Suns for CK by Francis Raven |
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A Memory Recovered While Deviling Eggs in the Delta
by Viola Weinberg I was praying over deviled eggs in the heat of the day Shaving horseradish and mashing mustard and mayonnaise Placing little leaves of cilantro in jaunty patterns And the whole mess— whites, yokes and all—in a Passover dish It was hotter than the Galilee, sweat running, hair sticking And I’m at the counter, under the spell of Lucinda Williams Singing "C’mon now child, let’s go for a ride And baby, for the first time in 30 years, I feel something good under me Like I’m behind the wheel of that sea foam green ’55 Chevy Bel Air With the big horses and the loud pipes and the accelerator like a rough tongue On the open road ahead, late at night on the delta, my husband gone With his sax, somewhere where women dance in red dresses so It’s just me, with the two little girls in the backseat Asleep in seersucker pajamas with the windows down Cheeks aflame with the summer heat, the breeze up Our way lit by an admiring moon as we drive on into the night Cutting through the delta like a ship under swirling stars Or haystacks or fantastic whirling rotaries of old dreams Going down like that, a cigarette burning in my ignorant lips Going down into the night, to meet my blue Venus On the far horizon, rumbling toward Mercury and his message Too hot to turn on the radio, I let out an old Okie love song Faster than Sylvia Plath, back to those young cells of brunette rebellion Driving hard into the cradle of civilization, swinging in a wide Chevy Tearing through the orchards down and up to the levee Unaware and uncaring if I would live to be 30 Unknowing that I would go through men like cheap shoes Or that I was about to burn my bra or become a poet Just the blacktop river and beads of sweat on my neck and the coal Burning low and furious on my next-to-last cigarette It was long before I knew about the future accountant And the prospective human resources consultant That would rise out of those two little girls in the back seat I was 23 years old and they were all I had—and it felt good To be flip as a cricket on the road, happily uninformed About the books that were in me, or the long way back I just kept driving, listening to the girls breathe quietly In the summer heat and river breeze, happy as they could ever be With their thumbs in their mouths and their stuffed bears Their little feet tangled together, their lips crimson and full With the smell of jasmine and pear blossoms to anoint us The wing windows straight out to catch every last inch of air My pony-tailed hair flying with clouds of smoke No idea of what would become of us or how hard it would be No idea of the joy that waited for us, our many lives Fanned out in the hours of darkness that enfolded the future No AC, just a bottle of frozen water on the seat To roll on our brows and necks, summer in the West Praying, like I pray over these egg yokes now— Thinking, "please god, please don’t ever let this road end." For Just One Hour by Viola Weinberg Turn off the machines Silence your quibble Lock the door and Draw all drapes— But open The windows over The snowy bedcovers And forget Let the air in as if It is clean and fresh Listen to the chimes And not the traffic Linger in the curious Half-light of a cloudy Friday afternoon, around five Gently run your finger Of the facets of this chamber And breathe Stop, take oxygen, and stretch Peel your clothes like skin From a heady clove Leave your body print— A shining silver rubbing On your lover’s Torso, impaneled With fear forgotten— And sigh Forget the mayhem of modernity The lost towers of the dead Don’t worry for a moment About the fires and the bombers Don’t think twice about ice on the road And jack-knifed trucks up on the hill And laugh softly Put on the Piazzola And dance again, tangled In the linens, shadow and flesh Of smooth, platinum hope Candles and light in dappled Amber-crusted happiness Happiness with charming flaws Arrive in blissful quiet, hand in hand And ten years younger And murmur Take this precious hour This thing you have This legend, this lore Wrap your arms Around each other Make love and peace Defeat the tongues Of war And live Outside, petals Flutter Early blossom Tributes leave a Purple stain The dead of dark comes in, but The spangled stars remain It Doesn't Matter What People Think by Viola Weinberg Years after they beat you with that airless book of essential etiquette, chapter by weary chapter Decades past party gloves and patent leather shoes and the dicta of the succession of forks and how to dislodge a small sea urchin from its spiny well There you were in Provence sucking down mountains of mussels, throttling escargot with a butter knife using a jam spoon to sup cold quince soup Just down the road from St. Remy, where Van Gogh's soul is forever trapped in a patch of Iris and a wheel of hay nothing matters to you, buttered and breaded with the crumbs of one plump oyster after another chin dripping, the white cloth changed twice, Champagne bottles rolling on the table, one dead soldier after another There are times when it doesn't matter what people think of you when your true love sloppy kisses you and wipes his hands On your soiled sweater, straining through the yarns of happiness when you are a little too loud in your revels as if sprung that very morning from the Bastille of your conformatory Each of you with your legs wrapped like peppermint sticks at a feast of the will, in the end, when you are dead and gone it hardly matters that for one evening, you tasted the starry night under the plane trees with the racket of cigale, buried deep in Cezanne territory, drunken libido and messy accordion song  Viola Weinberg. Photo by Ronna Leon Viola Weinberg (with Dennis Schmitz) was the first of Sacramento’s Poets Laureate (2000-2002) and received The Sacramento Mayor’s Award for the Arts in 1996. Last year, she named the Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poet. Viola has published five books of poetry, the last being Enso. Her work has appeared in the English Journal, Baseball Comes Home, Poetry Motel, Diablo and many other publications. She is currently at work on a collection of plein air poems. |
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