Those days in Puerto Rico, all those years ago… the mornings of dread
Looking around the corner to see
how crazy is he today, as opposed to yesterday
Last night he was up at 2 am (I was just coming home from work)
The TV was aglow and the sound on low
so as not to wake the baby (whom he probably ignored all evening)
“It’s the 700 Club,” says Husband excitedly, as Pat Robertson droned on like a snake charmer about the Book of Revelation.
“Big things coming in the year 2000, it’s all going to change,”
to which I replied ever so patiently, “Husband, Jews don’t watch the 700 Club.”
He looks at me wild-eyed, so I go on, as one must on these occasions: “We don’t own a Bible, but if we did, you can’t just skip over the whole New Testament, ignore Jesus’s teachings, and dwell on the scary parts at the end. Cuz I remember, there is some twisted stuff in there.”
(I wasn’t a Christian in those days, but even I knew that much.)
After months of pleading for him to get help, it came down to post-midnight conspiracy theories about the Second Coming, even though he didn’t believe in the First One.
Two Weeks Later
He boarded a plane back to New York that week. I sat up and realized it would always be my turn to take care of the baby, which was fine by me. The sun was so bright, the room seemed to shine, my heart was light… and I burst into grateful, happy tears.
I realized that it had been forever since I woke up with a smile. Hence the tears.
Hence the divorce.
© 2024 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For What’s Going On. The prompt from my friend Mary was about morning… I went further afield than I meant to, per usual! If you are new to writing poetry, you can jump right in. The folks at that blog are very supportive. Wishing you all a good night’s sleep – and a lovely tomorrow. Amy
That neighborhood lives on in stories we tell, songs we hum
Scent memories: yeasty pizza, toasted bagels (H&H at dawn),
We lived above a Cuban Chinese joint – our noses serenaded every night, pork fat and chilis, Jeff stop in for beans and rice after you score a toke toke on the corner
Espresso so strong you could cop a buzz just passing by the cafe
And the babies
Fancy babies in fancy carriages steered by weathered warhorse nannies
Fussy babies in strollers pushed by au pairs in skinny jeans
That one chill baby, always with both parents – they’d stroll at their own pace, lived just up the block from me
Everyone knew them, we nodded or passed the peace sign in greeting
Then one evening I came home and
my neighbor was dead
shot
and suddenly the dad I saw every day walking with his wife and son became a headline
The personal became universal
He left a legacy of beauty, but in that moment
he just a dad no longer pushing a stroller, our neighbor, John Lennon
(c) 2024 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
True story. I lived half a block from the Dakota in those days, in a run-down hotel called The Park Royal., I played weeknights at the gay bar downstairs. My friend Jeffery French would come by, drunk as a daffy skunk. Eventually, he found the love of his life, Christopher Kennedy, who nursed Jeff at home as he died of AIDS. We lost Chris this week – a 35-year AIDS survivor. More about him to come, but this prompt from What’s Going On? brought so much back to me. Gonna go cry after I post this. Peace, y’all, Amer
I am eight years old
bare feet, callouses planted firmly on the linoleum floor in the kitchen
Everybody else is otherwise occupied
A rare moment of solitude in a chaotic household
Hot, it’s a hot night
and humid
I can almost hear the atmosphere
No fan, just an occasional breeze to brush the bangs off my sweaty forehead
The moon is waning, crickets are chirping, frogs are frogging
In the kitchen, a low-hanging lamp glows golden
This stolen moment, no one can take it from me
I hold it close in my memory
in my dreams
(c) 2023 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
At What’s Going On, the prompt is memory. I confess, the first thing I thought of was the song from Cats, and now Streisand is blistering that tune to death. But sometimes, amid the oh-so-hard memories of my childhood, a few moments remain. Unmatched, never forgotten. Those moments gave me hope.
One, the GOP
Screaming about baby killers and abortion
Screaming about how white people should be in charge/white erasure
Screaming about Second Amendment rights and the NRA
Screaming about drag queens at libraries/which books to ban/trans women in sports/trans pp in general
Next door, the Dems
Screaming about baby killers and the NRA
Screaming for diversity and social/racial justice
Screaming about how First Amendment rights should not not cover hate speech
Screaming about banned books in libraries
BOTH have sarcastic, insulting rhetoric (but their side is right, of course)
Both have media outlets devoted to their side
Neither want to hear what THEY think in the other room
Swearing, condemning… never listening to anyone next door
But who would be heard, anyway? Everyone is screaming.
(c) 2023 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil, for my friends at What’s Going On?
We were asked to write about how life is going on in your neck of the woods. Just last week, we moved to the rural city of Platteville, WI (a university town, smaller than Madison), Lex was called as a pastor to a UCC church here. I was invited to a political meeting, and the enthusiasm there reminded me of the equal passion of GOP voters. Now, no one was screaming! It was friendly, at times a little rowdy in the best way… but needless to say, anyone in a MAGA hat would have walked in and walked back out again. I took it a step further when I thought about larger rallies, the rhetoric, and the basic ethos of both sides of the aisle, with a miles-wide ditch dug in between. And a moat. Possibly with dragons. Anyway, you get the idea. GUARD YOUR HEARTS this election season. Last time around, 45 ate my brain – and had a side dish of my very soul. And I put it out on the buffet for him. He didn’t feel my frustration; only I did, and to the detriment of creativity and all things healthy. Fool me once, shame on him. Fool me twice, well, not if I can help it.
This was written in 2010, and it still holds true. Based on a person from my hometown, name changed for dignity’s sake. No one should ever have to suffer because they live without lying about who they are. Over 20 years have gone by, and I can still feel every word.
FRANCES BY NIGHT
Frances took a lot of shit
back when cross-dressing was even more misunderstood
On Saturday nights, she’d dress to the nines
Scarves, handbag, nails done, bejeweled pumps
The Pink Cadillac was the only bar in town that would serve her
Sometimes she’d get bounced early for
flouncing around the married guys too much
They were undercover, like the CIA
This was back in the day
when you came in the back door and showed ID
Humiliating for closet cases, but worse for Frances
who had to show her license with her real name, Frank
It set her on edge every time, and she had a mouth on her
A few cocktails would set her right
She’d be fine ‘til closing time
If no prime escort took the bait
she’d wait as long as she could
before leaving for good (or for worse)
Fag bashers staked out the back door, on their beat
Ready to beat the crap out of “the little whore”
Yelling, “Frankie! Frankie!”
No cops were ever around that part of town
despite the shouts of the frantic rumble
She put up a good fight, that little queen
for all the mascara and cashmere, she was a scrapper
Her Georgette Klinger lipstick smeared on the knuckles
of some macho boy who really only wanted to touch her
but couldn’t admit it in front of his buddies
“Frankie,” they’d shout, “we’re coming for you”
“Boys,” she’d retort, “do come!
You need it more than I do”
© 2010 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
It’s been forever since I posted. That’s all I’m gonna say. My friend Jon and I have an agreement that we don’t apologize for how long it’s been. All that matters is that we’re here NOW.
Showing up. That’s the key to being an ally. In my case, an ally to my trans/nonbinary kid and to their friends and loved ones. Anyone who’s ever read this blog, ever met me, knows that I have been an ally since I was five and asked Mom why Uncle John and Uncle Tony never brought their girlfriends to our jazz gatherings. “Well, they love each other, so they don’t need girlfriends.” To which I replied, “Oooh, is that like Aunt Beadie and Aunt Thelma?” Mom said, “Yes, they are called lesbians.” And that was it. Explain things to your kids without a ton of details, just answer factually, and let them either figure it out or come back with more questions.
I kind of figured it out and never looked back. As a straight woman, gay and lesbian friends always let me play in their sandbox. And when I was living in NYC in the 80s, that took on new meaning as our friends were getting sick… too many funerals. I swore that, if I ever smelled a lily or looked at another orchid, I would lose it. Being an ally meant being acquainted with loss, massive loss.
But did you catch that last paragraph? I identified myself as a straight woman. Nothing else. I didn’t know there was more to be. But when Luka came out as trans, it was up to me to learn, to listen, and to evolve. Now, I understand that I am a white, straight, cisgender woman. This matters. White, because the first people to throw rocks at the police during Stonewall were trans women of color. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, trans women of color. And at a rally after Stonewall, Marsha got up to speak during one rally and was shouted down by a crowd of predominantly white gay men. The guys at that rally didn’t consider these trans women of color as part of “their group.” (Sound familiar? Fear of The Other is woven into the fabric of America.) To me, trans people (especially TWOC) have always been the most vulnerable of LGBTQ tribe.
So when I heard Elliot Page was coming to town to promote his new book, the brilliantly named Page Boy, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t go into the Barrymore Theater (COPD, Covid issues, etc. mean I don’t attend live anything anymore). But I could SHOW UP. And if there were protesters, I could calmly witness to love. (DISCLAIMER: Old Amy would have shouted at them and probably come up with some appropriate swears, but I like to think I have evolved in the past years.) So I grabbed a white t-shirt and two bottles of acrylic paint (one pink, one turquoise, natch) and improvised a shirt. Then I headed down to the theater, not sure of what to expect.
No protesters. What was I thinking? My therapist, the brilliant Rita, said, “Amy, this is Madison!” But I have seen neo-Nazis at drag shows… in Columbus, OH, home of my equally brilliant child, so I had to err on the side of caution. All that happened was this: I walked around, offering “Mommy Love” to anyone who needed it. I spoke to all sorts of people – allies and Tribe alike. I saw some people who wore the scars of past abuse. Some were physical scars, and some were emotional, like their auras were blurry. And one person was happy to show me the scars they got from their top surgery, which was impressive, because that takes trust.
Luka came out, and I came into a new understanding. I don’t pretend to have it all down, I am still following peeps on YouTube who are sharing their personal, intimate journeys with top surgery… and I am so grateful for their witness, for their generosity. They make it a little easier for those who are on the journey to self-acceptance.
Luka lives in Columbus, OH, so they is not in this picture. Want to see them and their work? Head to lowbarart.com and see the tattoos and fun and murals. But if you just want to see a pic, here you go!
I am rambling… but let me end with this thought: Years ago, I thought my only child was a (girl) who was pretty spectacular. Then I found out my (daughter) was a lesbian and still spectacular. Then I came to understand the trans/nonbinary of it all. Now I know this: Luka is a prism of light and love, talented and strong and vulnerable and kind. And all I have to do to be a supportive mom, to be an ally, is evolve. Fearlessly, loudly, grounded in love. And by God, to SHOW UP. Amen.
WARNING: If you don’t know where babies come from/if you don’t want to read the “F” word or any derivations of same, as they said in The Wizard of Oz, “I’d turn back now if I were you.”
Here is how I found out about human reproduction. When I was about 12, my mom said to me, “We need to have a talk. Let me get my appointment book.”
The formality was very much in keeping with my relationship with Mom, who was horrified at any talk about the human body. Not just sex. Anything. Except for her teenaged bout of appendicitis – she could go on for hours describing the torture, ending with the horrid incision. Why the beauty of human reproduction was not in her vernacular, but lurid descriptions of surgery and bile and barfing were, I will never know.
Like so many of my generation, practically everything I learned about sex was anecdotal. One of my friends whispered to me, “Did you hear about the boy and girl who died fucking? When her parents found them, they were still stuck together.” I didn’t want to admit I didn’t know what she was talking about. Compounding that was the fact that I thought she said they “died fucky,” and I didn’t know what that adjective meant, so I just nodded and wondered whether I could ask my sister.
Now if I never told you before, Mom was an alcoholic. Her family were shanty Irish for generations, all heavy smokers and drinker. Mom said they were “pigs in the parlor poor, but we didn’t have pigs and couldn’t afford a parlor.” Needless to say, about an hour before we were supposed “our appointment,” she started to fortify herself, but good. I spotted her little crystal punch glass in the fridge, back around the corner behind the milk. My sister and I always kept an eye peeled for that, so we could gauge how well dinner and everything after that would go.
She ducked in the fridge four times, went through four punch glasses of sherry. Then she shooed my dad out to play golf and made sure my sisters were elsewhere. We sat down at the kitchen table. She had poured a little something in her coffee, too… and away we went.
Paper and pen. She drew an approximate representation of a vaginal canal, a uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. “Now this, this here…” she stabbed the page at the ovaries, “is where the eggs are. One pops out every month, and it trrrravvvvellls…” (pen traces the tubes) “down to here. This is where the babies are made. And when you are with your husband, well, um…” (sip) “the egg gets fertilized and grows into a baby. Then,” (she drew a big X at the bottom of the vaginal canal) “it comes out here. And then you have a baby.”
“But first, you have to have your period. Someday soon, you’ll get a little stomach ache, and there’ll be some blood on your underpants. So you have to put on a belt and a sanitary napkin to make sure you don’t bleed through your clothes.” (sip) (burp) “So let’s get the pads.”
I tried to make sense of what she was telling me. There’s gonna be blood coming from my stomach ache? Was the blood gonna run out of my stomach? Is my belly button going to bleed? Then why do I put stuff in my undies? Why not my belly button? So many questions. And who puts a napkin in their underpants?
We wandered up the hall (she was bumping into walls by this time), into the bathroom. She pointed to a mysterious box that was always in place, but my oldest sister said I wasn’t supposed to touch it. And a little elastic thingie with clasps on it. Mom trussed me up with the belt and two ends of the napkin stuck into the garters and marched me down the hall, the pad so bulky I walked like a duck. This woman business was gonna be bad, I knew it.
NOTE: No minipads in those days. Oh, and no pantyhose, just a garter belt and stockings. Everything was analog.
We sat back down at the kitchen table. She was leaning on her elbows. I was sitting on top of a mountain of cotton, sure she had it all wrong.
Class dismissed. She toddled into the living room to resume her other habit, smoking Bel Airs. As for the egg being fertilized, it could have involved peat moss, I had no idea. And where on earth did that baby come out? The pee place or the poop place?
Next time, we will talk about how I learned about menopause. Class dismissed.
© 2022 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil, Beehat Baby Publishing
I’m 19
I’m on the way to a singing engagement
(because all teenagers do that)
I’m driving my first car
a ’62 Volvo sedan, standard shift
Her name was Marie Dressler
“Big, white, built like a truck, but a lot of class”
I’m pulled up to a stop light
One glance in the rearview says
somebody doesn’t see the stop light
and is barreling toward me fastfastfast
Instinct kicks in
I hit the clutch
Pull my foot off the brake and brace myself
SLAMCRASHCRUNCH AND riiiiip (this last, my seat running back in its track)
I pry open the door
I run back to the other car
I have, in a matter of seconds, prepared a diatribe
for which no amount of punctuation will do
but it begins with “WHAT THE F&%$!!*&???”
The driver rolls down the window of her
equally solid ’69 Buick sedan
and before I can get a word out, says sweetly
“I’m Sister Mary Elizabeth from St. Joseph’s Hospital”
Even though I am not Catholic
and still pretty steamed
I say, “Oh, Sister, are you all right?”
because my best friend is Catholic
(He was later a priest but is now retired and agnostic
Perhaps The Church didn’t celebrate PRIDE properly)
Sister whimpers, “I’m all right…
but my mother cut her lip”
Her mother. A NUN’S MOTHER
in the passenger seat
bleeding from the mouth but assuring me that
“I’m all right, dear”
in the tone of that mother in the how-many-moms flashbulb joke:
“That’s OK, honey, I’ll just sit in the dark”
I close the door
on her rosary beads
And now the full weight of consequence is clear
because
my first lay was a priest… yup
If that affair hadn’t condemned me to Hell
(and the requisite accordion – Gary Larson warned us about that)
this surely would
And then I hear my mom’s advice
her voice honeyed and in the key of Ab
“Never put your mascara on before you get to the venue.
You never know when something will make you cry before you get there.”
Marie Dressler was totaled
I was in shock, but was later told that
I got to the gig in a police car
and played piano and sang full voice
for four hours straight without a break
The nun never even got a ticket but
The Catholic Church shelled out $600 (twice what I paid for the car)
That money bought me a ticket to LA
and three months’ rent, into what would be
fun, music, and a whole lot of hurt
But that’s a story for another day
© 2022 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Beehat Baby Words & Music
True story, like all the best ones. It’s a wonder I ever made it out of my teens. The gig was quite successful, the tip jar was filled to overflowing. I sang a bunch of requests I really didn’t think I knew, but I must have heard them in an elevator. I even sang “Feelings,” the song I despise more than most. Also “Piano Man,” which is another song I despise more than most. Ah, life!
I read with horror the comments of (my) WI Sen. Ron Johnson, who endorses mouthwash to prevent Covid, lies about Dr. Fauci and medicine in general, and thinks taking horse de-wormer is acceptable medical treatment. I can’t believe anyone would avoid taking a vaccine because of a doofus like him, but then a thought occurred.
Perhaps the Trump faithful are letting Covid drag on, sowing doubt about Dr. Fauci, so we will become more and more hopeless. Drained. Depressed and isolated. I spoke with a member of our church about “sadness fatigue,” the endless parade of disaster on the news. So much is unavoidable, but there is a whole lot about our country that can be set right, if only we have the collective energy.
But what if the Ron Johnsons of the country are spreading disinformation and causing more chaos as a means to an end?
The scenario: Get folks to mistrust science and “the government,” or as the Qists think of it, the baby-eating megamonsters… keep them stirred up as a distraction. Then, they can, I don’t know, run knuckleheads in elections from the school boards to state office (while also putting their minions on election boards). From Charlottesville to January 6 and beyond, from George Floyd to countless Black men since… and all the trans women of color? No one cares about them (just Caitlyn Jenner, because according to someone I overheard) “Bruce is a Republican.” Ugh ugh ugh
Maybe I’m cynical (“No, really?” someone in the back row snorted), but the more I look at the Ivermectin Idiots and the more I listen to people wax effusive over Ron DeSantis and DJT (who wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire), the more I realize this situation is, to paraphrase, “One third of the country wanting to destroy another third of the county, while that final third just watches.”
So which third will I be in? Which third will write history?
Which third will you be?
In space, he found a mission, that is,
he found a mission in space
Founded a mission to fit Kirk tight into a tuna can
where he must have found it hard to have found air
drawing what air he could by sucking hard
and hoping nobody got a picture of that mess
Meanwhile, man is murdering the beaches
Squeezing atmosphere ever tighter
Drawing the last blasts of dino poop, sloppy and speedy
to make ever more fuel for Cowboy Jeff Bejezzus to
pop his cork (and champagne) and do the victory dance that
all flabbyass spoiled nimrods perform
when they think they’ve done it just right
(Look, Ma, no hands)
ugh.
© 2021 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For The Sunday Whirl, I think I used just about all the words provided. (Look, Ma, no hands)
Sharp Little Pencil 