Gimmesanity

It’s that time of the year.

FACE POEM

Your craggy mountain goat face.
Your mole-ridden, whiskered, stumpy fish of a face. Face
I turn to, face I trust, face I trace with grateful fingertips,
jaw like a hinge, washboard forehead, the deep scar a gnarl
along the scritch of your chin.
Your steep, crumbling cliff of a face.
Your U-Haul, bulldozer, crane of a face. Face worthy
of a thousand dollar bill, a thickly poured, stamped, minted
and excavated coin. Your mile-high billboard of a face looming
up from the pillow of sighs.
Your used car lot of a face, the bumpers
and sprung hoods and headlights of your eyes, your DieHard
battery of a face, the pulpy pith of it, the flare and slur and flange
of your ears, the subterranean up-thrust ridge of your nose.
Your many-planed, light-catching, shadow-etched face.
Your sallow, sun-wracked, jowl-hung face. Eye flash
in flesh folds, gunnel rope and upper lip storm on the high seas
thrash of a face. Your been-there, done-that, anything-goes face.
Luck-of-the-draw fabulous four clubs five knuckled slug
of a face. Toss of the dice face.

- Dorianne Laux

Things here have been a bit crazy since getting back from Colombia. I returned to find out that my mom had been admitted to the hospital to get her gallbladder taken out (it’s what all the cool kids are doing, dontcha’ know?) She’s fine now, but it was a bit rough seeing my mami in pain. That woman is a tough cookie, and I’ve never seen her actually writhe in pain before. = (

Basically, I got off the plane late last Thursday, got home around 2:30 AM, got about 4 hours of sleep, went to visit my Monkey, then spent the following few days shuttling between the hospital to keep mami company and going home to watch after the Monkey.

Classes started for me this week, too. Oy.

Things are finally starting to feel like they’re calming down, though. And, fittingly so, too, because today is Silent Poetry Reading to celebrate the Feast of Brigid. It’s a good excuse to sit for a moment, take in some brain food, and enjoy the moment of tranquility.

My choice this year is a song originally written by Ned Jones and Hoagy Carmichael. Sung by Norah Jones, it’s one of my favorite songs.

Maiden Name

Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.

Now it’s a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you’re past and gone,

It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.

– Philip Larkin