From Whence, and Why
(My Poetic Manifesto… because Gay asked for it!)
I write to give voice
to those without a choice
The homeless, incest survivors
Deep-water depression divers
I’ve been, at one time, all of these
I claim it, no third-person tease
Stated as fact, no truth untold
Some wish that I wouldn’t be quite so bold
Raised to speak raw truth to power
Toe to toe with guys who tower
far over my little Irish ass
(Pardon me, but I can be crass)
Give me paper, a sharp li’l pencil
and life’s underbelly I will stencil
Most people in sight of my spigots:
Racist, homophobic bigots
I’m not important, not myself
My poetry rarely graces a shelf
I drop truth bomb after drone
My words, the only weapon I own
© 2014 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For dverse Poets Pub, our host Gay Reiser Cannon asked for “Manifestos.” Reasons why we write, our impulses and drives, where it all first came from. I dedicate this piece to my late mother and my grandmother Blanche. The maternal side of my family, shanty Irish, were always mindful of those who had less, whether people of color, LGBT folks, victims of war (especially troops who died and their families)… perhaps because they themselves had been in a position of being homeless and next to starving during the Depression of the 30s.
They also thought Ayn Rand was full of shit. We ARE our brother’s – and sister’s – keepers, and if you deny that, you supply the world with ZILCH. Hence my manifesto. Peace, Amy
Letter to Blanche
Dear Grandma Blanche,
I know it’s been a long time
since I have written
I was only seven
when you met heaven
But I want you to know
in case you’re not watching
that as I grew
I was more like you
Sure, crossword puzzles and
acrostics and such we share,
but playing by ear?
Piano, my dear!
That gift of gab we were
both born/cursed with
Talking to all
Talking to walls…
Yes, I got that, too
Manic depression, haunting
Sometimes “crazy,”
sometimes “lazy”
in the eyes of others, that is,
bound as they are by convention
They don’t see through
like we do
Thanks for teaching me manners,
That conversation with your hostess is never
better than your words
with servers of hors d’oeuvres
Thank you for the music knack
the restless spirit, the lifelong struggle
And if I learn it
Let me earn it
Love, Amer
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
dverse Poetry Pub wanted us to harken back to the age of writing letters. I’ve been writing more letters lately, if only to help the struggling post office. But writing a letter to someone dear who’s dead is a challenge.
I write about Blanche, my maternal grandmother, a lot. Gone for some 50 years, I still feel her presence in my life. She had that knack of talking to people where they were, no matter what race, gender orientation… she spoke truth to power and often ending up in a cruel sanitarium for doing so. She is my HERO. God rest your soul, Blanche. Love, Amy
This is also “in the margins” at my poetic lily pad, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.
There was a prompt on dverse called “Missing You” that, of course, I missed linking to. To which I missed linking. Linking missed did I. Whatever! Fortunately, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads is hosting Open Link Monday, so thanks, Kerry!
During Advent, I remember large and small kindnesses, and I think about those I’ve lost over the years. “And of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares to you.” With a nod to John Lennon, here a a poem about the person I miss so much.
NOTE: All poems regarding my relationship with my father are about me and me alone. I make no claims, nor do I speak for my sisters.
MISSING CHARLOTTE
The coffee shared at the cigbutt-scarred
kitchen table (my workspace now).
The stories, especially when you were
drunk as a skunk, rambling on about
our noteworthy obscure Irish lineage.
Our family totem: Gordon’s and an ashtray.
Grandma Blanche exacting revenge
on Bill, who cheated with her best friend.
Wish you had taken a picture of his face
when he walked in, realizing he was busted.
The nights you went off to sing, scent of
Tigress cologne, the black sequins and
paste jewelry from Blanche, I called them
“dime mints,” the teardrop earrings you wore.
The teardrops signified more: Breakfast
wearing sunglasses, Dad hit you the night before
after doing me in a fit of jealousy – Dad sure
you were fooling around at your gig, you dig?
Next morning, to church, choir director… first,
vodka bracer, no lie detector, I’d never tell
Your secrets were safe with me and my
secrets I didn’t know until after you both died.
Mama, you told me we were both descended
from sirens. I didn’t think you meant
ambulances, yet backward glances tell me
(in the hindsight that trumps your own truth),
you were a mess, and so loveable, and so
weak, and so in need, and so on. I know.
I’m the dark mirth of the Irish, the mother of
a savant, the keeper of memories, of the love.
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
My mother was an enigmatic, persuasive lioness who occasionally retreated to helpless-kitten states through alcohol. She drank because she didn’t want to be “crazy” like her mother, Blanche, who was bipolar like me, but because of the times, was institutionalized and Frankenshocked through the 30s and 40s. Charlotte drank because she didn’t want to “notice” Dad sneaking up the hall after his little girls had gone to bed. And she drank to warm up her razor-sharp memory for “the telling of the stories,” our family history. Some people tell the same stories over and over… which start out like funny mice but, over the years, morph into elephants. Not Mama. I was her witness, and I know she would be glad I write about all the mess, the booze, the music, the tears, and the bellyaching laughter… and yes, even the abuse.
Hug your parents tight, if they are with you. My depression comes and goes, but hers was long, tortured, and I thank God that now, she is at peace. Miss you, Mama. Love, Amer
Photo taken by my Grandpa Bill in August 1959, during a visit to Mom’s home town, Council Bluffs, Iowa. Copyright is with me.
Iowa
In the stifling summer of ‘34
when drought hit Iowa hard
like brick on bone
my grandma Blanche packed up the family
for another Midnight Shhhhh! Move
(before the landlord came for the rent)
This time they hitched a ride
out of Council Bluffs to Lake Manawah
and settled in a summer cottage
They squatted there year-round
as did other families, who had
their own stories of landlords
Blanche fed every man who rode the rails
They put up signs for the next hobos:
A cat (“kind lady”) and two shovels (“work here”)
She felt that every person deserved food, medicine, and
shelter (today, this is called Socialism) and that
giving the men a task helped build their egos
So Dorney swept the steps and Gibb fed the chickens
(“borrowed” by Blanche on their way out of town)
while another collected eggs and so on. They never
stayed long. Blanche later insisted the term “Hobo”
was not slander but, as in H.L. Mencken’s writings,
it meant “homeward bound.” Indeed, some went “home”
right in their back room, too sick, too weary to go on.
Blanche knew the doctor, got them morphine, helped them
sip broth. She also washed them, like family, before burial.
When I asked my mom about those days, it began a years-long,
booze-fed, continuing conversation about poverty, the
Dust Bowl, generosity, and the human spirit. Blanche, before her
in those days, was Ma Joad incarnate, with a touch of
Woody Guthrie. “But Mom,” I said, “you got to live in a
cottage by a lake. Where did Grandpa get that kind of money?”
My mother Charlotte, Blanche’s only daughter,
gazed out the back window and smiled ruefully: “Child, it
may have been a lake, but there was no water in it back then.”
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Sunday Scribblings, the prompt is apropos: Drought. The Great Depression coincided with one of the worst droughts in American history. Bad agricultural practices were largely to blame, and it seems all we’ve learned is how to bio-engineer Frankenseeds to forestall the inevitable. Indigenous Americans knew how to plant and harvest; how to move south in the colder months, giving the land a chance to renew; and how to treat the earth with respect.
NOTE: Ma Joad is one of the main characters in John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes Of Wrath. The movie starred Henry Fonda as Tom, the eldest son, and Jane Darwell as Ma. Her embodiment of that character, Ma’s feistiness and compassion, won her an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress of 1940.
I like to think of Blanche in those days as part Ma Joad, part Steinbeck. Although she never wrote a book, Blanche was a voracious reader and self-taught scholar. That’s how she knew about Mencken, Upton Sinclair, and the like. She went to her grave despising Ayn Rand’s opinion that “altruism is evil” and her novel, The Fountainhead, which espoused that every person should look after themselves: “If we hadn’t lived near the tracks, who would have fed them? All the other houses had hobo signs like rectangles with a dot in the middle, ‘Dangerous.’ People thought I was nuts to try to feed these men. I guess that’s why I got committed eventually – Bill thought so too. But what’s crazy about taking care of each other in hard times?”
I’m proud to be Blanche Laughlin’s granddaughter. This is also at my poetic lake with water IN IT, Poets United.
I love the blog, “Imaginary Garden with Real Toads,” several writers who toss out different prompts. I saw Kerry’s challenge to write from the oral tradition, a story one would tell a small audience seated on the rug all around. Instantly I heard my grandma Blanche and imagined how she might tell of her long-ago relatives in the old country. I don’t do prose very often, but I do hope you enjoy this, offered with all my Shanty Irish heart. Peace, Amy
Long Ago and Far Away (the soil from which I spring)
Long ago, our ancestors dwelt far away, in a harsh land. Soil so rocky, for every shovel that dug in, two stones came out, and the walls and cottages were built with these. What was a hindrance became a treasure.
Men and tall enough boys tilled the landlords’ fields or worked the mines. Hardship was their way of life; the flintiest labor therefore must be rewarded in a friendly, communal atmosphere. Those who had pushed a plow or descended into the pitch black nether to dig for coal gathered nightly at the public meeting house, which was meant for all meetings pertaining to village life, but mostly beloved for its bar. Every village had a “pub,” as well as a church or two (the second being Anglican, depending on how England’s will held sway in town).
Soon, a tankard was banged on the bar and silence would come over them like a fog. A singer – Lord, you cannot toss a pebble in all of Eire without hitting a fine tenor! Someone offered a song. The verse was his to sing, and all voices joined in on the chorus. Some were mournful, in minor key, recalling a death or the loss of a plot of land, such as “Four Fields.” Others were rollicking, bawdy reels sung so loud they’d bring on the need for “just one more drink, and then I’ll see the missus.”
Meanwhile, the lady of the house, having milked the cow, drawn water from the well for washing faces of little ones, cleaning clothes, and scrubbing floors on her knees; having beaten blankets, spanked a naughty one or cupped another’s face in her palm, chopped wood for the fireplace to keep the house warm and roast the meat, stoked the stove for baking and invited the widow over to gossip over a cup of tea; having worked miracles with the potatoes yet again, fed the children, told them a story before prayers and kisses… After all this, she’d sit in her rocking chair, waiting for her man to stumble in, doff his hat, and eat his portion.
Then it was up the stairs together and, should the drink not have deprived him of his manhood, they would have a go at making another baby. As for how that happens, my dears, well, that would be a story for another day…
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Also at my poetic pub, Poets United, for their Poetry Pantry!
For Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, ancestry, oral tradition
Moving Day, circa 1933
I was entranced by my mother’s stories – all about the dilemmas of the 30s, the Great Depression. Never reluctant was she to retell the travails of Little Charlotte On The Ice Floes:
Come the end of the month, Mom would murmur about rent money. Dad answered by mapping out the next dwelling. Late that night, my senses on high alert for footsteps in the stairwell, I was once again loaded by like a burro: Mom’s shedding fox pelt over all the clothes I could manage to put on. Frying pan in one hand, big can of lard in the other, more cans stuffed under my arms, and a colander for a hat.
Our family would disappear monthly into the dense fog or deep snow or sweltering summer Iowa night, carrying our weary, cumbersome life like a sad caravan. The stray mongrel, Tilly, toddled behind, tail between her legs – even she reflected the shame of poverty.
Dad would eventually stop our mule train to light a Lucky, smoke tailing skyward, ashes flicked onto the cement. He’d whistle. Mom would sigh. My big brother, Tommy, never complained about handling three satchels, as long as his beloved sax could be strapped to his back.
I’d struggle to keep up, a three-foot Five and Dime housewares department wrapped in cheap fur. So to answer your question, Amer…
…that’s why I never had a doll. Who would’ve carried the frypan?
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil, photo by the inimitable Dorothea Lange
For The Sunday Whirl: Cement, Cumberson, Answer, Reluctant, Murmur, Senses, Dense, Pelt, Smoke, Map, Entranced, Stray
Also at Poetic Asides, for the Poetry Pantry.
First, continued apology for not answering your comments on recent posts. Doing my best to catch up, so don’t give up on me, OK? This is a dark take on the Sunday Whirl prompt; wordle is listed below. Thanks, and peace, Amy
The Ward and Me
Shadowy business, this
Nestled in the crook of a couch
for another shrink rap
My balance, shaky at best
This ward filled with walking open sores
Memories ooze from their psychic wounds
The runoff seeps up the floorboards
leaving smudgy, evil footprints
Traces of ghosts linger, follow us inmates:
Xeroxed Marleys, hovering phantoms whispering
what happened back when
back then
Grandma Blanche was a frequent flier,
restless for answers to
bizarre questions that made Grandpa cringe
and then commit her
They’d strap her down
They’d scorched her tortured brain
A sick science fair
I know that old game, how they
sucked the fun out of her
so I play along
I’m afraid but don’t let it show
I whistle a happy tune
This will all be over soon
I think
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For The Sunday Whirl: Straps, Balance, Sores, Ghosts, Smudgy, Bizarre, Scorched, Shadowy, Restless, Nestled, Whistle, Know, Seeps. And, as always, to be found in the right column of my poetic kith and kin, Poets United.
Silken Softness
My mom, Charlotte,
grew up in Iowa.
Council Bluffs, to be exact.
Recession, then Depression
brought the town to its knees,
at least until corn season.
Mom said Grandma Blanche
could make anything
from corn in a skillet:
Corn cakes, corn pone,
corn bread, but the best was
corn alone.
In the field, the poor were
allowed to glean from
Old Man Jones’ field.
Yanking from stalks,
home to shuck the ears.
Corn silk was, for Charlotte,
a miracle, a treasure. She said,
“I hope someday my wedding dress
will be as soft as this corn silk.”
Blanche marveled at
how her girl could always
make magic from simple things.
It’s a Laughlin tradition,
passed from Blanche to Charlotte,
from Charlotte to lucky me.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Poets United, my favorite site, asked for food-inspired, home-grown tales. Can’t get more “down home” than this!
Sharp Little Pencil 