TRADITIONAL
She has nothing, neither
power nor wealth, but what
the father of her children
gives her. All is well. She
remains beautiful on a pittance.
They have acquiesced to the stale-
mate that is sex and make do
now with each other’s public
desirability, private near-
brushes in the bed each night.
And when war comes and calls for
her sons, though she may sit on
damask or plush and drink red
or white, as she chooses,
and lament to friends, provided
they are women, all, she can but
suffer the loss of what she has
furnished. She cannot toss
her sabots into the gears that
sustain her. She cannot tear the
clothes off her own beautiful
body and barter.
: Linda McCarriston, Little River
A nice break in the weather today. Wish I'd been outside a bit more.* * *We're shipping Randy's quilt tomorrow to the PA quilt show. It runs Sept 6-9 in Harrisburg.* * *I should be in bed but LOTR: The Return of the King is on, and it's hard to walk away from it once heads get rolling.* * *From John Engman's Temporary Help, two more poems of dark days that foreshadow our own:Richard Nixon
Are you the President of pink flamingos and sad plastic flowers?
I remember you as a young man waving through a blizzard of television snow.
I remember you as an old man weeping real tears that fooled nobody.
I will do my best to remember you as a wise, china owl in a city garden.
Would you rather I remember you as a wise, china owl in a city garden
or as someone’s father selling pencils in the rain under a streetlamp?
Do you believe America will fall to pink flamingos and sad plastic flowers?
I believe I could have been elected President but nobody voted for me!
The young woman sitting beside me on the bus could have been an angel
of Michelangelo but half her face had been destroyed by a grenade.
Red Wine
Something in his voice tonight
is like joy as he describes
red noise and ribbons of white fire,
the beauty of the bombing of Iraq.
We are watching a late broadcast,
a new war on CBS, and my friend,
a woman with whom I have not slept,
admires the way the anchorman uses
his voice to confuse sex and death.
Showbiz, I tell her, is great stuff.
But she says no, the human touch.
He warms our insides like red wine,
as if he rushed to the studio to say
folks are dying, the sky is falling,
just for us. We believe he is kind.
We believe he has never been kissed.
