Art by: Thomas Gillaspy & Marcene Gandolfo
(Un)Related Tales of my Lost World
Issue of my Womb
Took him down to the river,
bathed him twice, scrubbed his little feet with a piece of soft wool that
soaked up the water and then released it at my hand’s command,
I didn’t care that it was cold
that his teeth had begun to chatter,
this had to be done if it was going to go away.
Walked all the way home,
up the hill, chanting low, holding him close to my body,
a thin yellow cotton fabric damp around his body,
and his eyes, those brown buttons, looked up at me from by breast and
asked me why
I was doing this, why I had taken him
out of the house at this early time of day,
undressed him and splashed cold water over his body,
his soft head, ignoring the shivering of his limbs.
Touched his forehead with my warm lips,
forehead cooler than it was when I pulled him out of the bed,
cheeks flaming, red apples. Sighed relief,
but knew it was temporary.
Just one step closer to losing all I had my heart in,
precious little gem that came into my life
before I could think about why I had invited him in.
Woman
The market was bare,
nothing in the stands and in the window up above
a sleeveless grass-green dress
hanging on a wooden hanger,
stretched by the time that had passed since
the lady with the big bosom and thick thighs
washed it by hand in the bathtub after it was stained by
greasy crumbs that fell into her lap and stayed there too long,
saturating the fabric in a pigeon-crumb pattern,
hardly noticeable
but which she could not stand.
The dress had been hanging there for months,
a flag over the market,
growing longer as the days crawled by,
witness to the shopkeepers leaving,
one at a time,
collecting their goods
in huge burlap sacks which they slung over shoulders,
slowly walking down the darkened corridor,
filthy, wet with juices of rotten fruit,
sewage from the decaying buildings that lined the market,
where in one such apartment used to live the woman with the big breasts
and cushioned hips, where she once wore a grass-green dress
and shared greasy homemade pastries with her neighbors,
her nephew, the short man who used to sell oranges
two stalls down and across from her window.
Each one left,
the orange man last to close his shop
not before carrying a big sack of overripe oranges up to the lady
who was still waiting for her dress to dry,
the dress now soaked with dusty rain and
the smell of a dying world,
the stench that never leaves the clothes
no matter how many times you soak them in water
in soap
in remedies from back home
where they always knew how to take care of everything,
including death.
Place
Aching limbs, rough palms, cracked skin around the mouth, and still, he walks around the house searching for the moment he lost when there was a look of hesitation on my face before I decided to flee the country, the land, the home I had shared with all those righteous ones, the honkers sitting in their still cars waiting for the light to change, the profuse sweaters lining the fronts of the buildings, cracking salted sunflower seeds between their dirty teeth, laughing too loud, then coughing too long, then whistling at some girl in tight jeans walking with a tank top because it is so damn hot here in this place, so damn hot, can’t breathe after walking for more than a few streets midday.
He continues to search, from his grave, sending out his eyes to wander the streets of where I spent most of my life as a younger person, as a child, as an open sore begging to be washed and treated with the disinfecting salts that would hurt like hell but make everything else go away. He lifts up garbage can lids looking for scraps of life unlived, long moments of understanding between him and his granddaughter, me, the one who left his dream behind, slapping his face with my ungrateful hand.
But there was that moment, which he believes he once had in his hands but let slip away, he is almost certain of it, even from his weakened memory under the ground, he is sure that when we sat together in the car as he was taking me home after dinner, that I looked at him with such hesitation, with so much sadness in my eyes, that all he had to say was you don’t have to go. You don’t have to go. You can stay here, in this tiny stretch of land that my brother was killed for, that I have spent my life defending with my words, where the language is pure and the sky is mostly blue except for when it wants to soothe us with rain. Israel.
But those eyes of mine, the ones that were glossy and ready to overflow, begged him to lose that moment, to hug me as usual right after the car stopped in front of the house, and to tell me to be ready for him to pick me up the next morning so that I don’t miss the flight.
Heart
There she was, right there, between the kitchen and the bathroom, in that dark hallway where she hung her portrait, the one that was done quickly, with charcoal, big strokes, just hinting at her features, the sharp nose, the thin eyebrows, those cheekbones, high and pointy, high and pointy.
She can’t remember where she is all of a sudden, there is nothing in this hallway anymore, just a faint square where the wall was once covered by that painting, visible even in this dark place, between the kitchen and the bathroom, she knew she should have left the painting in its place to remind her of where she was, where she has been, or where she used to be, before packing up maybe a third, a fifth? of her life and re-fitting into the square under a square over a square next to a square over a dining hall, white heads moving close to soup spoons, slowly, hands shaking, spilling some on the way to the mouth.
Never found the right place for that painting, that portrait of herself in charcoal, no dark hallway in the symmetric retirement home apartment, no corner to hang it up and let it breathe quietly, as she lived the rest of her life away from those places that had once held her, watched her lovingly as she woke up the day after her husband died, to the reality of the world without her work cut out for her, those walls that witnessed my sweet grandmother as she undressed, slipped into the bed she used to share with me on hot summer afternoons, the same bed where forty years before that she brought in a lover, a partner, a man who would sneak in to bring her back to life, and leave early enough so that he didn’t destroy it.
She now sleeps with the painting in her closet, the darkest place she could find. My sweet, aging grandmother, in all her beauty, sleeps peacefully, knowing that all those dark places she left behind are still alive, still beating, still remembering how much she loved to stand quietly for long moments, before moving on to the light.
About the author:
I’m a San Francisco-based writer of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. My work has been published in various journals including Entropy Magazine, The Blue Nib Literary Review, Quiet Lightening, to name a few. Founder of WordSpaceStudios Literary Arts Center, I am currently editing my first novel which spans 4 generations and three continents.
In the artists’ words:
Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Portland Review and Brooklyn Review. Further information and additional examples of his work are available at: www.thomasgillaspy.com www.flickr.com/photos/thomasmichaelart/
Marcene Gandolfo is a poet, writer, editor, and educator. Her debut book, Angles of Departure (Cherry Grove Collections, January 2014), won Foreword Reviews’ Silver Award in Poetry. Marcene’s poems have been published widely in literary journals, including Poet Lore, Bellingham Review, and December Magazine. She has taught writing and literature at various colleges in northern California.