The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 11/30/09 (warning: graphic subject)

[BlueIris]

"That Winter"

In Chicago near the lake, on the North Shore,
your shotgun apartment has a sun room
where you indulge in a cheap
chaise lounge--
and read Of Human Bondage--
There is a window in the living room proper
cracked open so you
Persian cat can go outside.
You are on the first floor and upstairs
a loud-mouthed southern woman
whose husband is away
all week on business trips
has brought her maid
up from Georgia
to do the work and take care of the baby.
"O lord," the southern woman says,
"He wants it spotless on the weekend--"
The maid, who has
smooth brown skin,
is not allowed to sit on the toilet
but she feeds the kid
and changes the dirty diapers.
She washes the dishes,
she cooks the southern meals,
she irons the sheets for the mahogany bed.
The southern woman shouts
at her in a southern drawl,
"Junie, don't sit on that chair
you'll bust it."
The southern woman is at
loose ends for five days
waiting for him to come in.
"It's like a honeymoon,
honey," she says--
"When he grabs me,
whooee."
She invites you up and makes
sure you understand
the fine points of being a white woman.
"I can't let her live
here--not in Chicago.
I made her go out
and get herself a room.
She's seventeen.
She bellered and blubbered.
Now I don't know
what she's trackin' in
from men."
It is winter. The ice
stacks up around the
retaining wall--
the lake slaps over
the park benches,
blocks of ice green with algae.
You are getting your mail secretly at a postal box
because your lover is in the Aleutians.
It's during the war and
your disgusting husband
works at an oil refinery
on the South Side.
Up there in the Aleutians
they are knocking the gold
teeth out of the dead Japanese.
One construction worker
has a skin bag and fifty
gold-filled teeth.
He pours them out at
night in his Quonset hut.
He brags about bashing their faces in.
One day you are fooling
around in a downtown music store
waiting for the war to end.
You let a strange teenage boy
talk you into going
home with him.
He lives alone in a basement behind a
square of buildings.
He shows you his knife collection
and talks obsessively about Raskolnikov--suddenly
your genes want to live
and you pull away
and get out of there.
It is almost dusk.
You run until you find the boulevard
sluggish with the 1943 traffic.
You know by now there
isn't much to live for
except to spite Hitler--
the war is so lurid
that everything else is dull.

--Ruth Stone

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. bkmrkng for later

can not deal with graphic content right now. will read later. thanks for posting something.

[BlueIris]

2. Okay. Well, that's what the warnings are for. nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear BlueIris...

Yeah, it is graphic. And very good...

So much sadness and terror...

Plus things hidden.

Thank you.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. nicely told

thanks.