Hi Marilyn,
I'm liking reading this. Each time I've read it through I've discovered
more. (Do sitar's unduluate? I guess they have volume pedals, but I seem to
remember them trilling more than anything else...)
And if you hadn't mentioned that she'd had regrets to be wrested away from I
don't think they would have been important to the mood she's found herself
in (are they important to mention?)
I'm relaxing through each image and the last line... "survive the ragged
journey" makes me want to fling an arm straight into the air and say
"Yesssss!"
Bob
>From: Marilyn Injeyan <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: new poem: Relics
>Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 19:47:41 EST
>
> Relics
>
> Forty years' passage is blurred
> in spiraling sage, a trio of jade
> elephants on paisley, drums
> and sitar's undulation that fills
> her like a hope chest.
>
> A giant soap bubble rainbows,
> rises, encompasses. The woman's
> dowry of lyrics carried from hilltop
> to hilltop mothers light intruding
> on shadows to wrest her away
> from regrets.
>
> She smoothes Vaseline on chapped
> lips, tongues the texture, strokes
> two lap cats curled in Yin and Yang
> and smiles at a third whose tail drapes
> in a coma over the speaker.
>
> She's taken back to a red turtleneck
> worn while pushing a stroller up
> and down Broadway in Oakland,
> taken back to Esmeralda Loved
> the Moonlight, yellow Tonka trucks,
> Boogie Boards, terrariums and bunk
> beds patterned with cowboys and Indians.
>
> It's as though she clapped her hands
> at twenty and whisssh, was transformed
> to sixty, where elephants, paisley, Ravi
> and sage still season the room, connect
> the years, survive the ragged journey.
>
>
> Marilyn Injeyan
> December 7, 2002
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