|
Naomi Buck Palagi Girl on Dock Woman,
says Neruda we see curve of hip Woman,
says Reddy we hear rroarrr Woman,
says my mother and all I know is her Jewelry,
to remind myself of beauty Boot-heels,
to remind myself of height Man,
soft and strong and hard and silky to remind myself of flesh Scrapple,
like a cat with hiss and swiftness Smooth,
like a skirt to flutter round my legs Tangled
hair and open breast, nothing before me but the sea, to breathe the wind Definition
is itself I
am I and woman and I I
am not that I which
is defined Naomi (and
Ruth): a dramatization N:
now what in hell am I gonna do over there with you
all’s family? R: N:
you all is young and pretty enough
anyway, to get you a husband, no, I’m agoin back
to my home I never did like this god-forsaken place I tole him ain’t no kinda place to live over there but he never listened ain’t
never listened to me so you all go along now, I said N:
run along, don’t make me get ugly cuz I can get
ugly you want me to, y’hear? O: N:
thank you, Orpah, you got some sense now you take this here skinny girl with you I got no use for her I tole you I’m agoin home
and you agoin home now Git! N:
`fore I start thowin these rocks like a mangy dog Git! go on, be a good girl like that Orpah, gonna get a husband
since my babies done died on us, on us women, we all outta men, I ain’t lyin I don’t miss that doorknob husband a mine one lick he ’as dummer’n I don’t even know my
poor babies N:
didn’t have a chance, father like that, I’m sorry you girls got dragged in with alla us, doorknob husband and babies all gone, all’um gone…. R: N:
didn’t I tell you go? I don’t need you, what a stick little-girl like you gonna
do for me anyhow N:
Ruth
alright I do appreciate it contra dance after divorce save me from the earnest young men with no souls their possessive wooden hands scraping the small of my back with robot passion give me undulating hearts in warm flesh smiles without controlling whirl of humility and hope, humor meet me, round and round and hand to hand til blood rises to my cheeks do not check me with your eager power the other woman a ding dong ding dong ding you’d
be soo nice to come home to you’d
be sooo nice by the fire give me an image a bone
i need something to work with here and This ain’t cuttin it you
are you all of a sudden long coat and hat tie
you could be a movie fifties
soft hard to
imagine this is all so UN real
proper what it appears it appears you’d
be paa-aaradise to come home to and l- but i’ve been
a clever fool and this is my home not yours and it is not my call i don’t even have a phone line on this one you take your private
call out in the hall and you or
your stead change him’s to talk to her but play me vocal jazz i spent so much time sorry for her when i could have saved it for me i’d
be soo nice to come home to i’d be sooo nice by the fire a ding dong ding dong ding The Pear Tree*
pocket in its denim back and they could stroll together her hand off, where if she was luckylucky she might meet the Dawn tree,
she used those hands, ate pears to
her heart’s content and wandered still damn hungry) So she used those hands, she climbed the greenish tinge) (it was all very déjà vu she thought but she was to be and there lo and bee-hold were Hands! (Albeit with a slightly to
the end of her four arms where her hands were supposed big
Hard green pear right square on her forehead and it bounced and
opened up her mouth beneath a tree and it dropped a great voracious rapacious and starving
so she tore ass to the
orchard but the next night you guessed it she was Holy Crap pear into her open
mouth and she wasn’t hungry
greenest branch and dropped a small a tree bent down its
into the orchard where hungry ravenous
again so she went back hungry
but the next night she was open
mouth and she wasn ‘t
a small pear into her
branch and dropped
bent down its most sup -ple
orchard where a tree
went back into the
even hungrier so she night she was hungry
hungry But the next
mouth and she wasn’t
small pear into her open
strongest branch and dropped a
orchard where a tree bent down
its She
wandered late one night into an
here Naomi Buck Palagi has made her way to Northwest Indiana via
many stops, including a "homesteader" childhood in rural Kentucky,
complete with goats and lots of bare feet, some years in the Mississippi Delta
as, among other things, a furniture maker and ballet teacher, and several
years in Chicago doing
the small theater rounds as an actor and director. She enjoys shaping
tangible things—wood, fabric, sound, words. She has work published or
forthcoming in Otoliths, Big Toe Review, Moria, P.F.S. Post, and Blue Fifth Review. |
|
|
