Day Eight

Title: if i keep driving

This piece comes from a poem I wrote about leaving a man I almost married years ago. We'd bought a house together, I had the diamond ring, we were on that track.

Mid-stride, I realized it was all wrong. And I left. Not in a mean way. He was a lovely person, a great friend. Just not the person I needed to be marrying. So, I packed up everything that would fit in my car, left what didn't, and started a cross country drive towards Pittsburgh (well, almost cross country).

The poem, If I keep driving, looks at those very last moments of leaving. Pulling out of the garage. Waving goodbye. Seeing the house in the rearview mirror. Seeing him standing in front of the house in the rearview mirror, waving.

It was the strangest sadness.

***

If I keep driving

our house will grow small
and eventually be gone.

If it suddenly begins to rain,
the distance between you
and your reflection in the
rearview mirror will seem shorter.

If I keep driving,
you will walk back
through the front door
after some time, a long time,
your arms folded over your chest,
and eventually you will be gone, too.

Day Seven

Title: add in here some phrase about solitude

Different direction with this one. The line comes from the poem At Last, Ursula Buendia Weeps for Her Husband. I won't post the poem again because I've posted it twice already (see Day Four - Part Two and Day Three). The magic poem bowl seems to keep spitting out lines from this poem. Who am I to complain?

What I was trying to get at with this line, though, is the fact that Marquez, in 100 Years of Solitude, never actually mentions the word solitude. Or loneliness. Or alone. Or any other word you might associate with solitude. He never spells any of those things out in the book.
The characters just become those things with their lives. It's quite a masterful move, from a writing standpoint. One of my favorites.

The studio

There's nothing like waiting for paint to dry. Really. It's like the quiet time in between dreams. Because my pieces are so layered, I've been spending a lot of time lately waiting for paint to dry. You should try it sometime.

Today, the painting mess I made was exceptionally beautiful, so I thought I'd take some pics and post them for you while I'm waiting.

Actually, I'm just avoiding finishing my thesis introduction. Taking pictures is funner. Yes, funner.

xo,
~Jen

Day Six

Title: don't let me leave

Early last winter, Jim and I took a trip up to the twin cities for a poetry reading he was doing at the Soap Factory. I was in a terrible mood, I don't remember why now, and I just couldn't shake off the intensity of the mood.

Some days are like that. Inexplicably sad. And when I'm having one of those days, I have trouble saying what I need to say. I speak in code, give only very subtle hints that anything is wrong, and I withdraw from the world.

After the mood had passed, I thought I'd sit down and write a little code-breaker, a kind of map, for Jim. Translation is that map (at least part of it).

***

Translation
- for the guy with good intentions

When I say
I’m going for a walk
and it happens to be dark
and the night happens to be cold
and we happen to be in St. Paul
in the shittiest part down by the Soap Factory
what I mean is
don’t let me leave

When I say
do you like my dress
the linen summer one
that settles just so around my hips
the one you asked me to wear
all last July
what I mean is
tell me I am beautiful

When I say
I’m tired
and I cry without cause
and recede like seawater into silence
when I weep for the dead and the undead
when I puddle and twist
and otherwise make a heap
of a body on the floor
what I mean is
pick me up
untangle the knots
put me to bed

When I say
tell me you love me
and then I am silent
what I mean is
tell me –
with your hands on my face
with your breath, with your eyes
as close as you can get
– tell me you love me

Day Five

Title: you will break over this soon

About a year or so year ago, my friend Paul wrote a blog about his mother's failing health. It was one of those rare and beautiful moments of openness when grief trumps loneliness and a hand is reached out.

***

fold & break
-for Paul

your mother in a nursing home
your mother wiped blank, clean
your mother broken

will is
a strange blue flower
folding delicate
folding in on itself
in the end
the will is being drawn

you will break
over this soon,
fold and
break

Day Four - Part Two

Title: 4 years, 11 months, and 2 days of rain is a shipwreck

This line comes from the poem I posted a few days ago, At Last, Ursula Buendia Weeps for Her Husband. I'll post the poem again below, but if you want the story on the poem, go to Day Three.

The line, in particular, comes from the end part of the book. After Ursula's husband dies and her sons have all left or died, the town falls into a long, long period of ruin. It rains for 4 years, 11 months, and 2 days without stopping. Everything in the town (Macondo), even the cars, begins to grow mold.

***

At Last, Ursula Buendia Weeps for Her Husband

1.
Peel back the first layer and
the second, flowering, the third
comes off bloody, the fourth
bone and bruised blood vessels,
no swelling, no tell-tale sign.

They say you have died, but
there you are, under the chestnut tree,
just as I left you, just as
the forever falling rain of
last year, just as my eyes red
and dry from cutting onions for
your supper, just the quiet, the
clay horizon, just the wind,
maybe your ghost, passing through.


2.
Just a moment ago you were
here, we were here, circle of hands.
Four years, eleven months, and two days of rain
is a ship wreck. I question the moment
the sun appears. I am sure of the lie.


3.
The trees weep without magic
when the cold does not come. Come
back, I cannot stand the silence and
more than that the nothingness, the
uselessness, my arms my body folding
at night into the shape of you, gone.
Come touch finger the raw place
I’ve collapsed into, bone over
bone over bruise over skin over night over
quiet.


4.
Add in here some phrase about
solitude - fall comes in one breath,
the leaves can’t even remember
what they’re supposed to do. Change
the mistake I made for some Mums, wait
and wait for the shipwreck to come,
hold out for rescue – sinking feeling.


5.
When the chestnut tree finally dies –
burnt gold, the alchemy of love –
you will return and I will
weep a river to carry us both
home.

Day Four - Part One

Two pieces for today, with very little in common...



Title: the tree we have been turning beneath

This line comes from my poem, Second Burial, which draws on the old burial traditions of the native peoples from Costa Rica. Their practice was to dowse the body in mangrove pulp and juice to quicken the decay process, bury the body once, wait until only the bones were left, dig up the bones and arrange them into a small stack before burying them in the ground a second and last time.

After my travels to Costa Rica and after I'd had a chance to think more on this curious process, it occurred to me that second burials are often what we do with people we love, living or dead. The grief of letting someone go comes in stages.

For me, I wanted to use the metaphor to speak about a particular relationship that I seemed to keep digging up and burying again and again.

***

Second Burial

Under the mangrove tree,
I find a place and bury you.

In a dream, roots wrap
around you, which is us,
which is me, which is you.

And when the juice of the mangrove
and the mash of the pulp
have pulled the soft tissue away,
I will go to the tree
we have been turning beneath,

unearth the remains,
unbury you, which is us,
which is me, which is you,

I will gather the bones we have left,
and tie them tenderly
into the shape of a gift,

give them back to the black soil
and watch as this last offering of us
is again returned to the thousand pieces
from which we came.

Day Three

Title: the uselessness

A few semesters ago, I took a course in Latin American Literature. For the first time, there, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude and fell in love with the book. One of the central characters is Ursula Buendia, the feminine whirlwind that keeps the family together through death after death after death.

I wanted to write from her perspective and give her the space to say the things it seemed she might have always wanted to say. Mostly, I thought she needed to grieve openly. And so this poem was born (along with a whole series of poems speaking from various characters' perspectives).

***

At Last, Ursula Buendia Weeps for Her Husband

1.
Peel back the first layer and
the second, flowering, the third
comes off bloody, the fourth
bone and bruised blood vessels,
no swelling, no tell-tale sign.

They say you have died, but
there you are, under the chestnut tree,
just as I left you, just as
the forever falling rain of
last year, just as my eyes red
and dry from cutting onions for
your supper, just the quiet, the
clay horizon, just the wind,
maybe your ghost, passing through.


2.
Just a moment ago you were
here, we were here, circle of hands.
Four years, eleven months, and two days of rain
is a ship wreck. I question the moment
the sun appears. I am sure of the lie.


3.
The trees weep without magic
when the cold does not come. Come
back, I cannot stand the silence and
more than that the nothingness, the
uselessness, my arms my body folding
at night into the shape of you, gone.
Come touch finger the raw place
I’ve collapsed into, bone over
bone over bruise over skin over night over
quiet.


4.
Add in here some phrase about
solitude - fall comes in one breath,
the leaves can’t even remember
what they’re supposed to do. Change
the mistake I made for some Mums, wait
and wait for the shipwreck to come,
hold out for rescue – sinking feeling.


5.
When the chestnut tree finally dies –
burnt gold, the alchemy of love –
you will return and I will
weep a river to carry us both
home.

Day Two

Title: I dream about dreaming about you

When I first moved to Pittsburgh, I spent the first three months losing my way. The city is one of the most difficult to navigate. Hills everywhere, one way streets, rivers, bridges. I got used to it eventually, but somehow, the changing of the seasons always seemed to disorient me again. I was never quite able to draw a map of Pittsburgh in my head, so I navigated by certain trees or buildings or sidewalks. Those changed with the season.

At the same time that I was learning Pittsburgh's streets, I was coming to terms with the ending of a long relationship. The two became inextricably linked in my mind.

***

The Penn Avenue Way Home

I am driving Liberty Avenue,
hoping I’ll find Penn.
All I see are row houses
and bad sidewalks,
leaves stuffed in gutters
and crowded cheap storefronts,
sudden potholes,
and an October-gray sky.

A dream that you have
returned to sender everything
I ever gave you.

I find Penn Avenue
but don’t recognize
anything:
this bridge
this hill
this corner of stores
these sleeping black branches.

You should know by now
that if I am dreaming of you like this
I am sorting something out,
untangling one sad root from another.

I get to Negley Boulevard
and finally see
the Babyland store
that I’ve seen before,
then the Presbyterian cathedral
with the homeless people
out front and the rainbow flag on the corner.
I have been here before.

I dream about
dreaming about you.

It’s at the light on Shady Avenue
in front of the Giant Eagle,
the one I shop at on Sundays,
that I remember
the rest of the way home.

Day One

Title: Radiation is a week without sleep

This piece comes from a poem about an old friend of mine whose father passed when we were in junior high.

***

Re: Fallout/1995

I.
The memory begins
with the death
of your dad.

It was Nevada’s
nuclear science
that started the tumor,
old men living so deep
in the desert that
radiation chooses skin
instead of sand or rock.

This is cancer.
It is unavoidable.
You will be compensated.
It will not be enough.

II.
Even at the funeral you didn’t cry.
I was suspicious.

I’m sorry.

III.
The beauty of speed
is that I never knew
until your bones
showed through
and you stopped showing
up for school.

Your mother worked skeleton shifts
in the Emergency Room.
Even she failed to notice.

IV.
Maybe your father had been dead
a long time.

Maybe your father had always
been dead.

V.
Radiation is a week without sleep.
Scientists are studying you
as we speak, smashing particles
over your widow’s peak.
Your mother gives you an Advil
and goes back to work.

You dye your hair black.

The memory ends here.

So what is this art series anyway?

Welcome to my new blog-a-roo, folks!

I've been a little out of touch lately (sorry about that) with all the traveling and the moving and the new album and the finishing my thesis stuff.

I've started a special project this summer that I think worth sharing. To finish off my time at Chatham, I'm doing an independent study focusing on the integration of my poetry and my art. This project has been a long, long time coming. I've been monkeying around for years with putting words on pottery, canvases, walls, and of course paper. The experimentation has been loads of fun, but it was time to get serious and actually do something with my ideas. So, I hunted down the perfect art professor to work with (the fabulous Ingrid Lilligren), some studio space, and took the summer off from working.

The idea is to create a painting a day.

And here's how it works:
I took a whole bunch of my poems, cut them up, folded them into tiny scraps and threw them into a bowl. Each day, I sit down and randomly pull out a scrap. The line that comes out of the bowl is the foundation of the painting. No throw backs. No starting over.

I'll be posting the paintings daily, along with the poem the line comes from. You're all welcome to comment on any of it - the poetry, the art, whatever strikes you. You can comment on this site (but I think you have to register as a user?), or directly to me by email (jenmcclung@yahoo.com). Let the conversations begin!

Big love,
~Jen