Leaving the Hospital
I am climbing the golden stairway of my hair
to the sweet hereafter
a flute is playing and I wonder if it is real
music of heaven and I am deceased
my legs somewhat numb
but no, I see the flautist in his tuxedo
I half expect him to have donkey ears
but he does not, so he is really here
my companion assures me of his reality
and the reality of the music
and that in fact I am alive
and that the baby in the car-seat
is our own baby with her thin patch
of red hair and her white knit bonnet
looking like a child of another era
an error of the anachronism the car-seat
and the shiny white hospital lobby floor
The flautist plays his Caliendo concerto
number whatever
inspired by Corot's gypsy painting
I will lay in the night later
with no guitar
only the baby and her face
pale as a moon
against my pale as moon breast
Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 11/5/2009
]]>Her Auburn Spiral Staircase
I have waited
for birch-wood fingers
to unclasp taciturn bun
and auburn steps to fall
loose with flame-fish
swimming the dull light
of a dirty-shaded lamp
where she sits
brush clutched in hand
torturing her scalp
with one hundred strokes
till hair shines
her eyes narrow to jade slits
caught in last light
of day’s fiery end
I am left wondering
if her hair was something
that needed
to be tamed
to become the spiral staircase
to the Hagia Sophia
of her domed forehead
Lucy Simpson
Seattle
2/25/2006, revised 10/2009
]]>My Moses
Big Jack and his walking stick
live on the ridge. Navajo
orphan kids dance for him,
bobcat urine's in the weeds,
the shotgun barrel's up his sleeve,
a Persian coin is on the wind.
The Chinese Mountains smell the moon
and arch their backs. I tell him, Jack,
there's times I wish I was living in
canvas France, the old west,
a picture book, the Sea of
Tranquility, or even in
the den near the hot spring.
He says, kid, to hell with
phantom limbs; spring is a verb
a wish is a wash, a walking stick
is a gottdam wing.
Wendy Videlock
Soft Spots
They're worse than weak links
in chains, which we can blame
on blacksmiths' fire, and chinks
in armor, made by rain
of arrows. Soft spots,
those parts of us that bruise,
prove we're fruit that rots
as hourglasses ooze.
But I've a spot spot for,
a phrase we tend to whisper,
is what we say before
we name our guilty pleasure--
the damper pedal that pounds
sonatas into mush
the critic Ezra Pound
would call, with a shudder, slush.
Jason Guriel
Twittering
The spent rocket shuddered and sped toward the blue world below.
The people were twittering on the sidewalk.
The birds in the trees were also twittering
When the debris crackled and hissed in the sky
the birds stopped twittering and flew off
The people looked up and then back to their cell phones and kept twittering
but now they had something new to share.
A record store clerk on break described the plummeting metal
like the tongues of flame above the apostles' heads.
He was very proud of this line.
He started to think he'd write a best-seller one of these days
if he could find the time.
A little man made mockery of the "fish-mouthed" people around him
He tapped a descriptions of them all:
of the balding man in shorts and knee-high socks
and the young woman with the black knee-high socks and just that little bit of
holy tan skin, who was also looking up at the sky
and then back to her phone
She was trying to tie it all into the “buddhistic acceptance,"
that she had learned in Eastern Philosophy Class
under Professor Kreely, a woman who always sat too close
and hitched up her skirt, revealing the two perfect white globes her knees
Kreely had lost a son to suicide.
There was only one in the crowd, an old man,
who hobbled very slowly out of the way.
pushing a stroller with a wailing infant.
He stood on the corner and railed at the group
to come to safety. He screamed. He tore his
yellow-white beard.
The baby also screamed, till it was red as coral.
A woman wrote that his hair was like
pissed-on snow and thought she should
write poetry someday and try to publish it
do something other than tap into her little box
and receive the affirmation she so longed for.
Lucy Simpson 10/31/2009, Seattle
]]>I often feel, of late, that I am two places at once, as I flit about the house cleaning, cooking and making social arrangements for my children. Home-schooling this year really takes all of me and I have had very little left over. I was considering nursing school etc. I realized we have to live with less materially, because my autism-spectrum son needs me so much. Regular schools eat him up. We have tried it. We have come up to speed in reading and math. Both things his first teacher said would not be possible. I have watched him obsessively create art and engineering projects. It seems like I have a brilliant child on my hand, rather than one "at the level of a baby." His last special ed teacher said he was like a baby. It was then I realized that the "village idiot" could not possibly understand Joseph. We have been home-schooling since last December with it currently heating up with anatomy and social engagements. Bridget wants to go to school, so I may put her in pre-school. The girl is writing, reading some and playing princesses any chance she gets. I am always a blue-skinned princess from another planet, a persona since childhood.
The book of fairytale poems by me and fabulous art by Katherine Sanderson is still in layout. My husband insists on having his name in the book and is doing a wonderful, if slow job at doing it right. I went through it the other night and it was like reconnecting with an old friend. I will keep you all posted.
I try to divide my time equally between writing, reading, critiquing, sculpting and photography, but I have found myself sculpting a lot lately. I have also met a wonderful sculpting buddy. It is so nice to sit down with another woman and create and talk. Knitters and quilters often feel this connection. A sculpture takes a commitment of days. It is not like a photograph or a poem that can sit on a computer. Leave a sculpture too long and you have a big expensive paperweight. I bet those would sell on Etsy.
I now have an Etsy store with framed photographs and clay masks. It ain't high art and it feels weird selling creations, but I have too many of them. I hang something up and then want to make way for the new art. If you want to check out my online store, the addy is http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=8348606 or www.luciditywalking.etsy.com.
I also feel an urge to get back to my novel, since a scene came to me the other day. It is a story that takes place in 1905 and 2005. It is a story of pregnancy and ghosts.
Off to plan the boy's and girl's lessons for the day. Thanks to my friends and neighbors for your continuing kindness and inspiration. I have enjoyed Kris' photography, Renee's poetry, Lavender's photography, Candy's photography, Emjay's essays and photos, Corbin's photos, Charmagne's art and Aubrey's brilliant essays. I have enjoyed much more and hope to reconnect with the art and literature on Vox in a few days time.
Lucy, whose daughter, Bridey, is dressed as a fairy princess
The Museum of Asian Art and the Greenhouse
I walk out of shadows
I walk out of light
in the valley of tumescent flowers
In the museum of piebald heirlooms
the checkered past sighs
in the silk kimonos
of straight-backed okusans
Outside the sun sets
through the portal
of a bronze sculpture
fraying at the seams
of petunias in an urn
beating the bronze doors
striking the green house
tiny peens of light
The greenhouse settles down
for the night
White waves of mums
close slightly inward
to introversion
and cacti sing the water
in their flesh
wiggle their thorns
ever so slightly
and I sleep in my bed
in a kimono's sigh
with white crested waves
like thousands of mums
curling in the blue
in ship of my skull
Lucy Simpson, October, 2009, Seattle
]]>
ragged small world
through a lens
a torn
leaf
a frayed seam
a tattered petal
a wizened carrot
the stain
on the blanched
sky
through a lens
a killer
can be lavender
ovals swimming
deadly bacteria
in a sea
I am home to millions
I feed millions
I am a planet
of tiny mites
and bacteria
in soft motion
Lucy Simpson, October, 2009, Seattle
Seeing Helga at the Museum
(for Andrew Wyeth)
In the valley of flickering lights
dancing – fireflies – tumbleweed of the sky
drift among gas nebula – angel-tossed
Cable cars – like horned beast pass by
in the city of lights and fog –
Lusty Lady – All Clothing 100% off –
neon-glows the sign – my son has found
a numerical pattern in the blinks
We are here to see Wyeth's Lady
clothed and unclothed – Helga in her incarnations
The waiter wears Groucho Marx eyebrows and glasses
Hear the sound of over fifty spoons and forks
the chatter of a crowd – my children's voices
We saw Helga floating on crushed velvet –
a black night sea
Little fish of light swam her body tide-pools
Her knees were raw – red from the winter
We saw her in her Austrian cape coat
standing for hours in the snow
We saw her with her braids – the nape of her neck naked
where spine joins brain in – Halleluja –
a white triangle exposed – holy peephole
We saw her smile lines and knew she smiled often
her blue eyes – like a slip of horizon over wild grass
and her hair – you could feel it – the oils – the texture
the softness – the neatness in those braids
We went home in dark and rain
the autumn trees lit our path
every leaf
a flame
in a lantern
Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 10/15/2009
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