i have no name (for One shoot Sunday)
Heather Nelson, photo by India Hobson
the owl
sees through me he digs
my heart
the truth about names
i am muneca
a filament of being
you drew
from rambling waterfalls
on my cheeks
you shaped a winter sky
my eyes and the temple tower
vie for light
you punctured
my lips so deep i gurgle
my defiance
of your desire
restless
your fingers knead
my neck to smoothen
veins you embedded
i leap in spasms
my death as brief
as your breath in my
clogged vena cava
you think
i am perfect in your hands
i grow molds
in the day
my skin liquifies
as you dream i am life
the owl reveals
i have no name
muneca a doll
of your melting eyes
has no heart
Posted from a photo image by India Hobson for One Shoot Sunday at One Shot Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for Art given last week in New York. Come join us at this gathering place and meet talented poets and artists who share their love for their art.
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About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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Great way into the picture, very different take, the model as victim, suggesting the natives were right to fear being photographed because they thought their soul would be stolen and trapped in the image. – Brendan
And a great comment from you, Brendan. What an honor! Yes, I’ve read about how fearful the natives were of this ‘evil eye’ that steals their ‘spirit’ (before their conversion to Christianity, they called that which is unseen the ‘spirit’). Today, of course, having since lost their souls along with their spirits, once proud natives chiefs decimated to penury put on their finery and pose for a snap shot for the money. It’s sad, pathetic, the way I feel about it–shamed even. I’ve seen it.
But that thought hardly figures in my take ‘on the model as victim’. The image of Pygmalion’s Galatea sort of drove me with defiance. ‘Muneca’ (doll in Pilipino, my native language given by the Spaniards—my ancestors didn’t have dolls as play things, they had dolls to drive evil away or exorcise evil spirits) is how the photo prompt breathed for me. And her dialogue is with his creator. This Galatea though has a life before her creation and that’s how the poem came to be…
Thanks again!
wow there are some wicked lines here…you puncture my lip…my death as brief as your breath…he digs my heart the truth about names…excellent write…
Some really powerful lines here. Great take on the photo, still trying to figure out her expression! A doll who melts your eyes, I see it 😉
Thanks, Shan! I’m glad to know that my poem somehow ‘got’ to you!
“A filament of being.” That’s really lovely.
And thanks to you, Mama Zen!
“on my cheeks
you shaped a winter sky
my eyes and the temple tower
vie for light”
Excellent poetry that gets to the very vena cava of the matter.
Thanks, Adam! “…the very vena cava of the matter..’ that’s uplifiting!
A really intriguing piece. Certainly it’s going to take more work for me to fully understand all the nuances of this poem. Some tremendously evocative imagery here. Beautifully constructed.
Thanks, James! From you, I’m humbled by your words.
Exceptionally good, Alegria. The photo can’t be completely real, the perfection is artificial, the demand blind and mistaken, self-defeating and imprisoning…but the subject is helpless except in her knowledge…or so I see it. Whatever the underlying meaning, these images are strong and vivid.Fine writing.
Thanks again, Joy! You’ve captured and carried off my poem beyond how it came to be! I’m still can’t figure out where my images come from as in this poem–the ‘narrator’ takes over and I simply write what it drives into; and I use the word because I do feel whatever it feels or as in this case how ‘she’, the doll, ‘muneca’ (in both my language and in Spanish) rage in defiance of its creator. Thanks again, as always for your humbling words on my writing!
Oh, I love your take on this photo! Her defiance here is more much than gurgling it seems as you take to task in excruciating detail how she’s objectified and ultimately slain by those “melting eyes.” And while only the owl can speak her “no-name,” she still manages to speak.
The imagery is fine throughout, but I was especially struck by “my skin liquefies/as you dream I am life.”
An excellent commentary on artificial beauty and the camera’s oppressive gaze. Fine writing!
Thanks, Ami! If I add a word to my gratefulness, I could splatter in my joy and there’s not much space for that here…I wish there was!