Carmen Mason

First Snow

by

by Carmen Mason

There’s a slight scent of first
snow coming through the woods
behind my house where years ago
I walked right after moving there
and found streams of celluloid
from the closed up movie house
tangled in the ragged brush
knotted round the rigid trunks and
holding some up to the icy sun I saw
frame after frame of naked women, men
little children wretched, posed
smeared now
with leaves and mud

days later I returned to find
glistening sheets of snow untouched
but for the V’s of tiny birds
frozen amorphous drifts bedazzling
some encircling the bases of the trees
cloaking all that lay beneath
as if these shrouds and
firm white collars of frost might
benumb and petrify, then turn
the world back to itself
when it was new

I have always written poetry and prose as meditation and to make some sense of things.
They are a way to duel and dance with love and fear, joy and discovery.

Loti

by

by Carmen Mason

Miss Benita Kroll, an early survivor of the raging blows from an initially beguiling but soon thankless husband, taught fourth grade at Boothbay Elementary her whole life. Her mother, Emerald Baxter (jewel-named but quite plain) begged her to flee to a new town, but she decided to stay put.

Never to be fooled by appearances again, Miss Kroll sized up her students in about five days: who the sheep, who the sheepdogs, who the wolves and who the stallion (never more than one) to finally reveal itself and canter deftly through, with grace and restraint to June.

At first Miss Kroll thought Loti sheep-like, unassuming, somewhat withdrawn or perhaps just reticent, like one with a secret treasured rather than shameful. She was skinny and wore home-made dresses (Miss Kroll could tell by the original styles, unusual fabrics and buttons and hand-stitched hems) and her brown hair was long and loose and looked home-cut, probably with a kitchen scissor or a razor. She was alert, articulate when called upon and she wrote about books and dreams, beetles and mica schist, and  solitary walks through the oval gardens near her project (the only one in Boothbay). And Freddy and Peter, the two most handsome boys (one a wolf, the other a sheepdog) were in love with her, probably because she was feminine and gentle-voiced yet rode her bike to school, played all the rough games (but as if she were all alone in them), her knees forever bandaged or scabbed over. Her eyes were hazel-green and they looked long and deep at things but not, Miss Kroll incorrectly assessed, at people.

What convinced Miss Kroll that Loti was the stallion – the one whose promise would flower by Spring if not sooner- was the prescient and life-changing act Loti performed one day while on a school trip to the zoo.

As Miss Kroll and her class wandered past the caged lions, pacing and listing back and forth, back and forth, Loti didn’t stop, taunt, laugh or throw peanuts at them as her class mates were doing, smug in their safe, railed off distance. Instead she waved regretfully at the lions, then walked quickly ahead, noticing the rare chipmunks and the bright colored birds flying free. Then, while she still heard her teacher’s calm yet stern reprimands to the class, Loti heard another voice, a loud and piercing harangue and looked ahead to a small bridge arched across a stagnant stream leading to the aviary. A towering woman, arms flailing, was glaring down at a small girl in a stroller. The child, chocolate ice cream dribbling down her chin onto her bright pink sweater, her hands dripping, her ice cream cone now smashed on the overpass, looked up, her face looking lost and afraid. A sweet small child, Loti uttered inside.  Lost and afraid.

“I told you, I told you but do you ever listen?” the woman railed at the child. Then she bent down and unhooked her brown high-wedged shoe. “I’ll teach you, I’ll teach you to listen…” and she drew the shoe high up over the child.

“Oh no, oh no, you’ll stop that at once,” Loti yelled. “No way will you touch her, no way!” Then she leaped into the air and grabbed the poor shoe, then threw it far into the stream.

Miss Kroll and the classmates now surrounded this scene, but not one word or gasp could be heard. The teacher stood ready. The children stood awe-struck. The child in the stroller gently sobbed. Then the shocked woman limped to the bridge’s edge, looked toward the lost shoe, then back at the shocked girl, both seemingly aghast at what they had done. Then the woman returned and bent slowly down to the small child, now silent and still.

The speechless class crossed the bridge lead by their teacher and Loti joined them. But only a minute passed before the woman rose and turning toward them all, called out loud and clear as they receded, “I’m sorry, damn sorry. I won’t ever do that again. Don’t know what got into me – I’m so, so sorry.”

Whether Loti held memories, treasured or shameful, Miss Kroll never learned.  But she knew she’d found her stallion early that year.

 

I have always written poetry and prose as meditation and to make some sense of things.
They are a way to duel and dance with love and fear, joy and discovery.

Lattice

by

by Carmen Mason

I have been a lattice
all my life
but now the winds have ceased
the roses’ merciless thorns
all fallen,   nailing dry
rose petals beneath me
into hard ground

I beg to let me fall with them
not outlive the one
who fashioned me
whose propping and prolonging
with new wood, paint and nails
seem like a crucifixual
stand for beauty ~

it matters nothing now
my bracing of
this grave world:
He is not coming
He will never come

 

Carmen Mason has always written poetry and prose as meditation and to make some sense of things. They are a way to duel and dance with love and fear, joy and discovery.

First Snow

by

by Carmen Mason

There’s a slight scent of first
snow coming through the woods
behind my house where years ago
I walked right after moving there
and found streams of celluloid
from the closed up movie house
tangled in the ragged brush
knotted round the rigid trunks and
holding some up to the icy sun I saw
frame after frame of naked women, men
little children wretched,   posed
smeared now
with leaves and mud

days later I returned to find
glistening sheets of snow untouched
but for the V’s of tiny birds
frozen amorphous drifts bedazzling
some encircling the bases of the trees
cloaking all that lay beneath
as if these shrouds and
firm white collars of frost might
benumb and petrify, then turn
the world back to itself
when it was new

 

 

Carmen Mason has always written poetry and prose as meditation and to make some sense of things. They are a way to duel and dance with love and fear, joy and discovery.

Still Life : September 15, 2001

by

by Carmen Mason

Is that what it is
this life?
Painting on water
the center not holding
no still life anywhere?

I am glad that the
children are still
on their swings
lovers still
holding hands
tighter than yesterday

fishermen on the bridge
watch the smoke
from the towers
forgetting the line’s pull
the silver dervish
at the end of the line

Driving by the small park
I notice it’s filled with
birch trees, triumphant
warriors of blight

a bride and groom
walk to the edge
of the pier and kiss
as the merciless smoke
leaves the frame of the camera

I am aware of all
I have not seen for years
All things precious

I see everything now
and wait for the next
glimpse of subject
the registering
the arm lifting
the brush taking
its oily ink to write
to paint on water.

I have been writing prose and poetry all my life.
They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love
or loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console
and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

American Beauty

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One does not become enlightened by imagining the figures of light
but by making the darkness conscious.  ~ Carl Jung

by Carmen Mason

Oh yes
the melon roses
shot with coral edging bending
down, their scalloped shadows
(strong scented, sweet) upon my favorite
page of writing (who today? Colette
Munro, Morrison, Millay?)
The West, its burnt sienna mountains
against feathered shirt-white tufts
periwinkle skies.
Oh yes, the sea, everywhere the sea.

And home
my grandchild’s face so full of trust
perfect kissing-lips turned up awaiting me.
Two neighbors, bowed and plodding
hands entwined, their fine
white hair whisping in the reminiscent air;
the garden’s figs, hard purple not yet cracked
by the squirrels’ teeth; obscene peppers, eggplants
melons hot and squirming in their lusty skins
eggplants, peppers like women bent and yearning
lettuces, frilled and gentle green
baby slugs benignly curled in their
tight wombs. America the Beautiful.

But no:
museums filled with blushing forms
of porcelain flesh and corn silk hair.
Madonnas and baby Jesuses putty pink
anemic white ’neath radiant halos –
arcs of sacred personages;
our Founders’ high-bosomed matrons
smiling coldly or away, pinched tight
but certainly please, not Beautiful.

(When my little girl, dark and olive-eyed
first went horse-back riding
the keeper booted and bravado, moved to
the little girl behind her on the line and said
here my angel, my blond-blue-eyed beauty                                                  

jump on his back and let him
ride you to glory, little princess
then pulled the
dappled pony round my own
sweet girl
to that golden smiling one

Later, driving home she asked
what it had been all about :
Why didn’t the man take me
first on the line? Avoiding
what she meant to say
her dark face looking out, away
my brave girl perhaps fearing my reply.
It’s the ignorant people
in the unfair world my .
darling colt, my gorgeous girl.
She laughed and turned to kiss
my neck, my fury galloping away
through her thick dark hair.
What could I say to a girl of six?)

There is a black girl in that astounding book
The Bluest Eye, called out of name:
a child who dreamed of gouging
out her shadowed eyes (her mother
looking down at her, assuring
she was Ugly, Homely, UnBeautiful.)
Pecola Breedlove begged to have the bluest eyes
so she might prevail and overcome.
She goes mad instead.

But the most astounding of all:
Helen Keller, smitten with years and years
of American lore, then old, had her eyes
surgically removed (one had always bulged.
She knew without seeing
it was unsightly.)
What did she replace them with?
Liquid blue glass
globes unseeing –
American Beauties (a marble term.)
Dear old Helen, her new blue eyes flashing,
still deaf and blind to those worn-out Old Men
who served to hobble her along her azure way.

I have been writing prose and poetry all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love or loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

AMERICA: Flip Book

by

by Carmen Mason

I remember Search
for Tomorrow, Ernie Kovacs
Pinhead and Foodini
benevolent, laughing times

years later with my first child
still resting inside me
I watched the President and his
pink pill-boxed lady
spilling and scrambling
through blood   then
Ruby getting Lee Harvey
in the gut    again and
again    a flip book
repeated on every
channel through the
day and night

fifteen years later the
Amazing Wallenda weaving then
plummeting again and
again onto a San Juan taxi cab
his granddaughter    the crowds
and the city buildings staring
all day long    all night

So I could only
sit still and give him
my unimportant tears
Robert Kennedy’s son
who sat alone
forgotten in his motel room
switching stations from daddy
to daddy to daddy waving
triumphantly
waving and waving
then shaking some hands
then falling and falling
again and again
and again   the boy
watching him fall
through the day
through the night

I have been writing prose and poetry all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love or loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

Diamond Earrings

by

by Carmen Mason

“Hello, Rachel? “

“Yes? Oh, hi Mrs. McConnell…oh I know, it’s about the saucer… you saw my note I hope…”

“Yes, that’s no problem Rachel, it was a silly old plate …”

“Oh no, it was so pretty and…”

“Rachel, I’m calling about something completely different…”

“I’ll surely find a matching one this weekend. My sister lives right near one of those great ‘seconds’ places that has every dish and glass pattern…”

“IT’S NOT ABOUT THE SAUCER, RACHEL!”

Desiree quickly lowered her voice. “Please forgive me for that. It’s just that I really think I’m getting the big A. Terry calls it ‘Oldtimers,’ and I think it’s happening to me. I’m more and more forgetful these days. Anyway, do you recall I had these earrings, half moons of gold and diamonds, and I usually put them with my gold chain in the Chinese box – are you still there, Rachel?”

“Yes, yes, I’m listening. I remember, sure I remember.”

“Well, last night I came home and was rushing out again with Terry to one of those auto convention dinners and I couldn’t find them.”

“You mean the Chinese box in your bedroom or the big one in the dining room with all the silver napkin rings?”

“No, the bedroom one where I always keep them. So anyway, I wondered if you could just remember I’m calling about them now so when you come next week you’ll look around and see if maybe I put them somewhere crazy. I swear I think I’m losing it. Today I left the car running after I locked it and went into Costco’s for over an hour! Luckily I keep that spare key in my wallet. You know how I’ve told you to do the same thing?”

“Yes, Mrs. O’Connell. Well, I didn’t see them yesterday any place at all, and I really did a heavy duty ‘cause I realized I missed a couple of carpets in the guest room the week before! And I felt so bad about breaking that saucer…”

“Rachel, let’s concentrate on the earrings. Maybe you found them and put them somewhere I’m not used to putting them – just for safe-keeping?”

“Me? Without telling you in the note along with the saucer?”

“Perhaps you just forgot, Rachel? Oh Rachel, they’re my most precious earrings. I love them. I’d be crazy without them. I really wish you’d think about it and look extra-carefully next Thursday…”

“But how could I forget such a thing? I mean, gold and diamond earrings?”

“I know, I know, but they mean so much to me, Rachel. Terry gave them to me on our twentieth.”

“That’s not the point I’m making, Mrs.O’Connell.  The point I’m making is that that’s not something someone so easily forgets.”

“But if you did – just look Rachel, okay? Is that too much to ask?”

“Did you look in all your pockets? When did you last wear them? Did you take them with you to the Caribbean last month?”

“I never travel with them. Terry puts them in the safe when we go away.”

“So maybe that’s exactly where they are then.”

“It’s the first place I had him look, Rachel!”

“What about that big plush purple robe, Mrs. O’Connell? Heaven knows you love that robe!”

“RACHEL WILSON, ARE YOU HEARING ME? I LOOKED EVERYWHERE IN THIS GOD-DAMNED HOUSE! THEY’RE GONE!” Silence. Then in a calmer voice she continued.

“Please Rachel, I’m being nice, I’m being straight with you. I’m giving you a chance to…”

“A chance? To what, Mrs. O’Connell? You’re giving me a chance to what?”

“TO TELL ME WHERE MY DIAMOND EARRINGS ARE OR TO JUST PUT THEM BACK WHEN YOU GET HERE NEXT WEEK!” Then came the long pause that can never erase the harmful blow, the words, the letter stamped and sent. “Oh God Rachel, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Please, please for…”

“It’s okay, Mrs.”

“Oh please, please, please, this wasn’t my plan. I was just going to…”

“Give me the chance to return them back and make it all right, Mrs.?”

“Yes, no… yes! I just wanted things to be okay again with no more questions asked. I…”

“I understand. I understand. Now you just go back and check every nook and cranny in that house of yours, bend down and check under all the furniture and through every drawer and box and between every book and don’t forget the basement and check the laundry basket although I know it’s empty but you never know, and then I want you to comb through all the sheets and towels and all your drawers and if you don’t mind awfully, ma’am, could you put things back just the way I arranged them, neat and tidy, and if you should find those glittering earrings in all their splendor, please don’t call me to let me know. I want this to be the one big mystery in this life of mine I’ll never have to learn the answer to or have to solve.

“Do you get me, do you hear me, Mrs.? And when I send you that sorry saucer which I do believe you don’t give a hang about, please, please, no simpering phone calls, thank you card, , no pleas from your sorry neck of the woods. Okay Mrs.? You got it? Good!  Now, you just go and have a nice day. Oh, wait, just one more thing – you know yesterday I forgot my pay underneath the Chinese box in your bedroom, but then I remembered it just as I got to the bus stop and funny, I went back through all that rain to get it, something I’d never do ‘cause it’s always going to be there with the next week’s cleaning.

“Isn’t life funny, Mrs.? Doesn’t life have its twists and turns? Now, now, you just stop all that sniffling and gushing, you hear me? Bye bye now. You’ll be just fine. Trust me.”

 

I have been writing prose and poetry all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love or loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

 

V. AMERICA: A Flip Book

by

by Carmen Mason

I remember Search
for Tomorrow, Ernie Kovacs
Pinhead and Foodini
benevolent, laughing times

years later with my first child
still resting inside me
I watched the President and his
pink pill-boxed lady
spilling and scrambling
through blood, then
Ruby getting Lee Harvey
in the gut, again and
again, a flip book
repeated on every
channel through the
day and night

fifteen years later the
Amazing Wallenda weaving, then
plummeting again and
again onto a San Juan taxi cab
his granddaughter, the crowds
and the city buildings staring
all day long, all night

So I could only
sit still and give him
my unimportant tears:
Robert Kennedy? son
who sat alone
forgotten in his motel room
switching from daddy
to daddy to daddy waving
triumphantly
waving and waving

then shaking some hands
then falling and falling
again and again
and again, the boy
watching him fall
through the day
through the night

 

I have been writing poems all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love and loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

Four Words, Four Lines — for Allen *

by

by Carmen Mason

 

Every thing was tongues
the lapping candle flames
cloud tails above  then
paper-thin eggplant singed

and curled at the
edge near the endive
portobellos fat and lush
he licked the cigar

its end coming unraveled
smoke lapping the window
of the car; later
pink-tongued rose petals

his tongue around hers
and after deepandmany kisses
he’d sucked her tongue
so hard it felt

ripped from the center
torn from the red
wet tunnel that lived
without shame, without censure

for food and words
and flesh and wine
and so much more.
In the morning she

was worried she could
not speak…..she sucked
on ice…..she said
ahh…she said  yes.

 

*Allen Ginsberg once said to choose any four words and then write groups of four lines or something like that.

 

I have been writing poems all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love and loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.