The Forbidden stitch

Sujata Bhatt Muliebrity
Autumn Gardening is a great story which fills survivors with a sense of purpose. It is interesting to see how the sentences work too, with the physical actuations of the character punctuated by the happenings in the emotional landscape.
Compare Khalil's lines in To rise above with Blake's Chminey Sweeper. I came across this Blake poem in Morning,Noon and Night by Arnold Weinstein
picture bride

Carol Bly

I came across Carol Bly's 'My Dear Republican Mother' essay in 'From Daughters to Mothers book.
Reading it I felt thatthis is the kind of work, editors are talking of when they talk about work with layers in it. While she is writing about the mother she knew for the first 12 years of her life, its also about the times then, the presence or lack of psychological attitudes. At the language level, she translates the behavior of people then into the terms of psychology that we use now to recognise them.

Gloria Gervitz
Milagro in from From Shejarit.

Totems fusing together
on poetry

Tarahumara
Chicha
pinole
peyote
Baldachin
Sudarium
Monstrance
Crepitation
Bambina - girl
Bambino -little boy

The tricks pictures play

When I saw a thumbnail of this picture, I recognised the figure of a man and when itwent with the words..'In this novel an assimilated Australian Jew chooses a vicious, and symbolic, husband.' then I corrected myself of the main character and a close look reveals the larger figure of a woman.

I am looking for the saddest thing, which once found
will never be lost again, because it will follow me
- Seductive sadness winks at me

In I called, called to the lashing waves, the end ties with the beginning.

Oscar Hahn's poem 'Places are neither here no there' on wishing hard. In 'The center of the bedroom', 'something' that takes a form but has been present even before identified as something - 'the sad snow this year's dirty snow'.

Antidote against medicine

As the water boils with bitter pink tonic
on a kerosene wick stove
dad cuts the apple
so the sweet apple
can leave a good taste

I direct a pill into my
mouth followed by a waterfall
A friend says its easier
for the pill to go down
after you store some water
in the mouth

Dissolved

A Mom puts a
disk shaped tablet
in a spoon of milk

the bitter medicine
is now
ready to be evaded
by an unwilling baby
oscillating the mouth
from side to side

Leapboard:
Lihn began to break it up with a spoon
Because I wrote by Enrique Lihn
Archilocus

Handy kerchief

A Handkerchief dropped
from a window onto
the seat can
hold your place
A handkerchief can
be knotted to hold
apples that you
didnt plan on buying
until your eyes fell
on them or tomatoes
that zing up your
curry

on a day other than
sunday when you are
out without a grocery bag.

Leapboard:
My whole sea is white scarves/kerchiefs

Handkerchiefs of air are slowly being spun
Jaime Sabines, With Nerves trailing poem

My first rainbow cloud

Driving west in the evening
a cloud has two colors of a
rainbow

May be its the sun light
But the sun is on the left

When I rushed home to take a picture
it was no longer there

In the morning I woke
up thinking its rain
it must be the sprinklers

Antigone poem by Claribel Alegria
Creon and Polyneices.

Blinding mirror

Venetian mirrors made of plate glass date back to 16th century.

Not so complex Bell jar

He lives in a bell jar called Art
or Pleasure or Science
The Tunnel

In the days of childhood
cream colored cotton candy
was sold in a bell jar

As I enter

through the gate
for lunch
a yellow butterfly
wades
through the air
of afternoon

courtesy:
"It will be", they said, " a sad,sad time
in which butterflies will be gathered" from The Calabash tree

Amen to butterflies

A crib

on layaway
at a Baby Depot.

The Foremost Good Fortune

The Foremost Good Fortune by Susan Conley

The foremost good fortune
Laowai
pole position

Anish Kapoor in China.

I am reading running away to home where author Jennifer Wilson with her family goes to her Croatian ancestral village to find her roots. I picked this 'The Foremost Good Fortune' book by Susan so I could compare.

Language is a big impediment in the new country in communicating yourself. Both families get care packages from grandparents back home for the displaced grandkids.



Puer tea

The author dines at local restaurants and involves herself in activities - sweater party, bag purchasing, that get her to interact more with the adopted country. From the people she meets everyday - a maid at house, a chaffeur, gym trainer, yoga teacher she learns much about the Chinese culture. As a family, she travels to different places and learns about the regions.

By making us see how her kids process her having cancer, she shows us a filigree of emotions around the cancer victims and family.

The author is not clueless in China as her husband has been there before and can speak the language. The children assimilate faster into the new culture with their father making it fun for them to learn the language. In distress when a child has to dissuade the maid from catching a pigeon outside their window, he says 'bu yao'.. not wanted.

The author compares her cancer to all situations she cant get a handle on.

Running Away to Home: Our Family's Journey to Croatia in Search of Who We Are, Where We Came From, and What Really Matters