving the surface of reason
we're_ in the extranfora,
inside the dark regions,
alien soil.
--Susan L. Smith
Norman
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pace 19
DEATH
OF
A
BATTLE
GROUND
A boy swallowed
In the horror of
damp pungent fungus
Squats in the underbrush.
Fingers twisted.
A change of mood in the
vegetation
Does not possess this mind
from its silent
Synchronicity.
Earth trembles
And he is awake.
Wrapped in violent green
and black
He begins to chant
To a dying mushroom
below.
Reaching down, plucking it
from its captured home
He heaves it onto his knee
and hears its cry:
"Ese fue mi casa.
E~e fue me padre."
He slips the mushroom into his mouth
and replies:
"Yo soy tu casa.
Yo soy tu padre."
Poison drags the boy
Closer into its
Tremoring world.
And a bomb
Silent
Slips out of the sky.
Page 20, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
--Jaylynn Bailey
Oklahoma City
BELFAST
Two iron gas tanks pose like buddhas
at the edge of our yard.
The dog ·reclines lazily beside them,
making the line of her domain
clear. Like us she's particular
who crosses her boundaries.
Inside we are cooking what we want,
after weeks of restaurant dinners
limited by menus.
In my mind, we're alone here,
and this is no resort.
Ireland, not Maine.
That place my grandmother used to tell
about where the water was forever
in the viewpoint.
Sensing the importance
of where we are, talk is serious,
each word a little death of its own.
We dissect our mothers
into questions and answer them slowly
like cannibals anxious to know
just how much of them we might become
in later years.
Over the miles, their love decides
a place in us, a legacy they can't die without
leaving. Together
we are many people. Some
we've never met and never will.
But no matter who you are
at this moment, I know you.
This one kissing me deep in the poem
I love best.
--Susan Powell
Rogers, Arkansas
PIBCBWORK. Swuier 1987, Pase Zl
DOWNWARD MOBILITY
Out in Asia somewhere
The Ambassador and his lady
share a government funded
stately home and stately life.
But upstairs, in a stately room,
our public faces peel away
and lie, two empty smiles
like cracks in the veneer.
Our stately room, soft-bottomed
with thick pile in Wedgwood blue,
is hung with damask drapes and furnished in solid
something made by craftsmen
in Hong Kong.
A crew of servants spends the day
in stately care. They search
on hands and knees
for hairs of dog or specks
of tummybutton fluff
and polish my 22
lipstick cases daily.
Away from public selves we hide
in our shining stately room
where a modern miracle, machined
in Singapore, exhales cool air
at tasteful pitch. Beneath the vent
one King Charles spaniel sleeps
on a Tudor blue cushion of silk.
In that private stately room
at night, I lie awake .
on an inner sprung posturepedic
non-allergenic king size
bed with satin sheets and velvet
headboard fringed in Saxony blue
beside a man I do not know.
Page 22, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
There, I listen to gurgles
and snores and turn away
from the smell of sour whiskey
and sweat. The man awakes,
sits up unsteady on the mattress edge.
I pretend to be asleep and watch
with slitted eyes the play of light
on wire curl golden hairs
sprouting from the cleavage
of his buttocks.
His hand shakes almost too much
lo hold the glass. He sips
and swallows. burps and farts.
turns out the light
lo rec:tch for me
and pump away and gasp and groan
until he forgets, I think,
whc:tt he is doing there.
He grunts, rolls off,
c:tnd s11ores .
I sleep these days somewhere
in Oklahoma on a campbed in the corner
of my friend's room, among stacks
of cardboard boxes, and my dog
looks hot and s~d
on the ragged towel on the floor.
But I can smell red dirt
in the splatters of the rain
and hear the creek bed waken
through the trees, and no one
reaches for me
in the night.
.. J. Arre
Edmond
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pace 23
EVENING RITUALS OF A MEXICAN WOMAN
Flour
will drift
for days
over the unwashed dishes.
I greedily swallow the heavy oval
tortilla that my grandmother
would say I've flipped as
gracefully as one flips a mattress.
Her kitchen is undefiled.
Balancing a grandchild on one hip
She turns tortillas with a
swift swoop of her hand.
Her fingertips touch the hot iron
as they always have
and she doesn't feel it.
I wonder if she cried the first time
her mother made her turn
the tortilla.
I wonder how many times it took
before she ran out
of names for the pain
like she ran out
of names for her babies.
Her husband named the boys.
Her first daughter she named Maria,
Second daughter, Mary.
The third daughter she named for
her own Mama', and after that,
the first children named the younger children,
because if a woman's name couldn't
mean "Mother" then it didn't
mean much of anything.
Pace 24, Summer 1987, PIBCEWORK
After everyone was fed, my grandmother
climbed up on the high brass bed.
Her husband got out the Bible
and read •to her the words
she couldn't read.
She sat beside hini listening
intently, her hands folded on her lap,
her brown chunky legs dangling.
I've wandered away
I call myself "Belinda"
According to one source
My name means
Wisdom
In another translation
it means sea-serpent.
The flour on my jeans will fade.
I turn out the kitchen light.
I put the baby to bed as if
my life depends on it
I begin to write.
--Belinda Bruner
Stillwater
PIBCBWORK, Sumer 1987, Pase 25
MEDICINE SONG
"Mummy"
I bind my feet first
fold my toes under heel and wind tightly
to sway slowly
stepping on myself
to keep in step with you
my mind dogs your feet
for the opportunity to leap between the back of your heel and shoe.
I want to be with you.
Up my legs--too long, too wide-I wind bandages because there is too much flesh for you to handle .
I wind tightly and sit upright
· and try to hide beneath my breasts and hair.
I repair my genitalia
with white criss-cross, criss-r::ross
of gauze between my legs
and bind the bloom and boom and rhythm in my hips and ass .
I fold my belly in upon itsP.lf
I cinch and strap around my diaphram
so as not to breathe or speak deeply.
I raise and round my breasts
into correct formation
and sling straps over my shoulders
then string them through my crotch to croud1 me clown
so I won't tower Ov Pr you
or seem able to carry heavy loads
such as my head.
Bandages like boa constrictors or blood pressure cuffs
I coil down my arms and squeeze.
I can't lift my hands to contend with ·the arer1 above my neck.
It would throw me off balance.
It would jeopardize my poise.
Like a bouquet clenched in a fist, my head blossoms.
It is fantastic.
Page 26, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
"Medusa"
From my seat on the shore you are first a speck.
Why should I look up from the waves swaying seaweed?
You will get so close; I will raise my head;
you will freeze, drop, and be gone.
A shadow glides on the water
and the waves chop it.
I lean back and look up
and down, stunned, my eyes numb and ringing.
Was the eye of Cyclops disembodied in the sky
on fire, skimming air, fringed with wings?
It wheels--a bright, white angel horse ridden by a hero
who holds his shield and face away.
He swoops in dives fast past and feathers brush my breast.
How soft.
Again the shield catches sun;
I'm blinded
and smell the horse and wonder:
has this hero come for me?
His arm shoots out of the dazzle
I reach to climb behind between the wings.
I feel air hiss;
we miss;
he wheels;
I reach
and he extends his arm
which flashes
and lengthens to a point,
hissing;
smooth as a shadow slipping between my eyes and dropping body.
The world bounces.
PIBCEWORK, Summer 198,, ~-'age 27
"Mirror"
Detached, my head rolls back.
I see two marble, bulging bun•~ eyes
wreathed by writhing adders
only when I look into
the polished monocle you thrust at me
because you know, a priori,
if our visions meet,
YOU will be petrified.
"Me"
Severed, I wrench myself from reflection
and see no stars or landmarks.
North, south, east and west have left me.
The maps in the mirror read backwards from where I am
and when I use them to move by
my body does monkey junk.
So I stand still
and feel the wind whistle clouds stroked on blue
in nude movement raising tree limbs
shimmying color after color
inlaid with shadow shaping depth perception of a Dancer
gracing-even in my belly-my body dissolves into her-everywhere
her voice calling me
to feel for my head, with the scare washing off and running down
and now I've found it rising in my hands above
I crown it on me-tissue kissing tissue.
Rising eyelids catch the gilded forms · of morning rise my hair
everywhere floats glinting in the Dancing Spirit's breath.
--Beazley Kanost
Norman
Pase 28, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
LINKS
You, from your hack hills
and me
a pavement kid
With a generation in between
All the songs
stories
memories
The living that went into you
Your own
and the generations stretching behind you
were passed on to me
bit by hit
in a broken mosaic
of words
The storyteller
songster
The rememberer
(keeper of a past pride)
This you handed on to me
my inheritance
--J. Leigh Perry
Moore
PIECEWORK, Sammer 1987, Paae 29
VIA AFFIRMATIVA
and I he only crop
that never failed
was thP. kids born
every year, rough
old times, when
the thrash"r didn't come
we rode our horses
round and round
on the wheat, broadcast
by hand in Spring
lucky to have a cow
you couldn 'l buy no milk
nor gu tu school till
all the work was done
on the farm, didn't
make one grade a year
like kids today and
when we reached eighth
we was through our education
those was rough old times
but them that stuf k it
had a good life
--Kennette H. Wilkes
Edmond
Pare 30, Summer l 987, PIECEWORK
TO MARY HELEN
They say that when a tree
falls in the forest
where no ears listen
no sound occurs
Perhaps this is true
after all
A giant
fell in the classroom
last year
Math teacher
diligent laborer for years
filler of young minds and grade grids
hardwood standard of
rational perfection
axed slowly by the irrational
tilted
and crashed
in a silent arc
of death
--Ruth Dishman
Lawton
PIECEWORK, Saaaer 1987, Pase 31
UCO Women's Reaean:b & BOLTQ+Cents
100 N. University Dr
Edmond, OK 73034
HER WORLD
The land was once rich, ready for harvest
but lies barren now, aged and overworked.
She sleeps within the fruitless soil, feeling the
pain of her life. Her rural home rests quiet, silent,
and childless. She parts the thin veil of two
worlds and bridges the gap across time. Older now,
yet the same age, she faces the mountain landscape
which would have shaped her life. She knew the reality of pain, like crops planted in
early spring; only to wither and die when summer
droughts plagued the once fertile fields.
No rain, No tears.
No trees to shelter from the burning sun. The seeds
of life hidden from view, died each time they gave
birth to new harvest crops.
She recalls her own death, looking towards
the grey-hewned stone on the distant hill.
Her dreams are colorless; mostly greys, and her
secrets are only known by the shadows on her old
tattered dress.
Her face is always hidden from view, concealing
moments that might have been,
if she had lived.
Flowers that might have grown. Trees that
might have budded, all died when she died.
Facing backwards toward her own destiny, she parts a
withered blade of grass.
--Catherine J. Donnell
Rogers, Arkansas
P~e 32, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
ON HER GARDEN
Winter is gone
I hope
Because today
I sallied forth
With rake and hoe
In mighty rototiller's
Wake
To groom my plot
And row by row
My seeds to plant
By hours of
Deep knee bends.
If every seed
Would heed my care
And every bug
Would kindly sate
Its ravenous
Appetite upon
My weeds
Why then, I'd have
And hold
My dreams.
--Eve Lear
Oklahoma City
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pace 33
COMING FULL CIRCLE
Soon,
when the crisp autumn leaves
gently kneel to touch the
hard, dark earth-it will sustain.
Locked in the icy edges of
A winter queen•-and shut her marble grey eyes
to true emotions.
Let her obtain nothing but the
blank stares of
abandoned stars in
a vast sky of emptiness.
Lock-out.
Overthrow the
dry gulches of December and
the starved, barren earth--and
it will come again soon.
An easy breath will come once again-The monogamous love between
Earth and sky softly reassured in
the gentle fingertips of the wind.
Capture the warm essence of
sunshine, and
embrace its innocence and child-like mystique
in your frail, winter-white arms.
Soon,
the
opalescence of spring
will prove
the long wait
worthwhile.
And the circle will be complete.
--Stephanie Booth
Oklahoma City
Pare 34, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
Locking eyes, we sensed a bonding,
Left over from lifetimes past.
Rememberances were not needed
for friendship to flourish.
As the times we spent, surrounded
with personal endeavors, grew ...
We were absorbed in succeeding,
soaring above the feelings we
tried to ignore.
Once set free of ties we merely
endure, we came togetl16l'-using our logic.
But, responding with the only
consequence our hearts could
hope for.
--Patricia Wade
Owasso
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pase 35
THE BITCH
You asked me to tell you what drives me up the wall,
And I wanted to tell you, to tell it all.
But I didn't want to whine like some victim of circumstance;
I wanted to make the subject sort of DANCE;
I.
(Fast and furious)
I wanted to speak with great authority
About the evils of bureaucray,
To point out the contradiction, the indignity
Of putting in your 9 to 5 in pure futility,
To slash with crystal clarity
The petty politics of mere expediency!
II.
(Slow, with grandeur)
I wanted to defend impoverished spirits,
I wanted so much to stand tall, to paint
a compelling vision of another Way; to
enlist your commitment to the Cause.
I wanted to be a strategist, or, if not,
a courageous heroine in a catacomb or the
underground railway.
Pqe 36, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
But when you asked me to tell you what drives me up the wall,
My revolutionary fervor · went right out the window;
I slouched onto the nearest couch,
Lifted a glass of gin to my lips,
And like some toothless old wino,
Rendered up today's version of...
THE OLD FAMILIAR TALE.
And you listened, like a friend,
To me "bitching about my job again,"
And knowing me well, you saw behind this dope;
You heard the pain, the passion, and the hope.
So we had another gin or two, and talked all night;
Then laughed, when morning surprised us with the light.
Thanks, I needed that.
--Pat Weygandt
Oklahoma City
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pase 37
THE DEVIL QUOTES SCRIPTURE
"I thought he was a preacher."
"Yeah, Mom says a devil found him."
"But those precious little girls!"
"Yeah.
They would say to their mom, 'I hope
Daddy dies on the way home.'"
"And she didn't suspect?"
"No.
It's good she found out when she did,
before either of them got pregnant."
"If they were my girls, he'd die."
"Yeah.
He called and asked if he could come home."
"Doesn't he know what he's done?"
"Sure he does.
Know what he said? 'But
Lot lay with his daughters.'"
--Sharon E. Martin
Cushing
Page 38, Summer 1987, PIBCEWORK
A PSYCHOTHERAPIST FRIEND
It's wonderful to have a psychotherapist friend
Who carefully analyzes your every word,
expression, bodily movement.
Why are you tapping your foot?
How do you feel about that?
Why do you love your cat more than
your friends?
Are you aware that you just sighed?
What does it mean?
It's wonderful to have a psychotherapist friend
Who advises you to go into group therapy to
discover your real self.
(Is your "real" self different from the
one you've been living with for 33 years?)
Why aren't you more assertive?
What does that expression mean?
Why don't you date?
Don't tell me what you think. Tell
me what you feel.
Be true to yourself!
It's wonderful to have a psychotherapist friend.
--Susan A. VanSchuyver
Oklahoma City
PIBC8WORK, Summer 1987, Pase 39
READ MY LIPS
"When you speak, it is my thinking out loud."
Ann L. Zoller
If I could
I would drink only
Asti,
eat only croissants
and dessert
on Perugina,
I would wear only
Fiorucci,
have my car last
forever ,
never yell
at my daughter,
take the moon
for my heart
and kiss only
your mouth .
--Mary Crescenzo Simons
Tulsa
Pase 40, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
YOU STAND THERE WAITING FOR THE PHONE
You stand there waiting for the phone
to ring three times and stop.
It's a signal you have with your mother.
Or else you call and ask for someone else
and she calls back knowing it's you
to this phone booth on a deserted roadside
half way up the coast of Maine.
Last week she didn't return your call,
though you waited twenty minutes
in the rain, either of which would have
given you reason to be angry.
But you came back, cussing yourself
instead. As if some harm had been done
without your say so, you created stories
for why she wouldn't want to talk.
Something that happened months ago,
making it your fault.
All week you punished yourself,
not knowing what for
but that you had it coming.
This is the signal, the love
that hurts and will not stop.
--Susan Powell
Rogers, Arkansas
PIBCBWORK, s-er 1917, P•e 41
EARTH-THROB
"My heart. have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My lovP , my love, my love, why have you left me alone?"
James Joyce
The heartbeat of rare
Intens,i earth-A mirage of sun baked clay
Reflects
To l>eat the wind from
Whist ling into death fields.
The shimmered eyes of dead babies
Hurled past my vision
Of emptiness
Follow the sunken beads
Of milk-white honey
Fastened to a string of dead
Sea horses, climbing
The ocean walls, for they are
Drowning.
A sand sprinkled wise man
Gave birth to a white cold ghost
He lost his way in a game and
Never turned
To see me sucking breath
To birth a dying lamb.
I am pierced to a core of rotten
Sea corral.
An ageless, timeless void.
God help the children
Who savor the youth
A spiral calling .
Page 42, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
The falling bodies of stained wine cups
Are placid in morning light.
The open pits of flesh wounds and
Vein colored maggots
Drip to syrup.
Bloody pin prick-Oozing gash of stained
Breath.
Let the mindless one wander
To find the knowing man
And send him to Wisdom
Where the skies are melting sugar cane
And words are poppy dust in
The damp dying fire of daybreak.
--Jaylynn Bailey
Oklahoma City
PIECEWORK, Summer 1987, Pqe 43
WALLS AND BRIDGES
standing
in quiet solitude
on a desolate beach,
i can tell by
the deep impressions
in the sand
(which are not my own)
that i am really not alone;
yet i continue to construct
these granular walls,
forming towering, silver sand
castles
and sensing the
presence of a
living soul on the
other side,
only to await the moment
when i'd choose to
build a billion bridges
above the rolling waters.
--Frances Fong
Oklahoma City
Page 44, Summer 1987, PIECEWORK
CROSSROADS
I've come to a crossroads.
Whichever turn I make the result will
be the same.
Trusting my feelings, never to return
to the stagnant path of isolation.
Moving onward, only stopping enough
to balance the rocky terrain
of logic versus passion.
Yielding to the moment of indecision,
yet, taking the turn which allows
feelings without guilt.
Crossing over to love, trust and feelings.
Living.
--Patricia Wade
Owasso
PIECEWORK, SUIDIDer 1987, Page 45
HOME
Our lives and homes now concretized,
we wander back where windows looked
on snow or summer rain,
where this spring's colt sniffs
grass and rocks of cellar hole
which supported timber and
whose windows looked on meadow blowing
smooth around its horses' legs. He lopes
where men and women, strong and wrestling
with that ground, slept and cooked,
bled children, held them close and looked through
windows, curtained then with cobwebs, now with dust.
Particles adhere and form their own peculiar valence;
fields of morphology and those of grass
allow science to explain that when the sun
burns out what will be gon~ and what remain,
while we, in looking through our windows
create the universe.
--Ellen Dudley
Marlboro, Vermont
Pace 46, SumJDer 1987, PIECEWORK
DUST BOWL DAZB
Tornadic winds whipped churning clouds to flight
while shiftiq soil to sift it miles away;
dust stifled breath and suffocated dreams.
The eeriness of day turned into night
as windows rattled at prodigious qht
of howling force that flung to disarray
neat ' cultivated farms of yesterday.
AB farmers watch destructive duststorms leave
clean crackled squares on farms today, they arieve,
search hopelessly in cloud-free sky for rain.
Dust devils writhe in dervish twist qain.
"They sure cleaned house in hell today: men say,
as ashes, tamed to dust, drift overhead.
-Marianne McFarland McNeil
Aaarillo, Teus
PIBCBWORK. S...er 1987, P... 47
THE RITZ
When I was humbly reading one day,
Something just turned my head away.
I heard an "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
So I went to see.
When I hit the kitchen floor,
I hadn't worries any more.
When I asked what was wrong,
I didn't have to wait too long.
I could see right through my mom,
There was no reason to be calm.
In the cabinet was a field mouse,
In my mind, "This house?"
It took a few hours but we caught it,
So anxious, I almost threw a fit.
Luckily we still have it now,
It eats more like a cow.
It eats lots of pecans to bits
And even has some special mouse chocolates.
You can tell he feels he really fits,
That's because he thinks he stays at THE RITZ.
--Lauren M. Barnes
Edmond ·
Pase 48, SWDD1er 1987, PIECEWORK
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SUMMER 1987
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4
Red Dirt Press, Inc., P.O. Box 60693, Oklahoma City, OK 73146
Part of Piecework : v.1:no.4(1987)