Caramel
Yesterday I went to a poetry salon at a lovely art and book-filled home in Georgetown to benefit the Folger’s poetry programs where Carolyn Forche (who is reading at the Folger tonight) read poems to a small audience and everyone leaned in in in to hear her read from the sheafs of paper she’d brought and she didn’t read very loud at all, but we were quiet, and only once or twice did someone sitting a bit further away ask her to speak up and there was a Q&A afterwards, and dessert, including a birthday cake and singing because it was Carolyn’s birthday. Then just as I put a caramel in my mouth I heard someone say Carolyn was leaving and I hadn’t thanked her yet so I tried to wash the caramel away with a swallow of wine (which did not work) so I just thanked her and apologized for the caramel sticking in my mouth and blackening my teeth, but the caramel was very very good, and salted, and so I have to say I don’t regret it at all, though I’m mildly embarrassed by the fact that I never grew up (I used to say “haven’t grown up yet” but I’ve pretty much given up on it altogether, and it feels good). I was wearing heels and lipstick and two matching earrings and for god’s sake what else do you want from me?
She read these poems about people surviving horrible things against all these awful odds and despite gruesome circumstances and if you know me, you know I don’t care for surviving gruesome circumstances, and I just kept thinking about that. All along the dark ride home. Why survive? But today O and I played catch for an hour in the green space next to the pond while the soup cooked in the slow cooker, and the geese left us alone, and here we sit. It isn’t gruesome at all, the furthest thing from gruesome. What if it were to turn gruesome? Would I just give up on it? Perhaps the memory of less gruesome times is what makes people willing to fight for survival.
Anyway, i went to find a poem to post here as our prompt, and the lot posted on the Poetry Foundation’s website are so good I had a really hard time deciding, so I chose two. This first poem is a documentary poem, written during her time in El Salvador. You can hear her read it here. It’s a tough read, but these are tough times. The second poem, I just love. The way it starts and ends. And maybe it’s a documentary poem too. The black wine. Read them both (gruesome and not gruesome) and write.
Your prompt is:
“What you have heard is true…”
The Colonel
WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
May 1978
Reunion
Just as he changes himself, in the end eternity changes him.
—MallarméOn the phonograph, the voiceof a woman already dead for threedecades, singing of a manwho could make her do anything.On the table, two fragileglasses of black wine,a bottle wrapped in its towel.It is that room, the onewe took in every city, it isas I remember: the bed, a blockof moonlight and pillows.My fingernails, pecks of lighton your thighs.The stink of the fire escape.The wet butts of cigarettesyou crushed one after another.How I watched the morning comeas you slept, more my sonthan a man ten years older.How my breasts feel, yearslater, the tongues swishingin my dress, some yours, someleft by other men.Since then, I have alwayswakened first, I have learnedto leave a bed without beingseen and have stoodat the washbasins, wiping oiland salt from my skin,staring at the cupped waterin my two hands.I have kept everythingyou whispered to me then.I can remember it now as I see youagain, how much tenderness we couldwedge between a stairwelland a police lock, or as it was,as it still is, in the voiceof a woman singing of a manwho could make her do anything.
