Ash Wednesday

Humans of God,
Take your place in line.

Ashes in pie tin
mix with ashes on skin.
When you rub my forehead
are you applying
or uncovering?

Priest to priest,
From dust we have come--
vertical line
--to dust we shall return.
horizontal
passed from ashes
to ashes.

Pastor Jeff said,
“The reason for the ash
is to remind us that we all come
from the same place:
we are all dirt.”

So.
An endless chain of fetid priests,
every white-washed one of us.
Priests.

The first emerging from dust,
the last disintegrating.

Dirt caked nails,
ratted hair,
stinking breath,
burnt wick, broken incense.
Image of God,
Give me your sacrament.

Reveal my ash.

Until we return to the ground,
let's take our place in line

to be anointed by the whore priests
in the footsteps of our Lord.

Waiting for Wedding

This weekend I received a free book in the mail, Love Worth the Wait: Trusting God for Real Romance and Real Relationship, from a certain conservative Christian organization as a thank you gift for my recent donation. Now, I don’t remember ever having any contact with this organization, and as far as I know I never donated to them. I have no idea how they got my address—although I do have a sneaky suspicion that my Grandma, who is always sending me literature on getting married, donated in my name.  

I really only read about three pages of it, but they were very thought-provoking. After flipping through a little, I turned to a chapter called “Living with Unmet Desires,” which sounded considerably more interesting to me than “Is this ‘The One’?”  The first suggestion is to “Practice active waiting.” While you’re waiting for your man, ahem, Prince Charming, to sweep in, you may as well do something. The author suggests, among other things, that you “Take a class or finish your degree,” “Explore and develop an enjoyable hobby, whether it’s seasonal like softball or something ongoing like photography,” “Volunteer somewhere,” “Read at least two or three missionary biographies,” (ah yes, that’ll definitely make the time pass faster—I’m sure to have a husband by the time I finish J. Hudson Taylor: Pioneer Missionary and David Livingstone: The Pathfinder of Africa), and my personal favorite “If you are in debt, begin to climb out of it.” Oh I certainly hope there is not a man out there waiting to marry me before he starts paying off his debt, because I can tell you he’s going to be waiting a long time.

It beats me what this author assumes single women are doing with their lives while they wait to be wed. However, I am not exactly the intended audience of this book: while I do have unmet desires, mine fall more along the lines of wanting a travel partner to go with to India than wanting someone to “provide for me,” whatever that means. Perhaps there are women out there who are not exploring hobbies, getting degrees, earning money, or reading missionary biographies (okay, there might be several who aren’t doing that), people to whom it never occurred to invite a friend out for a Saturday morning brunch. Maybe there are women who are actually doing nothing besides sitting at home waiting for someone to propose.  And that is very sad. What is this underlying message that a woman’s life begins once she’s married? You’ll never hear that a man’s life begins once he’s married: more likely you’ll hear that it ends! I say, why wait? There’s plenty of happiness to be had without combining your laundry with someone else’s, or listening to someone’s breathing all night long.

At any rate, I thought the list of “waiting” activities in this book was unhelpful, and rather unpractical. (Can’t we also play softball and read missionary biographies after we’re married? I should hope so.) So I set out to think of a few practical activities that one could do while waiting to get married and start a family, things that will make life easier once this family is in place. I enlisted the help of my cousin, and together we created the following list. Some of these suggestions are more specifically for waiting to become a mother and some are practical for marriage.

• Stock-pile frozen meals. I have seen mothers, and believe me they are busy people. Isn’t it a paradox that being single means you have the time to cook enormous meals? Why not work ahead for those days of running the kids to daycare?
• Get yourself onto a polyphasic sleeping schedule. If you’re only taking six twenty-minute naps, you will have no trouble with mid-night feedings, or nightmares.
• Start sewing baby diapers (or any sort of baby clothes) 
• Do arm curls. Those children can be heavy--particularly when their weight is combined with that of a car seat!
• Hang out in sewers, hog farms, and dirty bathrooms to increase your tolerance for nasty smells (which is good preparation for having kids)
• Spend a lot of time with highly opinionated people with whom you do not agree, so you can practice communication and conflict resolution. Lock yourself in close quarters with these people. In fact, maybe just turn yourself in to the local jail. If you can maintain working relationships with those people, conflict resolution with a future spouse will certainly be a breeze!
• Live with opposites. For instance, if you like to sleep with the windows closed in the winter, sleep with them open. If you like eating meat well-done, practice eating it raw. If you like to be able to see your bedroom floor, take out all of your drawers and strew their contents around the room. By the time you get married, you'll be very well adjusted to living styles that are different from your own.

Neither my cousin nor I are married, which gives us a slight disadvantage. Are you a married person? Do you have children? What do you wish you would have done  while you had more time and personal space? Are you single and "actively waiting," or "actively living as a single person"? Do you have more ideas? 

What can "actively waiting" singles do to practically prepare themselves for marriage, besides reading books like the one mentioned above?

Driving Home, Spring 2008

The Sichuan earthquake in south central China killed at least 80,000 people and left more than 5 million homeless.

 

The road

is outlined

five, six, ten deep

with people

 

who gather to its warmth

hang from its length.

 

Your eyes in my headlights

are slivers in midnight's deep gray

grasping for your child,

 

powerless to wrench him

from road's belly.

 

The road,

your last belonging.

 

With this piece, I would really like to hear what you think works and what does not work. Could a few of you let me know what you think is happening in the poem and what it poem is saying? That would be really helpful.

 

Upon Returning

Many people I know (myself included) are standing at shifts in life. The years right after college seem to be filled with changes, leaving behind people, places and ways of being that we had grown used to. Here is a piece that I wrote specifically about my return to the US after studying in Lithuania, but it applies to any stage of life we are leaving behind.

You will hold tight to the string

and measure the distance

between you and the diamond

of those days, the kite

that whips and twirls

against your memory.

 

Three weeks, you will count,

since you and Ana

biked to the beach

to look for amber after the storm.

Five months since the

landlady handed you your key

and just ten days

since the corner bakery

and the peach pastries with Andi.

 

Nadia's long blue scarf,

Luan's Albanian rock,

the frozen dumplings

fried in olive oil,

the child with the kitten

in the next apartment—

all floating far above your head.

 

Up, up the kite flies

over photo albums,

past letters and phone calls,

behind the entry-level job

and new friends.

 

You stand beneath it,

reaching for Andi and Nadia,

for the kitten, and the dumplings,

but they are in the kite in the sky

floating further and further away.

 

So you return to the ivy-grown

apartment and retrace your steps

from the bus stop to the market

where you bought the tomatoes,

hoping to find the kite

on the ground somewhere

or to see it hovering over the ferry

and run and catch it and pull it down.

 

But the winds won't relent.

And so you will look at the string

in your hand and follow its line up and up

 

and finally watch the diamond

growing more obscure

thinking how beautiful it is

against the backdrop of the sun

and the leafless trees.    

            Spring 2008

Ella in Her Armchair

Hands folded,

I am breathing her in.

 

My open eyes adjust to the dim room

and her silhouette against Venetian blinds.

She perches in the armchair.

 

Undaunted by silence,

we are both listening.

 

Tick—tick, grandmother clock.

My heart beats,

Her ribcage rises.

 

The well-worn wing-back

upholds a formal distance.

Once they shared a kindred bond—

Proper both, but also tender.

 

Now its arms awkwardly protrude.

Hesitant to embrace,

it is afraid like me in my shortened breaths

 

to find it cannot take her in.

The reverberations of her life have been

widening since they met while

 

her earth-grain skin slips undisturbed

through floral upholstery onto the floor

beneath wooden baseboards.

 

With Strong German Self-Assurance,

and a spine shriveled, curved,

and slowly diminishing, she perches.

 

Spring 2007

Readings of This Poem Aloud

Shortly after this post, Carl recorded himself reading this poem (aloud, of course)!  Listen to him read the original or listen to a fun, artistic "double reading".

Read a Poem

...aloud.

But

do not read a loud

staticky public service announcement

—as though its only aspiration was to be a broadcast,

like it was raised by a pack of HEY-YOU!'s

in a spit-molding megaphone.

 

Do not read a poem

like a hot lunch menu—

    Creamed Turkey

    With Mashed Syllables

    Alliteration

    And Canned Metaphor

(Now raise your hand if you thought the imagery was dry.)

 

I don't know what you've been told,

but a poem is not the IBM Financial Statement of 1995.

Or the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Killer Whales

you used for your fourth-grade science report.

 

A poem

is a looooooooonnnnnnngggg word to massage your ear,

the sound between this breath and the next,

the space between your eyelashes or your two front teeth—

a gap in time so full it can't be pushed shut.

 

Read a poem aloud—yes, read it aloud—

but don't rattle-tattle-prattle

or flick-a-lick-a-tick it.

 

A poem

should be held and savored,

    like the last of your European chocolates

    that you hold in your mouth until

    it dissolves by itself.

 

And after it's gone,

    you do not brush your teeth,

    you do not drink your coffee.

You lick the wrapper,

    You hold your taste buds still

    so they will be sure to remember.

 

A poem should be

greeted "Good morning,"

    and invited over for dinner

    (and perhaps also for dessert,

    just in case it thinks of more to say.)

 

And ssssssssssswwwwwwooooooooooonnnned,

And cccrrrrroooooooooooonnnned,

     (and tuned),

     And caressed,

And humored,

And savored.

And spoken.

And heard.

     And read.

Aloud.