The Social Justice Center

In 1977 I looked pretty hot. Slender again after the birth of three children, I had great legs and better curves. I was sitting in the bar of a hotel in New Jersey waiting for my husband. I was chatting with the bartender and trying out a new drink he had recommended that involved amaretto and cream and strawberries. I was wearing a very snappy red and black suit with red pumps (sorry, folks, but it was the 70's). It was mid-afternoon and I was trying to tune out the revelry from a table of six business-types in suits who were ending their day with libations. They kept shooting glances my way. One of them got up and approached me. "Can I buy you a drink?" he asked. Politely, I said no, thank you. He persisted. I continue to refuse. Finally, he made a crude remark about me sitting in bar alone in the middle of the day, implying that I was a working girl. Flustered and furious I got up and left the bar. In my room I cried and stewed for a few minutes until I calmed myself and went back downstairs. Resolutely I approached the table where the men were still whooping it up, and proceded to give them a piece of advice. I am a married woman with three kids, I informed them icily. I am in this bar to meet my husband who is here on a business trip, probably the way you guys are. How many of your wives are home being accosted in a bar right now while you are out of town hitting on other women in a strange city? You are totally out of line, as well as obnoxious. Surprisingly, profuse apologies followed, from all the men and I stalked back to my room feeling proud of myself for not letting the moment pass to speak out.

Last night at the dumb poetry reading at the Social Justice Center, with Tim and Dennis and Obee and Mimi and Tom, I read my Las Vegas poem which mentioned being married by a judge holding a white Bible. The Bible I had in mind was one I had (and read) for many years, with a white leather cover. Following me, some goofy black dude got up to the microphone and in front of the whole crowd, challenged me to read my "white" Bible more because I would find that it was a Bible for black people, too. I was stunned and not sure if he were joking or not. I felt much the same as I did that day in the hotel. After the reading I approached the man. At first I spoke calmly and asked him if he was joking or serious. He was totally serious and resisted my efforts to explain about the cover of the Bible as opposed to the content. As it became obvious that either he wasn't wrapped too tight or was just fixated on this race thing, I chastised him for his mistaken assumptions and his rudeness. We parted without coming to an accord.

Dennis challenged me about the encounter, accusing me of having an anger issue. He was right that I was angry, but it was not uncontrolled. It was a matter of confronting injustice, which Dennis, I thought, would be sympathetic to. If we do not confront racism (or abusive parents or obnoxious salesmen or whatever) and attempt to defend what is right and true, then we are not fulfilling our responsibilites as citizens of the world. I used to be a non-confrontational person. I avoided the unpleasant and swallowed a lot of stuff I should have spoken out about. No more. I was angry and I made the effort, despite my innate aversion to it, to go to the root of the problem and make it right. I did the right thing.


Not a Racist

101 State Street

We are celebrating Joshua's wedding this weekend.

I married his father on a sunny May day in 1966 in a church that was not mine, or his. I was pregnant and wore a yellow dress with a white bibbed front that hung loose around the small round of my middle. I never did get very heavy with that pregnancy. I was hardly any bigger when my daughter was born at the end of August.

My friend Dolly was my maid of honor and her boyfriend Gary stood up with David, who looked like a mile of bad road. Three parents and all our sisters were there. My one sister was a chubby little 12-year-old with knock-knees and the seven-year-old pale and skinny and waiflike. The few photos that survived show us all looking hesitant and and a little confused. I was not yet nineteen and David was 21.

It was pretty much of a gamble. I probably married the wrong guy, but then, my other choices were not much better and I thought, of course, that I loved him. We "honeymooned" at the Villa Capri on Central Avenue, and I escorted the drunken groom a few blocks to our apartment on State Street. A railroad flat, three rooms one behind the other with two tall front windows looking on a row of un-rehabbed brownstones on the old Albany street not far from Washington Park.

What a country girl I was, frightened out of my skin by the appearance of a monstrous bug on the bedroom floor the first week we lived there. I spent the whole night in my Aunt Ethel's platform rocker in the living room with my feet in my lap to keep them off the floor. When David got home from his night shift at the Watervliet Arsenal, he introduced it to me as a cockroach. They were also in the bathtub. I insisted we pack up and move by the next weekend.

We moved in with his mother on Homestead Street and my dear Aunt Ethel bought us a car. What a car it was. A 1961 white Thunderbird convertible with red interior. When the baby was only a few weeks old, David racked up the beautiful car on the train tracks underneath the Dunn Memorial Bridge. He arrived home walking, reeking of alcohol, with a ragged hole in his elbow.

He almost missed the baby being born. We were in the old Hopper's Bar on the end of Johnston Road with his mother and a transient boyfriend. I was not feeling well -with good reason as it turned out- and not up to the regular Friday night bar hopping he refused to miss, so he left with his friend Wayne Barden. The baby was not due for almost another month. The transient boyfriend drove me back to Homestead Street finally and left me in the care of David's sister Linda.
As was usually the case, Vi's phone had been turned off, so when my pains got bad, Linda got nervous and walked about a mile to a pay phone, called her mother at the bar, and the transient boyfriend had the privilege of driving me to the hospital. They located my husband just in time for the birth.

I had a perfect tiny girl that David wanted to name after my sister. She weighed six pounds and had a head full of curls.

Josh has married a soulmate I think. She has a child of her own and he and Egan seem to adore each other. He is a good dad. He didn't invite his father to the wedding.

Zach is back

...and he is in love with California. He is packing his life up to move it out there. I am feeling my losses. Lady Bird Johnson died this week. I never liked her. Paul Salisbury also died this week. The little fireplug. Tom and I visited Cathy after our pottery lesson today. She has admitted to not doing well and that is a blow. Dwight and Shanna and the kids are with her. That is good. Baby J is working with cousin Will. I have not heard from Elaine. Another worry. I need to call Deb. My biopsy was fine. My neck is still ugly. Eli got a haircut on Tony's porch today. Tony swept the dog hair off the grass. I fell asleep on his couch. We are invited for breakfast. I saw many of my parents peers at the lib concert this week. Still going strong. Andrea sent a photo of the babes. I don't know if I should answer.

My back is burning.

Someone might be putting out a lit cigarette on the skin next to my spine. Yet, I sit here at my computer, in the position which causes me the most pain. Hedy says it is arthritis in my neck, but I doubt her. The pain is so strong that I can hardly work sometimes.

Eli has moved again to lay at my feet. Always moving as I do. To the couch. To the bathroom. To the bed. I am braless in a spotty tie-dyed t-shirt. I have stitches in my leg from the biopsy. My hair is wild. I have iced and heated my neck according to Mary's instruction.

I have canceled my Sushi date. My reluctant Sushi date. I hate Sushi. I have checked my email again and again. The mail never comes. I am tired of doing my laundry. I would rather sleep on top of the sheets. With the cat hair. Chinny is on the back of the couch. Fat and fluffy. There are never enough hours. To paint to read to sleep to brush the dog. Eli is checking the window. Nobody comes. Casey comes. She comes for Lauren. Then Tracy. With a sad story. Zach calls his mother. Lauren cries. Cars go up and down and in and out. Tom did not come with the video.

I am on the periphery of the world. Tony is on his porch. The pizza man is coming. I am the keeper of the money. I am the keeper of the porch.


Looking out

What Dennis Said

Another Poem for Etta
June 2007


I never liked you, old woman
your froggy mouth snapping lipless
to catch my imperfections on your eager tongue

your righteous southern Methodist
intervention offered with that prissy little smirk
you thought was softening the whipcrack

of your god-almighty words
oh, you could charm the neighbors
with your clever liquid drawl

you weren’t born a redhead for no reason
in your long black gloves and feather comb
showing off that unbecoming flirt in you

your jowls quivered baby powder soft but you
were all bones and angles and faded sunbonnets
in the cornfields with your brother and the mule

gathering eggs from the hen house
chopping heads off squawking chickens
on the bloody stump with the long-handled axe

cranking buckets from the rock well
there were king snakes in the cistern
Nigras down the dirt road through the pines

baking early morning biscuits
in the wood stove after
a nose-holding trip to the two-seater

no spare flesh but sacrifice
you were a brittle woman
abandoned to raise three sons

intruding into the lives of others
taking your secret self to the grave
leaving me to mourn the little yellow finch

dead under the giant cedar
and the graceful curving staircase
to the slant-roofed garret rooms

in the old farmhouse
and the magnolia-scented
summers of Tennessee


only your granddaughter

Zach is gone

We have lost another one and the house seems to be echoing a protest. He is such a presence flying in and out, with his rosy cheeks and his intensity. His little brother will be missing him, and his mother, and me.

Young men are dying now, his age, lost forever to the ones who love them. The funeral for Shawn Martin of Delmar will be this week, whenever what is left of him returns. Casey's Jared is somewhere in the fighting, and my little cousin Logan, we don't know where. Someone is counting the dead still, but more and more they are just numbers instead of living, breathing people. Eighty this month so far; the "96" only a memory. I visit their pictures and try to meet them and imagine the loss of them in the lives of others. It seems like all, and the least, I can do.

Our Zach will be returning, still on this earth, in California or New York or points where we can find him, and touch him, and hear his voice.

Zachary, so anxious to go and start your life, be safe and be happy. We'll be here.

only Grandma C.

What I Want

I want to go to Vegas
on a four-day junket
in the cheap seats
and in the Chapel of Love
pledge my undying
to the man of my heart

I want Elvis in black leather
to walk me down
the petal-strewn aisle
lip-synching The Wonder of You
up to the altar massed with white tulips
where a dumpling of a justice
in a genuine black robe
will pronounce the words
over a white Bible
with his wife of 52 years
standing by to witness

I want my arms overflowing with
orange poppies and lavender roses
I'll wear a slinky black dress
with my sun-soaked breasts
barely covered
not virginal at all because
I am no virgin and don't
want to be
there will be no rings
just in case
my love and I will flee
in a rented yellow convertible
with the top down to
a neon night and cruise
the Strip so everyone can
see me and know
that I am loved and then

we will lock ourselves for
three days in a schmancy hotel
with room service before we
pop a coin in some slot and fly
backover the Grand Canyon
to our separate houses and
I know the sex will be
the best I've ever had



Today I want to be married

Crow Ink

Crows know.
They take their black,
raucous selves,
fire up that attitude
and never look back
at their abandoned nest
high in the pines

I wonder, sometimes,
if our lives might be no more
than the art of crows
written, for awhile
on the sky
then, in an instant,
erased by the wind…
--Sharon Auberle

(from CROW INK, 2007)

After the party

Catalpa blossoms are littering the driveway, frilly white on my red car like crumpled tissues, the scent of the heavy-headed peonies perfuming the morning air.

My sister timed her arrival for the middle of my party, perhaps to play to the biggest audience. Mistakenly, I greeted her with open arms, ready to be friends again. Her imperious self was temporarily dormant, unleashed shortly with the infusion of scotch she didn't wait long to order. It was, as she planned, a black note in a sweet day. Making nice, she informed me, is not the same as making amends, and amends is what she was looking for - her "birthright" which I "stole". I can't make amends. I cannot give her what I do not have and I am never to be forgiven.

My other sister, the one who relented and sent a birthday card, did not appear at all.

There was no surprise visit from Michael, which, although I didn't expect it, was constantly in the back of my mind. I was waiting to see Lily and Maddix come shyly through the swinging door. Josh had warned me they were not coming.
But, still...I was waiting.

It was a day of curiosities. A day of the expected and unexpected. I did not expect the tribute that Tom paid me and it was, perhaps, the most meaningful moment of my day. Josh's reading of my poems was exquisite and I was so proud of him. Lauren's planning and cooking and execution skills are wonderful, although there was much about her that was worrisome. My talented Zach was upset about his broken mousse whose taste was not affected by the texture.
Baby Josh was there with a woman, looking handsome and hugging me. Amy, looking lovely, took the photos, Egan was his engaging self and very well behaved. Courtney came and Heather brought Emily who plastered herself with chocolate. Jimmy and Floyd brought flowers and lugged tables and chairs. Marion and Arthur sat in the nursing home.
That was all my family.

My gifts were both charming and plebian, from the lotto tickets to the artwork. Diane Shedd's painting, obeedude's Bruce Springstein, pottery from the Darlings. Obeedude came in costume as he threatened and so did Willow whose mom dressed her in a birthday outfit.

There appeared many poets, not so many library people, few of Tony's friends and many missing who should have been there. There was no dancing, too much leftover food, and as always after a party, that vague feeling that something else should have happened.


Just thinking.

The Years

1947
...I am born in May.
...they call me Barbie.
...we live on Woodlawn Avenue with Irvin and Emily.
...the tulips are blooming in Washington Park.
...I fall out of the green wooden swing
...my mother walks me in my stroller to see Mr. Mudge.
...we visit aunt Ethel on Hurlbut Street next to the school.
...and Aunt Kate with the bum knee and Uncle Ralph
...and their snappy little Jack Russell with no name.
...I play with my ice cream.

1967
...I am a college dropout
...I am the mother of baby girl
...I am sexy
...the world is at war.
...we live in a trailer in Clifton Park.
...David works nights at the Watervliet Arsenal.
...We drive a Thunderbird with no reverse.
...I have all my parts.
...my sisters are in high school.
...We meet Chris and Carol Mouyos.
...Susie and Elaine become my best friends.
...I play the guitar.

1987
...Big Josh gives me a birthday party.
...Linda and John are there.
...Baby Josh learns to walk.
...there is no Zach, no T-rex.
...Tony and I play pinochle with Milt and Eunice.
...We live in our own house in the orchard with Max.
...my sister lives next door.
...Cheryl lives in Florida
...Nancy is my best friend.
...I don't know Jackie and George.
...I play Trivial Pursuit.


2007
...Ollie is dead. And Max.
...and John and George and Susie
...and Linda and Milt and Chris
...and all the aunts and uncles
...Michael is gone. And Nancy.
...my sisters hate me.
...my parents are locked up.
...I smoke cigarettes.
...I have a tattoo.
...I have a nose ring.
...I have new knees.
...I have six grandchildren.
...Two of them are missing.
...I have been to Paris.
...the world is at war.
...George Bush is an asshole.
...I play computer games.


2017
...I am planning to be dead.


Contemplating changes