Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Vagina Dentata
Eva Mudocci
Salome, Eve, The Madonna with a violin
Edvard's queen of ire and desire
Eva's steamy death image
sinister, nude, looking down at the viewer
Deadly seductive, framed in a line of spermatozoa
swimming from a skeletal fetus
swimming from a skeletal fetus
Evangaline Hope Murdock
Italianized her English name
Muse and lover of Munch
Posed for Henri
I would have loved to hear you play your violin
witnessing the lines of music entwining the audience,
like the strands of your endless, long dark hair
reaching out to ensnare.
Tentacles ever reaching
choking poor emotionally gridlocked Edvard
and the audience, leaving them to imagine.
They are spellbound by your myth
the artists, feminists, romanticists
Devil Woman, let me be…
Sexual power and evil
Ye are one and the same.
Debra Girard, July 7, 2011
A Christmas Grand Guignol in Prague
Two carp.
Two carp biting chunks out of each other
trapped in a small bath tub
Left there for days, ten to be exact,
to eliminate the muddy taste
that bottom feeders often have
Sweet meat for Christmas dinner.
Christmas was coming To Prague
The "Golden City"
that birthed Kafka, and The Golem
The city that Kafka once called "The little mother with claws."
There was Pani Uteshena, my Ukrainian born landlady
I rented her deceased husband's library
in a sprawling Stalin-era apartment complex
painted in acres and acres of ochre
Mrs Uteshena, the little grandmother with claws
Christmas was coming to Prague.
I saw the signs: the tubs of live carp
on each street corner.
At home in the U.S. we have over the top
retina burning displays,
gaudy Christmas colors everywhere.
gaudy Christmas colors everywhere.
In Prague, tubs of live carp.
Red holiday blood splatters the white snow- Ho ho ho!
A burly man will club a carp for you- CRACKKK!
Or you can take it home
and club it yourself
"People don't do that anymore" he said.
I was reassured that I wouldn't find
a surprise in the bathtub
Mrs. Uteshena, though, was a traditionalist.
So for ten reeking days I couldn't shower
Waiting for the day of the carp's reckoning
When the day finally came, I was ready
towel, soap and toothbrush in my hand,
I waited for a sign
I listened for a sign
Then a WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! from behind the door.
I felt like Joan Blondell, who played the fat hooker
in the 60's shocker film "Lady in a Cage"
when the hoodlums stabbed
her wino buddy to death
behind the couch where she was seated.
Off-camera violence- WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!
I quickly went to the bath tub,
rinsed off the remnants
of the carps' brain and scales
left over from the profuse drubbing
and relished the warm water rushing over me.
Debra Girard, July 8, 2011
Motion or an Imagined Conversation to a Friend Who Has Asperger's
Yeah I always felt like the odd duck. My teacher's would write in my report cards
about how they couldn't
reach me-
I was in another world
that I never responded to them
in a way that they were accustomed
had thrown up their hands long ago.
Kids get it- they know something is strange about you.
My mother used to tell me that when I was a baby
I would rock repetitively in my crib for hours.
I think I just liked the motion.
When the car stopped I would start screaming
until the car moved again.
I was also like a sack of flour when she held me
That's what she was fond of saying
But I cried when I saw "Bambi"...
by Debra Girard, April 22, 2011
by Debra Girard, April 22, 2011
Catbird
D L Girard, July 5, 2011
"You can stay"
So D. found a spot to roost
wildly turning his head
from side to side, not unlike a praying mantis
when it eyes its prey
flapping his arms
punctuating his sentences with
"Wowww, maaan!"
So he stayed and
Regaled us with stories of his travels
across the states,
His deals, his near escapes
comically flapping his arms all the while
He introduced us to hashish
laced with what is erroneously called angel dust
Starting to panic, my heart pounding in my ears
the telltale heart,
revealing my paranoia, my panic
To prevent a stir,
I busied myself by cooking sopapillas, sofapillas all night
The puffy bits of fried dough
permeating my clothes along with burnt Crisco
At one of our many impromptu parties
he brought some "friends"
one pasty, jerking and hopping
the junkie's jig
disappearing with D., then reappearing
on our sofa gloriously sated
I knew. I had Cathode Ray images of "The Man With the Golden Arm"
flashing in my fourteen year old head.
One day D. flew, presumably
back to De Moines
back to where my ancestors lived for generations
back to my mother's home town
She knew his family-small world!
leaving me wondering
if he finally found his own nest
leaving room for another to take his place.
leaving room for another to take his place.
Video courtesy of MC Jungle Paul.
The Guardians
At the end of the day, the end of the day
they arrive
The shadows guarding their stake
At the end of the day
She screamed herself
into exhaustion
Sometimes from a failed disciplinary action
doing the opposite of what it was supposed to do
The shadows make such a clamor
their voices cracking, adolescent
At the end of the day
their cursive lettering carefully guarded
No one is going to fuck with their mark
At the end of the day
The guardian shadows take their posts, Imbibe, trash talk
Bust each other's balls
The boredom makes them edgy
By Debra Girard, July 3, 2011
Spraying
Evidence is everywhere
by Debra Girard, June 30, 2011
painted in letters
that look like extra terrestrial cursive
lines over lines
I wish I had that hand
such swirls of paint
I wish I could piss
like a dog or cat
proclaiming my height, gender,
position in life
my readiness to mate.
How would others read it?
She's powerful,
she's horny,
she's mean, avoid her,
court her, she's fertile, and can give you
a strong genetic line.
My emotional, genetic, pheromonal state
sprayed on the bushes,
fences, gates, sidewalks, and trees.
by Debra Girard, June 30, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Sidewalk Gazing
Debra Girard, June 24, 2011
I walk on the battered sidewalk
head tucked down
like I have a thousand times
read what was scrawled in the cement
like I have a thousand times
A sidewalk bas relief:
"Jose con Ramona
Jose Con Patricia
Jose con Anci"
'82.
The "i's" with a circle where the dot should be.
Worn down, but still visible,
like the fragments of a hieroglyph
stolen from an Egyptian tomb
The message leaving me to wonder if it was written by a group of girls
with crushes on Jose, or angry girls
getting the message out
in their round adolescent lettering
That Jose was untrue.
Black Phoebe
I first saw one drawn on a sidewalk
with a waxy ink black crayon
deep rich black feathers
a dab of white on its chest
written beneath the picture
an explanation telling us that we live in its habitat
I make it across the intersection
dash over the hump of the intersection
just a few paces
from history
the history of dreamtime
the history that had sold over a million seats
to over a million warm asses
The neighborhood i walk along now
is shockingly quiet
I am not used to such quiet
Spanish pueblo style houses mixed with craftsman style
plus a dash of what? Tudor?
lush tangled vines ramble over fences, well fed and watered
I saw him
bobbing on the extended branch of a tree
tiny flycatcher, black with a dab of white
Debra Girard, June 24, 2011
Not a Poem About Sylvia Plath
Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia
You have ruined it for any other
female poet
that dares to write about
Mental institutions-the slightest whiff
of Psychiatric hospitals
or disorders,
of vague references to Robert Grave's White Goddess
the slight tiff with a mate or spouse
or anything remotely "confessional"
and we get swooning remarks: "Oh that reminds me of Sylvia"
I gave up painting because everyone told me
my work closely resembled David Hockney
I like you both, Hockney more.
His paintings inspired by the honey gold sun of Los Angeles
soulless hard edged buildings passing for houses
The human subjects show a subtle melancholic undercurrent
Isolation, in a riot of color
Poor florid, melodramatic Sylvia
Beating on your chest
Proclaiming your daddy a "black devil"
that bit your "pretty red heart in two"
A victimization so intense
imagining yourself to be a Jew
being "chuffed off to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen"
And your tarot pack, and your tarot pack…
Your ninth life finally spent
in a London apartment
Wet towels stuffed into the cracks
of doors, a thin veil to protect the children
Your pretty head
shoved into a gas oven
until you were dead, dead, dead.
Showing off your model legs...
Sylvia, Sylvia, older sister under
whose shadow I must crawl
Sylvia, I have had to kill you.
By Debra Girard, July 2, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
A Discreet Burial
Ernstine Pauline Reichardt ending in "dt"
Reichart ending in "t'
My father wrote on the back of a photo
"Richart", exposing a hidden dyslexia,
Ernstine Pauline
Did you really despise Amerika?
Did you really try to sail back to Hamburg
to its green watery parks?
Its massive port, its shipyards?
Only to die en route
To be buried at sea?
Golden hair, small toes nibbled by fish?
Amerika.
A cultural slap in your face so intense
That you just had to be shipped back home?
Slapped out to sea?
Ich habe keine Idee.
Leaving husband and children back in the New Land?
In the photograph you have a faint smile, impish eyes,
August seated at your side
Your belly corseted, but swollen
With who? Mien Großvater?
Ich habe keine Idee.
Along with your burial at sea
the invisible ancient heritage
of lost tribes
the Diaspora that may have been shown
through a sturdy wooden towel rack with two separate rungs
and ceramic oval shaped signs written in German dialect
Low German, a "strange dialect", one translator said
"Meat knife towel, cheese knife towel"
Sometimes objects
can expose the ghosts
hidden underneath our skin, hidden in our blood
that tongues never dare reveal.
By Debra Girard, July 3, 2011
Photo by Debra Girard© 2008
Pores
Tip of nose
around the face
hair follicles
porous skin
dead skin
dead skin
dead skin
Not fun to peel off
like a sunburn, revealing
new skin, baby skin.
Through these pores
the dust comes in
the outside clamor
of the shopping carts
glistening in the sun
The chlorine drenched fumes
of the garbage truck,
The spray paint
of countless territorial graffiti
of sprayed anagrams, codes, warnings
creating textures- a tangle of lines, color, texture, space
The art of territory, embedded in my pores.
Holes
Our next orifice
what will it be?
I am learning about
my orifices
Don't put more wax in your ears
be nice to your ears
And women- do not douche!
But here's a handy-dandy
hose you can use
to make you feel nice and fresh.
The attachment a chrome phallus that has holes
Holes that push the water out
Gently, gently raining
holes that remind me
of a weeping lawn sprinkler
or a "rain cane"
that I used to jump over as a child.
Flying Feral
Sometimes you can hear them
before you see them.
rising above the chittering of other birds
and traffic, and children's rough and tumble play
There, in the distance
behind the listing dingbat apartment building
The froggy-green tip of a wing or a tail
screeching, squawking to announce their presence
in the towering palm.
Or perhaps to call the others home
before night falls.
Debra Girard, June 24, 2011
Floating Rudderless in Ash
Arizona State Hospital
Aldonza was 15
Quinceanera ready
during that economic Pompeii disaster known as the Great Depression
Rudderless. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Mom, a petite beauty with marcel waved jet black hair, sometimes tinted henna red
Mom with dark red bee stung lips and powder
didn’t want to bother
with a child anymore.
Aldonza can take care of herself.
Seeking a helmsman, Aldonza found him
Married him at age 15
Her life another song of perfidious lovers and spouses
that she heard on her mother’s phonograph as a little girl
She eventually tired of the tunes
Tired of slogging through ashes
And when he sauntered home after a long absence...
In a fit of rage
she tore off every stitch of clothing he had on him
and locked him out, standing in the hallway,
bewildered, bloody and naked.
She was put away
dragged handcuffed into the bald light
Growing under the florescent light
A light that bathes everyone in a greenish hue
While locked in with the criminally insane, she met Winnie Ruth Judd
The Tiger Woman, accused murderer of two other women
Whose dismembered bodies turned up in a trunk that oozed,
if that trunk hadn’t oozed.
Thorazine did nothing to cure Aldonza's umbrage
Neither did the lobotomy
which left her with swimming eyes
soft, dark swimming eyes
but meaner than ever.
Reached through a doctor’s trousers once
clamped her fingers around his balls
and led him around his office
he tripping gingerly behind her, and shouting for the orderlies
Knocked out a nurse's front tooth
In the mid-sixties, with a pale gesture of apology
Aldonza was released.
She returned to her mother, who was now a decimated barfly
Her beauty still vaguely evident through her leathery features
her shoulder length hair now two toned, rolled in the front,
In a deflated 1940’s bouffant. Still ready for the evening.
Dybbuks Cause My Meniere's
by DL Girard on Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 7:29pm
I try to get up
but I am thrown back down
It seems as if invisible hands
grab me by the shoulders
Pushing me back down in a brutal way
Fortunately I land on a soft surface
Slow. Slow down, move the legs
rise, rise slowly.
I don't dare look up
I pitch backwards
This time there is no sofa to break my fall
Only the hard linoleum
I have heard the dybbuks singing each to each
I do believe they sing for me
They sing in my ear, in ringing tones, like singing bowls,
and soft hissing white noise
for an eternity.
The Gift
by Debra Girard on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 5:48pm
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"-R.W.Emerson
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative"-Oscar Wilde
Torture can't be consistent
In order for it to work well
there must be an element of surprise. Inconsistency.
The water boarded aren't tortured
on a regular basis
They are never warned.
What would be the use?
My gift to you.
Your gift to me.
Exorcist Ted
by Debra Girard on Monday, June 13, 2011 at 10:59pm
Approaching thirteen- pottymouthed little pirate!
I had just learned to say "Fuck"- I had mastered the word "Shit" years before
At her wit's end, she took me to see the Doctor Who Works With Kids
She met him while she was pink collaring it at the State Hospital
Bellvue of the desert
Because I was an angry little pottymouthed pirate
Because I flunked out of the seventh grade
Because I drew strange pictures- copies of Munch's Eve, incessantly
From Life magazine's glorious photos
He sent me to nightmare summer school at the children's ward,
the summer Judy Garland died
A cluster of small pretty pastel colored houses
that reeked of Lysol and rotten oranges
behind the hospital
Where tortured couches lined the meeting room.
Where I learned the word "cum".
He tried hypnosis, and talk therapy peppered with homilies
"No One Will Like You, If You Don't Like Your-SELF!"
He became my art critic.
I emerged bruised, but none the worse for wear and tear,
baptized in sweat, ink, and barbed wire-slapped a bullygirl hard.
Thorazine and the strength of six counselors eventually calmed the bullygirl's fury
He became my cheerleader.
Preadolescent Bell Jar baby.
Became a Pop Psychologist, publishing books
that helped us hang, hang loose
I found out later that he,
he found God's light
and toppled the ethics of psychiatry
by performing an exorcism or two.
Lost his license. Satan had won this bout-
I wondered if the exorcised were also
pottymouthed little pirates...
Neighbor
by Debra Girard on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 1:48p
His tow head buzzed
bristling, with fragmented shards of light
in the murderous sun
the desert sun
Eagle Scout
He points his rifle at the fat lady
He doesn't hear what she says
He hears nothing
peers through the site
All he sees is a target
All of his thoughts trained to the target
The lady is angry, defiant
Twisting through his feverish adolescent brain
are the words
the words, a sickening traveling campaign
And he is well trained
His father's son, his father's words:
"We need to rid the neighborhood of this n****r-loving trash"
He lowers his rifle
The fat lady sings
He hears her
-Dedicated to Josephine McCabe Girard
24 Plastic Cowboys and Indians and One Dead Horse
by Debra Girard on Monday, June 13, 2011 at 10:15pm
My new packet of cowboys and Indians
In their own little bag-a dime store find
Smelling of fresh "new"
My cowboys and Indians
Mine! Just out of toddlerhood
and in the world of Mine!
I set them up on the floor of the front room
and I weep
One horse is lying on its side, not upright-
legs not in a proud frozen trot like it should
but curled up
this shouldn't be...why? Why?
My mother tells me the obviously very dead horse is just sleeping
I don't buy it.
One day the dead horse disappears-quietly.
Two Inches of Broken Glass, Prague, New Year's Eve, 1995
by Debra Girard on Friday, April 22, 2011 at 6:36pm
Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
Are we still the same? I don't feel any different
Aren't we supposed to feel brand new?
Sans taxi we trudged through two inches of broken glass.
I didn't realize that taxis avoided downtown during such merriment.
A small group of young Italians,
waving the Red flag and chanting slogans
" Ach- Communists" he grumbled
Crunch, crunch crunch! Crunch crunch crunch!
Running and streaming, we had to dodge the bombs made with firecrackers
lit and placed very deftly into champagne bottles
that restauranteurs, pub keepers, tourists had thrown into the crowd.
And various European tourists. And the tourists.
We reach the bridge
The Bridge. Once having a pleasant earthy scent of ancient wooden beams and brick
now reeks of piss and vomit.
And gun powder. Pervasive gun powder mixed with the acrid smell of burning hair
The Migration of Selfs From the Sargasso Sea
by Debra Girard on Friday, April 22, 2011 at 2:27pm
I have seen
A great migration of selfs to and
From the Sargasso Sea
They reside in what are called Ranch homes
It's called "desert landscaping": Squat barrel cacti
Raggedy Pampas grass
Cat litter gravel tinted pink, brown, green-
Green- an ersatz grass lawn.
In remembrance of where they once lived
The siroccos come and go
Along with them are swept the weeping, those that rejoice
In the migration, those that breathe a sigh of relief
upon leaving
the gravel that graces the lawns.
Yes it hurts when it hits you
You have bits of sandy grit in your teeth.
The United States of Fugue
by Debra Girard on Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 8:11pm
United States of Fugue.
by Debra Girard on Friday, April 22, 2011 at 1:55pm
A fleeting thought
A fleeting emotion
What was it?
What IS it?
Some vague irritation
Growing blackened branches
From the occipital
to the eye sockets.
To nasal passages.
To the tongue that must always be placed on the palate
Not below, never behind the lower teeth
Quiet, not allowed to move
Is it some ancient sense of anger?
Some Insipid grudge that wormed its way in?
What was it?
What IS it?
Brawlers
Brawlers
by Debra Girard on Monday, June 13, 2011 at 9:57pm
I live facing the alley
a bougainvillea -lovely insignificant papery flowers
that rarely bloom, but provide
a tiny sense of privacy
even, dare I say
"security"
and sometimes even some color.
The sparrows enjoy their territorial noisemaking
exclaiming- exclaiming- exclaiming.
I didn't notice this before, but right now there is dead silence.
I hear a large battle going on near the gate
a brawl is once again taking place
I grab the phone. The brawlers are suddenly quiet
feathers spill out from one of the bushes
a tiny hawk emerges, waddling sideways
with its talons clutching its prey
A Cooper's? Half the size of it's paralyzed prey
lifts off-teeters- lifts off again.
Over the chipped repainted graffitied patina of the dumpster
A blur of reddish brown spots
and dun grey.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)