National Poetry Month and daily poetry prompts

In the days when I could jabber on the phone for hours, one of my favorite things to do was ask my friend Deesh to read me a poem. He’d have me pick a date from a year or two or three years ago, and then he‘d look up his old notebooks and read me the poem he had written on that date. Since I was listening from a distance, I didn’t always “understand” it, but the mood it created was definite, roughly tangible.

When I started life on a different continent, I started doing it myself. And most of the time these are pieces that cannot stand alone--but re-reading them, they hint, rather than remind me, of laughter or disappointment or scrutiny that happened long ago. They’re typically unvarnished (unless I went back to tinker) but I like the way they process experience into a dappled utterance.

This month, in honor of National Poetry Month, Robert Lee Brewer will post prompts to encourage his wordsmith-audience to write every day. I may post there, but mostly may not--I’m not a particularly group activity type--but I’ll save some back here.

WORD-PICKING

Perhaps perfect words
fall like leaves, relief
not thoughts, stones
prodded, turned over

My son motions
at the fruit bowl
the bananas, he says
have gone Dalmatian

At the first, gleeful
lift of storm wind*
Baby pauses, parses
AaaAAAAAAngaa

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*“Breeze” was too tame, but I paused before I used “wind” because of its ambiguity--anyone who’s been around Baby A knows that she is a gassy little monkey : ).

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P-a-r-a-d-o-x (100 points on bingo)

If Big A and I seem all honeymoony and get called on it, I have to smile because, actually, we had a big fight while we were *on* our honeymoon. There we were playing Scrabble at the airport (and I was, typically, getting beaten) and then I found the following letters on my rack: p-a-y-m-e-e-t. There was an open “s” on the board and I could make bingo with “payment” if only I had an “n” instead of an “e.” Not that I was at all concerned. It was our honeymoon and Big A loves me. So, so, SO much. He’d let me sneak into the bag, no problem, right? Wrong.


Me said: But I’d let you if it were that important to you!

He said: (all preachy) “I love you, but I’m not going to let you cheat.” (Please note the charming way he insists on using the word “cheat” that I’m trying to gloss over.) Aww! This was his sweet, caring way of saying, Baby, I love winning this unrecorded game more than I love you.

So when we found Scrabulous on Facebook, I thought it was perfect—for him because I couldn’t try to wheedle him into letting me replenish my rack, for me because I could consult the OSPD any damn time I wanted. Except that in the intervening years, something miraculous happened. (Either that or residency has really worn him out.) Big A is the only Scrabulous partner I’ve beaten. Thrice. He didn’t even challenge a couple of my shoddily constructed double plays when we switched to “Challenge mode.”

Back then, popular counsel was that if he didn’t let me scam at Scrabble on our honeymoon, it ain’t ever happening. Man, were they wrong :). Hope floats; love grows.

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* Yes, okay, alright; keep moving. There really is no paradox here; just my attempt to warp a la Morissette.

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Hard Times

These last couple of months, things have been pretty sucky money-wise. I wait for pay-day the way I used to wait for pocket money. It seems like it’s that way for everyone and shoddier for a lot more.

One of my dear friends showed up a few weeks ago to say hello to the baby with his grandson and a small gift. Both his grown daughter and son live with him, so I wound up asking about everyone under his roof--plus a couple of foster kids. Remember I said both his grown children live with him? It’s so that they can make the payments on the house. This wave of foreclosures you’ve been hearing about in the news? Happening to them.

When foreclosure looms (if ever there was a threat that deserves the use of looms, it is this), over someone you know, you can’t easily console them. Not with platitudes, not with small loan offers, not with brainstormed ideas. It still looms. I could tell that both of us wished that the topic hadn’t come up, because we were tip-toeing around that elephant for the rest of the visit.

And then another moment of love happened. He works a 9-5 blue-collar job, but he’s also a lay preacher and had been urging me to christen Baby A “properly in a church.” Now I don’t know what Baby A is--perhaps Unitarian Universalist (which is evidently another way of saying I don’t know what we are)—but not “properly" anything at all. Since it’s important mostly to him, I say we’ll do it at his store-front church and we spend the next half-hour comfortably talking about dates, who to invite etc. And I think we’re past it and to indulge him further, I propose that he be the baby’s godparent, as well and he accepts delightedly.

But a few minutes later, he returns to that moment. I think you should choose someone else, he says. I’m surprised. Why? I keep asking him, Why?

I’m stupid, that’s why. Choose someone with money, he says. In case something happens to you, I can look after the baby, but someone with money can send her to college too.

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WTF??

Happy women have up to a third less sex than unhappy ones.

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The continuing vilification of Taslima Nasreen

I’ve heard from at least a couple of prominent Indian litterateurs (a poet and a novelist) that Taslima Nasreen tends to avoid the South Asian tables at conferences to sit with the firangs. I remember that the poet seemed to see it as a personal affront and an indication of Nasreen’s lack of respect and affection for her South Asian brethren. The novelist, whom I knew much better, said it with a lack of judgment and perhaps just the smallest glimmer of a smile—no wonder I love him still.

So now that Nasreen has decided to live in France or Germany for lack of cardiological care in India—it’s caused a big upset among those who read (and watch) South Asian literature: What? Like there aren’t any good cardiologists in India? Does she know that people come to India for heart treatments from all over the world?

Before everyone jumps on her case, however, I think it makes sense to read her statement, which sounds like a reasonable response to Indian bureaucracy and its botched rescue attempt.

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Because there should be Truth in esteem-building

That evening when they were working on cheering me up.

Big A: You are a sweet, kind person. You are considerate. You are an excellent driver.

Li’l A: [Probably taken aback by the uncharacteristic overstatement—esp. of my driving skills]

Even though you’re not a very good navigator…

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Messing with Mud

I’m picking up Big A from the train station (like a good little suburban frau--but I’ll rant about that in another post). There’s a line of cars idling at the curb (as usual) and I pull up to the curb (as usual too), except this time there’s insistent, loud honking. There’s a black Infiniti behind me and after another bout of enraged honking, it pulls up alongside me and the irate guy inside tells me that he’s been waiting “ten FUCKING minutes” for the parking space way ahead of me (and, really, too far away from him).

I wasn’t planning to park, but I can see why he is indignant so I’m ready to ignore the cussing; the easy apology is on my lips-although I haven’t been able to say anything yet, except may be look confused and then apologetic. Which, clearly, is the proper cue for him to yell--YOU! GET OUT of here NOW. And for his elderly father sitting next to him to shake his fist at me. The apology withers on my lips. And then the parking space that they so clearly want and I have no interest in clears.

I pull into it.

I know it was a cheap move. But here’s the thing--I’m brown, female, weigh 115 lbs, have two kids in the back seat, and no matter how much Deborah Tannen I read, I can’t seem to kick the smiley face and the head bobbing. It’s safe to say I’m non threatening. And here’s another thing--I was already beginning to pull out of their spot when they began yelling at me.

Of course they pull up alongside again, madder than ever. But I think I know what to say. I tell them that they were unnecessarily rude and that if they had asked me nicely instead of yelling, I would have been happy to give them the parking space. (I’m going HA! at myself now--what was I thinking?!? :) But clearly they didn’t have the same kindergarten teacher I had. The father in the other car says, You are a dirty woman! TRAMP, you get out of here! A woman walking on the sidewalk overhears him and says, "Hey, what’s all this “dirty woman,” “tramp?” *You* get out of here before I call the cops." I register the funny-sounding old-timey-ness of the insults, but my hands are shaking nevertheless from the implied hostility and I can only say, “No. If you talk to me that way I won’t move.”

The driver-guy smiles at me rather benignly and says, “You can suck my cock.” For one brief, blinding moment I wish that I hadn’t pulled into his space. I feel filthy. And ashamed. I have kids back there--my daughter is pre-verbal, and my son has never heard that precise string, but knows what each of those words mean. The very ineffective words, “You’re such an idiot” are bubbling out of me, but the other people have already gone. My kids and I sit in perfect silence for the twenty seconds it takes Big A to get to the car. I haven’t spotted him as I usually do, so he decides to walk over to my window and pulls a scary face as I turn towards him. That’s when I start crying.

My husband begins to apologize. (Long after I’m over this, I think this is the part that will continue to shame me--that he thinks I’m such a ninny that something like that can set me off.) Then there’s the blessed relief of hearing his livid anger and then I’m trying to give my anger words.

I see the Infiniti driver in my head, but I can’t repeat his words back--obviously I want the idiot nowhere near me or my vagina. So I think to reuse insults. Pimply fat slob, I think. Loser with a tiny dick. But it’s unsatisfactory. I have nothing against fat or bad skin or laziness or tiny penises or a lack of success. I’m not so much angry as disquieted because I think what happened to me was unfair.*

My father would say (my mother is fiery and might have egged me on) that it’s best not to engage with psychotic idiots because whether you mess with mud or mud messes with you, *you* are the one who ends up messy. But I’m glad I stood up for myself. Glad my son saw. My children, more than most, will have to find a way to deal with prejudice--something usually lacking in my small world of nice people.

I have a hunch that the people in the other car have already forgotten about this--that this would be an ordinary occurrence to them--just another incident that reinforced their prejudices against my gender and may be my ethnicity too. But I know I will keep returning to this embarrassing nidus in my head: How should I have reacted? Retorted? Was I standing up for myself in a Gandhian way or was I just being super fucking annoying? Did I even thank the woman who tried to defend me?

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* The people in the Infiniti probably think that it was unfair to them too. But just before they pull away, the father gets out and goes into the train station. No luggage, no nothing. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t that important for them to grab the parking space either.

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