Risa Denenberg

Everyone wants to remind me that it’s mothers’ day –a day that clearly holds Hallmark irrelevance while calling forth complex emotional responses. The grammatical confusion alone is enough to make me cringe; let’s see, is it “Mother’s Day”, “Mothers’ Day” or “Mothers Day”? Funny, or not so much, but when I hear the word “mothers” my first thought is of Frank Zappa, followed closely by the slur M-F’er.

Like many women who call themselves, or are called by others, mother, I have a lot of baggage to unload (or suppress) when I consider my personal history. So I try not to go there on a day prescribed by a consumer notion. But ignoring hasn’t worked today. I just read a version of the first “celebration” of mother’s day which was the brainchild of one Anna Jarvis, whose mother was a community health activist (Yay for that! ).  Apparently she came to despise the national holiday. Her story below is sad, but edifying.

Jarvis died in a sanitarium in 1948. The holiday she created lives on.
Today, more people purchase flowers and plants for Mother's Day than 
for any other holiday except Christmas/Hanukkah. This year alone, Americans 
will spend $23.1 billion on the holiday. And most of that money will be 
spent on jewelry: $4.6 billion.

So. I have difficult memories of both having and being a mother.  I learned to love my mother late in her life, and am grateful that we managed to become close before her death. I lost custody of my son when he was barely five; yet he is and always has been my greatest joy. So whoever you are, whatever you are feeling on this day, be gentle and kind. Not everyone has the same associations with this day.  I share this, but only for myself.

In which my brother goes to her grave and I shed a tear

My brother goes to the grave
site and says farewell
to the engraving on the rock.

I live far away and today
the buttress crumbles and I miss my mother
for the first time.

I don’t know why he does it
knowing and not knowing him so well
is all I have to go on.

Debt, veneration, relief, it’s all
so mixed, right? Maybe in his melancholy
he hoards an image of our family,

but I feel misplaced today, weepy
as if disowned, shorn from that photo
not like me at all, the cold unfeeling

bitch of me, knowing and not knowing
myself so well, with no urge to go on
after so many years.

Forebear 

Even as she rejoins perfunctorily when you query,
–How is school? or Do you have a boyfriend? —
she scoffs at your drab flabbiness, the discolorations
of craggy cheeks, the lag-behind. She mocks as you press
palms into the plague of lumbago.

She forgets uncounted times when she extended
toddler arms, palm facing palm, thumbs up
in the universal salute: Pick me up! And you did,
carrying her even though she was already a big girl
who could walk on her own.

Just as you have forgotten how you sucked dry
your mother’s tits until they hung like
two braids across her chest. How you raced
as far as your legs would bear.

We do not tread nimbly upon the back of time,
we trample its soft belly.

Published at SoundZine, 2010

On Friday, I was interviewed on the local Port Townsend radio station, KPTZ, by Phil Andrus,the wonderful host of a weekly arts show called Tossed Salad.  The studio is small and when you exchange places with the prior guest, which may be a group of 4 or more musicians and their various instruments, you brush against them to settle into the recording booth. Intimate and friendly, Phil pressed me with questions about faith, what did I mean by this term, how was I using it in the several poems I read during our interview. It’s so enlightening to discover what someone reading the work makes of it. It’s a little frightening, too, the sense of letting go of the poems to float into the realm of someone else’s thought bubbles. You send your kid off to college and hope he does well without your hand-holding.

Yesterday, Saturday, I read from ‘slight faith’ along with two fine regional poets, Susan Rich and Susan Landgraf, at Imprint Books, also in Port Townsend, owned and exquisitely run by Anna and Peter Quinn. I am so thankful and just can’t fully express what gracious hosts they are.  The audience was so engaged and people I’ve never met even bought my book! Of course we made our way to Elevated Ice Cream afterwards, where I had my favorite flavor, cardamom.

Port Townsend is only about 30 miles from my home and to be able to have such a kind reception for my book in my own backyard was beyond fabulous. ‘slight faith’ (MoonPath Press), just released, seems to have gotten a fine send-off. I hope it does well in this world-full of books.

Meanwhile, at home on Sunday morning, with the screen-door open, birds squawking and chirping, and some sunlight streaming (finally!), Bo is crying . . . . to go out. Poor guy has to mew at the door while I have coffee on the porch. 

Consolation

Imagine the crawl from sight to sightlessness.
Even in dreams you wear bifocals.

Imagine not knowing your grandson’s name, or being
lost in a word-salad thicket of sinister trees.

Imagine lying on your death bed, palms cupped
in a mudra of surrender. And among dementia,

going blind, and dying, you pray death will come first.
This is how you curl into your solace, bidding its shell

to your mollusk, storm of sea blowing in your ear,
inexpressible pain expressed sotto voce.

from “slight faith” (MoonPath Press, 2018)

I slipped in the tub on Saturday morning. I was in Seattle attending a 2-day medical meeting, and spent Friday night at a hotel. As I stepped into the tub for a shower, the bath mat slid out from underfoot, and I slid headfirst into the wall. I have a multicolored bruise at my forehead, that has leaked into the left eyelid. I’ve made two artsy photos of the stigmata so far. And wrote this poem. 

A Slip

I was reminded sharply
of danger, of throbbing, of sudden
death. Here is a lavender bruise,
here, a tender egg-bump on my fore-
head. At sixteen, I ran smack
into a concrete wall, chased
down the hall by my brother.
Just kids then. I have worn the years
of depression from that skull dent
with aplomb. Today, it’s nausea
and vertigo. A concussion? Today
I have curtly become an old lady. One
who slips. One who slips in the shower.

If it rains when I’m thirsty, am I the orchard?

On the other side of glass it’s raining.
Glass is made of silicon. Rain is H₂O.
I think of two hydrogen atoms swaddling
the lone oxygen, how they cleave through
rain, ice, clouds. Or split into lone atoms,
singlet oxygens linking arms in air, or turning
bigamous with carbon: CO2, voila!

Is this downpour meant for me? The progeny
of quake and earth is great upheaval,
subduction plates, solid earth torn asunder.
Through hazy lens, I see nothing essential
or enduring. I obsess over maps, the enormous
ring of fire that surrounds us, a locus, a spit
of land, a catastrophe in slow-mo.

Memories dissolve in smog, mind maps shuffle
and tangle, brain cells lose ribosomes
and centrioles. Sucking my thumb at 8, in bed,
lights out, I thought, Where is God? What
I want to know now is: Exactly where am I?
I think about my childhood, my brother,
the playground, the uncle who . . .

. . . or that day with high school friends when
we skipped class, stood bundled tight, a yoked
circle in snow, unseen, fragrant joint passed
one to one. I wonder if the edge of the universe
will ever catch up with creation. An atom is endless
until split. All unions are ultimately annulled.

Outside, abundant fog obscures Port Townsend
to the east, erasing it. The round earth keeps
her secrets close to her crusty chest.

—from this month’s NaPoMo

I’ve kept my pledge for National Poetry Month – so far – I have written a poem-a-day, and I’ve purchased, borrowed, or swapped a book-a-day.

Among the books sitting at my desk and bedside include these. Of course, it will take more than an April to read all of them. I’ll post about another bunch next Sunday.

You Should Have Told Me That We Have Nothing Left. Jessie Tu  (Vagabond Press). I met Jessie at a writers’ workshop near Atlantic City, NJ, this January. She is from Australia, but studying in the US. I haven’t made a friend so easily in a long while. We walked the boardwalk on a cold Winter morning, ate cheese fries, and talked our hearts out.

I forgot
to

bring in the
ducks.

They froze
to death

on a Sunday
morning, right

before the
snow storm. 

I was grateful
to God, for

saving them
the agony
of my own
grey loneliness.

Speaking of ducks, here are a few lines from “Duck Hunting” in PIER, Janine Oshiro (Alice James Books, 2011), winner of the 2010 Kundiman Poetry Prize). 

The hunter he lives in the house beyond the trees. He lives in that
corner. Believe me. It is dark, and darkly

seen, the duck is falling.

I bought Lesley Wheeler‘s Book, Radioland, (Barrow Street, 2015) after following her blogs on the Poetry Blog Revival.

https://lesleywheeler.org/

I am enjoying her leaps and musicality. This one, called Abortion Radio, struck a nerve.

                                         I felt
 
something pass, I caught it, my baby. Tiny
hands, skin translucent. every stump resembles
a deer that's poised to leap. My friend just hit
a doe last night, driving home from a conference,
having missed her son's bedtime for three
nights running. Her first thought: I killed a baby. 

Finally, for today, these words from Elegy Owed, Bob Hicok (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). I’ve not read Hicok before, but I’m very glad to be reading this book now. These lines are from “The days are getting longer” which speaks to me not only because the days are in fact getting longer and my melancholy has lifted, slightly.

She asked


the other day how my day was,
I told her, she asked again,
as if I hadn't answered
or slept in the rumpus-room
of her womb. Do you ever look
at a crust of bread and wonder
if that's God, if the quiet
that lives there is the same hush
we become? I never do too,
but is it, and why are we dragging

Charoset and Bitter Herbs

An amalgam of ground pecans, chopped apples,
red wine, and nutmeg
primes us to recall the taste of mortar— 

the timeworn saga of servitude and how despots’
sovereignties always hinge on slavery.
But instead, it is sweet as honey

It can be hard to explain exactly why I love him so much. But I don’t have to. I know you understand. Bo is the most affectionate cat I’ve ever had, so it would be hard not to adore him. He likes to climb up on my shoulder and let me hold him like a newborn. Yesterday I told him the story of Jezebel, and he listened attentively, especially to the part when I said,  I think I love you even more. As a youngster, Jezebel was known for boxing with me and walking across the room on her hind legs. This morning Bo, who is perilously knock-kneed, danced for about 10 seconds on his hinds. Tell me cats don’t know when we’re talking to them!

I put Jezzie down when I was living in Seattle and she was 19. The five years between Jezebel and Bo were lonely ones.

Jezebel

I’ve not replaced Jezebel,
who died in my arms
with a needle in her paw

years ago. On this dismal
wintry day, shag of snow
in the yard, I’m on my own.

As my last lover shut
the door, she warned,
You’ll die pet-less and unwed.

Now I live like a nun
who’s slept too many nights
in a habit of coarse cloth.

I am not at risk

Today I am not at risk.
No one touches me now. It is my own choice. Or is it?
Was I ever at risk?
If you count the times I shot meth.
If you count all of the unprotected sex I had with guys when I was living with my             girlfriend but trying to get pregnant.
If you count all of the times I started IVs in the emergency room without wearing gloves.
If you count the six years I provided GYN care to HIV-positive women in the South Bronx.
If you count the time I got chlamydia in my eyes, since gloves don’t protect eyes.
Gloves only give the illusion of protection.
If you count all my losses, I am at risk.
I am at risk as long as there is an epidemic.
As long as people give and take viruses through acts of love or sex or healthcare or IVDU or violence.
We live in a world of illusions when we deny risk.
I live in this world.

I am at risk.

Published on 4/4/18 at HIV Here and Now-NaHIVPoWrMo