Flash Memoir: Feeding Sean

 (c) 3/21/2022

“Well, Sean,” I said, “You look good! Your wound has healed up nicely.”

Sean had shaved off the scrub of beard and mustache. His makeshift cast, which was built up from strips of t-shirt and plaid shirts wrapped nearly two inches thick and that had been hiding a purplish, swollen hand, was now gone. The gash had healed to a four-inch-long welt along his wrist. His hand looked normal.

Sean showed me how his wrist was stiff and that he could barely bend it. If he’d had any type of manual labor job before that opportunity was now past.

“I sure wish you could have gone to the ER with that!” The mother in me popped out. I hoped Sean wouldn’t take it poorly. I had already learned that he wouldn’t check in to any medical facility. Money and lack of insurance aside, he was convinced Doctors would lock him up and force feed him hallucinogens and poison.

I noticed that while I couldn’t say Sean’s clothes looked freshly laundered at least they weren’t rank and grubby from months of daily wear.

“Yeah,” he said. “I got the chance to clean myself up.” He beamed and his blue eyes shone with a calm I hadn’t seen when running into him during the past year.

I thought against asking him where the opportunity came from. It had taken me several months, a few dips into my grocery bag or wallet, and a couple of meals at Ozzie’s Pub before he offered his name.

The first time I saw Sean panhandling outside of Starbucks three different people, including me, ran up with cups of coffee and bagged pastries. I nudged my companion. “Look how he shines!” His smile was infectious. I instantly wanted to give him the world.  If only I’d owned the world.

When I talked him into a meal, I learned to not ask many questions. His meal choices had started as burgers and fries, an occasional steak. Eventually all he ate was pulled Pork and a Pale Ale. No sides. No buns. “This is what the German’s eat,” he’d said. He’d never go back to California to see his mother. The German’s were teaching him how to be a man. I didn’t ask about the Germans. I supposed they were white supremacists, and if Sean bought into that belief, I didn’t want to sit here feeding him. I hadn’t asked about the wound on his wrist either. I couldn’t tell if it was an accident or self-inflicted. I had offered to pay for urgent care. That is how small my world is. He needed much more than one doctor visit.

Sometimes Sean would shut down, turn slightly, and stare to the right of my face. Then he grinned as though there was a frenetic comedy on a big screen beside my head. A couple of times I turned to look. “There’s nothing there,” Sean said somewhat dispassionately. After a long pause, he would re-start the conversation.

The last time I ran into Sean he showed how he got around the security fence and slept in the crawl space of the now defunct Kasper’s French restaurant. The restaurant was festooned with notice of what new Apartment Complex was coming. Now four years later, I think of Sean on occasion and with worry. It never changes anything.

Flash Memoir: Confession Night

 (c) 3/20/2022)

One confession night in October, Jimmy confessed to masturbating.

Gathered from across the states we were a community of forty young Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and some like me, non-denominational. Our community leaders were married and the rest of us had taken vows of poverty and celibacy. Of course, Jimmy masturbated.

Jimmy felt the need to confess details. He did it whenever his roommate left for the quad bathroom. Instead of eating dinner. Or breakfast. During solitude hour, usually reserved for prayer and meditation. He described his grip,  moving his hands like God moving heavenly hands over the water in the silent dark, bringing forth teeming creatures from the depths.

 As an activity that amounts to self and group denigration, confession provides criticism to promote mortification, to forge new identity and new norms based on the power of the group, to reduce individual separateness. Instead, Jimmy’s confession disrupted everything.

Fifteen minutes into a confession that would seemingly never end Jimmy started to cry. “I can’t stop. I know Satan controls  my penis. Everywhere I turn is temptation.”

“Stop already!” I thought, utterly transfixed. All the girls continued to look on  wide-eyed.

Sure, sure there’s the sin of Onanism. By Jewish law, Onan had to marry his brother Er’s widow Tamar and help her bear a son that would carry forward Er’s line. Instead of impregnating her Onan spilt his seeds on the ground and so God smite Onan. It wasn’t spilling seeds that was the sin but Onan’s refusal to invest in raising up his brother’s son.

How cruel that his parents, and his church taught him this shame. Masturbating was probably the only activity most of us could take to remain born-again virgins.

Jimmy wasn’t one of the boys any of us speculated about marrying. He didn’t play guitar. He’d never lead a Youth Group. He hadn’t spoken much before tonight and wasn’t a powerful orator. The chances of his becoming a pastor were slim. Even in the secular world he would likely have problems finding a Friday night date. Without Satan, where would Jimmy shift blame for his transgressions? Shame radiates outward. How would Jimmy relieve that pain? Upon whom?

Finally, Bill broke in. “I see you girls looking with disgust at Jimmy. But masturbating is a totally normal thing for guys to do.”

“Yeah, sure thing Bill,” I thought. It is normal. We women though, held captive to a near-pornographic call for our comfort and understanding was not.

Tarot: Page of Wands

 (c) 3/19/2022

The Page of Wands always stoops

to smell the roses, or to sneak

Spreading Phlox between the pavers.

Equal parts haphazard and methodical,

she generates ideas while planting seeds.

My Great-Aunt Winnie loved the garden.

She labored beside the work crew that planted

crocus’s and daffodils each spring

in the concrete planter bowls straddling the entrance. 

Flowers were intended to make visitors feel welcome.

Winnie had no visitors. Not her mother.

Not any of her five brothers. But then,

taking time for family can be such an inconvenience.

 

More than anything, Winifred loved to listen to music.

Music soothes the soul and the Page of Wands

by default of immaturity faces challenges.

Whatever journey she began back home

The Queen circumnavigated it and

had Winnie institutionalized here

among catatonics and their colonic irrigations,

among palliatives, shocks, and needles.

Access to a turntable took finagling the one attendant

who wasn’t easily agitated. Even Glen Miller and

Gene Autry become irritating when over-played.

 

Winnie was, my father said, a talented pianist.

“She spent her time playing for the inmates

and probably felt fulfilled.”

 

The Page of Wands is modest, and Winnie

may not have realized she had been sterilized.  

The Page is a dreamer, an idealist,

whose energy uncoils as optimism,

and maybe Winnie felt fulfilled

Sundays after lunch, plunking out As Time Goes By

or Blue Moon on the auditorium piano.

Capable hands her mother saw no use for at home.

Flash Memoir: Privates

(c) 3/19/2022

Charles wore thick-rimmed glasses that were held onto his head with a large rubber band and a nose clip. To make it easier to wear, he’d said, his mother shaved his hair down to a blonde crew cut reminiscent of the soldiers on the news.  No one else at school wore hair short enough to show even their ears.

Whenever Charles saw me on the playground, he came charging whether I was on the girl’s or the boy’s side, or at the top of the neutral stairwell that led down to the street. No matter how many times I told him to go away he laughed loudly and drew even more attention. Sometimes he handed me a note with hearts drawn all over it. Once he told me that he loved me. When he brought blue bells picked from the school entrance, I scrunched them with my foot on the concrete.

One day, after ripping up another note, waving it in his face and yelling, “Stop it!”, Charles said that he would pull down his pants for me. My friend Stephanie looked shocked. Kanda laughed. I certainly did not want to see his privates, let alone any boy’s privates. I didn’t think he’d go through with it.

And yet, “Sure Charles” I said. “You can pull down your pants for me. But not here on the playground.”

He decided it would be at Roger’s Park after school let out the next day. Roger’s Park started at the bottom as a track with a soccer field in the center. From there it was like a bowl with a steep climb up to the trails through Fir, Hemlock, Maple and the stinky scent of Scotch broom. In the late Spring we girls like to sit off the track, chain daisies together and talk about boys. We never talked about Charles.

Charles raced to find me after school. His forehead glistened with sweat. His voice shook. “Are you ready?” he asked me.

I had forgotten but dutifully turned with Kanda and followed him. My word is my word!

Notice of the event had spread. At least fifty unruly, exuberant students already assembled followed Charles. He stopped walking halfway out on one trail and turned to face the crowd who were now surrounding him. He looked frozen. One hand on a Fir trunk, his other clutched his trousers as boys shouted threatening encouragement. Pinecones were thrown. Small spits of gravel. Charles started to unbuckle his belt.

“I don’t think I can watch,” I said to Kanda. What if I had pushed through and told Charles that I didn’t even want to see his privates? How could I say that amidst a mob?

Charles dropped his trousers. Underneath the standard beige he had on plastic pants that were covered with cartoonish fire trucks.

“Oh no!” I gasped. Nobody wore plastic pants. That was for babies, not for third graders. What was wrong with him?

As I turned to leave Charles was crying, sweat rolling down his forehead into his eyes. Still besieged by the throng, the din captured the attention of college boys jogging in the bowl who, thankfully intervened.

I felt shame and regret that I’d agreed to look at him. I was partly to blame for his humiliation. It was a guilt I didn’t have to face for long. He transferred to another school the  next week and he was soon enough forgotten.

 

Flash Memoir: The Fit

 (c) 03/16/2022

1968 and we were eight and nine, the butt-end of the baby-boomers, city kids whose working class parents didn’t flee to the suburbs. Nixon was president. The Vietnam war raged across our black and white television screens. Kennedy and King had been assassinated, yet we didn’t know a thing about racial unrest or civil rights. Zoning red lines had lifted in Seattle; our student base still looked like it was segregated. None of us had parent’s contemplating divorce, and we were shielded from those older cousins who started taking the pill.

The world rarely broke through our slumber-party TV nights, the homogenous Brady Bunch and the strangely matriarchal Partridge Family. The three of us, Kanda, Stephanie and I, had Davy Jones posters on our walls. A couple of times I wiped boogers across Davy’s face.  

Kanda was already talking about how many babies she would have. Three, maybe four and at least one of each. We were allowed to look at, but not touch her baby doll. It was expensive and looked real. Stephanie didn’t talk about babies. She was already focused on what her husband would be like.

The last thing I wanted was a baby, and the attention of grown men either made me uncomfortable or terrified. It was clear to me that I’d would never quite fit the mold they both so easily slipped in to. I didn’t know what else to want.

Kanda’s mother worked at Fircrest which is an institution housing the intellectually disabled. That was not the label we used in 1968.  We went there on weekends to play on the trampoline, but just us. Not the residents. I was confused by their visible inabilities to do simple things on their own, such as walking. Kanda’s mom seemed unfazed by it.

Stephanie’s mother volunteered at the church. I tagged along sometimes to youth events. I’m sure someone, somewhere hoped I’d become a believer. For a while I did.

We lost touch over the years, got back in touch, lost touch.

In 1980, Kanda had secured a job for me as a housecleaner for anarchists. There were guns on the floor and in cabinets and hunting knives on the kitchen counter. I cleaned one day and never went back to collect my money.

When I introduced her to my infant, Kanda held my daughter for two hours.

At our twenty-year high school reunion, Kanda brought one of her gay male friends and introduced him as her husband. We made eye contact. He shrugged.

As it turned out Kanda never had any children. She died of alcohol poisoning before she turned forty.

The last time I checked Stephanie had already been divorced three times. She is still committed to her church community.

I kept trying to fit the mold our parents set before us, even while the world all around illuminated that the mold was faulty. That if it wasn’t the mold that would break, it was us.

Flash Memoir: That Time David Bought me a Rolls Royse

 3/5/2022 (c) 

I was still on maternity leave and David was still working the dinner shift. He told me we had money, but so far we weren’t living it. Or at least I and the baby weren’t. The only groceries in the apartment were popcorn and one old bag of rice, and not always butter. I learned how to eat it dry. That wouldn’t be so bad except David liked to call me on his break and describe the quail under glass, the steak tartare, French onion soup, or whatever he was having that night. Even then, under the weight of that unnecessary cruelty I made excuses for him. I would make excuses for years, mostly to myself.

One day he came home from work in a Rolls Royse. It was an older model but mostly clean and such a pretty blue-gray. He said he bought it for me. I would have preferred food but said nothing as I didn’t want to appear ungrateful.

“You should drive it into work and show your coworkers!” he said.

 I wasn’t working. I could wait to show it off. He was insistent, so I drove it downtown.

“What did they say?” Well, they thought it was a pretty car.

“No,  about me?” Well, yeah. They thought it was a generous gift.

He let me know that my enthusiasm was insufficient. Perhaps the lack of nutrients going into my body and my baby sucking out what flawed nutrition she could took my mood down. In any case, a week later my car was gone.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Oh, I sold it and made a tidy profit.”

 I pointed out that as the Rolls was a gift it belonged to me and he had no right to sell it. Plus, I could use that tidy profit to fill the fridge. Never saw the fridge filled or the profit. This is how his gifts worked. They were rare and they would come then shortly go.

Tarot: King of Wands

 3/6/2022 (c)  for Charlie

Well, I’d hardly say he’s effeminate though he is dapper

applying a grand expression to his clothes

from  his lint-free top hat to his well-shined shoes

and all the accoutrements in between.

His glasses are special, almost magic,

they way everything he sees is imbued by his own curiosity

and a yearning to understand.

Whether he has chosen to write Dada poems,

or to paint a surreal story on canvas,

or even to give a PowerPoint presentation at work,

he is a consummate communicator.

He burns brightly. Sometimes he is too much;

an over-achiever that is often harrowing to follow

no matter how inspiring his endeavors are.

I tried to love him once. I was so young, naïve, and unskilled.

There was little space for my ideas and even less for me.

And like a lion in it’s grandiosity

he had plenty enough of wild cats in his pride.

Tarot: Queen of Wands

 3/6/2022 (c) p.s. currently not caring about line breaks.

The Queen of Wands is not sensual so much as sexual

She is fecund and if nature rearranged itself

the queen could birth babies until the cows came home.

You don’t have to seduce her. She knows exactly what she wants

and if she doesn’t want you, you will know it,

though you will still feel your loveliness

and not think of it as rejection.

 

How sun lights upon her face! Does she wear a halo?

Maybe. For a time. Orion imbues her

with an otherworldly glow so bright

she can paint, dance, or write by her light.

Sometimes she sprouts an avian head

or wings that are luxurious as fur

wrapped around her shoulders.

She can take you along as she rises to moonlit heights.

 

The Queen radiates magic and keeps an assortment of masks

which she applies with such cunning that you will thank her.

 

The Queen holds her scepter—

a wand hewn from the mustard tree

because all great things come from small beginnings--

held slightly aware from her torso

pointing to all the possibility in the world,

pointing to the road you should follow

to find the innate exquisiteness of your own inner beauty.

Tarot: Page of Wands 1

 (c) 3/1/2022

I like the word apothecary though I use the word pharmacy

or drug store as though elemental magic is long gone.

I envy the midwives and the women who used to gather 

herbs and powders and make poultices, teas, and incense

although I use the words compress, syrups and pills.

It has all been knowledge disconnected from Mother earth

and transferred from the hands of women to the banks of men.

Tarot: Wands

 (c) 3/4/2022

All parts of the Yew tree are poisonous.

Tea steeped from the leaves easily makes

a small child sick. Placed in wise womanly hands

Yew heals swollen tonsils, inflamed joints,

and aborts. Some believe the trunk

of the church-yard Yew contains purifying properties,

like a baptismal font, or a polished coffin lined with silk.

Say, like how a devil serves as a psychopomp to heaven.

Townsmen choose Yew wood as cask barrel staves

to aid in rotting grapes, and often as rods

to bludgeon the stranger for the sin

of being a stranger, never forgiven

but often forgotten until consequences caught up.

Rods hewn from Yew trees offer balance

to the crippled witch.

 

Quicker to hide her trade than to heal

the wife gathers twigs for her broom

from the hardy Hackberry tree, the beaverwood,

the sugarberry, the nettle tree.

Sometimes the branch’s wart-like protuberances

transfer to her knuckles.

A host to butterfly larva, the flowers

are often perfect and the townsmen think

the tree is merely ornamental.

 

Yew rods have been cut to hold up the climbing vine,

to frame a window; to offer the magician

a wooden bridge between her hand,

earth, and the sky.

Everything depends on what is cut, or whether

it is ever picked up. 

Tarot: Justice

 (c) 01/16/2022

Before I know it, it’s time for another spin around the sun.
This time my studio with its small comforts is enough.  
The home-sewn quilt and pillows.
A few cracks in need of plaster and fresh paint.
A pipe any plumber could fix. Efficient.
I think that’s the word Agents use 
to describe a kitchen, bath, space for  a bed.
Comfort makes me lazy and lackluster,
but what have I ever done to earn more or to deserve less?
For years all I have thought about is what I am owed
or due, all loss and no gain.
At another spin around the sun, I am stealing
toilet paper and cups of coffee in the breakroom at work.
Holes in my pantyhose stuck to my skin with lacquer.
I can only stretch my wages so far.
Justice does her best to serve, but I am unbalanced
and struggle to be rational amid the chaos.
A swing and there I sweep butts and leaves
off the Hyatt parking lot wearing $800 suits.
Another spin around the sun and I wonder
if the streets are all the same but am I different
or if this leg of the journey offers new streets
and I am the one who reeks of déjà vu?
It is time for another spin around the sun
and instead of celebrating I’m ruminating.
Where would civilization be without rules,
without procedures and policies?
Where would we be without desire
to right wrongs, to seek redress and remedy?
Justice and I are weighing my childhood memories
stacking them up against todays heart.
We are weighing my reticence to change
against my desire to be someone different.
My dreams against my choices.
I am no more honest than anyone else,
and no braver. Justice does her best.