Painting Grandma

Painting Grandma

Bean tendrils curl like memories, twisting from the tip

of my brush onto the canvas before me.   Clipped crookedly

to the easel, small, bent and dark, an old sepia photo

calls memories of my grandmother into this distant studio.

To delight her only granddaughter, she let skin form

on my farina the way I liked it, brewed strong coffee for me

at an age when my parents called me “tender” and “too young,”

sweetened it with cream and sugar (and sometimes chocolate),

warmed me on winter afternoons with hugs and homemade soup,

baked cookies for me with sweet surprises hidden inside. 

And her garden I remember, and her in it. As she bent

to pluck peas or pull weeds, bulges of flesh and rolls

of stocking tops showed below the hems of her slips and skirts. 

I loved the neat perfection of that garden with its black, glittery soil.

Its bounty filled her pots and pans, her table, and our bellies.

The dark little photo invades my painting.  Brushed in first,

tumbles of white cotton candy ride brown, flat-bottomed barges

across a brown sea of sky.  I borrowed them from the photo,

too resonant in brown to paint in blue.  Tall beans wind

around rows of poles and pile on one another over mounds

of clouds, their leaves sepia brown on the bottoms and greening

gradually toward the top.  I paint the photo’s dark woman

secure between the rows, round as a snowman in this unlikely

season. Her grey braids I paint wrapped thin around her head,

like a shining tiara, her square face a tea-stained brown, leathery

and wrinkled as shed layers of sycamore bark. 

As the old photo revives my memories, Grandma

becomes the brightest point in the painting. I paint her bib apron

pink with red flowers over a frayed blue gingham housedress.

She reaches heavy brown arms to pluck green beans from plants

I paint in greens and golds before her.  The tips of their leaves overlap

her reproachful face.  I remember the smile that stern face

always turned toward me and I smile in return toward the small scowl

I paint on her lips and forehead.   “Don’t,” she warns my father,

“point that camera at me.” Through the shining, iridescent lens

in my father’s hands, through more than fifty years of silence,

my grandmother cannot see the granddaughter who with a brush

traces the sun-edged clouds, suggests the light in her eyes,

and defines her bean-burgeoning apron, nor see, beyond me,

the great granddaughters and great, great granddaughters

who across five generations touch her still-damp face with their smiles.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

for Nicolina deNigri Ciaranello

This poem was published in the Paterson Literary Review #39, 2011-2012

A Jungle of Light

A Jungle of Light

As he is dying, my father furiously

paints.  Instead of the small invisible strokes

he used earlier, precise as a photo, he splashes

light on the canvas with a wide brush,

bold and bright.

When he looks inside, he says, all is darkness

and vultures circling.  But beside him,

still wet, a painted phoenix

circles the sun.  It pulses with brilliance,

yellows, oranges, and reds.

Crouched over his easel, he paints

the sunroom he'd always wanted

but never had.  Looks out from a jungle of light

and leaf to a succession of mountains gold on gold

on gold in the setting sun.

When he can't stand any more, he sits,

and when he can't sit, he paints lying

curled on his side.  Water lilies, in another new painting,

each flame white, green and gold.  Light defines

the leaves and liberates the water. 

He paints a self-portrait, a bit of ink blue,

black, purple and plum.  Drenching him with light,

a sun rises inside his heart.  An absence of paint

creates the light.  And the paint is absent;

it's missing, more and more.

Mary StebbinsTaitt

This poem was nominated for a Pushcart.

In Murky Waters

In Murky Waters

Already her pink toes disappear into the small shadowed pond

That serves as a gateway to the underworld.  The sun sets

Due west, relentless, as she plunges deep into clouded

Waters, swims strong, and surfaces

In another world.  It’s not what you’d expect, dark

Damp rock, stalactites and stalagmites, clusters of bats,

Dangling spiders.  Here, dark things coexist with an improbable

Profusion of sunshine:  dunes, jungles, mountains, waterfalls,

Fecund green swamps.  Anything found in the above-world exists

Below.  That first time, Persephone saw only darkness,

The fire-lit throne room, the endless files of dead

Passing through, the grey river Styx and the huge grey swamps

Through which it flows.  Hades had to teach her.  She opened

Her eyes to find other eyelids underneath.  Hades, who spoke at length

About the “veils,” peeled away onion layers of Persephone’s eyes

Until a pale yellow-green light began to suffuse the endless

Night.  Layer upon layer he scraped away, until Persephone herself

Began clawing the masks of blindness from her eyes,

Like Dante, tearing off his masks.  After months

Of thinning, the sun appeared within rock and beyond rock. 

“Ah, sweet sun,” She said to Demeter, one spring evening, pointing

Down through stone into her husband’s chambers.  Demeter imagined

Her daughter weak from lack of sustenance, from drinking

Only grenadine for half the year.  At first, Persephone swore she would rewrite

Her own myth:  escape from Hades and return to the flowering earth.

Now, rewriting again, she sees herself as uniquely privileged, golden

Fish in murky waters, the powerful, winged and shining

Queen of the underworld.

By Mary Stebbins Taitt.

This poem won first place at New Millennium and was published by them.

Counting Fingers Again

Because she’s sure the wolves have taken some, Geraldine

has started counting fingers.  She’s not sure how many she had

before.  She thinks they may have taken a nose, a breast or some

of her toes.  But mostly, her fingers worry her.  They look lumpy

and uneven, leftovers the wolves rejected.  She has fed the wolves

ice cream and donuts.  Slipped out with steak and chicken, hands full

of scrambled eggs.  Sometimes their long tongues and sharp teeth

wrap around her fingers, but always, they seem to let go and try again

lunging for the treats she offers them.  A nip here, a bite there. One,

she says, two.  Three.  She starts again.  One.  The wolf pack forms

around her, sweeps her out into the darkness with them. Tonight, she

has frosted sugar cookies.  With sprinkles.  Her pockets are full of them.

by Mary Stebbins Taitt

Published in eDificewRecked

Edge of Glass

My mother bites the edge of fine blown glass,

crunches fragments in her teeth and swallows them.

Cool, smooth and delicate.  Like dangerous ribbon candy.

She is a small, thin child, sepia-skinned, dark

hollow eyes with reflections of long-dead faces.

She scuffs her knees roller-skating, metal skates

on bumpy sidewalks from home to Grandmother's.

Yesterday, a match fell into the wastebasket.

The kitchen went up in flames.

She turns a Tootsie-Roll in her mouth as she skates,

chocolate honey-syrup darkens her tongue.

Sometimes, there is a large, strange bow at her throat

or perched on her head. Her dress is polka-dotted,

gingham, flowered, devoid of color.

Other times, the skate key bangs on a cord

No one seems to notice as she grows smaller

and smaller. Fades. Wrinkles around the edges.

Tonight, she turns another glass in her teeth.

Half a house burns from her dreams.

Tomorrow, she may disappear entirely.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

published in The Women Artist's Datebook

A Visit with Van Gogh

A Visit with Van Gogh

I walk through broad strokes of sun,

wheat bent over, women carrying

bundled sheaves, trees dark

in the distance.  At the edge

of the field, he sits, crumpled,

still, and filled with light.  I sit

beside him, look out over the late

afternoon, over the stubbled fields,

the roughened skin of soil. 

In his dark wild eyes,

for one moment, I see galaxies

colliding, shining cities of darkness

crumbling.  His gaze returns

to his palette, to the field beyond

his work.  I finger an obsidian chip,

feel the edge of its glassy smoothness,

the darkness of his implosion.  A black hole

flowers at the center of his soul.

The bottom of my sleeve, the hem

of my dress, my hair blow toward him.

A great light radiates from his darkness,

illuminates the coming night.

              ~
by Mary Stebbins Taitt
published in Montserrat Review

Marie Rivet has translated this to French, which you can view here.

Into the Current

Into the Current

We hid mountains under the sheets, a rising core

of flowered Appalachians. You thrust me into the shapes

of krumholtz. Fairy forests at the edge of rock, trees twisted

into storm. Cougar on granite; eager feasting at the warm flesh

of a doe. We hid the wind, the sudden first warm day of April,

snow still in the shadows of the oaks. Heat drove us

from our cave onto the rocks above the precipice. We tumbled, plummeted

into the gorge. Colliding in air, we crashed to the water.

Into the current, over the falls, into the pool. A sudden mountain

pool. Lit by trilliums and bloodroot. Coo

of a mourning dove. The first white-throated sparrow sings. Flies from

under the sheets smack into the still-closed window.

Crumples, chest fluttering, to lie stunned on the bedroom floor.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

(this poem appears in the Feb/March issue of edificeWRECKED, I'm unsure of the year --2005, I think)

Morphing--en Francais

Morphing--en Francais

I have had two poems translated by Marie into French. I am so pleased and proud that she chose to work on two of my poems.

Here is what she wrote (unfortunately, I have yet to be able to get poetry to publish well on this blog. The line breaks never come out right.):

MORPHING

Par Marie, vendredi 15 décembre 2006 à 16:30 :: Marie :: #543 :: rss

de Mary Stebbins Taitt

Ceci est un deuxième poème de Mary Stebbins Taitt. Un poème en prose (suis pas si sûre). Une série d'images encore plus frappante que celle de Bord de verre. On les imagine, les femmes humiliées parce que Dieu le Père ou qui vous voudrez ne les a pas faites parfaites façon Stone ou Roberts.

Chuck, c'est le mari de Mary, celui qui se moque des femmes. Les mâchoires de vie, ou mâchoires de la vie, ce sont les désincarcérateurs qui servent à sortir les personnes blessées, ou pire, de leurs véhicules. Le panneau américain dit "wide load", c'est à dire littéralement "charge large", ou de large dimension. Le panneau français, "convoi exceptionnel", qui lui correspond, est différemment connoté.

Morphing, ou Comment je suis devenue Géraldine

Dondon simiesque que tu dis, sale grosse qui s’empiffre de cochonneries sucrées. Tu montres

Geraldine qui cueille des fleurs dans le jardin d’à côté. Tu la traites

d’arriérée mentale, d’idiote. Elle a les yeux globuleux, que tu ajoutes, et il lui manque

des dents. C’est un être humain, que je te réponds, qui a des sentiments, tout comme nous.

Tu me fais remarquer d’autres femmes alors que nous roulons vers la salle de sport.

Les moches, les stupides. Celles qui ont des dents de lapin.

Les boutonneuses, celles qui ont les jambes arquées ou les genoux cagneux.

Je fais miennes leurs émotions, et je les cajole. Chaque mot me gifle mes propres imperfections

en plein visage. Dépassant un camion qui porte le signe "convoi exceptionnel",

tu me désignes du doigt, et tu te mets à rire. A l’arrivée, je suis si grosse,

si idiote, si stupide, que je ne peux pas descendre. Je reste coincée sur le siège,

et il n’y a que les mâchoires de la vie qui puissent me sauver.

Mary Stebbins

Pour Chuck

Morphing, or How I Become Geraldine

Buffarilla, you say, fat slob, Twinkie grubber. You point

at Geraldine, who picks flowers in the yard next door. Call her

retarded, crazy. Her eyes bulge, you add, and she's missing

teeth. She's human, I respond, has feelings, like we do.

You point out other women, as we drive toward the gym.

The ugly ones, the stupid ones. The ones with buck teeth.

The acned, bow-legged and knock-kneed ones. I cradle

their feelings, and mine. Every word slaps the face of my own

imperfections. Roaring past a truck with a sign: Wide Load,

you point at me, laughing. By the time we arrive, I'm so fat,

crazy and stupid I can't get out. I'm wedged in the seat,

and only the jaws of life can save me.

Mary Stebbins

for Chuck

Merci à Dominique Gauthiez-Rieucau, écrivaine et professeur, qui anime l'atelier d'écriture auquel je participe à l'IUFM de Montpellier, de m'avoir proposé "dondon simiesque" pour traduire "buffarilla", injure sexiste composée à partir des mots "buffalo" et "gorilla".

http://www.harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=auteurs&obj=artiste&no=7041

http://adesauteurs.free.fr/association/pages%20auteurs/Gauthiez%20Rieucau/Gauthiez-rieucau.htm

(je trouve que Dominique est bien plus belle en réalité que sur la photo)

See it on her site and read the comments.

This poem was originally published in English in the Women Artists Datebook, published by the Syracuse Cultural Workers. Read more about Marie.

Edge of Glass--en Francais

Edge of Glass--en Francais

Here is another of my poems translated into French by Marie.

POÈTES DE TOUS LES PAYS

Par Marie, jeudi 14 décembre 2006 à 22:03 :: Marie :: #541 :: rss

unissez-vous !

Je suis sûre que vous pourriez re-créer un monde plus humain que n'importe quel politicien. Tous les poètes qui fréquentent les blogs sont pétris de bonnes intentions et de belles images.

J'ai traduit deux poèmes d'une poétesse américaine, Mary Stebbins Taitt, dont le blog, Imagik, est en lien sur le mien. J'ai été émue par les sujets que Mary se choisit. Des femmes. En l'occurrence, sa mère dans Edge of Glass/Bord de verre, dans lequel elle mêle la maman qui perd la mémoire et la maman encore enfant des photos couleur sépia dont le bord se rabougrit autant que la vieille dame. Et toutes les femmes méprisées pour leur physique, dans Morphing, que je mettrai en ligne demain.

Traduire de la poésie moderne n'est pas chose facile. J'espère que les poétesses qui visitent mon blog voudront bien rendre hommage à Mary. Quand j'écris poétesse, j'entends femmes de coeur, c'est à dire toutes les femmes qui me font l'honneur de poster des commentaires sur mes notes.

Les poètes et même ceux que cet art indiffère sont aussi les bienvenus.

Mary Stebbins a aussi un site sur lequel elle publie ses poèmes, ses peintures et ses très belles photos : http://maryspoetry.bravehost.com/page2.html

Frosty Morning, photo Mary Stebbins Taitt.

Bord de verre

Ma mère croque le bord mince du verre soufflé,

en écrase des fragments entre ses dents, et les avale.

Frais, doux et délicats. Dangereux minces sucres d’orge.

C’est une enfant couleur sépia, petite et menue, aux yeux sombres

enfoncés dans leurs orbites, reflets de visages disparus de longue date.

Elle s’écorche les genoux à pâtiner

sur les trottoirs bosselés entre chez nous et chez grand-mère.

Hier, une allumette est tombée dans la corbeille à papier.

La cuisine s’est embrasée.

Elle fait tourner un carambar dans sa bouche tout en patinant,

Le caramel et le cacao lui font la langue toute marron

Parfois, un large noeud bizarre orne son cou

ou est perché au sommet de sa tête. Elle porte des robes à pois,

à carreaux, à fleurs, dépourvues de couleurs,

A d’autres moments, la clé des patins se balance au bout d’une cordelette.

Personne ne semble remarquer qu’elle se fait

de plus en plus petite. Qu’elle se fâne. Les bords sont tous ridés.

Ce soir elle fait tourner un autre verre entre ses dents.

Ses rêves ont mis le feu à la moitié de la maison.

Il se pourrait que demain elle s’efface tout à fait.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

Pour Margaret

Edge of Glass

My mother bites the thin edge of fine blown glass,

crunches fragments in her teeth and swallows them.

Cool, smooth and delicate. Like dangerous ribbon candy.

She is a small, thin child, sepia-skinned, dark

hollow eyes with reflections of long-dead faces.

She scuffs her knees roller-skating, metal skates

on bumpy sidewalks from home to Grandmother's.

Yesterday, a match fell into the wastebasket.

The kitchen went up in flames.

She turns a Tootsie-Roll in her mouth as she skates,

chocolate honey-syrup darkens her tongue.

Sometimes, there is a large, strange bow at her throat

or perched on her head. Her dress is polka-dotted, gingham,

flowered, devoid of color,

Other times, the skate key bangs on a cord.

No one seems to notice as she grows smaller

and smaller. Fades. Wrinkles around the edges.

Tonight, she turns another glass in her teeth.

Half a house burns from her dreams.

Tomorrow, she may disappear entirely.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

for Margaret

This poem was originally published in English in The Women Artists' Datebook published by the Syracuse Cultural Workers.

Read this at the original site, and read comments.

Read about Marie's translations.

I have attempted to translate into English the first portion of Marie's remarks. The translation is incomplete and I am out of time, but I am posting it here for those of you who do not speak French and may be interested in at least part of what she said:

I am sure that you could recreate a world more human than any politician. Poets posting online have beautiful images and intentions.

I translated two poems of an American poetess, Mary Stebbins Taitt, whose artblog, Imagik, is linked on mine.

I was moved by the subjects that Mary has chosen.

• Women. In fact, her mother in Edge of Glass/Bord of glass, which mixes the mom who loses the memory with the mom who is still a child with old sepia photographs of which the edge rabougrit as much as the old injury.
• And for all women scorned for their body-size, I will put Morphing, on line tomorrow.

It is not easy to translate modern poetry. I hope that the poets and poétesses who visit my blog will want to pay homage to Mary as well. When I write poetess, I hear noble-hearted women, i.e. all the women who make me the honor of posting their comments on my notes. Poets and other artists are also welcome.

Mary Stebbins Taitt also has a website with poems, paintings and beautiful photographs.

New

New

I have just been born
anew, emerging from the chrysalis
of my former life.

I stretch my wings to dry,
angelic laundry.
You float

down to me. Your wings
are halos, two shining suns, bright
invitations.

I join you in a wedding
dance as morning rises. We share
honeysuckle nectar. Our wingtips

touch, touch. Open, close. Slow
passion. Our joining
lazy and good.

No one whispers
“ephemeral”
more quietly than we.

~
Mary Stebbins Taitt
For Bruce
Published in City Edition, May 29, 1989
“available”

Hanging Out the Wash

Hanging Out the Wash

All day, I hung the wash out, coat open, hat off,

no mittens. It seemed like spring as I splashed

the wet clothes on the line like paints. I painted you 

a picture of our lives, our bodies, our arms and legs

flapping, useless and empty of each other.

You say I shouldn't hang the wash

out, but I hang my sorrows in the sun

to thaw. It's so much warmer than yesterday

and feels like spring: thirty-five degrees but falling.

Yesterday was 20 below. I bend over coughing

and cannot stop. The cough sinks a taproot in my lungs

You say I shouldn't hang the wash out; want me 

perhaps, to scrub it on a washboard in the basement. 

Coughing and wheezing, I hang out your private shorts

all in a row. If you can say it, I can tell it.

I read that asthma is another way of crying, another way

of screaming. You say I'm allergic to you

and I am.

I take the frozen laundry from the line: stiff bras

and panties, solid jeans

shatter

and lie splintered on the snow.

My fingers crack

and fall off too.

They are my ten tongues,

punished for their honesty.

Mary Stebbins

061101b, original 1981 or earlier (find info)

From the Chapbook, Broken Mirrors

All day, I hung the wash out, coat open, hat off,

no mittens. It seemed like spring as I splashed

the wet clothes on the line like paints. I painted you 

a picture of our lives, our bodies, our arms and legs

flapping, useless and empty of each other.

You say I shouldn't hang the wash

out, but I hang my sorrows in the sun

to thaw. It's so much warmer than yesterday

and feels like spring: thirty-five degrees but falling.

Yesterday was 20 below. I bend over coughing

and cannot stop. The cough sinks a taproot in my lungs

You say I shouldn't hang the wash out; want me 

perhaps, to scrub it on a washboard in the basement. 

Coughing and wheezing, I hang out your private shorts

all in a row. If you can say it, I can tell it.

I read that asthma is another way of crying, another way

of screaming. You say I'm allergic to you

and I am.

I take the frozen laundry from the line: stiff bras

and panties, solid jeans

shatter

and lie splintered on the snow.

My fingers crack

and fall off too.

They are my ten tongues,

punished for their honesty.

Mary Stebbins

061101b, original 1981 or earlier (find info)

From the Chapbook, Broken Mirrors