February 3, 2024: "Late Speech with My Brother," Abuse, "Poetry Lesson"

Abuse is a generational thing, as you probably know.  It gets passed down like an old, shabby coat from person to person--father to son to grandson, for example.  Each person puts it on and feels the dark pull of its threads.  You can't donate it to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul.

Sharon Olds wants to talk to her brother . . . 

Late Speech with My Brother

by: Sharon Olds

I can see you now so vividly,

fine head titled back,

bold Teutonic jaw stiff, the

bristle along it glistens and your blue

eyes glitter like glass.  I have always

feared you would take your life, I have seen you

taking your life for thirty-five years,

taking it cell by cell.  I can see you

throw away your body as easily

as you thrust your whole thumb that time

into the moving machinery, so

gracefully, as if you understood

the union of science and the human.  I can see you

sending your body to hell as they sent us to

bed without supper, you're as big as them now

and as proud, you would die before you would break and say

Please, don't.  Please, don't

do their work for them,

don't produce a stopped life like some

work of art, the bottle fallen

away from your open hand.  It is not

too late, your life is ahead of you,

behind you is your thirty-five years of

death--I have seen a man of eighty

drop his parents' hands and just walk the other way.

I think Sharon Olds is trying to break the cycle of abuse and trauma in her family.  She lives in fear of her brother committing suicide because of their childhood experiences.  So, she begs her brother to walk away from his "thirty-five years of / death . . ."

It's hard to let go of the kind of trauma Olds' father inflicted on his wife and children.  In my life, people have hurt me.  Close people whom I loved.  Because of that pain, I have a difficult time with trust.  I don't take compliments well and constantly feel unworthy of love or affection.

Yes, I have been in therapy for years.  Every couple weeks, I unpack my issues.  There's a LOT of them.  I have been able to let go of some things.  Other things are not as easy.  They stick with me as if they are part of my DNA.  Maybe they are.

If you're waiting for me to go into more detail, I'm not going to.  That's between myself and my therapist.  What I will tell you is this:  I don't hang around mean people anymore, whether they're family members or friends.  Life is too short.  I prefer to surround myself with love and joy.  It's a choice that saves me quite a bit of heartache.

Tonight, Saint Marty wrote a poem about a person who loved him, unconditionally.  It was based on this prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Company issued the first paper money.  Write a poem that involves the exchange of currency for goods.  To get you started, consider these facts:  President Andrew Johnson purchased the Louisiana Territory for three cents an acre.  The local Indians gave Peter Minuit the island of Manhattan in exchange for some hatchets, cloth, and beads with an approximate worth of sixty guilders (the equivalent of 1 1/2 pounds of silver).  Feel free to use any of these facts or consider any strange things you have spent money on and write about that.

Poetry Lesson

by: Martin Achatz

My mother, housewife with knobbed

knuckles and pepper hair, taught me

lots of things--how to fold socks,

make mashed potatoes, pray

the rosary, find blueberries, locate

Venus and Mars in a star-drunk sky,

read a book as if it was a friend

I hadn't seen in fifteen years.

When I bought a collection of Anne

Sexton poems for a college class, I studied

its words and lines the way Mom showed

me, trying to see the face on the page,

its freckles, wrinkles, errant nose hairs.

I wanted to make friends with Anne, offer 

her a hand if she fell, peanut butter 

sandwich when her body growled,

But I couldn't.  The book remained

a weird exchange student from

the Tadpole Galaxy, tongue sticky

with flies and mosquitoes.

Finally, I brought the book

to Mom, read her a poem

about Sexton pulling a girdle

down, squeezing her post-pregnancy

belly and thighs "thick as young pigs" 

into the garment, like a snake

wriggling back into its shed casing of skin.

Mom listened the way she always

did, as if I was giving her directions

to get into heaven or defuse

a ticking bomb, and her body began

to tremble, shoulders quake.  She pressed

a hand against her lips, and I was 

sure she was going to throw up.

Instead, her mouth opened, an air raid

siren rolling from between her lips.

Laughter.  Tears-rolling-down-her-cheeks

laughter that swelled and swelled until,

when I uttered the poem's last 

word, she collapsed back into her chair,

a marathoner at the end of mile 26.

I stared into her shining face, knew

she and Anne had just become best friends,

would share coffee together the following

morning, talk about how their bodies

used to glow like carved moonlight

under their husband's searching hands.